Culture | TV Cross Doctor Who with a sprinkling of Black Mirror -styled dystopia, and you’ll end up with the sci-fi series’ sixth episode, Dot and Bubble. Meet Lindy Pepperbean. When she wakes up every day, she immediately switches on her ‘bubble’ – essentially, a VR social media feed crossed with a golfball – and spends the entire day immersed in it, with barely a thought for the outside world.
Her home? A far-flung planet called Finetime, where everything is indeed “fine all of the time”, and everything comes bedecked in shades of pastel. Hooray! With all that tech around, she’s been massively infantilised. “Do I need to pee?” she asks her online consultant, as she gets ready for her two hour working day.
Apparently not: “urine content is 0 for the 3rd day in a row, well done Lindy!” And as she dances to a modernised version of the novelty pop song Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, a monster lurks in her bedroom, ready to eat her. Has Russell T Davies been taking notes from Charlie Brooker ? This does wears its influences on its sleeve. Think Bryce Dallas Howard as the social media-obsessed Lacie in Black Mirror’s acclaimed episode Nosedive: the twee aesthetics, the technology controlling peoples’ lives, and the sinister undertones that gradually become overtones are all broadly the same.
And as in Black Mirror, Doctor Who also has a lot of fun unpicking these concepts. Lindy lives in a literal echo chamber comprised of her best f.
