Spoilers Dot and Bubble grade and discussion thread
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
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Very much. And if you can’t see the difference between these things and events, and utterly failing to speak out at racism, then you need to watch a bit more of the show. Doctor Who has been anti-racist since at least the second serial.
RTD deliberately obfuscated it by giving another explanation every time something was done, up to the point of outing Lindy as someone who would stick someone else on the block to save her own skin. It’s only at the very end that it’s revealed as racism, and only at the very end that it’s really coming from anyone not Lindy. So it’s not meant to visible until you look for it on second viewing, or by thinking back.
You can watch twelve hundred hours of anything and not learn a thing. Or make 12000 posts without saying much worth noting.
There's a difference between being anti-racist, and being anti-racist right at the moment you're trying to SAVE the racists and need them to trust you.
Kira's "yeah, Damar, what kind of people give those orders?" line only works because Damar's already chosen to work with a Bajoran.
To be fair, one of the ways racism works in the UK is by ethnicity providing an easy shorthand to class — upper or even upper middle class weren’t particularly diverse for decades — and a fair chunk of this episode was very much using class based stuff. The fact that it’s expensive to send the kids off to this place puts that front and centre as well. So it’s there in the mix. Because it’s another thing designed to red-herring the audience.
Different show.
DW is family ent, and there’s no reason to have the Doctor, or Ruby, (or the show) put aside their ethics in the moment in this episode. As I said in another post, it’s also ridiculous because even Nick Griffin would hop in a Ghanaian owned Minicab if it was that or death. Or even a night of roughing it stuck in a forest in the middle of no-where. But that’s by-the-by really.
This was done for the gotcha, and as fable SF, it’s pretty good.
As an episode of Doctor Who it’s… kind of sad. Offensive in places too.
No one else pick up on surnames like Pentecost?
Racism so rife throughout all of time and space?
It’s confected, and another rushed ending that undermined it, and undermined something in the heart of the character.
It’s another one where the Doctor *lost* and where someone else had to be the Doctor for the writer to make the story work.
I believe there was an Orville episode that dealt with social media dominating a society. I want to say it was in its first season. Been a long time since I've seen it but I don't think it was similar other than featuring social media gone amuck.
The episode is S01E07, "Majority Rule". You're right in that there was no racial aspect . . . rather, it was a world where all political decisions, judicial decisions and scientific epistemology were based on majority vote using a social-media-type system.
I liked that a lot, and that's despite a whole bunch of people on Twitter completely spoiling much of it right from around 1am, so crikey if I hadn't known it might have been even better. Ricky September was so cool that for a moment I genuinely believed he was the Doctor in some kind of perception filter disguise.
Even knowing what was really going on the way they reacted to the Doctor at the end was shocking. Lindy was a cunt all along of course, and throwing Ricky under the bus proved it way before she was obviously racist to the Doctor (as people have said the micro-agressions were horrible.)
I half expected the Doctor to skip forward a few years and find some deserted half built village full of skeletons.
Anyway I thought it was good and, surprisingly for RTD, wasn't anywhere near as sledgehammery as I might have expected.
Really looking forward to the Bridgerton episode next week (yes I love Bridgerton, got a problem?)
Even knowing what was really going on the way they reacted to the Doctor at the end was shocking. Lindy was a cunt all along of course, and throwing Ricky under the bus proved it way before she was obviously racist to the Doctor (as people have said the micro-agressions were horrible.)
I half expected the Doctor to skip forward a few years and find some deserted half built village full of skeletons.
Anyway I thought it was good and, surprisingly for RTD, wasn't anywhere near as sledgehammery as I might have expected.
Really looking forward to the Bridgerton episode next week (yes I love Bridgerton, got a problem?)
Yeah, society ruled over by Like and Dislike buttons, with those getting a certain number of Dislikes getting penalized.
Well, since you're asking...
