This was quite the episode! Strong character work, great aesthetics, and more biting than it seems on first glance. I’m still mulling it over.
At Finetime, life is lived in the bubble, a high-tech social media smorgasbord. Everything is virtual hangouts, outfit walkthroughs, and watching the latest content from Ricky September. Nobody looks outside the bubble into the real world, because why would they? But something has gotten into the real world, something dangerous. The Doctor and Ruby, desperate to help, try to push into the bubble to warn them.
Okay, first of all, I adore “The Macra Terror.” It’s the lost serial I most wish could be found, even as I wonder whether actually seeing the Macra in motion would enhance the story or distract with the no-doubt ridiculous 1960s BBC effects. But the point is, I love a happy-shiny society with deadly monsters lurking beneath the surface, so I’m all about this episode too.
With the heavy emphasis on social media/influencer culture and the futuristic analogue to Gen Z, there are understandably some cringy moments care of the 60-something RTD. But for the most part, I think the set-up works, and I like seeing how these kids are so dependent on the bubble that they don’t know how to function without it. The main person we see the Doctor and Ruby trying to help is Lindy, who’s used to walking surrounded by the bubble, with a pleasant AI voice telling her which way to turn so she doesn’t bump into things in the real world. Trying to navigate the real world without the bubble, she’s utterly lost, and I love the Rassilon give me strength inflection in the Doctor’s voice as he incredulously asks, “You don’t know how to walk without the arrows?”
What looks like a frothy, aesthetics-driven monster romp on the surface has something deeper to say. The episode explores privilege, conformity, and literally tuning out the world’s problems rather than dealing with them, and I can tell it’s an episode that will benefit from a rewatch (but in an entirely different way than “73 Yards”!) I won’t get into it too much right now—this is one I’ll probably circle back to for a spoilery post once the season is over.
The Doctor and Ruby can’t get into Finetime themselves, so they’re stuck on the outside trying to reach Lindy and her friends within the bubble. That means it’s another relatively Doctor- and companion-lite episode, right on the heels of “73 Yards.” Given how short the season is, that’s a serious bummer, even if both characters still deliver in the scenes they do have—in particular, Ncuti Gatwa gives us some phenomenal acting near the end of the episode. But really, we only have eight episodes this season, and going Doctor-lite with two of them back-to-back is really tough. I wonder if Gatwa was pulling double duty between filming this show and the final season of Sex Education—if that’s the case, now that Sex Education is over, we can hopefully get much more of his Doctor in his second season.
Only three episodes left! I’m so excited for next week!
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Just wanted to mention that I'll be switching up the format here a little. Mainly, I'm going to take the pressure off myself to post something every day. I'm going to focus on the features that interest me the most right now--Neurodivergent Alley, my actor reviews, the current Doctor Who season--and post other stuff on more of an as-I-feel-like-it basis. I'm still around, but I want to free up a little more time for myself to work on other things.
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