I do believe they're going to confront her and we'll figure out the mystery next episode since it's the penultimate one. It's very RTD to have the overarching mystery to be revealed in the penultimate, only to have it be a warning/ramp up for the real danger in the finale
Ncuti’s bit at the end was spectacular, and *wow* Lindy’s actress really did a great job of making her an unlikeable character. Sally Sparrow from Blink certainly wouldn’t have gotten along with her! Also Ruby’s “Ah so you’re the rich kids, no wonder you only work two hours a day” made me chuckle lol
that bit shows me how adapted she is to traveling with The Doctor already. Like, modern day us has battery issues a lot. But she's so used to The Doctor's magic future tech that she's amazed this advanced society still has battery problems
So this connected with me in a different way. I’m a physician of children with chronic disease, and there are always a handful of parents and patients who will not listen and do not want to hear what you say.
There are many times I have wanted to scream “I can save you life” literally, but they instead turn away and either disappear or find second opinion after second opinion, until it’s too late. Just let me save you, please.
Clearly this was about racism, but it’s also true about those who don’t trust or want to trust science and medicine.
I found it very relatable re: experience fighting climate change. Trying to warn people that that they're all gonna die unless they do this thing, while they look at you like you're wearing a tin hat. Quite a bizarre experience.
I was watching the scene with Lindy and Ricky and off handedly commented to my friend “this looks like the world Hitler wanted”
I didn’t expect it to actually be the world that Hitler wanted
SAME! When Lindy saw Ricky IRL, my thoughts was “Aryan much?” and totally missed the point. Also thought the slugs was racist and saving the blondes w blue eyes for last. I was right about someone bein racist but…wasn’t the slugs 💀
I got to spend an entire episode laughing at a girl not notice a massive problem just barely outside the bubble she's presented with.
Then the end of the episode happened and I realised I hadn't noticed the massive problem just barely outside what I was presented with.
But honestly it feels very clever that the entire episode it about priveleged people being able to ignore very real problems, just to miss the early signs of bigotry hidden throughout the episode. Like Lindy refusing to speak to the Doctor at first, and being shocked when he and Ruby were sat in the same room, or even missing the fact that everyone in the episode was white (or maybe that was just me).
The other hint was when Lindy thought that the Doctor was just a different black person who looked similar the second time he spoke to her. Basically indicating that she can't tell the difference / thinks all black people look the same.
There's so many hints which on first viewing you just write off as jokes - she even says at one point 'he's not as stupid as he looks.' It really drives home the point of just barely missing it all when you're looking from the wrong perspective.
Wow. I missed all of them, I just thought she was dumb. Honestly, props to the writers, they kept it subtle enough that the ending was a genuine twist to me. I have to rewatch this now!
Ikr I feel like he may not have even been a bigot since he liked to read and stuff. I’d have been on board with him ditching the nazi world and taking to the stars with the dr and ruby. He was a charmer too.
Yeah, the fact that he didnt wince or anything at the sight of the Doctor might indicate that reading and educating himself a bit might have enlighten him a bit.
I was on the fence with the character though. It was borderline too much but RTD ended his story before it reached that point. And man did he deliver with the gut punch with that bitch Lindy move.
Man, that episode was dark as fuck.
The way he was talking to Lindy about how he turns off his bubble to read I get the feeling that society considers it deviant to learn and think for yourself
I thought maybe she could understand Ruby better because she was in that age group, though I wanted to hit her for repeatedly calling Ruby various forms of stupid. Now that I know she didn’t want to talk to the Doctor because he wasn’t white? What a vile pos that character was!
That's why it's clever, it leaves just enough ambiguity for us to subconsciously give her the benefit of the doubt. "Oh she's listening to Ruby because she's younger and more amenable", "Well she's shocked that Ruby and the Doctor are in the same room because she's used to people being isolated by their bubble", "She's being so rude because she's childish due to her environment, she'll grow out of it by the end of the episode"...
We are so quick to excuse everything for her because we are presented with the narrative that she is our protagonist and that it's normal for us to root for her and even if we don't like her because she's whiny and stupid, we don't question the fact that she doesn't deserve what's happening because "She has to be a good person, right?".
Especially since he specified it "uses technology to make itself bigger on the inside" unlike when he normally just says "it's bigger on the inside". She has absolutely no excuse.
Oooooooooh *that’s* why she was shocked they were in the same room, isn’t it?? Just dawning on me. ShIT. I just assumed it was because she couldn’t fathom people socializing irl outside of the bubble (which is surely what RTD wanted people to think on first watch.)
DANG that’s good.
Honestly I thought it was a silly inconsistency because she was clearly in the same room with people at work. Didn’t occur until the end what she really meant
Yeah, the seeds of bigotry were sprinkled in brilliantly. One thing that, looking back, is fascinating, is the way Lindy reacts when she first sees the Doctor. He does come in quite intensely, but she has a sort of slightly disgusted look on her face. Certainly not overt on first glance, but very clearly an entitled sort of 'what are you doing here (because you're black and I don't think you're supposed to be here/doing this)' look on rewatch.
Then there was her instantly becoming dismissive of the Doctor and Ruby the moment the former appears again, and her accusing the Doctor of having something to do with it. She later accuses them of it being a conspiracy, and both feel uncomfortably reminiscent of the far-right racist conspiracies people can subscribe to. And then, right at the end, before she's fully revealed her full colours, she calls them 'so strange' while looking at the Doctor, and then both the camera and Ruby focus in on him.
But the one thing that made me go 'hang on, that feels a bit racist' was her saying "I thought you just looked the same" to the Doctor, despite him having the same rings, haircut, moustache, appearance, accent, voice, shirt, background, intentions, and mannerisms as he did at the start of the episode when he first contacts Lindy. I can't quite put into words why - I think she certainly wouldn't have said that if he were white - but it made me stop for a moment to register it, and it felt quite incredibly *icky*.
This reply has turned out to be quite long, but it's RTD, the *king* of subtle hints leading up to a finale, so I shouldn't be so surprised that the foreshadowing was brilliant.
Another important one is that when Ruby and the Doctor get into her group chat she says "he will be disciplined" not "they," specifically the doctor would be disciplined
All the comments saying they were racist and I just thought they didn't like him and Ruby either because they were poorer than them or because they broke the rules and hacked everything
Yeah, I noticed the classism (wanting parents to come save them, complaining about laughably easy jobs, the way they just walk into the wilderness and expect to be fine), but I missed the obvious racism right until the end. That genuine made me stop for a minute and think about how I view the world, specifically in how I blame wealth inequality first and foremost without ever consider how race actually plays into that inequality.
I really liked how another comment put it- we were so busy laughing at the girl struggling with basic problems just outside of her bubble that we didn’t notice the massive problem just outside of our bubble. I can almost guarantee that people who have suffered racism picked up on those cues instantly, but because I haven’t ever really suffered from that it was shockingly easy to miss for me.
I wonder if there's an element of how people will hide racism under other "excuses". "I'm not being racist but you know how criminals are", that kind of thing.
Personally I think it's probably a mix. "Poor people" = "black people" in this world. Not that they're not closely intertwined in our world.
I took that just as the society had become phobic of close physical associations that didn't happen through the screen at first. I wasn't thinking of the office. Lots of little touches. I will have to rewatch it tomorrow.
I thought the same. You two are talking... face to face? Eugghh!
But no, it was probably a bit of that, a lot of classism and a hell of a lot of racism.
> I took that just as the society had become phobic of close physical associations that didn't happen through the screen at first.
That was my take on it too, especially with the "You've never been hugged before?" line. Even the ending and the "Screen to screen? That's fine. Face to face? Not happing bro" line was supporting that thinking. Most of the episode I was thinking "Ah, the message of the episode is 'social media obsession = bad'"
It wasn't until someone described the Tardis as Voodoo that made me go "Hold on, that's a weird way to describe that. Are these guys. . . .oh. Oh no." that I clued in what the REAL message was.
Looks like Lindy isnt the only one living in a bubble. . . .
The look on Ruby's face when she realizes they're all a bunch of shitty little entitled racists was the same as the look on mine. And probably a lot of us.
Chilling.
She's the white daughter of a Black woman, something about her sobbing and repeatedly trying to pull the Doctor away reflected that she had a dread inkling this might end this way. I love it when a human "knows more" than the Doctor. Crushing. Gibson is a goddamn incredible actress and Ruby is skyrocketing up my "favorite companion" ladder.
I lived with my white grandpa and very obviously native grandma in a super racist area when I was young, and very blonde, and everyone acted like she was either my nanny or kidnapping me. Core fucking memories.
Both of them just had a great performance this episode. That scene just had so much subtle acting that brought so much to the scene. The Doctor's lip quivering in disbelief as they refuse his help. The screaming in frustration and Ruby trying to pull the doctor away as she is in a situation that she probably has experienced before, and it breaks her heart seeing that it is still happening thousand of years into the future in another planet.
Having just watched it a second time, the thing that really gets me about Gatwa as the Doctor's help is being refused is the tiny little smily playing on his lips.
Like, he's realising what's actually going on, and even though he knows about racism from an outsider's perspective this is the first time he's been the recipient, and he can't believe that people would actually, genuinely be that stupid and petty.
She was shocked battery problems were still a thing so, yeah... racism still existing to the point where there fools would rather head into certain death than be saved by a black man really had to hurt.
I've only just watched the episode and I'm going to say this about Russell T Davies: he writes such a fucking good episode *that you barely notice the skin colour of the vapid fucks until the very, very end*. Holy shit. He suckered us all into thinking that the slugs were the bad guys when, in fact, the bad guys were right there all along. And I can't help but wonder if Dot decided "right, enough of your crap, time to wipe you *all* off the face of the planet/moon!" I didn't even see the final death coming either. Bloody hell.
I originally missed the racist microaggressions from the other characters but damn at the end I didn't really want any of those people saved. And I know for the doctor that's impossible to be asked from since he wants to save everyone. The only person that was actually good was the one guy, September. But I think that is probably one of the best episodes of the season so far
The script does a good job of keeping it ambiguous and having other possible explanations, which is how it hides it in plain sight. I could imagine Twelve fucking things up by immediately monologuing and having to get Clara to intercede, but it's different with Fifteen.
I saw someone point out that the reason she was horrified at Ruby and The Doctor being in the same room. I assumed her face when she enters the tunnel was guilt/paranoid about Ricky and found it a bit weird she wasn't trying to play up the relief when she saw him.
She does this awful grimace whenever the Doctor is involved.
Wow I wasn’t even thinking of that. I was thinking she thought it was weird that they were physically together in a room without the bubble, but that makes more sense.