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I feel like I worded this in a way that sounds overly harsh: I didn't meant to imply that I instantly knew it was about racism after the "look alike" line. But that line did stick out when it happened (and I think the Doctor did have a visible reaction to it) and I thought of it when the ending reveal what was really going on. I'm very pleased it ended with the Doctor just silently watching them leave instead of making a big speech about racism. Thought it was much more powerful that way.
I really enjoyed this one, but I missed the whole racism aspect to it, I didn't catch why Lindy and the Finetime people didn't want to go with Ruby and The Doctor, so I had just assumed it was because they didn't know them. And the Doctor's frustration was just that they were so clueless they were passing up their only chance to survive.
Though now that I know that, it does give a different context to her being disgusted when The Doctor first contacted her, I assumed it was just that he was some random guy she didn't know.
The bug creatures were definitely creepy, and the way the people with their Bubbles up just walked right into them made it even worse.
The social media aspect of the episode was pretty good, sadly it really didn't seem that far off from reality. People in reality have been so busy on their phones that they walked into traffic and open manholes and things like that.
I was almost starting to think maybe Lindy really wasn't that bad, until she sacrificed Ricky just to save herself. I do have to compliment the actress, she did a good job.
And I do think a social media app that got sick of the people on the app and started killing them all, was a pretty good idea for a villain in a story like this.
Though now that I know that, it does give a different context to her being disgusted when The Doctor first contacted her, I assumed it was just that he was some random guy she didn't know.
The bug creatures were definitely creepy, and the way the people with their Bubbles up just walked right into them made it even worse.
The social media aspect of the episode was pretty good, sadly it really didn't seem that far off from reality. People in reality have been so busy on their phones that they walked into traffic and open manholes and things like that.
I was almost starting to think maybe Lindy really wasn't that bad, until she sacrificed Ricky just to save herself. I do have to compliment the actress, she did a good job.
And I do think a social media app that got sick of the people on the app and started killing them all, was a pretty good idea for a villain in a story like this.
I'm boggled by myself: I thought it was about class too.
I thought this was an excellent episode, even with me missing the point. The scene where Ruby gets Lindy to look around her office creeped me out. And then the crunching!
When Lindy threw poor Ricky under the bus, I truly hated her. Good job by the actors.
And The Doctor literally crying to them to let him save them.... My heart just broke because saving people is who he is.
Rough episode emotionally. I gave it a 10.
Thanks for saying that because I know I was hesitant to post because I figured everyone was going to mock the admission that I missed it upon initial viewing.
I assumed they were looking down on them because of class at first as well. It definitely took me a couple of seconds before I noticed that all the survivors were white and then a few more to mentally rewind to the faces we saw in her bubble. They made it easy for us as well by having Ruby and the survivors all in blue while the Doctor was in bright orange!
But I think the smart thing about the episode is that even though we learn more about Lindy as the episode goes on, it doesn't necessarily invalidate all our previous assumptions. Lindy is certainly racist, but I'm sure she was also looking down on Ruby because of her class. We know why she closed the message from the Doctor at the start, but if it'd been Jodie Whittaker on the line I bet it would've only taken her a second longer to make that same choice, because the Doctor wasn't in her friend group and wasn't telling her what she wanted to hear.
I think the episode's about any kind of segregation, isolation and closed-mindedness, and what it does to people. The big twist may be 'oh, they're white supremacists' and you can catch a lot of the racism on a rewatch, but there's more to unpack here.
But I think the smart thing about the episode is that even though we learn more about Lindy as the episode goes on, it doesn't necessarily invalidate all our previous assumptions. Lindy is certainly racist, but I'm sure she was also looking down on Ruby because of her class. We know why she closed the message from the Doctor at the start, but if it'd been Jodie Whittaker on the line I bet it would've only taken her a second longer to make that same choice, because the Doctor wasn't in her friend group and wasn't telling her what she wanted to hear.
I think the episode's about any kind of segregation, isolation and closed-mindedness, and what it does to people. The big twist may be 'oh, they're white supremacists' and you can catch a lot of the racism on a rewatch, but there's more to unpack here.
Count me as another person who also thought it was about class.
