It’s one of these things where if you know the racism’s there, it was hinted at all over the place in the episode before the end…
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I saw some comments on Twitter (no I shouldn’t have gone on there, just went to post a link to this thread) where some white people were saying “it wasn’t clear enough that it was about racism, it should have been spelled out and clearly explained”.
I get that it was subtle. I didn’t see it coming (even though all her friends were so, so white). And at the end, when I realised what was happening, it all clicked for me. Then reading comments online, it all makes sense and I desperately want to watch it again with that in mind.
I think it was really, really cleverly done.
But yes absolutely Russell does need to get more people of colour, and women, in the writers room. I’m hoping he does that more next season.
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I think this is how you do an effective story about racism. I did not realize that it was about that until the end and that made it hit harder. I think me as a heterosexual white CIS man is trained not to see this kind of racism and that made the obvious hateful stuff she said earlier hit harder because I did not even see when it happened.
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When you think about it there have been two men and two women writing for this season - it’s just that RTD has written a loooot.
Bring in new voices, more voices, more diverse voices and most importantly bring in writers who have brilliant stories to tell!
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And the thing is, had it been made any more obvious, those same people would have complained that RTD is driving a woke agenda and that Doctor Who has never been this woke before!
RTD has stated that there is a bigger variation in writers incoming in S2. I guess they struggled to get people on board for the first relaunch season!
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And it’s definitely the little things. See the Rotterdam twins here, who Lindy has no reaction to being in the same room? But when it’s Ruby and the Doctor…
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Frankly between the reaction to this and the reaction to 73 Yards, I don’t think the Twitterati deserves the level of storytelling we’re actually achieving here. Dot And Bubble is already unsubtle enough as it is, and the whole point of 73 Yards is the ambiguity. It is almost ironic that people complaining about not getting the racism in Dot And Bubble are probably not getting it for very Dot And Bubble reasons.
One thing that massively struck me when I think about it again, and I think the thing that really actually set me off into realizing something about the last scene was not going to be a triumphant victory - when Lindy arrives at the pier, and she sees The Doctor and Millie, she doesn’t acknowledge them. Barely even looks at them really. She seems almost afraid? It isn’t the sort of reaction we tend to expect from a recently rescued Doctor Who protagonist. They’re almost like micro-aggressions, so if you’re white, you won’t notice it. That’s the whole point. I think a lot of the people who are complaining about the racism not being more obvious are actually just feeling a tremendous discomfort because they didn’t pick up on it until it was too late in the narrative for them to comfortably other the Finetimers. I think this is going to slice very close to home for a lot of Twitter users and the response is partially because of that.
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I’m getting sidetracked here. Are we supposed to believe that the person to the right in that shot is 17 years old??? (There’s a decade if not two on top of that number surely?)
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We’re actually expected to believe everyone on the planet is between 17 and 27. 
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Remember, this is the future! Let’s not judge them by our ancient standards 
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I mean, to be fair, we don’t know how long a year is there…
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True true. We don’t know how long they were at the Space Baby stage 
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OK Bill’s post upthread has reminded me very rapidly as well of that truly horrifying (and again, Children of Earth-esque moment when Lindy gets introduced to the person immediately preceding her in the alphabetical order.
It’s heartbreaking. Let’s grab the most kind, pleasant looking person that we can, let’s make sure that the visual storytelling is overtly letting us know that she’s only seventeen years old, and then let’s have her get eaten in horrific fashion by the alien when we all know it’s coming and more importantly there’s nothing we can do about it. The fact that Lindy is more affected by the murder that happens on the screen in front of her than the very real death she causes with her betrayal is the icing on the cake. If it isn’t in the Bubble, it doesn’t really matter, and it can be rationalized.
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That’s a classic Troughton plot hook though. Someone on Reddit made a reference to The Macra Terror that made that reading click for me.
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Well if you are going to be logical about it…
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I am one of the first proponents of Russell bringing in new blood, and also bringing in people with the experience required to write stories of the nature he wants.
However, I don’t actually think that this episode is a misstep in that regard. This script isn’t about what it’s like to experience racism as a Black man, and in the parts of the show where it is, it’s clear that Ncuti’s own lived experiences allow him to deliver an incredible performance that’s rich in the nuance required. I’d be very interested to hear his opinion and also his process for working that final scene, what he was drawing from, what his motivations were. But I think the fact that this is a RTD script, and one where he’s flexing some of his best work, is actually a benefit to the story.
It’s not a story about experiencing racism.
It’s a cautionary tale, an exceptionally bleak one, but one nonetheless.
It’s also the spiritual successor to the moment where Gwen wonders in CoE whether The Doctor sometimes turns his face away in shame from humanity. We get a definitive answer here - he doesn’t. At least when he has the chance to. This isn’t about how terrible it is that The Doctor is rejected because of the color of his skin. It’s about how terrible it could be that we’re so close to a society where that sort of offer would be rejected for the color of someone’s skin. We live in that world already. People very regularly refuse medical care from Black doctors. Ncuti’s pain and anger are all entirely justified at the end, but I don’t think that the trauma of that experience is the message Russell is trying to get across.
The message is “Be careful, because without your input, without your control, you could very easily be turned into this.” And it works because he’s right.
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You could tell something was off when she quickly swiped to get the Doctor off the screen. Could it be because he wasn’t a follower or someone in her friends list or something more sinister. You just didn’t know why exactly at that point. Then you start paying attention to there was no one of color. This shows exactly how a lot of people view the world with race and prejudice. You stay in your bubble oblivious to what going on around you. The dot and bubble hits at so many different levels in our society from being in our bubbles of racism, prejudice and social media.
There is a lot to takeaway from this episode and this is just some of it.
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There’s also another thing - it isn’t explicitly stated why The Doctor can’t get into Finetime, just that there’s a “force-field.” I wonder how that force-field is programmed? Also to address I think the question of why the Dot murdered everyone on the homeworld too, as they can’t have all been old rich white people…well, they really could have?
That’s the point of this story. This isn’t a heroic “The Doctor saves the day” story, this is a classic 2000s Big Finish McGann story. “The Doctor arrives in a society where things are already way too far gone for him to fix it, he still tries his best anyway, and is markedly damaged by the attempt.” It’s almost but not quite Jubilee’s ending for a modern audience.
It has also rendered Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini (DOT how am I just seeing that now) into a horror movie soundtrack. Even the first use of it before it fades out into the opening titles, I was like “Wow something is VERY wrong here.”
Speaking of music, did anyone else also think Murray Gold was doing some of his finest work in years on this episode?
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This is exactly what I think this episode was going for - to confront one with ones own discomfort when realising that being cruel and callous and, indeed, racist, isn’t as difficult as people like to think it is. I confess that I too didn’t pick up on the racism until the very end either, but looking at other people’s analysis and gifs and whatnot, I think it is sprinkled in there incredibly well all the any through, and it wouldn’t be nearly as powerful as an ending if Lindy had been more cartoonish about it.
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Yeah, and she didn’t have the same reaction to Ruby. She was actively hostile to the Doctor pretty much any time he said anything, “I don’t think he’s as stupid as he looks”, she thought the Doctor was two different people that looked the same, referred to Ruby and the Doctor as criminals, and then said he was going to be punished (and was probably calling the police on him earlier?). Lots of things.
It’s one of these spots where I end up wondering how I didn’t notice a lot of that earlier…
(And yes, the music was wonderful.)
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