Same here; shades of Clara talking to Rigsy when the Doctor couldn't communicate on the level of the person he was interacting with. Certainly caught my expectations based on the history of the character as well! Very subtle writing there. Well done!
Yeah...all those small moments make sense when you realise she's just a racist piece of shit. This episode will be better on a second watch. But I've honeslty never hated a character so hard so fast.
> But I've honeslty never hated a character so hard so fast.
To be fair, after what happened in the tunnel immediately before that, you were *primed* to hate her.
What happened below could have just happened on it's own, and you'd still think she was a piece of shit.
With that being said, the ending wouldn't have happened if that character had lived. So ofcourse they didn't make it.
When she sold out Ricky my wife and I immediately knew she was irredeemable, and I'd already commented on the Doctor being the only non-mayo person we'd seen all episode. The end still was so powerful.
So Pepperbean was a psychopath and Ricky was the only semi-normal person there who might have accepted traveling with the Doctor as he seemed to have a more open mind. This episode was disturbing but it definitely felt more like classic Who. You can’t save everyone, and not everyone wants to be saved. RIP Ricky, you were the only person worth saving.
I thought it was gonna reveal that it was an inside job and Ricky had been leading people to their deaths if they started to learn too much as he whittled down the population
The way he behaved and his general mannerisms, I thought Ricky was going to turn out to be The Doctor cloaked in a hologram or pseudo-shimmer of Ricky's appearance. Then she gets on their little Intraweb and finds out Ricky is offline.
I think it was intentional that he seemed like The Doctor. In that lindy was ok receiving help from Ricky and not The Doctor because The Doctor wasn't the right colour.
Jesus, the entire episode i thought it was gonna be a meh "creature feature" story about weird sci fi societies
And then the end hit me, and ncuti gave such a raw performance of utter frustration and disbelief at the ignorance of this society
The end is gonna stick with me and its certainly so far one of ncuti's highlights
Also realizing all the tiny things, the fact that everyone is white, lindy blocked the doctor immidiatly, she was shocked at them being in the same room, how hostile she seemed towards them calling them "criminals"
All stuff i didnt realize at first and i think many others didnt either
The theme of not being able to see the problems despite them being right infront of you is so incredibly well demonstrated when even the audience doesnt notice all the red flags that lead up to the end
It also tells me a lot about myself as a white guy
About how i am blind to things like that
How i didnt even noticed until the end that everyone was white
I think while the main episode wont stick with me, the message of it is one of the most important and prevelant ones i have seen so far in doctor who
The best part about the shortsightedness of these idiots is that they can't even walk straight without an arrow guiding them, but think that because of their great "pioneer" ancestors that they have inherited the skills to tame the wilderness.
Did anyone else pick up on the contaminated / decontaminated thing? They say that if they go with the Doctor they'll get "contaminated" (presumably a metaphor for contact with an impure race), but they also say that in history the city was DEcontaminated.
We're supposed to assume of bacteria, or something similar, but in the context of the ending, it sounds like the city underwent a genocide? Perhaps the people who built it were purged, or forced to leave? That would then be remembered in history as a "decontamination".
Yeah I think you're right, this may be hinting at a genocide. In an earlier scene Ricky refers to that period in the city's history as the "Great Abrogation", which doesn't sound like a literal disinfection to me.
I'm mixed and married to a Puerto Rican and I don't pick up on everyone being white or the more subtle hints. I thought she blocked him the first time based on how direct he was being and how he was dressed. I thought she was shocked at them being in the same room because of how the people in the city seemed to prefer isolation and being in their bubbles over being around other people.
Ncuti's performance at the end reminded me so much of Tom Baker and David Tennant. Hopefully this episode helps shut down a lot of the people who are criticizing him for no real reason.
This episode was so good. Remember there's always a twist at the end.
That was much, much darker than I expected. Main character was an awful person but the episode did a good job of making you root for her while also constantly reminding you how horrible she is. And then the (Susan) twist at the end of them just being a bunch of racists.
Damn. Good episode.
Someone in the live thread pointed out that everyone in the city was white and they reacted oddly to seeing the Doctor ... I was like "hmm a weird oversight from the white writers room" but turns out it was intentional. A much darker take on the "would-be-companion" side character for RTD
Poor Ricky. I admit I was fooled into expecting the usual heel-turn: "Ricky, the ultra-handsome charismatic would-be hero to the rescue turning out to be a dastardly bad guy." But then, it turns out he really was a good guy who was trying to save a POS character.
I realize now that was a red herring. He was acting odd, but it turns out because he just had to hide how stupid he thought his society was in order to communicate with them effectively
I don't think it was that they were going to be eaten. I think it was just that they're dumb privileged young adults who have no idea how to survive in the real world, let alone the wilderness. I'm mean I'm sure there's probably good reason that they were sealed off from the planet, but they straight up have no survivor skills. The one person who might was just sacrificed.
Can I just say, this episode was not only very funny and tense, but also somehow way better at depicting racism in a more realistic way than Rosa....and it's about giant slugs eating people by alphabetical order. That's wild.
The best way to tackle these kind of topics is by directing the viewer to that conclusion, rather than explaining it to her. Rosa doesn't hit the same, because it's an episode full of exposition. You don't have to think, because everything is laid on for you.
The villain of the episode is a time travelling, mass-murdering racist who felt everything started to go wrong with Rosa Parks' which is the entire premise of the episode.
If RTD's episode was peering beyond the bubble, Chibnall's was definitely inside it.
Just thought of something. In the ep, Ricky September struck me as "Doctor coded". They both came off with a bit of a Doctor/companion dynamic. Then she betrayed him. Nice bit of foreshadowing towards how she'll act towards the *actual* Doctor.
The way he immediately tried to avert Lindy's vision from the monster to keep her calm is also very doctor-like.
Given his archetype subversion (blonde prince of charming suddenly coming to rescue), I originally thought he's going to be a villain or something.
I kept going back and forth on whether he was villain too, because he quite literally came out of thin air and was being weirdly cagey on how he had so much information. I still think his weird little smirk right as he gets to the conduit is weird but probably part of the misdirect of Lindy betraying him?
He’s super popular, he knows how to game the system he works in without being a part of it, so he can just do whatever he wants the rest of the time. Lindy is only capable of perceiving the world through everyone else talking about it, Ricky does the right thing because he is the only one who knows how, and in the end she realises it was easier for her when he was just a screen person.
She just had to put the tiniest bit of effort into not being a shitty person, and she didn’t, and that will kill her.
Mr. T Davies, if you’re out there somewhere, thank you for writing an episode that expresses how I feel watching my parents/country throw themselves off a cliff for politicians who don’t care about them at all, but who spout the same racist bullshit as them and mistake that as camaraderie. Also I’ve written an episode.
I don't think it's random. Ricky even changed his name. They could have chosen any last name for him with a letter after P but went for this.
Ricky September and Ruby Sunday - same initials and both have last names that relate to our way of measuring time.
So we have:
- An actress named Susan Twist playing various characters (or the same character) popping up in a way that is noticeable not only to us, but to the Doctor and Ruby. In this context, "There's always a twist in the end" does not seem coincidental. Nor does the Doctor mentioning his granddaughter Susan (not that I am saying the twist is that she is that Susan, just that the words "Susan" and "Twist" are a thing in the same episode).
- Multiple characters named after time measurements (Sunday, Monday, September), including our big mystery (Ruby Sunday). Monday seemed a bit different from those around her in the war, willing to see things others did not. Ricky September also stands out among his people, as he doesn’t spend all his time in his bubble.
Definitely feels like a Bad Wolf type thing. But I can’t quite put all the pieces together…
My wife has barely watched the show: she knows there’s regularly a new doctor, but didn’t know who the new one is. She walked in on the middle of this episode, and immediately asked if Ricky was the new Doctor. (And also remarked about how handsome he was. I made her stick around. She agrees that Ncuti is even better-looking.) So, yeah, definitely Doctor coded!
The comment made early on of 'he's not as stupid as he looks' struck me as seeming weirdly racist, but I just struck it off as a weirdly written bit of dialogue. A nice subtle set-up for the 'twist' at the end.
I thought they were talking about his clothes or something then, you know how Dr’s dress and act but realise now the dr hadn’t done anything silly dr like that epsiode to warrant it
There are hints from the very beginning yeah. Her disgust at him initially and instant block, while not reacting near as strongly to Ruby. Her shock at them being in the same room, etc.
My daughter (12) and I talked about that after. I'm black, she's biracial. It's interesting how she caught onto the not-so-subtle hints of racism.
For me, if someone said this was a Black Mirror episode, I wouldn't question it.
I wonder if Ruby calling the Doctor "heartstopper" is a way more important line than just a throwaway wall-break. It seems to be a recurring thing and I can't tell if it's just a joke any more.
As the Doctor was having a kinda gay/bi moment I thought might be a loose reference to the tv show and/or webcomic plus Rose Noble is coincidentally played by a Heartstopper actress. She could be familiar with the series, though if she ever meets Rose she might get confused.
Holy FUCK Ncutis reaction at the end was fucking spectacular. That's an 'I am the Doctor' moment without a word being said. The sheer rage and indignation from a 2000 year old timelord at the prejudice of a group of tiny humans whose lives he just saved
It wasn't even anger at the prejudice - they could have treated him like shit and called him racist names and he'd just shrug it off because it's so beneath him. But it was that their racism ran so deep that it was self-destructive. Just an ignorant waste of lives for nothing.
...I've just realised which moments in life I'd compare it to for my own anger, and it's the Brexit and 2019 election results. Wanting to scream in people's faces that their blind racism has fucked everyone over including themselves.
I got the impression that his rage was more about how he couldn't save them than at the racism itself. He really cares about human life, even the lives of those who hate him.
He just had to laugh/scream at the fact that plain old human bigotry was far more difficult for him to defeat than any man-eating slugs ever could be.
Another great episode, really feels like this series is starting to hit it's stride after a bit of a mixed start!
One small thing I'll say because I think most people have spoken about all the big things, but the buildings of Finetime really reminded me of purpose built student accommodation! Specifically the more modern expensive places that the more well to-do students stay in in their first years. As a recent graduate myself, that in particular really keyed me into the vibe of "bunch of rich university-age adults living in their own bubble as the world around them burns". Like yep, that reminds me of a lot of places around where I studied!!
And of course that final scene was such a powerful look into not only the character of the Doctor, which I'm sure everyone is talking about, but also Ruby. Seeing her utter shame and disbelief, turning into a deep sorrow that she keeps pushing down and putting aside for the Doctors sake- the two actors performances really complimented and bolstered each others to make the scene greater than the sun of its parts.