I've been quietly reading all of the comments here and reflecting on this episode since it came out (when I've had the time; I've been quite busy since then) and I freely admit that I missed the point, too.
I had been too focused on the surface level of the episode's social media commentary that I didn't consciously pick up on what was going on right in front of me. I noticed most of the microagressions already discussed here but I misread them in regards to classism and sheltered existence.
But as others have noted, that's no excuse and it's a mark of my own white privilege.
While there is some argument on whether Davies presented this idea in the best way (notably how Ruby failed to react), he ultimately succeeded in the best way: He got all of us talking about this episode, the depiction of racism, and its continued prevalence in the real world.
I've been quietly reading all of the comments here and reflecting on this episode since it came out (when I've had the time; I've been quite busy since then) and I freely admit that I missed the point, too.
I had been too focused on the surface level of the episode's social media commentary that I didn't consciously pick up on what was going on right in front of me. I noticed most of the microagressions already discussed here but I misread them in regards to classism and sheltered existence.
But as others have noted, that's no excuse and it's a mark of my own white privilege.
While there is some argument on whether Davies presented this idea in the best way (notably how Ruby failed to react), he ultimately succeeded in the best way: He got all of us talking about this episode, the depiction of racism, and its continued prevalence in the real world.
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I thought the episode was about classism at first as well because of the obvious spoilt, entitled kid-adults, the spilt blue blood, and the bugs literally "eating the rich". That it was about racism made me question my own biases that I had overlaid in the same way as the bubble - my own self-generated perception filter, acquired from decades immersed in a society that is engineered a certain way, whether deliberately or accidentally.
There's a lot to unpack here, but basically, you're comparing apples and oranges. The point of the Doctor punching that douchebag for insulting Billie was that he was protecting his friend's pride after he insulted her to her face. He wasn't gonna let him die or anything. The ending is about the Doctor, now a black man, ignoring the racism inherent in these pathetic fools, totally willing to save them because they were gonna die if he didn't offer them his help. Whether they were racists or not was not just irrelevant, it didn't matter.
It was mentioned that the Doctor was impressed with humanity, all the way back in Arc in Space and that this couldn't be the same race. Well, actually it absolutely could have. The idea of humanity progressing in any leftist show (and this show is such under Davies) is that they eventually put aside their pettiness and discriminations and looked at the matters at heart. Not so here clearly. That humanity is imperfect and racist does not mean it can never stop being so eventually. And vice-versa, being benevolent and kind-hearted doesn't mean one can't turn bitter and even devolve, under the right circumstances.
Hell, we're all Trek fans, and we've at least seen DS9. Are we actually surprised at the racism?
Also, someone mentioned that they ignored the "you all look alike" comment early on, but... damn, dudes. That's the more alarming racism alarm that exists. Doesn't mean you're racist either, it does mean that racism is not affecting the way it can affect groups like blacks, etc. You don't have to be a "social warrior", whatever the fuck that means, to get that RTD was going for that, it just means you have some sense of fairness towards people that exist outside the zone of the white privilege. If you didn't realize it immediately, its RTD telling you, the viewer, that you should have, and that's not a bad thing if you realize that you missed it because its art, not everything can be read by everyone at once. But part of evolution in man and ourselves is in recognizing what's being said and comprehending the essence of it. Lets do that.
Exceptionally well told. The Doctor's in despair at the end because there's nothing he can do to save them. They can't see past his skin color, and he's the smartest guy they'll ever know easily. Its exactly the reaction you'd expect from the Doctor.
Why didn't the Doctor call out the racism?
Let's see. Did he call out the racism in that asshole he punched as Capaldi in the clip you shared? No, he just punched his lights out. The Doctor's not out to lecture everyone in sight, he's just trying to help when he can. That's the Doctor. Not everyone is his friend to have a discussion with. The Doctor is well experienced to comprehend that these people won't be reasoned with whatever he says rationally, let alone abrasively and didactingly scolding them for their racism.
The Doctor's not out-of-character in the scene, period.
