Doctor Who season 14, episode 5, “Dot and Bubble,” left me with a sense of frustration that I hadn’t had yet during the show’s Disney era, and I’ve figured out why it felt so incomplete.
The show’s new direction has allowed the Doctor to take on threats that are becoming increasingly supernatural, and has even forced Ruby Sunday into a solo mission for “73 Yards.” The recent focus on fantasy elements like magic and Doctor Who’s Pantheon of Gods allows the show to maintain an aura of mystery that I actually find fun to ride out.
“Dot and Bubble” sidelines the fantasy components of the latest run of episodes, meaning the members of the Doctor Who season 14 cast find themselves in the middle of a much more recognizable form of the show. The issue is that the Disney era of Doctor Who doesn’t seem to know how to completely switch off from the change in formula. As a result, “Dot and Bubble” falls short of what I wanted and expected it to be.
“Dot & Bubble” Doesn’t Answer Any Of The Questions It Raises
The Doctor Who season 14 enigma mill just keeps on turning
When “Dot and Bubble” began, I felt like I was watching a lost Black Mirror episode. Now, I love Black Mirror, so I was quite excited by what felt like a soft crossover between the two franchises. The problem is that Russell T Davies’ take on the sci-fi anthology series doesn’t quite work, because “Dot and Bubble” introduces even more mysteries to Doctor Who season 14 without the payoff of a big reveal at the end of the episode. I’ve found the constant slew of unanswered questions throughout Gatwa’s run incredibly compelling, but the saturation point is fast approaching.
The biggest threat in “Dot and Bubble” is the race of slug-like alien monsters that are eating the residents of Finetime. Previous eras of Doctor Who would have included a detailed breakdown of where the monsters came from, what made them tick, and what they were called. Instead, all I learned was that the creatures were artificially manufactured somehow and that Finetime isn’t the first population to be decimated by them. It’s not even revealed how long the Homeworld’s population has been reduced to zero, which raises the question of when they last had direct communication with Finetime.
The only concrete reveal is the fact that Lindy Pepper-Bean and the other Finetime residents are all racist, which I’d already managed to glean from the episode anyway. While the sequence is incredibly well-acted by Ncuti Gatwa, it felt a bit like a smokescreen that was trying to distract me from the fact that the script had neglected to tie up any of the story’s other loose ends.