Black Doctor Who, White Writer: My Problem with Dot & Bubble

Doctor… Don’t Beg… It’s Disgusting

I would like to start this one with an old tweet of mine:

Can you see where this one might be going?

Good.

Let’s get into it.

Being a Black fan of modern Doctor Who hasn’t always been easy. While Black representation across the show has gotten better since its revival in 2005, the instances of colour that we’ve gotten have overall been pretty hit-or-miss. When I think about Black representation in Doctor Who I think of Bill Potts (😀); and then I think of Mickey Smith (😒); I think of Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS (😀); and then I think of Rosa (might write something about that episode but TLDR, I hate it 😒); I think of Ryan Sinclair (🙂), and then I forget that I was thinking about Ryan Sinclair because they kinda underused Tosin Cole; I think of Martha Jones (😀) and then I reeeeally think about Martha Jones (😒).

Like I said, hit-or-miss.

The fact is that, like much of this country’s voting population, Doctor Who is very white and very old. While it has been good to see the attempts by various showrunners to embrace Britain’s ever-growing diversity, there have been plenty of moments in which I’ve had to kinda hold my nose as a Black fan of the show. So when I heard that Ncuti Gatwa of Sex Education fame would play the 15th mainstream incarnation of the Doctor, my emotional spectrum ranged from happiness to overwhelming trepidation.

Why?

Weeell…

The RTD Era

If you’ve heard me talk about Doctor Who for more than a minute, you’ll know that I’m decidedly not a fan of the show’s saviour and head writer, Russell T Davies. I personally find his writing on Doctor Who to be a bit self-indulgent and ham-fisted, his approach to season-long arcs can sometimes feel lazy, and if I had to describe his attempts at social commentary within the show, I would simply use this photo:

But by far my biggest issue with RTD’s previous era of Doctor Who is how his Black characters were treated, particularly Martha Jones, played by Freema Agyeman. Martha was an incredibly promising character, intelligent, loyal, and fearless, and her casting marked a huge milestone for the show, being the Doctor’s first-ever mainstream Black companion. However, if you go back and watch her time on the show, you’ll notice quite a few… iffy moments.

Now it’s important to point out that RTD himself didn’t write a lot of the worst Martha moments. However, it was pretty clear that a defining plot thread for her would be that while she was in love with the Doctor, he was still pining for his former companion who happened to be a blonde white woman (also doesn’t help that I’m not a fan of Rose Tyler). The Doctor’s behaviour towards Martha is pretty awful; he openly compares her unfavourably to Rose, he’s dismissive of her generally, and even after she makes her anxieties about being a Black time traveller clear to him, he’s overly flippant about it despite the fact that she later does face racism (directly because of him) as he continues to take her to the past.

And don’t even get me started on Human Nature/Family of Blood.

Like I said, RTD didn’t write this, but when there is a constant thread across episodes in which a character is belittled and mistreated, I look at the showrunner rather than the individual writers. It’s especially disappointing that, knowing that many fans wouldn’t give any replacement for Rose a fair hearing, the head writer chose to lean into this (a behaviour he repeats with the 10th Doctor’s excruciatingly self-indulgent death) and does so with a Black character.

Plus we can absolutely pin this one on Russell:

I could get into it more but YouTuber Princess Weekes does a much better job of breaking down Martha’s character so I’ll just link that below:

Dot & Bubble

So with all of this in mind, you can imagine why I was a bit nervous to hear that upon RTD’s return as showrunner, he would be writing the majority of episodes for Ncuti Gatwa, the first Black mainstream Doctor. By far the biggest concern for me was the complete lack of Black writers, and the thought of Russell being the one to address the Doctor’s new identity was not a comforting one. Even so, for the sake of fairness I gave him the benefit of the doubt aaaaand-

Less than 2 minutes.

It took less than 2 minutes for them to make this joke.

(It’s fine guys, Donna’s husband is Black, and she has a Black daughter.)

Admittedly, it wasn’t the best of starts, but while I’ve generally felt that the quality of most episodes in season 1 (series 14) has left a lot to be desired, I was really starting to enjoy Ncuti’s incarnation of the Doctor. Sure Space Babies was pretty awful and his characterisation still isn’t quite there, but Boom was great, and I was starting to become invested in this new take on the Doctor.

And then Dot & Bubble happened.

Man I hate Dot & Bubble.

Quick run-through: This episode is a massively unsubtle commentary on how we’re all obsessed with screens and social media and we need to touch grass. The episode is set in a city named FineTime where a bunch of rich young people live their lives entirely through a social media interface. However, things go bad as human-eating slugs start… eating humans (suddenly thought of Katt Williams’ “How you gonna blame the tiger?” bit) and the citizens of FineTime are completely ill-equipped to deal with it, requiring the Doctor and his companion Ruby to have to save them.

