I really like this episode, although my partner thought it was the worst so far, worse than 73 Yards (neither of us rated that well!).I enjoyed the cartoony, slightly camp world. I enjoyed the visuals with the washed out pastels, the tanned and shiny faces of the inhabitants with their wigs and 90s Clueless-esque outfits.
As a satire on social media use it definitely felt like a heavy handed Black Mirror episode, probably because the Disney Budget allowed for a much more polished look that is still taking some getting used to! I think it worked, and I liked the sillier aspects with Dr Pee and the fact Lindy couldn’t fucking walk without her Bubble acting as a Sat Nav!
As fun as that was at first, it did feel like it took her too long to figure it out! Then after struggling so much she basically walked into the “jaws” of a slug, she meets Ricky and within seconds she’s sprinting around corners and downstairs…! It was really zero to a hundred.
Side note, I wonder if Ricky September is a pastiche of a real trend on TikTok I recall where be-curtained pretty young men would do similar boy and lip sync style performances right to camera. Obviously TikTok moves so fast I can’t find an example of this now!
And then right at the end, when I thought I knew what was the epsidode was about (the Doctor about to save a terrible selfish person) it pulled the rug out from under my feet. This felt incredibly abrupt to me because I had clearly not been paying attention earlier in the episode!
Partly this is because, I must admit, I am rarely giving Doctor Who my full attention. Generally I don’t think of it a show with a lot of nuanced subtext (I’m used to it’s more recent social messages being delivered via sledgehammer) and not every episode is a winner, so sometimes yes I might be playing a Sudoku or browsing my RSS feed!
But also it is definitely because I am white, and I didn’t grow up in a racially diverse area, and I just didn’t pick up on the microaggressions that breadcrumbed the episode.
Racism hints I didn’t pick up on:
- Everyone is super white and blue eyed. I did notice that but because they all had such weird tanned skin with a mega highlighted sheen to it, and that they had blue blood (OMG I only just got the blue blood 😂) I thought this was an alien thing – like all the gold people in Guardians of the Galaxy. I wasn’t positive that they were meant to be human so I guess I wasn’t thinking about diversity in the same way.
- Ignoring and blocking the Doctor but listening to Ruby (I thought that was because she was closer to her age and gave Lindy lots of compliments in the same fake way she spoke to her friends).
- Asking if the Doctor was the same or different person she spoke with before!
- “He’s not as stupid as he looks” and general hostility.
- Disgust that the Doctor and Ruby they were in the same “bubble” (at the time I thought that was because nobody has much physical contact, and the twins were just a cute aesthetic thing).
So I take back the sledgehammer thing. RTD can do subtle subtext! This was clever and it’s definitely made me look at my own priveldge – my own bubble – as a white person. Like the brats if Finetime maybe I don’t see outside of it enough?
The idea of those spoiled idiots going to “tame the wilderness” is ridiculous when most of them only just learned to walk unassisted! Michael at My Comic Relief likened this to the “good ol’ days” bridade that want to live like pioneers in the 1800s. That’s definitely a very American thing, since in the UK that period in our history was very different!
Also, why was there a Disneyland boat down in that dark river tunnel? I get that it’s another silly visual, like they’re off the play at being pioneers in a theme park… But like, why was it there?
There was still, of course, one glaring hole in an otherwise unusually clever episode – why did the Finetime AI come up with this convuluted plan involving giant slugs working down an A-Z list if it had the ability to instantly kill everyone by just flying through their skulls?! It could have murdered them all in seconds! Where did the slugs come from? Did it make them somehow or let them in from the outside? I guess it was making the people walk into the slugs mouths rather than controlling the slugs… Did the AI just really like the slugs?
I did love the big slugs though!
My other complaint is that I really want an episode with the Doctor! We are 6 episodes in and I feel like we’ve spent barely any time with the Doctor and nor got to know who he really is.
Final thought is I thought Callie Cooke was great as Lindy Pepper-Bean! I saw her in Cheaters recently where she was also fantastic (that was such an odd but interesting show, Susan Wakoma was phenomenonal in it). She’s got a slightly awkward physicality that I thought worked will for this character too.
Series 8 Rewatch
We’ve been busy this week in the evenings so not had much Who time, only watched two.
9. Flatline
This was a cool episode. First off, loved LOVED The Doctor being trapped in a tiny TARDIS! Hilarious. It’s fun to play with the “Dimension” element. The 2D monster/alien thing I didn’t really get but visually it was cool. Clara being “the Doctor” reminded me that is is the point where I think I lost track of who Clara is and what her personality is meant to be. Has she always been so…. Cold? It’s disturbing how easily she lies. She is not really a good person. I’m confused that we are sumulatenously supposed to be seeing her in love with Danny (despite all actions to the contrary…) and yet still so desperately seeking the Doctor’s approval. It is meant to be a contradiction or just poor writing?
10. In the Forest of the Night
The forest was cool too! I enjoyed this one as well, although once again it was light on the Doctor and heavy on Clara. I remain unconvinced of her relationship with Danny. When she turns down the Doctor’s offer to save her life her reason was “I don’t want to be the last of my kind” and nothing about the fact that she didn’t want abandon the man she supposedly loves to die… as far as I could tell she didn’t give two shits about Danny dying! She also had a disturbing lack of concern for the safety of her students.
I think this was around the time where I was originally getting fed up with the show because I didn’t understand what they were trying to do Clara, and she was turning me off from watching. Still I think we get Missy in the next episode!!
