In tonight’s all-new episode of Doctor Who, “Dot and Bubble,” the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby (Millie Gibson) try to save the residents of Finetime, who are happy chatting away in their “bubbles,” on social media. However, not everything is as perfect as it seems as giant slug-like creatures start eating the citizens. Can the Doctor and Ruby get them to step into the real world to escape before it’s too late?

This episode is once again Doctor-lite, but also doesn’t have much of Ruby either, focusing instead on Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke). The duo are, as usual, fantastic for what we see of them, but I definitely would have liked more, especially in such a short season. That being said, Cooke does a great job of carrying the story. In fact, the majority of the story is focused on her face inside the bubble rather than even the environment, which was likely hard to pull off.

It’s quite clear this episode is likely to be polarizing among fans. Evoking a Black Mirror-esque vibe, the episode does a terrific job of commenting on how dependent people are on their devices, as well as, of course, social media, but it also has a darker undertone, as Lindy, along with the other residents of Finetime, are upper class young adults who care more about how they look than how they treat people. At first it seems Lindy is just a ditzy social-media obsessed entitled rich kid, but it’s quickly revealed its more than that. She not only puts herself above all others, sacrificing the young man who helped her escape, Ricky September (Tom Rhys Harries), in order to save herself, but she thinks herself better than the Doctor and Ruby and is revealed to be racist. 

After first viewing, I’m not sure how I yet feel about the episode. I definitely get where they were going and the social commentary Russell T. Davies, who wrote the episode, was trying to make. As a society, we are definitely glued to our screens, and I am first to admit, I’m addicted to my own phone. That being said, the ending was shocking as Lindy and the other privileged idiots refused the Doctor when all he wanted was to save them, as it was I'm sure supposed to be, but it felt a bit disjointed to me. I do appreciate that Davies is thinking outside the box and that the episodes are a step away from a lot of what we’ve seen recently on the series. Still, I think I would have liked to have seen a more positive ending, whether it was one person turning away from the masses at the end like Ricky did, or even just the Doctor and Ruby talking after about people having to want to be saved, or perhaps even Ruby questioning if they deserved to be. Black Mirror, however, didn’t usually have happy endings either. Still, overall I liked the episode and am looking forward to what’s next. I just hope with such a short season that the Doctor and Ruby will be a much larger part of the rest of the season.