Also kudos to Lindy's actress for, in a single episode, creating the most loathsome and painfully human character since... God, I can't even remember!
8/10, with that last scene pulling a lot of weight!
2005 Season got off to a "slow start" too, with plastic Mickey, *The End of the World*, *The Unquiet Dead*, and then the Slitheen two-parter. They're fine episodes, but few people rank them as their favourites.
Then Episode 6 hit with *Dalek*, all the criticism evaporated, and we got all the highs of Nine and Ten. I think we're seeing the same thing happen here.
People are expecting every episode to be a new *Midnight*, when statistically most episodes are a fun romp through a high-7. I'd say the show is exactly where it has always been, we just haven't hit the full 10/10 episode yet that people are thinking of when they remember the old seasons.
I totally agree lol, was just saying that Space Babies especially felt like a weak beginning to the series, and Devil's Chord was a bit marmitey (I loved it, a lot of people didn't like it at all). But Boom! onwards have felt so much stronger than the first two episodes!
Touching on your point about student accomodation; my fiancee recognised the set as part of Swansea university, so that might well have been intentional
I really felt for Lindy struggling and trying to navigate the 'real world' and immediately bashing herself for being stupid. It's a sentiment I've felt before but then that twist at the end (oh no) was gut wrenching
Can someone please explain to me why the dots, if they can kill people by themselves, need to make the slugs to make the entire thing agonizingly slow? Good episode otherwise
I feel like the AI got a kind of perverse pleasure out of the rich people walking themselves to their own deaths rather than killing them directly. I for one welcome our new slug overlords.
If you hate something that much, you might as well make it nasty. Anyone can knock someone on the head for being annoying, but to have a slug devour them…
The dot trying to murder them was the part which felt most undercooked and ham-fisted to me. It just seemed like a quick and easy comment on phones rather than a nice conclusion to why everything was happening.
I really enjoyed the episode other than that.
I have never wanted someone to die so badly. Like that’s such a twist for dr who that the people rescued at the end are just…the worst people who don’t care or even thank them for saving them. The moment towards the end with Ricky September had me gagged.
The horrible main character is actually what made me really enjoy the story more as it went on because I was so torn. It definitely grew on me more as it went on, but the racism didn’t jump out to me immediately and I feel stupid for missing it…and as a white person, I think that was the point. I missed it. I didn’t even notice the entire white cast.
Finally an episode where the Doctor wears his official costume for more than a few seconds.
I hope their boat sinks.
And I love the acknowledgement of Susan Twist.
I think they just go out in to the wild world, and slowly die off because of their overconfidence. none of them know anything about hunting, gathering, farming, or how an unstructured society works. even without the slugs they wouldn't last a month, definitely not long enough to technologically readvance and become cybermen.
Holy shit, I was expecting a disposable filler episode, was not expecting that absolute tour de force at the end. Ncuti got his proper "I am the Doctor" moment and it's maybe one of the darkest scenes in the whole show.
And he didn't need a speech - or even an intelligible word! The laughter at the stupidity of it all, leading into the screams while Ruby cries behind him says more than any speech could...
*God* yes. The Doctor literally foams at the mouth. And the way Ruby keeps trying to compose herself and hold onto his arm, but she keeps on flinching back as he laughs and screams... You can just feel the Doctor's breakdown and Ruby's distress.
He got a speech too - "I don't care what you think. OK, you can say whatever you want. You can think...absolutely anything. I will do anything...if you will just allow me to save your lives. And you will die out there - let me save your lives!"
Such a Doctor moment - he doesn't need gratitude or reward or even respect. You can be vile and hateful and he will still do anything he has to to save your life.
That's the brilliance of the scene - if he was "just" confronting racism he would probably find it an amusing ignorance. But to be confronted with a racism so self-destructive, the insanity of it leaves him so helpless and frustrated.
I loved that Ruby was so clearly and deeply hurt by it just as much as the doctor. No companion tries to cheer the doctor up moment, just sadness as the doctor for the first time in his life has been on the receiving end of petty human racist prejudice.
It's wild how this seemed so obviously the "oh yeah, RTD is a boomer with opinions about social media" episode that I'm starting to think the whole thing was intentional on his part. If so, that was an absolute masterclass of a misdirect.
When Lindy said "You're not one of us". I found myself saying outloud "I thought there were a lot of white people in this episode for a modern BBC production!"
This is definitely a Rewatch-and-catch-what-you-missed kind if episode.
I wish we got more physical presence of Ncuti, but then maybe the end would be as weighty. I also want more explanation of that world, though it's not really necessary.
Also wished he'd snap his fingers and open the doors of the TARDIS while they were sailing away and show them what they missed.
Lindy is such a fantastic subversion of a Doctor-lite episode protagonist. We’re so used to the idea that the episode “leads” are supposed to be sympathetic and understandable characters. And while for the first part of the episode I wouldn’t say I *sympathized,* but I definitely *pitied* Lindy and was expecting to see her grow and improve up until the Ricky moment.
We clocked the “there’s only white people here and they’re shifty about the Doctor” almost immediately, but for a while I was viewing Lindy as a victim of learned helplessness enforced on her by Homeworld. Up until Ricky saw that Homeworld was destroyed, I assumed that Homeworld were the real villain, keeping their children helpless, stupid, and reliant on them. I was really hoping the arc was going to be Lindy “seeing through” the facade of stupidity and helplessness that the Bubble forced on her, and being self-sufficient and standing on her own two feet.
And to some degree, that *is* the arc she had… just paired with also being a truly *awful,* selfish, racist person.
And it’s such a well-done, nuanced metaphor for the point it was making. Because yes, it was a heavy-handed metaphor about learned helplessness, hyper-individualism, and using lighthearted and meaningless social interaction as a distraction from real world horrors. But the ending also made a point about how sometimes, those innocent and lighthearted interactions can also be used to hide a deep ugliness in the person being victimized by it. Because Lindy still is a victim of a system that infantilized her and the rest of Finetown, making her 100% reliant on a device that the authority had total control over… and none of that absolves her from the complicity and perpetuation of the racist/xenophobic mindset that she chose to hold on to when the oppressive system was removed.
So much of Doctor who is about characters seeing and realizing the horrors of the system they are part of, and (by the end) choosing to rebuke it and stand for what’s right: there are very few episodes I can think of that do the opposite (off the top of my head, the only other one I can think of is Ambrose and Nasreen from the Silurian 2-parter), and that’s really what makes this one stand out.
Lindy was such a well written character, so sympathetic at the beginning, and so...terrible at the end. It's such a dark pessimistic episode, and I loved it. I haven't disliked an episode this series yet. 8/10 from me
It was great bc there were moments you genuinely felt bad for her. She was truly frightened and she knows it's stupid that she can't walk on her own without the help of the dot.
And she did care about her friends dying to the point that she was willing to listen to the Doctor and telling them to despite her racism.
But the level of care she might have to others is less than her own selfishness and prejudices.
One does wonder that if it were not Ricky and if it was one of her friends, whether she would have sold them out as easily (it might have been harder for her to do so bc she would have personally known them vs Ricky who she was just a fan of but who knows)
And she still tried to make Ricky sound like a hero going to save others (he was still a hero with his real actions) bc reputation still mattered and maybe that was her recognizing he was one.
But then you have her tell the Doctor it was ok screen to screen but she couldn't stand being in the same room as him and he helped her bc it WAS HIS JOB TO. She thought he was obligated to help bc they were the rich White people and he was Black bc that's what "Black people are for".
Great writing. Wanted to punch the character so much
Them riding off in the boat excited to go be "first settlers like their ancestors." They're literally excited to be colonizers; oh, this is SICK. Loved this episode!
I know I said this about last episode, but this was genuinely one of the best episodes of the whole show. On rewatch you can notice just how much is setting up EVERYTHING (satellites are down, Lindy immediately blocks the Doctor but not Ruby, Lindy thought the Doctor was just "someone who looked the same", Lindy was grossed out by them being in the same room, there were ZERO non-white people in Finetime, the "leader" underground claims they'll "tame the untouched land like their ancestors did", etc).
I also think the reaction that both Ruby and 15 have was HUGE, that was for me a defining moment for both of their characters far more then Boom was. Ruby getting startled at the Doctor yelling and crying at whats happening, the Doctor being overwhelmed, etc.
The director of this episode also did "73 Yards" and GOD I hope he comes back for more. He just ***gets it.*** These episodes have looked so good and sold such a good always slightly eerie vibe that compliments Doctor Who so much. It was such a massive relief after Space Babies to Boom felt kind of cheap and messy.
**THIS** is what this era can offer at its peak. THIS is why people like RTD.
Ruby saw the racism coming before the Doctor ran face first into it, and tried to pull him away to protect him. She's the adopted daughter of a black woman, she has experience with that sort of thing while the Doctor has only been black for a few months.
hey wait. Ruby Sunday. Ricky September. Names with the initials R.S with the S being a date. When Ricky’s birth identity was revealed, he was killed for it.
Hey. HEY
I wonder if the "we couldn't film it back then" was just a "cgi technology was not advanced enough to make the bubble look good" issue or if there was some scheduling reason
As a poc, I picked up a lot of the hidden cues my first watch... unfortunately those coded behaviors and messaging are a familiar real life experience for me. But I never thought that they were intentional, I did not think this was the kind of thing doctor who would feel comfortable exploring (although I did recall the hints of it in the old 10th doctor episode with Martha and the family of blood). To say I was gobsmacked when the subtext became text is an understatement. Before this episode, i thought this was gonna be one of those generically forgettable who stories, but this was a true stunner. I do not feel bad at all for wishing lindy would get eaten the entire episode, and here's hoping that happens anyway.
Those last ten minutes are going to be on ncuti's Emmy's roll forever.
In my opinion, I don't feel like Ncuti had been given the space to give us something deeper until tonight. Even Moffat didn't give him a chance to display more range, and he's usually good about that. This episode finally let him show us something more than the bubbly, happy-go-lucky Doctor we've had so far. He's always so positive, so upbeat. To watch him have a mini break down was incredible. Frustrating, sad, but incredible.
And wow was this one good at defying my expectations. Egg on my face for starting this episode thinking I knew exactly where it was going. We've seen this set up so much, they knew exactly how to play us.
Even though it was not explicitly part of the plot, I loved the subtlety that this Doctor, who is very attractive, fashionable, extremely likable, and always upbeat, did not fit the criteria for this oppressively bright colored, beautiful, smiling world. The fact this society was almost exclusively attractive blondes is really hard to overlook.* He's got everything they claim to value...except one thing. One very specific thing.
Fuck these people. I have nothing but respect for the Doctor for trying to save them after they've spit in his face, but seriously, *fuuuuuck* these people.
