Doctor Who (2024) Episode 5 Review – Trapped in an Annoying Social Bubble

I, honestly, do not like doing negative reviews. I don’t. I don’t get joy out of insulting what other people have created, because, at the bare minimum, they put a lot of effort into making the thing that we are viewing/playing/listening to. No matter what, an intention was put into the product. But just like with my review for “73 Yards,” I can’t help but feel both depressed and angry as I write my Doctor Who Episode 5 Review because I’m once again feeling hollow over an episode that was both frustrating and the end…pointless.

The premise of “Dot and Bubble” was sound enough and was a direct finger point on the screen-filled world we live in. We go to a world that we find out is full of pampered rich kids who literally have their heads wrapped in their screens where they talk with all of their “closest friends,” work only two hours a day, and then party the rest of the time. To some, that might seem like the “perfect life,” but as this episode was about to reveal, it was about to become a nightmare.

Because, surprise, there are monsters in this world, and they’re slowly devouring the people, and because of the screen addiction/focus the people, like Lindy, have, they can’t even notice the monsters until they absolutely have to. Enter The Doctor and Ruby, who reach out to one of the people, Lindy, in an attempt to help her escape the horror that awaits her.

Again, in concept, that’s a brilliant setting, as we see The Doctor and Ruby solely through screens through much of the episode, and not unlike Asylum of the Daleks, it could’ve led to an interesting set of circumstances on which both sides of the coin would’ve come together to make something special. Instead…we got a whole lot of stupidity, and it all starts with Lindy.

Lindy is meant to be the personification of Gen-Z and their desire to do nothing but have fun, not listen to reason, and have “relationships” in a non-personal way. The problem is that Lindy is so unlikeable and unbelievable from start to finish that it created a massive disconnect in the episode for me. I didn’t care what happened to her, at times, I just wanted her to shut up!

Mean? Sure. But she deserves it in every way, shape, and form, not just because of the “stinger” at the end (which I will address.) Lindy was loud, unable to walk on her own (more on that in a second, too), and even when faced with literal reality, she refused to do what The Doctor and Ruby said until the literal last second.

When “Doctor Lite” episodes happen or have a protagonist we don’t know, it’s important to make them someone to root for in some capacity, like with “Blink” or “The Return of Doctor Mysterio.” But Lindy wasn’t anything like those characters in the worst way.

Truth be told, the episode worked not just as a better horror episode to “73 Yards” because of how the people getting eaten were shown, but it worked for the most part IN SPITE of Lindy. I was caring about everything ELSE but her! That’s not how it should work.

And it didn’t help that when we did meet an actual good character in Mr. Ricky September, he wasn’t around too long and didn’t get enough backstory. So… yeah… let’s get into that “twist,” shall we?

As we find out, the slug monsters are killing everyone within this place (Called “FineTime,” …yeah, sure.) via alphabetical order. Plus, it’s their tech (the literal “Dot and Bubble”) that created the beings to kill them because…they hate them after hearing them talk for so long. Yeah, sure.

Anyway, after giving Lindy directions on where to go, meeting Ricky Strawberry, and risking his life multiple times to save her, Lindy straight-up sacrifices him so that she can escape. Then, she basically smiles as though she did nothing wrong and even talks about him to a “friend” of hers as though he is still alive…and lies about him to The Doctor and Ruby.

It was at that point, not the scene that came after that I had it with this episode. She was totally irredeemable and deserved to get eaten. If Lindy was swapped with Strawberry for the role of protagonist, and she did the same thing, it would’ve been more tragic and meaningful, especially if The Doctor and Ruby called her out on what she did after learning the truth. Instead, it’s glossed over and Lindy gets to keep being her annoying self with no sense of remorse.

It was infuriating to watch, as this show is often very good about giving “just desserts” to those who deserve it, as episodes like “Dinosaur on a Spaceship” can attest to. And then…there was that final scene.

I’ll give RTD props; I didn’t see the racism scene coming. The all-white cast, save for The Doctor, was perfectly kept at arm’s length so we wouldn’t question the lack of diversity we were seeing. So when that racism bit dropped, I almost didn’t catch it. I first thought that they were “simply above help,” but then when Ncuti Gatwa did that laugh/roar bit, it clicked. It was racism, pure and simple, and yeah, I felt bad for The Doctor because they are always up for helping people…even those who don’t deserve it.

So, why did it fail to resonate with me? Because it happened too quickly! It was a literal “drop the hammer” moment, and then the episode was done. With EVERYTHING that happened before then, there wasn’t enough time to process before clicking off Disney+ or BBC. Plus, by that point, I was so over Lindy and her world that the racism bit felt almost like a, “Oh, so they’re that, too, huh?” kind of thing. I already saw Lindy sacrifice someone who was arguably the greatest person in her world…so why would I be fazed by her suddenly being racist? I wasn’t, and that’s why it didn’t click right away.

This is in direct contrast to an episode like “Rosa” (which I gave a perfect score on another site and hailed as one of the most important episodes of NuWho) because it was a truly beautiful analysis of that important moment in history and how the characters who KNEW what would happen would react to the racism that was all around them. Here, though, it was almost a “Yeah, they’re all racists, bye!” moment, and then the episode ended. If they had just a few more minutes to show The Doctor reacting more or Ruby comforting The Doctor, that would’ve made it more meaningful. But instead, they literally closed the door on the story and ended the episode.

What might be more frustrating to point out in my review isn’t Lindy’s stupidity or how the episode ended — it’s all the inconsistencies that were strewn throughout the episode. For example, one of the things Lindy says earlier on is that she “can’t walk without the arrows,” and yet we see her doing that multiple times in various ways later on in the episode, including running at high speed, which you KNOW she didn’t do before.

Second, one of the reasons that The Doctor and Ruby have to talk through the screens is that they “can’t get in” to FineTime. Except, they do in the end, and they don’t explain why or how. How were they blocked before but not blocked at the end? And if it was one of the “magic acts” to arrive in front of everyone at the end (which is implied,) why did no one believe them that the Tardis could move through space?

Going to the Dots, now, we see one of them go killer at the end of the episode…so why did it create bug monsters to kill everyone when it could’ve literally lunged at their heads in seconds? Furthermore, HOW did these little AI robots come up with the idea of making the slug monsters and bringing them into not just the FineTime bubble but the homeworld? We get no explanation about that.

Just as important, why did The Doctor choose Lindy out of everyone in FineTime? Someone even asked for help because they noticed the disappearances, yet they went to Lindy instead of everyone else. That doesn’t make sense.

Finally, and arguably most importantly, we see the remaining members of the society come together and say they’ll be “pioneers” like their ancestors and then sail away…except…how would they know how to survive when some of them couldn’t even walk beforehand? As The Doctor said, “You’ll all die!” Yet they didn’t seem to register that, which makes them all the more infuriating.

As I thankfully end my review, I want to say that I really hope you understand why I feel the way I do about these last two episodes. Doctor Who is a special show to me, and I’ve seen hopeful Doctor Who episodes and depressing ones, but they always had a meaning or a point to them, not just for the audience but for the characters. For two episodes now, you can look back at them and go, “Where’s the growth?” or “What’s the tie to the overall season?” and literally say…”Nothing.” That’s wrong to me, and I REALLY hope that the next Doctor Who episode changes things, or this could be one of the worst seasons in Doctor Who’s long history. Doctor Who Doctor Who Doctor Who