Doctor Who: Dot and Bubble

Doctor Who: Dot and Bubble has newcomer Callie Cooke lead the show in a social commentary from Russell T Davies on class and race.

Callie Cooke, who plays Lindy Pepper-Bean, is a resident of Finetime, a pastel living environment for the rich and privileged, enjoying a harmonious life paid for by the Banks of Mommy and Daddy. A community that shares exclusively through an all-encompassing social media bubble, unaware of the threatening slugs that linger, threatening to unravel their sanctuary.

The episode, written by Russell T Davies, is billed as Doctor Who meets Black Mirror. It attempts to set the world right with its clunky commentary on social politics. Still, it ultimately ends up feeling slimy as hypocrisy from the writer becomes clear.

Dylan Holmes Williams, the same director as the previous episode, 73 Yards (2024), returns to handle Dot and Bubble, but the disappointing story fails the award-winning director. Once more, there is an apparent consistency in the director’s precise understanding of telling a story. With his considered collaboration with the cinematography and production design departments, the pastel idyllic of Finetime become a distorting, uncomforting dystopia, and the claustrophobic framing mirrors the bubbling communication between its residents.

As the second episode of the season with little in-person involvement from the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) or Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson), the episode becomes wholly reliant on Callie Cooke’s performance as the third story with a one-off lead character, becoming the first since Blink (2007). As Pepper-Bean, the annoyance of someone so vacuous and self-absorbed irks and grates, teetering the line between cringe and satire. Her prejudices and views ooze into covert racism, immediately blocking the Doctor or as indicated through her venom-laced retorts, and only is it through a literal white saviour, Ruby Sunday, or Ricky September (Tom Rhys Harries), will Lindy Pepper-Bean listen and heed the warnings.

Interestingly, for an episode of Doctor Who, audiences are likely to remember and discuss not the story or its characters but its themes as a commentary on race and privilege. The only person of colour throughout the episode is the Doctor, with Gatwa delivering a remarkable reminder in its final act about why he undeniably excels in his role.

Furthermore, Harries’ role as Ricky September invokes all the charming swagger of the Doctor. While audiences may not immediately recognise the comparisons, his reassurance and demeanour winning over Pepper-Bean becomes the most considerable commentary in the episode. This sauntering intellect happens to know all the answers, whisking away his companion by the hand and rushing headfirst into danger as his wispy fringe falls back neatly into place each time. Reminiscent of David Tennant or Matt Smith, the Doctor’s identity is very much at the core of Ricky September, and in showing Pepper-Beans’ reluctance to listen to Gatwa and her all-trusting compassion for September, it precisely captures the underlying racial issue at the episode’s heart.

However, despite Gatwa’s performance hitting it out of the park again, the episode has its faults. The human-eating slugs are briefly justified as the creation of a sentient Dot, with no further contextualisation given. Unfortunately, this undoes all the threat of the slugs, especially as, with one grizzly shot, we see how the Dot can kill without the need for its slug creations. Comparing these slugs to the crab-like creatures, the Macra, last seen in Gridlock (2007), audiences understand precisely what the creatures are, how they came to be, what they’re doing, and why.

Equally, in the second act, Pepper-Bean and September are running through buildings, and despite the set-dressing department’s best efforts, it still looks and feels like Swansea University. Though this is a personal issue, the realisation of the recognisable feeling of a university campus did create a disassociation from its immersive utopian worldbuilding.

Similarly, the discomfort the episode invites audiences to sit in about racial injustice and discrimination does present itself on the nose under writer Russell T Davies. Especially as no writers of this season are people of colour, with Davies writing six of the eight episodes — Steven Moffat wrote Boom (2024), whilst Kate Herron and Briony Redman co-write next week’s Rogue.

In fact, no writers of colour have written for Davies for any episode since he came to the show in 2005. Whilst it is always encouraged to challenge your audience and present ideas that make them think and question, the current showrunner should address his own biases within the storytelling department in order to break the cycle that the episode highlights.

Dot and Bubble then, whilst the episode itself feels very at home under the writer, and could easily have been broadcast as part of his first 2005 tenure, its commentary about racial injustice isn’t without hypocrisy. Callie Cooke is excellent, as is the direction under Dylan Holmes Williams, but those in transparent bubbles shouldn’t throw dot-sized stones.

Doctor Who: Dot and Bubble is available on BBC iPlayer, with new episodes released weekly on Saturday at midnight on the streaming platform, or broadcast later in the day on BBC One. Outside the UK the show can be watched exclusively on Disney+.