We get to the end of the episode after realizing that the social media interface is killing people in alphabetical order (really…) and the Doctor offers to take the survivors with him because the outside world is super scary. But they refuse.

Because he’s Black.

That’s right, for those eagle-eyed viewers, there were super sneaky breadcrumbs laid throughout the episode hinting at the fact that the citizens of FineTime are actually massive racists (people are rude to the Doctor and slightly less rude to Ruby).

And yeah, I hate this. So much.

I’m seeing a lot of positive feedback on this moment from white viewers and that’s great, enjoy it, this was made for you and no one else. But I really hate that this is how the Doctor’s change of skin colour is forced into the plot.

It was literally that bit in Community where Troy and Jeff find a trampoline before later finding out that the janitor who owned it was racist the whole time, and it recontextualises all of his interactions with Troy in a funny way. But this time it’s not a joke.

Where to even start with this?

An Easter Egg Hunt But With Racism

The fact that there are small hints towards the Doctor’s Blackness being an issue is nowhere near enough to stop what should be a very important moment in the show’s 60-year history feeling like a cheap, tacked-on plot twist, especially when the microaggressions against him are pretty underwritten (I assume so no one guesses the final twist but also because RTD hasn’t experienced them). The Doctor has been white for millions of years (longer if you count the numerous other regenerations that the previous showrunner added to the lore, shoutout Jo Martin), he has encountered racism towards others several times, but this is his first time experiencing it, and it should have been a pretty huge event. Instead, the moment feels a bit… well…

Additionally, like I said, Doctor Who has historically been a pretty white show, the idea that one of the “clues” (thanks so much for the racist Easter egg hunt Russell) pointing to the racism of FineTime was that they were all whiter than a Kier Starmer focus group just kind of accentuates this historical fact. For me personally, it’s not too out of the ordinary to see a Doctor Who episode full of white people.

The Weirdness of It All

Here’s a minor nitpick: the episode does a pretty poor job of making me care that the people of FineTime are venturing into the creatively named Wild Woods. Most of the runtime is spent focusing entirely on the immediate threat of the slugs, so once they’ve allowed the Doctor to guide them out of danger, it just feels incredibly jarring for there to be this new vague threat that they suddenly won’t allow him to help them with. RTD tries to explain this by having the FineTimers allow the Doctor to save them for most of the episode before having them declare that they only did so because it was through a screen, interacting with him in person is just a step too far. Okay. It just feels like a convoluted plot development designed only for this cheap reveal, the Doctor’s desperation to save the racists feels odd because it’s difficult to visualise the immediate danger they’re suddenly in.

Also, the entire execution of the twist, as well as the Doctor’s reaction to it just feels so surface-level, to the point where you can really tell that a white dude wrote it. Upon realizing that he won’t be able to save these people because racism, the Doctor’s reaction is to simply plough through their bigotry and beg them to follow him, with their refusal causing him to shed a signature slow 15th Doctor tear and have a meltdown out of frustration as Ruby sobs next to him because she’s an ally (ugh). The whole thing feels incredibly awkward and has a very weird energy to it. The pacing of it is off, the dialogue feels clunky and slightly non-committal. I’ve seen reactions hailing Ncuti’s performance here as the best we’ve had on Doctor Who, and I just think that’s some white nonsense honestly. Ncuti is great in this scene, selling the Doctor’s bafflement and frustration well, but the dialogue, pacing and just general awkward direction of the scene make it feel like he’s acting in a vacuum to no one, as if he’s not quite sure how to pinpoint this moment.

So now that we’ve dealt with my nitpicks, let’s get into why I reeeeally hate Dot & Bubbles final twist. Let’s start by talking about

✨Black Trauma in Media✨

When writing scenes that depict racism and Black trauma, I don’t think that writers generally take into account the feelings of viewers from the affected minority group. I’ve spoken before about how I’m very reticent to watch media that dips its toes into Black trauma and racism because I often feel that it’s used as a handy tool to elicit shock and performative guilt from a white audience (see the entirety of Steve McQueen’s Widows), while the writer laps up the praise for “making you think” and “tackling racism” by doing the bare minimum.

The problem for me is that when I see a character who looks like me face trauma, brutality, or racism, I don’t come away from it thinking any more deeply about what I’ve seen, I just feel a bit shit. While white liberal viewers are allowed to feel like good allies for not looking away and allowing themselves to be taught a real lesson about the existence of racism, viewers of colour don’t really get anything out of the deal other than a shitty feeling. We don’t need to see people who look like us be treated poorly to learn a lesson about racism, and we didn’t particularly ask for it to be “tackled” in this way, nor are we consulted or allowed to give feedback on the most effective and sensitive way to depict it; the best we can do is avoid depictions that are particularly upsetting, and just kinda firm it when we’re unable to do so.