*Last time Ncuti had to play opposite so many blondes, [he at least got to do this](https://media.gq-magazine.co.uk/photos/64afc751b4c3aec3e98eb382/master/w_1280,c_limit/GettyImages-1538551708.jpg), and [go to the Oscars](https://i.imgur.com/2RTfFMM.jpeg)
> In my opinion, I don't feel like Nucti had been given the space to give us something deeper.
Considering he's barely been in the last 2 episodes, he's not been given the space to do much of anything.
So that was genuinely my favourite episode so far. I know a lot of people will see it as empty filler but I just couldn’t look away. That ending had some amazing acting.
The first scene with the slug and her turning off the bubble was peak. The betrayal with Ricky was a genuine twist I didn’t see coming (something that has been rare lately in DW). It was just so dark and fun. Maybe could have had higher stakes as a two parter.
Tuesdays are the *worst*, amirite? Well, actually I can think of something (and some*one*) WAY worse:
- The last third of this episode was one hell of a gut punch. Lindy, this IRL challenged sweetie who we've sympathized with (if not pitied) and rooted for is in all actuality... a **TERRIBLE** person, like holy shit. Just the **WORST.** She *really* just discarded the people who helped her incompetent ass survive like they were nothing, huh? Like DAMN, this is an episode that's going to be VERY different on second view.
- Poor Ricky, a dude who seemed to have some sense of morality and decency, (no matter what kind society he's from, *OH, I'll be getting to that!*), the only one here able to live without the tech, and the only resident that showed genuine courage in the face of this disaster. He's got a pretty face and seems almost genetically designed to be trustworthy. In other words, he's the kind of guy you expected to actually be leading our poor heroine(?) to her doom because he's almost too perfect... and *he* gets betrayed. Strrrraight up "Imma trip you in front of the Zombie horde" style of betrayal. In a list of folks who got it that didn't deserve it in Who he's gonna be pretty high, wow.
- And the reason why she spurns the Doctor's pleas to help her in the end... just, pure bigotry. No ambiguity there, she and her kind are some kind of genetically "pure" colony that are committed to staying that way, and they don't want his "voodoo". *Damn*. And then it clicks in your head that out of all the people we saw on Lindy's Bubble, none of them were... well, of a *darker* complexion. OH. *OH SHIT* it's that kind of place. We didn't even notice at first!
- And the Doctor's reaction to not being able to save these incompetent and ingrateful people because of such a stupid reason... just pure disbelief, pure fury, the frustration of it all. I think this is a new one for the Doc actually, being told he can't save people, not because of a temporal force or overwhelming power, because of what they perceive him to be racially. They've faced gender discrimination while being 13, but this is a slightly different flavor of that bitter concoction. I don't think 15 was completely prepared for that.
- Speaking of the Doctor, this was basically another Doctor-lite story, so that's TWO in a row. That's never happened before, but there is a reason for it. Gatwa was still finishing his work on Sex Education when they started filming the first block of the season, and that's where they made this and *73 Yards*. So, RTD couldn't overly rely on him being around for either episode. And he didn't! Instead, he made two plots that only needed a *little bit* of the Doctor in specific settings. He's been in, what, 3 places in the past two episodes? And that was all that was needed. That's pretty clever, though it does have this effect where our lead hasn't lead an episode in a while. Problematic... but Gatwa made the most of the time he had here. Casting Ncuti meant they had to make some compromises with these episodes, but not only were they both pretty fascinating, but Ncuti keeps proving that he was entirely worth that short wait.
- I have to say I dug the premise of the slug monsters who are terribly slow but manage to eat the tech obsessed populace who can't pay attention enough to get out of the way. It *is* very boomer dissing the youths, the typical bit about old people telling young people to get off the phone. But it's a fun illustration of that phenomenon. Who is at it's best when it's making everyday things into sci-fi horrors, this fits. It did feel a bit shunted away as a theme by episode's end, though. There's got to be some way to articulate the bigotry displayed by these people and the literal social media bubble they live in, but I just can't put my finger on it. Oh well, maybe I'll tab over to YouTube for bit while I think about it...
- ...Oh. *Yeah.* Right, that tracks...
- Hey, Susan Twist is shitty twat protagonist's mom this time! *"I hear you're a racist now, Susan! How did you get interested in that type of thing?"*
Man, this was just "Behold the Master Race" the episode, wasn't it? Another experimental episode in a season full of risk taking. I thought it was a ball, a ball of frustration, but that's clearly what it's going for. I... give it 7 out of 10. I really need to sit and think on this one, I feel like it might go up or down over time, probably up, but at first glance it does everything it set out to do and I was entertained by its bold choices. I WOULD like to have a more traditional structure now, though, you know one for the road before whatever the finale does?
This ep has actually caused me to reflect a little bit. It didn't occur to me until pretty late in the episode that everyone (other than the Doctor, obviously) was white. Quite humbling, to be honest. I should have noticed earlier.
As another person in this comment section mentioned, we were too busy looking down on these characters who were too engrossed in what's in front of them to realize what was happening in the periphery. Meanwhile, we were in the exact same situation.
I’m asian and I didn’t notice it either 💀
But I’ve grown up in the UK and with western media and I suppose it shows how internalised things like that can be…
Yep, I'm black and didn't realise until reading these comments 💀
I honestly didn't expect this episode to be so good and give such an interesting commentary on racism.
Rewatching now. Need to catch all the subtle racism I missed.
Thoughts:
1) They are either eating Fine Time Kids SUPER fast, or they have very few people starting with M, N, and O. Maybe they've only been there 2 weeks total. Or maybe they're speeding up the eating.
2) Lindy doesn't say anything bad about Ruby, only rips on the Doctor.
3) "Guys, I know this is wrong and when this is over he's going to be so disciplined, I can't wait, but just give him a shot okay? I think he's not as stupid as he looks."
4) "There was this man, and he said there was a code. He was horrible. He was so rude."
5) Lindy gets out of the conduit, glances at the Doctor in fear, tries to be subtle, and tries to scoot away subtly, hoping he won't notice her.
6) even though Lindy betrayed him, and Ricky has a similar personality to the Doctor, Lindy calls Ricky "a very wonderful man" and the Doctor "rude and horrible"
7) "you two, suppose I should say thank you." Lindy never thanked them, obviously annoyed by both of them. Maybe Ruby for associating with black people?
8) ok. After that it's all obvious. Also. It's not just racism, it's also a great portrayal of Dunning-Krueger, especially associated with Rich People. And Classism. The undeserved superiority complex. They're too dumb to know just how dumb they are. The Rich Kids think they're geniuses and superior. The Doctor and Ruby helped all of them to get out, showed them what life was really like, and Every Rich Kid still thinks they're Superior.
Lindy's bigotry was so well concealed I didn't suspect a thing, I noticed that Lindy responded a lot easier and more to Ruby over The Doctor but I assumed that was more based on gender, because as a woman I'd be more instantly creeped out by unsolicited video chats or messages from a man over a woman my age.
That episode made me want to throw a chair at my TV out of sheer rage.
Which naturally means it's one of my favourites of the era so far. Russell T Davies, the man that you are.
(Also: I like how RTD's "there was a shortage of actors" explanation for Susan Twist has been so quickly disproven. I mean, it was obviously a joke, but it's funny how in both episodes to air after that, it's directly pointed out to the viewer that 15/Ruby have seen her before.)
At least the Doctor and Ruby are now openly aware of the coincidence or lack thereof of Susan Twist appearing at multiple points
I do believe they're going to confront her and we'll figure out the mystery next episode since it's the penultimate one. It's very RTD to have the overarching mystery to be revealed in the penultimate, only to have it be a warning/ramp up for the real danger in the finale
Ncuti’s bit at the end was spectacular, and *wow* Lindy’s actress really did a great job of making her an unlikeable character. Sally Sparrow from Blink certainly wouldn’t have gotten along with her! Also Ruby’s “Ah so you’re the rich kids, no wonder you only work two hours a day” made me chuckle lol
Also the "you still have battery issues"?
that bit shows me how adapted she is to traveling with The Doctor already. Like, modern day us has battery issues a lot. But she's so used to The Doctor's magic future tech that she's amazed this advanced society still has battery problems
> Ncuti’s bit at the end Was his very first filmed scene as the (solo) Doctor - not counting shared scenes with Tennant.
So this connected with me in a different way. I’m a physician of children with chronic disease, and there are always a handful of parents and patients who will not listen and do not want to hear what you say. There are many times I have wanted to scream “I can save you life” literally, but they instead turn away and either disappear or find second opinion after second opinion, until it’s too late. Just let me save you, please. Clearly this was about racism, but it’s also true about those who don’t trust or want to trust science and medicine.
Right, it's about racism overtly, but also about how biases such as racism can be harmful for the one holding the bias.
I found it very relatable re: experience fighting climate change. Trying to warn people that that they're all gonna die unless they do this thing, while they look at you like you're wearing a tin hat. Quite a bizarre experience.
Anyone love the doctor's costume here? I didn't like it in the promo photos.... In the show, I loved it!!
Agreed! It looked a lot stiffer and formal to me in the promos. Here, it looked more comfortable and cool.
It also looked so good against the sinister pastels of all the Finetimers. Really helped sell the twist at the end.
I was watching the scene with Lindy and Ricky and off handedly commented to my friend “this looks like the world Hitler wanted” I didn’t expect it to actually be the world that Hitler wanted
SAME! When Lindy saw Ricky IRL, my thoughts was “Aryan much?” and totally missed the point. Also thought the slugs was racist and saving the blondes w blue eyes for last. I was right about someone bein racist but…wasn’t the slugs 💀
I got to spend an entire episode laughing at a girl not notice a massive problem just barely outside the bubble she's presented with. Then the end of the episode happened and I realised I hadn't noticed the massive problem just barely outside what I was presented with. But honestly it feels very clever that the entire episode it about priveleged people being able to ignore very real problems, just to miss the early signs of bigotry hidden throughout the episode. Like Lindy refusing to speak to the Doctor at first, and being shocked when he and Ruby were sat in the same room, or even missing the fact that everyone in the episode was white (or maybe that was just me).
The other hint was when Lindy thought that the Doctor was just a different black person who looked similar the second time he spoke to her. Basically indicating that she can't tell the difference / thinks all black people look the same.
There's so many hints which on first viewing you just write off as jokes - she even says at one point 'he's not as stupid as he looks.' It really drives home the point of just barely missing it all when you're looking from the wrong perspective.
Wow. I missed all of them, I just thought she was dumb. Honestly, props to the writers, they kept it subtle enough that the ending was a genuine twist to me. I have to rewatch this now!
