It wouldn’t be a season of Doctor Who if I wasn’t terrified of something. The latest episode, “Dot and Bubble,” gives us a glimpse into a world where we can hide behind technology. Oh … wait … that is kind of where we already are at. Oh no, are we Lindy?!
We are following Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke) as she navigates her life in the virtual world. She relies heavily on her bubble system, which connects her with friends and even tells her how to walk to get to work. Slowly, she starts to see her friends offline and it takes the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) coming to her to try and get her to take down her bubble and see what is going on around her.
Aliens are killing everyone in alphabetical order and Lindy is low on the list given her last name. But what is really terrifying about this episode stems from the fact that Lindy literally lives in a bubble of technology. As much as we, as a society, pretend like that won’t apply to us, we are completely dependent on our technology working.
If the cell towers are down, what do we do? Wi-fi isn’t working? Well, you can’t watch anything or do anything with your free time. We’re so connected to the tech world that we’re not that far off from Lindy.
Even more than her blinders to the world around her, there is something else even more frightening about “Dot and Bubble” and it is how Lindy acts.
Lindy is also a villain
There have been fears about the technology generations. How will they function in society if all they’ve known is friendship through a device? Lindy, who seemingly is worried about her friends the entire episode, shows her true colors in the final moments when it counts the most.
It is clear that Lindy has a crush on Ricky September (Tom Rhys Harries) when she sees him in the bubble. One of his many followers, she is shocked when she has to take down her device to run and save herself but comes into contact with her “celebrity crush.” Ricky September is willing to help keep her safe and the two discover that the aliens are killing in alphabetical order.
In a flash of fear, Lindy tells her Dot (which is her system targeting these people) and says that Ricky September’s real last name is Coomes. Despite the fact that Ricky was trying to save her, she threw him under the bus and let Dot kill him without an ounce of regret.
To me, that is what frightens me about technology. Through it, we could lose our sense of humanity. She tried nothing else to fight back, she just knew that she could use Ricky to free herself and it makes her a villain. Especially since she then told the Doctor and Ruby that they were essentially outsiders and it was their “duty” to save her.
Lindy is a perfect example of how bad things can get and it’s horrifying to watch.