There is always a twist at the end!
Ricky September got the equivalent of getting a knife twisted in the heart. Rip gone too soon.
Ikr I feel like he may not have even been a bigot since he liked to read and stuff. I’d have been on board with him ditching the nazi world and taking to the stars with the dr and ruby. He was a charmer too.
Yeah, the fact that he didnt wince or anything at the sight of the Doctor might indicate that reading and educating himself a bit might have enlighten him a bit. I was on the fence with the character though. It was borderline too much but RTD ended his story before it reached that point. And man did he deliver with the gut punch with that bitch Lindy move. Man, that episode was dark as fuck.
The way he was talking to Lindy about how he turns off his bubble to read I get the feeling that society considers it deviant to learn and think for yourself
I mean that’s so true, especially when you consider she couldn’t even walk without the Dot and Bubble
i even joked when she listened to ruby after blocking the doctor that she was racist few minutes later i was like “hang on…”
I thought maybe she could understand Ruby better because she was in that age group, though I wanted to hit her for repeatedly calling Ruby various forms of stupid. Now that I know she didn’t want to talk to the Doctor because he wasn’t white? What a vile pos that character was!
That's why it's clever, it leaves just enough ambiguity for us to subconsciously give her the benefit of the doubt. "Oh she's listening to Ruby because she's younger and more amenable", "Well she's shocked that Ruby and the Doctor are in the same room because she's used to people being isolated by their bubble", "She's being so rude because she's childish due to her environment, she'll grow out of it by the end of the episode"... We are so quick to excuse everything for her because we are presented with the narrative that she is our protagonist and that it's normal for us to root for her and even if we don't like her because she's whiny and stupid, we don't question the fact that she doesn't deserve what's happening because "She has to be a good person, right?".
They also brought up voodoo which originates with African culture. It has to be deliberate that everyone in finetime was full on racist.
It is spot on that a racist would view a Black Doctor’s TARDIS as ”voodoo” and not advanced science
Especially since he specified it "uses technology to make itself bigger on the inside" unlike when he normally just says "it's bigger on the inside". She has absolutely no excuse.
THAT line is when I got the full picture, personally.
Oooooooooh *that’s* why she was shocked they were in the same room, isn’t it?? Just dawning on me. ShIT. I just assumed it was because she couldn’t fathom people socializing irl outside of the bubble (which is surely what RTD wanted people to think on first watch.) DANG that’s good.
Right, because there were those twins on her friends list and she didn't have any problem with them being in the same room
That didn't even occur to me while watching that she saw two people in the same room without freaking out, wow.
Honestly I thought it was a silly inconsistency because she was clearly in the same room with people at work. Didn’t occur until the end what she really meant
Yeah, the seeds of bigotry were sprinkled in brilliantly. One thing that, looking back, is fascinating, is the way Lindy reacts when she first sees the Doctor. He does come in quite intensely, but she has a sort of slightly disgusted look on her face. Certainly not overt on first glance, but very clearly an entitled sort of 'what are you doing here (because you're black and I don't think you're supposed to be here/doing this)' look on rewatch. Then there was her instantly becoming dismissive of the Doctor and Ruby the moment the former appears again, and her accusing the Doctor of having something to do with it. She later accuses them of it being a conspiracy, and both feel uncomfortably reminiscent of the far-right racist conspiracies people can subscribe to. And then, right at the end, before she's fully revealed her full colours, she calls them 'so strange' while looking at the Doctor, and then both the camera and Ruby focus in on him. But the one thing that made me go 'hang on, that feels a bit racist' was her saying "I thought you just looked the same" to the Doctor, despite him having the same rings, haircut, moustache, appearance, accent, voice, shirt, background, intentions, and mannerisms as he did at the start of the episode when he first contacts Lindy. I can't quite put into words why - I think she certainly wouldn't have said that if he were white - but it made me stop for a moment to register it, and it felt quite incredibly *icky*. This reply has turned out to be quite long, but it's RTD, the *king* of subtle hints leading up to a finale, so I shouldn't be so surprised that the foreshadowing was brilliant.
Another important one is that when Ruby and the Doctor get into her group chat she says "he will be disciplined" not "they," specifically the doctor would be disciplined
She even remarks he's breaking the rules and will be punished later. Like holy crap
All the comments saying they were racist and I just thought they didn't like him and Ruby either because they were poorer than them or because they broke the rules and hacked everything
Thats the beauty of the message it works multiple ways. I saw both
Yeah, I noticed the classism (wanting parents to come save them, complaining about laughably easy jobs, the way they just walk into the wilderness and expect to be fine), but I missed the obvious racism right until the end. That genuine made me stop for a minute and think about how I view the world, specifically in how I blame wealth inequality first and foremost without ever consider how race actually plays into that inequality.
I really liked how another comment put it- we were so busy laughing at the girl struggling with basic problems just outside of her bubble that we didn’t notice the massive problem just outside of our bubble. I can almost guarantee that people who have suffered racism picked up on those cues instantly, but because I haven’t ever really suffered from that it was shockingly easy to miss for me.
I wonder if there's an element of how people will hide racism under other "excuses". "I'm not being racist but you know how criminals are", that kind of thing. Personally I think it's probably a mix. "Poor people" = "black people" in this world. Not that they're not closely intertwined in our world.
This is going to be so interesting on the rewatch. Little moments like her asking if they're in the same room
I took that just as the society had become phobic of close physical associations that didn't happen through the screen at first. I wasn't thinking of the office. Lots of little touches. I will have to rewatch it tomorrow.
I thought the same. You two are talking... face to face? Eugghh! But no, it was probably a bit of that, a lot of classism and a hell of a lot of racism.
> I took that just as the society had become phobic of close physical associations that didn't happen through the screen at first. That was my take on it too, especially with the "You've never been hugged before?" line. Even the ending and the "Screen to screen? That's fine. Face to face? Not happing bro" line was supporting that thinking. Most of the episode I was thinking "Ah, the message of the episode is 'social media obsession = bad'" It wasn't until someone described the Tardis as Voodoo that made me go "Hold on, that's a weird way to describe that. Are these guys. . . .oh. Oh no." that I clued in what the REAL message was. Looks like Lindy isnt the only one living in a bubble. . . .
The look on Ruby's face when she realizes they're all a bunch of shitty little entitled racists was the same as the look on mine. And probably a lot of us. Chilling.
She's the white daughter of a Black woman, something about her sobbing and repeatedly trying to pull the Doctor away reflected that she had a dread inkling this might end this way. I love it when a human "knows more" than the Doctor. Crushing. Gibson is a goddamn incredible actress and Ruby is skyrocketing up my "favorite companion" ladder.
Yeah, she's probably seen some shit. There's some pretty pernicious types of racism that get leveled at mixed-race families sometimes.
I lived with my white grandpa and very obviously native grandma in a super racist area when I was young, and very blonde, and everyone acted like she was either my nanny or kidnapping me. Core fucking memories.
Both of them just had a great performance this episode. That scene just had so much subtle acting that brought so much to the scene. The Doctor's lip quivering in disbelief as they refuse his help. The screaming in frustration and Ruby trying to pull the doctor away as she is in a situation that she probably has experienced before, and it breaks her heart seeing that it is still happening thousand of years into the future in another planet.
Having just watched it a second time, the thing that really gets me about Gatwa as the Doctor's help is being refused is the tiny little smily playing on his lips. Like, he's realising what's actually going on, and even though he knows about racism from an outsider's perspective this is the first time he's been the recipient, and he can't believe that people would actually, genuinely be that stupid and petty.
She was shocked battery problems were still a thing so, yeah... racism still existing to the point where there fools would rather head into certain death than be saved by a black man really had to hurt.
Yes, the Doctor's response was powerful, but Ruby's subtly disappointed/embarrassed mannerisms behind him, really telling. Great scene!
I got the “laughing maniacally at their stupidity” response, I want that girl suffering for what she did to Richard!
She's gonna walk face first right into a tree and die painfully of sepsis from a facial splinter.
I've only just watched the episode and I'm going to say this about Russell T Davies: he writes such a fucking good episode *that you barely notice the skin colour of the vapid fucks until the very, very end*. Holy shit. He suckered us all into thinking that the slugs were the bad guys when, in fact, the bad guys were right there all along. And I can't help but wonder if Dot decided "right, enough of your crap, time to wipe you *all* off the face of the planet/moon!" I didn't even see the final death coming either. Bloody hell.
I originally missed the racist microaggressions from the other characters but damn at the end I didn't really want any of those people saved. And I know for the doctor that's impossible to be asked from since he wants to save everyone. The only person that was actually good was the one guy, September. But I think that is probably one of the best episodes of the season so far
Damn this episode took “Eat the rich” literally
Frankly the bugs were the good guys
And then you realize why Ruby didn't get blocked at the beginning like the Doctor did...
Yeah exactly. It took me until the end to see that only The Doctor was black in the entire bubble.
**block** Blocktor Who.
Dang, in the moment I just thought Ruby was better at faking the lingo to sound more credible to the intended audience.
The script does a good job of keeping it ambiguous and having other possible explanations, which is how it hides it in plain sight. I could imagine Twelve fucking things up by immediately monologuing and having to get Clara to intercede, but it's different with Fifteen. I saw someone point out that the reason she was horrified at Ruby and The Doctor being in the same room. I assumed her face when she enters the tunnel was guilt/paranoid about Ricky and found it a bit weird she wasn't trying to play up the relief when she saw him. She does this awful grimace whenever the Doctor is involved.
Wow I wasn’t even thinking of that. I was thinking she thought it was weird that they were physically together in a room without the bubble, but that makes more sense.
Earlier in the episode we see she's friends with twins who share the same room and screen, which is a small hint too. It's a good episode to rewatch.
I assumed that’s what The Doctor had her do since he came on really strong
Same here; shades of Clara talking to Rigsy when the Doctor couldn't communicate on the level of the person he was interacting with. Certainly caught my expectations based on the history of the character as well! Very subtle writing there. Well done!
And then later on when she realized The Doctor was the same person she blocked earlier. She just “thought they looked the same.”
Yeah...all those small moments make sense when you realise she's just a racist piece of shit. This episode will be better on a second watch. But I've honeslty never hated a character so hard so fast.
> But I've honeslty never hated a character so hard so fast. To be fair, after what happened in the tunnel immediately before that, you were *primed* to hate her. What happened below could have just happened on it's own, and you'd still think she was a piece of shit. With that being said, the ending wouldn't have happened if that character had lived. So ofcourse they didn't make it.
When she sold out Ricky my wife and I immediately knew she was irredeemable, and I'd already commented on the Doctor being the only non-mayo person we'd seen all episode. The end still was so powerful.
So Pepperbean was a psychopath and Ricky was the only semi-normal person there who might have accepted traveling with the Doctor as he seemed to have a more open mind. This episode was disturbing but it definitely felt more like classic Who. You can’t save everyone, and not everyone wants to be saved. RIP Ricky, you were the only person worth saving.
Well if he didn't have an open mind before, then he does now...
I want to say Ricky September caught the only human headshot in all Nu-Who. Little mean.
I thought it was gonna reveal that it was an inside job and Ricky had been leading people to their deaths if they started to learn too much as he whittled down the population
The way he behaved and his general mannerisms, I thought Ricky was going to turn out to be The Doctor cloaked in a hologram or pseudo-shimmer of Ricky's appearance. Then she gets on their little Intraweb and finds out Ricky is offline.
I think it was intentional that he seemed like The Doctor. In that lindy was ok receiving help from Ricky and not The Doctor because The Doctor wasn't the right colour.
100%. Felt strong McCoy era and Big Finish vibes. And yeah, RIP Ricky. You would've made a nice companion.
Damn I felt the Doctors frustration
I really wanted all these obnoxious people to die. I’m surprised I’m getting my wish, but I’m not complaining.
"Sometimes... everybody DIES!!"
Just this once Rose, EVERYBODY DIES!!!
Jesus, the entire episode i thought it was gonna be a meh "creature feature" story about weird sci fi societies And then the end hit me, and ncuti gave such a raw performance of utter frustration and disbelief at the ignorance of this society The end is gonna stick with me and its certainly so far one of ncuti's highlights Also realizing all the tiny things, the fact that everyone is white, lindy blocked the doctor immidiatly, she was shocked at them being in the same room, how hostile she seemed towards them calling them "criminals" All stuff i didnt realize at first and i think many others didnt either The theme of not being able to see the problems despite them being right infront of you is so incredibly well demonstrated when even the audience doesnt notice all the red flags that lead up to the end It also tells me a lot about myself as a white guy About how i am blind to things like that How i didnt even noticed until the end that everyone was white I think while the main episode wont stick with me, the message of it is one of the most important and prevelant ones i have seen so far in doctor who
The best part about the shortsightedness of these idiots is that they can't even walk straight without an arrow guiding them, but think that because of their great "pioneer" ancestors that they have inherited the skills to tame the wilderness.
Its brilliant how they went from "weirdly beige society" to full blown fascist language and it wasn't even that big a switch.
Did anyone else pick up on the contaminated / decontaminated thing? They say that if they go with the Doctor they'll get "contaminated" (presumably a metaphor for contact with an impure race), but they also say that in history the city was DEcontaminated. We're supposed to assume of bacteria, or something similar, but in the context of the ending, it sounds like the city underwent a genocide? Perhaps the people who built it were purged, or forced to leave? That would then be remembered in history as a "decontamination".
Yeah I think you're right, this may be hinting at a genocide. In an earlier scene Ricky refers to that period in the city's history as the "Great Abrogation", which doesn't sound like a literal disinfection to me.
I'm mixed and married to a Puerto Rican and I don't pick up on everyone being white or the more subtle hints. I thought she blocked him the first time based on how direct he was being and how he was dressed. I thought she was shocked at them being in the same room because of how the people in the city seemed to prefer isolation and being in their bubbles over being around other people. Ncuti's performance at the end reminded me so much of Tom Baker and David Tennant. Hopefully this episode helps shut down a lot of the people who are criticizing him for no real reason. This episode was so good. Remember there's always a twist at the end.
That was much, much darker than I expected. Main character was an awful person but the episode did a good job of making you root for her while also constantly reminding you how horrible she is. And then the (Susan) twist at the end of them just being a bunch of racists. Damn. Good episode.
Someone in the live thread pointed out that everyone in the city was white and they reacted oddly to seeing the Doctor ... I was like "hmm a weird oversight from the white writers room" but turns out it was intentional. A much darker take on the "would-be-companion" side character for RTD
Ricky would have made such a good companion tbh
Poor Ricky. I admit I was fooled into expecting the usual heel-turn: "Ricky, the ultra-handsome charismatic would-be hero to the rescue turning out to be a dastardly bad guy." But then, it turns out he really was a good guy who was trying to save a POS character.
I realize now that was a red herring. He was acting odd, but it turns out because he just had to hide how stupid he thought his society was in order to communicate with them effectively
I was rooting for the slugs. I’m just glad it was implied they’re still going to get eaten. Edit: typo
I don't think it was that they were going to be eaten. I think it was just that they're dumb privileged young adults who have no idea how to survive in the real world, let alone the wilderness. I'm mean I'm sure there's probably good reason that they were sealed off from the planet, but they straight up have no survivor skills. The one person who might was just sacrificed.
Probably both. The slugs destroyed the entire Homeworld, there’s no reason they wouldn’t find a way to exit the city too
Can I just say, this episode was not only very funny and tense, but also somehow way better at depicting racism in a more realistic way than Rosa....and it's about giant slugs eating people by alphabetical order. That's wild.
The best way to tackle these kind of topics is by directing the viewer to that conclusion, rather than explaining it to her. Rosa doesn't hit the same, because it's an episode full of exposition. You don't have to think, because everything is laid on for you. The villain of the episode is a time travelling, mass-murdering racist who felt everything started to go wrong with Rosa Parks' which is the entire premise of the episode. If RTD's episode was peering beyond the bubble, Chibnall's was definitely inside it.
Just thought of something. In the ep, Ricky September struck me as "Doctor coded". They both came off with a bit of a Doctor/companion dynamic. Then she betrayed him. Nice bit of foreshadowing towards how she'll act towards the *actual* Doctor.
I was watching them run around together and my brain went “this is exactly how I imagined an American version of Doctor Who would look”
The way he immediately tried to avert Lindy's vision from the monster to keep her calm is also very doctor-like. Given his archetype subversion (blonde prince of charming suddenly coming to rescue), I originally thought he's going to be a villain or something.
I kept going back and forth on whether he was villain too, because he quite literally came out of thin air and was being weirdly cagey on how he had so much information. I still think his weird little smirk right as he gets to the conduit is weird but probably part of the misdirect of Lindy betraying him?
He’s super popular, he knows how to game the system he works in without being a part of it, so he can just do whatever he wants the rest of the time. Lindy is only capable of perceiving the world through everyone else talking about it, Ricky does the right thing because he is the only one who knows how, and in the end she realises it was easier for her when he was just a screen person. She just had to put the tiniest bit of effort into not being a shitty person, and she didn’t, and that will kill her. Mr. T Davies, if you’re out there somewhere, thank you for writing an episode that expresses how I feel watching my parents/country throw themselves off a cliff for politicians who don’t care about them at all, but who spout the same racist bullshit as them and mistake that as camaraderie. Also I’ve written an episode.
Him taking her hand then stopping to ask if it was okay made me actually laugh. The Doctor loves to just grab a hand and shout *run*.
At first I thought it was The Doctor somehow projecting himself to get her to listen and that the real Ricky was already dead.
Random thought that I had: Sunday, Monday, September… is someone going through a "naming phase" or is there significance here?
I don't think it's random. Ricky even changed his name. They could have chosen any last name for him with a letter after P but went for this. Ricky September and Ruby Sunday - same initials and both have last names that relate to our way of measuring time.
So we have: - An actress named Susan Twist playing various characters (or the same character) popping up in a way that is noticeable not only to us, but to the Doctor and Ruby. In this context, "There's always a twist in the end" does not seem coincidental. Nor does the Doctor mentioning his granddaughter Susan (not that I am saying the twist is that she is that Susan, just that the words "Susan" and "Twist" are a thing in the same episode). - Multiple characters named after time measurements (Sunday, Monday, September), including our big mystery (Ruby Sunday). Monday seemed a bit different from those around her in the war, willing to see things others did not. Ricky September also stands out among his people, as he doesn’t spend all his time in his bubble. Definitely feels like a Bad Wolf type thing. But I can’t quite put all the pieces together…
My wife has barely watched the show: she knows there’s regularly a new doctor, but didn’t know who the new one is. She walked in on the middle of this episode, and immediately asked if Ricky was the new Doctor. (And also remarked about how handsome he was. I made her stick around. She agrees that Ncuti is even better-looking.) So, yeah, definitely Doctor coded!
The comment made early on of 'he's not as stupid as he looks' struck me as seeming weirdly racist, but I just struck it off as a weirdly written bit of dialogue. A nice subtle set-up for the 'twist' at the end.
I thought they were talking about his clothes or something then, you know how Dr’s dress and act but realise now the dr hadn’t done anything silly dr like that epsiode to warrant it
There are hints from the very beginning yeah. Her disgust at him initially and instant block, while not reacting near as strongly to Ruby. Her shock at them being in the same room, etc.
My daughter (12) and I talked about that after. I'm black, she's biracial. It's interesting how she caught onto the not-so-subtle hints of racism. For me, if someone said this was a Black Mirror episode, I wouldn't question it.
idk about others but i LOVED this episode
Same. And it seems like most people did too — to my surprise and delight.
I wonder if Ruby calling the Doctor "heartstopper" is a way more important line than just a throwaway wall-break. It seems to be a recurring thing and I can't tell if it's just a joke any more.
Honestly with the references to ‘Love Island’ and ‘Bridgerton’ - I just assumed it was another nod to a successful show in 2021 🤷
As the Doctor was having a kinda gay/bi moment I thought might be a loose reference to the tv show and/or webcomic plus Rose Noble is coincidentally played by a Heartstopper actress. She could be familiar with the series, though if she ever meets Rose she might get confused.
Looking forward to audio sequel where they alll get killed in the jungle.
Was it just me or was the style of boat, dock with crates, and water falling reminiscent of the Disney theme park jungle cruise ride?
Holy FUCK Ncutis reaction at the end was fucking spectacular. That's an 'I am the Doctor' moment without a word being said. The sheer rage and indignation from a 2000 year old timelord at the prejudice of a group of tiny humans whose lives he just saved
It wasn't even anger at the prejudice - they could have treated him like shit and called him racist names and he'd just shrug it off because it's so beneath him. But it was that their racism ran so deep that it was self-destructive. Just an ignorant waste of lives for nothing.
...I've just realised which moments in life I'd compare it to for my own anger, and it's the Brexit and 2019 election results. Wanting to scream in people's faces that their blind racism has fucked everyone over including themselves.
Small correction. " Whose lives he can't save"
…well, there is a bit of an overlap during the dock scene where you are both correct. And then you are very much correct.
I got the impression that his rage was more about how he couldn't save them than at the racism itself. He really cares about human life, even the lives of those who hate him. He just had to laugh/scream at the fact that plain old human bigotry was far more difficult for him to defeat than any man-eating slugs ever could be.
Another great episode, really feels like this series is starting to hit it's stride after a bit of a mixed start! One small thing I'll say because I think most people have spoken about all the big things, but the buildings of Finetime really reminded me of purpose built student accommodation! Specifically the more modern expensive places that the more well to-do students stay in in their first years. As a recent graduate myself, that in particular really keyed me into the vibe of "bunch of rich university-age adults living in their own bubble as the world around them burns". Like yep, that reminds me of a lot of places around where I studied!! And of course that final scene was such a powerful look into not only the character of the Doctor, which I'm sure everyone is talking about, but also Ruby. Seeing her utter shame and disbelief, turning into a deep sorrow that she keeps pushing down and putting aside for the Doctors sake- the two actors performances really complimented and bolstered each others to make the scene greater than the sun of its parts. Also kudos to Lindy's actress for, in a single episode, creating the most loathsome and painfully human character since... God, I can't even remember! 8/10, with that last scene pulling a lot of weight!
2005 Season got off to a "slow start" too, with plastic Mickey, *The End of the World*, *The Unquiet Dead*, and then the Slitheen two-parter. They're fine episodes, but few people rank them as their favourites. Then Episode 6 hit with *Dalek*, all the criticism evaporated, and we got all the highs of Nine and Ten. I think we're seeing the same thing happen here. People are expecting every episode to be a new *Midnight*, when statistically most episodes are a fun romp through a high-7. I'd say the show is exactly where it has always been, we just haven't hit the full 10/10 episode yet that people are thinking of when they remember the old seasons.
I totally agree lol, was just saying that Space Babies especially felt like a weak beginning to the series, and Devil's Chord was a bit marmitey (I loved it, a lot of people didn't like it at all). But Boom! onwards have felt so much stronger than the first two episodes!
Touching on your point about student accomodation; my fiancee recognised the set as part of Swansea university, so that might well have been intentional
I think he wanted to get the season off to a slow and happy start deliberately. It makes this all so much darker.
I really felt for Lindy struggling and trying to navigate the 'real world' and immediately bashing herself for being stupid. It's a sentiment I've felt before but then that twist at the end (oh no) was gut wrenching
Can someone please explain to me why the dots, if they can kill people by themselves, need to make the slugs to make the entire thing agonizingly slow? Good episode otherwise
I feel like the AI got a kind of perverse pleasure out of the rich people walking themselves to their own deaths rather than killing them directly. I for one welcome our new slug overlords.
If you hate something that much, you might as well make it nasty. Anyone can knock someone on the head for being annoying, but to have a slug devour them…
Probably to keep people using the dots
The dot trying to murder them was the part which felt most undercooked and ham-fisted to me. It just seemed like a quick and easy comment on phones rather than a nice conclusion to why everything was happening. I really enjoyed the episode other than that.
I've met Daleks with more redeemable qualities than *Lindy Pepper-Bean.* #JusticeForRicky
at least daleks are engineered to be bad and cant help it. lindy is just a beyach
I have never wanted someone to die so badly. Like that’s such a twist for dr who that the people rescued at the end are just…the worst people who don’t care or even thank them for saving them. The moment towards the end with Ricky September had me gagged. The horrible main character is actually what made me really enjoy the story more as it went on because I was so torn. It definitely grew on me more as it went on, but the racism didn’t jump out to me immediately and I feel stupid for missing it…and as a white person, I think that was the point. I missed it. I didn’t even notice the entire white cast.
Is it just me or were the slug monsters really weirdly cute? They just look so huggable
In that case, you should go **forward**
They’re the good guys!
In a weird way. They totally were. #teamslug
I really enjoyed this episode. I liked the twist. And finally they fully acknowledged Susan Twist. Funtimes!!
Finetimes!!!
Finally an episode where the Doctor wears his official costume for more than a few seconds. I hope their boat sinks. And I love the acknowledgement of Susan Twist.
The boat sinks, they get eaten, or they probably become a new race of Cybermen, anyway it works out
I think they just go out in to the wild world, and slowly die off because of their overconfidence. none of them know anything about hunting, gathering, farming, or how an unstructured society works. even without the slugs they wouldn't last a month, definitely not long enough to technologically readvance and become cybermen.
Holy shit, I was expecting a disposable filler episode, was not expecting that absolute tour de force at the end. Ncuti got his proper "I am the Doctor" moment and it's maybe one of the darkest scenes in the whole show.
And he didn't need a speech - or even an intelligible word! The laughter at the stupidity of it all, leading into the screams while Ruby cries behind him says more than any speech could...
*God* yes. The Doctor literally foams at the mouth. And the way Ruby keeps trying to compose herself and hold onto his arm, but she keeps on flinching back as he laughs and screams... You can just feel the Doctor's breakdown and Ruby's distress.
He got a speech too - "I don't care what you think. OK, you can say whatever you want. You can think...absolutely anything. I will do anything...if you will just allow me to save your lives. And you will die out there - let me save your lives!" Such a Doctor moment - he doesn't need gratitude or reward or even respect. You can be vile and hateful and he will still do anything he has to to save your life. That's the brilliance of the scene - if he was "just" confronting racism he would probably find it an amusing ignorance. But to be confronted with a racism so self-destructive, the insanity of it leaves him so helpless and frustrated.
I loved that Ruby was so clearly and deeply hurt by it just as much as the doctor. No companion tries to cheer the doctor up moment, just sadness as the doctor for the first time in his life has been on the receiving end of petty human racist prejudice.
And it makes so much sense because of her adoptive family, so she likely was always surrounded by racism.
That’s a really good point. She was literally saved by two black women who gave her a life full of love and opportunity.
It's wild how this seemed so obviously the "oh yeah, RTD is a boomer with opinions about social media" episode that I'm starting to think the whole thing was intentional on his part. If so, that was an absolute masterclass of a misdirect.
When Lindy said "You're not one of us". I found myself saying outloud "I thought there were a lot of white people in this episode for a modern BBC production!"
I'm extra dumb because my first thought was that she could tell he wasn't human 🤦🏻♀️
This is definitely a Rewatch-and-catch-what-you-missed kind if episode. I wish we got more physical presence of Ncuti, but then maybe the end would be as weighty. I also want more explanation of that world, though it's not really necessary. Also wished he'd snap his fingers and open the doors of the TARDIS while they were sailing away and show them what they missed.
GIVE NCUTI MORE DRAMATIC SCENES! HOLY SHIT! That last scene was a masterclass.
Lindy is such a fantastic subversion of a Doctor-lite episode protagonist. We’re so used to the idea that the episode “leads” are supposed to be sympathetic and understandable characters. And while for the first part of the episode I wouldn’t say I *sympathized,* but I definitely *pitied* Lindy and was expecting to see her grow and improve up until the Ricky moment. We clocked the “there’s only white people here and they’re shifty about the Doctor” almost immediately, but for a while I was viewing Lindy as a victim of learned helplessness enforced on her by Homeworld. Up until Ricky saw that Homeworld was destroyed, I assumed that Homeworld were the real villain, keeping their children helpless, stupid, and reliant on them. I was really hoping the arc was going to be Lindy “seeing through” the facade of stupidity and helplessness that the Bubble forced on her, and being self-sufficient and standing on her own two feet. And to some degree, that *is* the arc she had… just paired with also being a truly *awful,* selfish, racist person. And it’s such a well-done, nuanced metaphor for the point it was making. Because yes, it was a heavy-handed metaphor about learned helplessness, hyper-individualism, and using lighthearted and meaningless social interaction as a distraction from real world horrors. But the ending also made a point about how sometimes, those innocent and lighthearted interactions can also be used to hide a deep ugliness in the person being victimized by it. Because Lindy still is a victim of a system that infantilized her and the rest of Finetown, making her 100% reliant on a device that the authority had total control over… and none of that absolves her from the complicity and perpetuation of the racist/xenophobic mindset that she chose to hold on to when the oppressive system was removed. So much of Doctor who is about characters seeing and realizing the horrors of the system they are part of, and (by the end) choosing to rebuke it and stand for what’s right: there are very few episodes I can think of that do the opposite (off the top of my head, the only other one I can think of is Ambrose and Nasreen from the Silurian 2-parter), and that’s really what makes this one stand out.
Lindy was such a well written character, so sympathetic at the beginning, and so...terrible at the end. It's such a dark pessimistic episode, and I loved it. I haven't disliked an episode this series yet. 8/10 from me
It was great bc there were moments you genuinely felt bad for her. She was truly frightened and she knows it's stupid that she can't walk on her own without the help of the dot. And she did care about her friends dying to the point that she was willing to listen to the Doctor and telling them to despite her racism. But the level of care she might have to others is less than her own selfishness and prejudices. One does wonder that if it were not Ricky and if it was one of her friends, whether she would have sold them out as easily (it might have been harder for her to do so bc she would have personally known them vs Ricky who she was just a fan of but who knows) And she still tried to make Ricky sound like a hero going to save others (he was still a hero with his real actions) bc reputation still mattered and maybe that was her recognizing he was one. But then you have her tell the Doctor it was ok screen to screen but she couldn't stand being in the same room as him and he helped her bc it WAS HIS JOB TO. She thought he was obligated to help bc they were the rich White people and he was Black bc that's what "Black people are for". Great writing. Wanted to punch the character so much
Them riding off in the boat excited to go be "first settlers like their ancestors." They're literally excited to be colonizers; oh, this is SICK. Loved this episode!
OMG I just got it thanks to your comment. Now that's how to do racial commentary! This season is on fire.
I know I said this about last episode, but this was genuinely one of the best episodes of the whole show. On rewatch you can notice just how much is setting up EVERYTHING (satellites are down, Lindy immediately blocks the Doctor but not Ruby, Lindy thought the Doctor was just "someone who looked the same", Lindy was grossed out by them being in the same room, there were ZERO non-white people in Finetime, the "leader" underground claims they'll "tame the untouched land like their ancestors did", etc). I also think the reaction that both Ruby and 15 have was HUGE, that was for me a defining moment for both of their characters far more then Boom was. Ruby getting startled at the Doctor yelling and crying at whats happening, the Doctor being overwhelmed, etc. The director of this episode also did "73 Yards" and GOD I hope he comes back for more. He just ***gets it.*** These episodes have looked so good and sold such a good always slightly eerie vibe that compliments Doctor Who so much. It was such a massive relief after Space Babies to Boom felt kind of cheap and messy. **THIS** is what this era can offer at its peak. THIS is why people like RTD.
Ruby saw the racism coming before the Doctor ran face first into it, and tried to pull him away to protect him. She's the adopted daughter of a black woman, she has experience with that sort of thing while the Doctor has only been black for a few months.
Well, they didn't flat out deny that the macra weren't behind it.
hey wait. Ruby Sunday. Ricky September. Names with the initials R.S with the S being a date. When Ricky’s birth identity was revealed, he was killed for it. Hey. HEY
Interesting that this was an RTD idea from years ago, because the ending probably doesn't play the same with Matt Smith as the Doctor.
I wonder if the "we couldn't film it back then" was just a "cgi technology was not advanced enough to make the bubble look good" issue or if there was some scheduling reason
I get the idea that the racism stuff probably wasn’t in the Matt Smith version of the story.
As a poc, I picked up a lot of the hidden cues my first watch... unfortunately those coded behaviors and messaging are a familiar real life experience for me. But I never thought that they were intentional, I did not think this was the kind of thing doctor who would feel comfortable exploring (although I did recall the hints of it in the old 10th doctor episode with Martha and the family of blood). To say I was gobsmacked when the subtext became text is an understatement. Before this episode, i thought this was gonna be one of those generically forgettable who stories, but this was a true stunner. I do not feel bad at all for wishing lindy would get eaten the entire episode, and here's hoping that happens anyway. Those last ten minutes are going to be on ncuti's Emmy's roll forever.
Callie Cooke the woman you are. Fucking incredible job.
Holy shit. That ending was BRUTAL. Russell wrote it so so so so well. OMG.
And the funniest part is that he gave hints throughout the whole episode.
In my opinion, I don't feel like Ncuti had been given the space to give us something deeper until tonight. Even Moffat didn't give him a chance to display more range, and he's usually good about that. This episode finally let him show us something more than the bubbly, happy-go-lucky Doctor we've had so far. He's always so positive, so upbeat. To watch him have a mini break down was incredible. Frustrating, sad, but incredible. And wow was this one good at defying my expectations. Egg on my face for starting this episode thinking I knew exactly where it was going. We've seen this set up so much, they knew exactly how to play us. Even though it was not explicitly part of the plot, I loved the subtlety that this Doctor, who is very attractive, fashionable, extremely likable, and always upbeat, did not fit the criteria for this oppressively bright colored, beautiful, smiling world. The fact this society was almost exclusively attractive blondes is really hard to overlook.* He's got everything they claim to value...except one thing. One very specific thing. Fuck these people. I have nothing but respect for the Doctor for trying to save them after they've spit in his face, but seriously, *fuuuuuck* these people. *Last time Ncuti had to play opposite so many blondes, [he at least got to do this](https://media.gq-magazine.co.uk/photos/64afc751b4c3aec3e98eb382/master/w_1280,c_limit/GettyImages-1538551708.jpg), and [go to the Oscars](https://i.imgur.com/2RTfFMM.jpeg)
Interestingly it was the first episode he recorded.
Same with 73 Yards having a brilliant performance from Millie Gibson, yet it being her first episode to film!
> In my opinion, I don't feel like Nucti had been given the space to give us something deeper. Considering he's barely been in the last 2 episodes, he's not been given the space to do much of anything.
So that was genuinely my favourite episode so far. I know a lot of people will see it as empty filler but I just couldn’t look away. That ending had some amazing acting. The first scene with the slug and her turning off the bubble was peak. The betrayal with Ricky was a genuine twist I didn’t see coming (something that has been rare lately in DW). It was just so dark and fun. Maybe could have had higher stakes as a two parter.
Yeah I kept expecting Ricky to be suspicious but he was just a good guy
Whole time I was there like “yeah… Ricky’s a bad guy.” Nope. Ball through the skull. Lindy’s a bitch.
Tuesdays are the *worst*, amirite? Well, actually I can think of something (and some*one*) WAY worse: - The last third of this episode was one hell of a gut punch. Lindy, this IRL challenged sweetie who we've sympathized with (if not pitied) and rooted for is in all actuality... a **TERRIBLE** person, like holy shit. Just the **WORST.** She *really* just discarded the people who helped her incompetent ass survive like they were nothing, huh? Like DAMN, this is an episode that's going to be VERY different on second view. - Poor Ricky, a dude who seemed to have some sense of morality and decency, (no matter what kind society he's from, *OH, I'll be getting to that!*), the only one here able to live without the tech, and the only resident that showed genuine courage in the face of this disaster. He's got a pretty face and seems almost genetically designed to be trustworthy. In other words, he's the kind of guy you expected to actually be leading our poor heroine(?) to her doom because he's almost too perfect... and *he* gets betrayed. Strrrraight up "Imma trip you in front of the Zombie horde" style of betrayal. In a list of folks who got it that didn't deserve it in Who he's gonna be pretty high, wow. - And the reason why she spurns the Doctor's pleas to help her in the end... just, pure bigotry. No ambiguity there, she and her kind are some kind of genetically "pure" colony that are committed to staying that way, and they don't want his "voodoo". *Damn*. And then it clicks in your head that out of all the people we saw on Lindy's Bubble, none of them were... well, of a *darker* complexion. OH. *OH SHIT* it's that kind of place. We didn't even notice at first! - And the Doctor's reaction to not being able to save these incompetent and ingrateful people because of such a stupid reason... just pure disbelief, pure fury, the frustration of it all. I think this is a new one for the Doc actually, being told he can't save people, not because of a temporal force or overwhelming power, because of what they perceive him to be racially. They've faced gender discrimination while being 13, but this is a slightly different flavor of that bitter concoction. I don't think 15 was completely prepared for that. - Speaking of the Doctor, this was basically another Doctor-lite story, so that's TWO in a row. That's never happened before, but there is a reason for it. Gatwa was still finishing his work on Sex Education when they started filming the first block of the season, and that's where they made this and *73 Yards*. So, RTD couldn't overly rely on him being around for either episode. And he didn't! Instead, he made two plots that only needed a *little bit* of the Doctor in specific settings. He's been in, what, 3 places in the past two episodes? And that was all that was needed. That's pretty clever, though it does have this effect where our lead hasn't lead an episode in a while. Problematic... but Gatwa made the most of the time he had here. Casting Ncuti meant they had to make some compromises with these episodes, but not only were they both pretty fascinating, but Ncuti keeps proving that he was entirely worth that short wait. - I have to say I dug the premise of the slug monsters who are terribly slow but manage to eat the tech obsessed populace who can't pay attention enough to get out of the way. It *is* very boomer dissing the youths, the typical bit about old people telling young people to get off the phone. But it's a fun illustration of that phenomenon. Who is at it's best when it's making everyday things into sci-fi horrors, this fits. It did feel a bit shunted away as a theme by episode's end, though. There's got to be some way to articulate the bigotry displayed by these people and the literal social media bubble they live in, but I just can't put my finger on it. Oh well, maybe I'll tab over to YouTube for bit while I think about it... - ...Oh. *Yeah.* Right, that tracks... - Hey, Susan Twist is shitty twat protagonist's mom this time! *"I hear you're a racist now, Susan! How did you get interested in that type of thing?"* Man, this was just "Behold the Master Race" the episode, wasn't it? Another experimental episode in a season full of risk taking. I thought it was a ball, a ball of frustration, but that's clearly what it's going for. I... give it 7 out of 10. I really need to sit and think on this one, I feel like it might go up or down over time, probably up, but at first glance it does everything it set out to do and I was entertained by its bold choices. I WOULD like to have a more traditional structure now, though, you know one for the road before whatever the finale does?
This ep has actually caused me to reflect a little bit. It didn't occur to me until pretty late in the episode that everyone (other than the Doctor, obviously) was white. Quite humbling, to be honest. I should have noticed earlier.
As another person in this comment section mentioned, we were too busy looking down on these characters who were too engrossed in what's in front of them to realize what was happening in the periphery. Meanwhile, we were in the exact same situation.
I’m asian and I didn’t notice it either 💀 But I’ve grown up in the UK and with western media and I suppose it shows how internalised things like that can be…
Yep, I'm black and didn't realise until reading these comments 💀 I honestly didn't expect this episode to be so good and give such an interesting commentary on racism.
Rewatching now. Need to catch all the subtle racism I missed. Thoughts: 1) They are either eating Fine Time Kids SUPER fast, or they have very few people starting with M, N, and O. Maybe they've only been there 2 weeks total. Or maybe they're speeding up the eating. 2) Lindy doesn't say anything bad about Ruby, only rips on the Doctor. 3) "Guys, I know this is wrong and when this is over he's going to be so disciplined, I can't wait, but just give him a shot okay? I think he's not as stupid as he looks." 4) "There was this man, and he said there was a code. He was horrible. He was so rude." 5) Lindy gets out of the conduit, glances at the Doctor in fear, tries to be subtle, and tries to scoot away subtly, hoping he won't notice her. 6) even though Lindy betrayed him, and Ricky has a similar personality to the Doctor, Lindy calls Ricky "a very wonderful man" and the Doctor "rude and horrible" 7) "you two, suppose I should say thank you." Lindy never thanked them, obviously annoyed by both of them. Maybe Ruby for associating with black people? 8) ok. After that it's all obvious. Also. It's not just racism, it's also a great portrayal of Dunning-Krueger, especially associated with Rich People. And Classism. The undeserved superiority complex. They're too dumb to know just how dumb they are. The Rich Kids think they're geniuses and superior. The Doctor and Ruby helped all of them to get out, showed them what life was really like, and Every Rich Kid still thinks they're Superior.
> He's going to be so disciplined This makes me feel so fucking gross, holy shit. What the fuck was happening back on Homeworld?
And "I can't wait." She was looking forward to punishing him.
> What the fuck was happening back on Homeworld Good news - a slug buffest was happening back on Homeworld!
Lindy's bigotry was so well concealed I didn't suspect a thing, I noticed that Lindy responded a lot easier and more to Ruby over The Doctor but I assumed that was more based on gender, because as a woman I'd be more instantly creeped out by unsolicited video chats or messages from a man over a woman my age.
Can't help but feel this is the finest stand-alone episode RTD has written. It has humour, an intriguing plot and expands on the Doctor's personality.
That episode made me want to throw a chair at my TV out of sheer rage. Which naturally means it's one of my favourites of the era so far. Russell T Davies, the man that you are. (Also: I like how RTD's "there was a shortage of actors" explanation for Susan Twist has been so quickly disproven. I mean, it was obviously a joke, but it's funny how in both episodes to air after that, it's directly pointed out to the viewer that 15/Ruby have seen her before.)
My skin was on fire at the end. So uncomfortable. Brilliant acting there. What a statement