The idea of putting an instance of Black trauma at the tail end of such a ridiculous episode where a white supremacist society is portrayed as a bunch of silly, cartoonishly vapid bigots who simply walk away from the Doctor is massively ill-judged. White supremacy is not a fun little Easter egg to lead up to a tacked-on plot twist. It is not the simple act of being a bit rude and then refusing to let a Black guy help you cross the street. The fact that something as serious as a systemically racist society is depicted through a few microaggressions and then a stuffy “ew, bye” shows me that RTD should not have been writing this. He does not have the range, this is a plot twist written by someone who sees the Doctor’s new skin colour as a mere cosmetic change, because he comes “in a range of colours”, right?

The Most Powerful Black Man in the Universe Begs Racists

The second reason that Dot & Bubble’s final twist rubs me the wrong way is the Doctor’s reaction.

When confronted with people who are so hateful and bigoted that they’ll choose certain (?) death over receiving his help, the Doctor immediately dismisses their racism and pleads for them to come with him and then screams and cries when they walk away.

Here’s my issue with this: I totally understand that the Doctor’s core principle is that every life has value, he must do everything in his power to save everyone, no matter how scummy they are. Hoooowever, he’s certainly allowed to make a bit of a fuss about it, no?

There have been numerous examples over the years of the Doctor saving the lives of unsavoury humans and absolutely despising the fact that he has to do so. My favourite example of this is in series 5’s The Beast Below (nothing to do with how much I love Sophie Okonedo as Meghan Markle’s descendant, Liz 10), in which Matt Smith’s 11th Doctor is forced to save humanity after finding out that they’ve been torturing a creature that he now believes he must kill to save as many lives as he can. There are fantastic moments of rage and pathos for the Doctor as he lashes out at humanity for both its cruelty and for forcing him to harm a creature that he cares for deeply (Matt Smith’s delivery of “Nobody HUMAN has anything to say to me today!” is one of my highlights of the entire show).

Many of my favourite character moments for the Doctor are when he realizes that human beings suck, calls them out for it, and then is forced to save them anyway. It’s as if the Doctor is a prisoner of his own moral code, but he maintains a level of authority in being the one to admonish humanity, it’s still very much his moment.

However, in this situation, I’m assuming that the Doctor is so taken aback by now being the one to directly experience racism (even though he’s apparently been Black before), that he has no capacity to hand out admonishments, all he can do is plead with the racists to allow him to save them. It’s just not very good to watch another Black character become helpless in the face of white cruelty while still having to take the high ground and beg them to let him help. I understand the thematic appeal of having an ancient supergenius pseudo-god be totally helpless in the face of racists but like… a previous white Doctor got to punch a racist in the face. Sure it was a performative moment, but even that moment had much more weight to it than this. Plus it’s always fun to see racists get punched.

Perhaps in the hands of a better (and Blacker) writer, the Doctor would be given a bit more time to grapple with this new dilemma of having to save racists who refuse his aid.

Perhaps, instead of a white companion just standing there with him and crying awkward ally tears, he’d have a Black character beside him questioning whether maybe the right thing to do would be to leave the hateful racists to their chosen fate. This would make it much more impactful when the Doctor’s saviour complex (and the fact that he doesn’t fully understand the weight of what he’s experiencing) makes him choose to save them anyway (full disclosure, I’d want him to leave them all to die).

Perhaps he’d have a much more angry, spiteful reaction before finally offering his help and still having it rejected because racists are deeply stupid people.

Perhaps in that moment, he’d have to confront his previous colour blindness and grapple with the fact that he cannot navigate the universe in the same way he has been thus far. Simply “walking around like you own the place” is easy when you look like someone who does, as an alien who appears as a Black man, the flaws in the callous advice he gave Martha would come under more scrutiny.

It would be genuinely interesting to see any of these alternatives, at the very least it would lend the situation some real substance that would actually resonate with a viewer like myself rather than just leaving me incredibly underwhelmed and annoyed.

A Black Doctor dealing with systemic white supremacy isn’t a moment that should be tacked onto the ending of an episode and played as a clever little plot twist, frankly, that’s just insulting. I’ve seen tweets saying that this was an episode about the dangers of white supremacy and hell no it wasn’t. This is exactly the problem with how writers use moments of Black trauma to “tackle” racism, just because you show an instance of racism, doesn’t mean you are providing commentary or analysis of it.

If you want to really do commentary on racism, then do actual commentary on racism, don’t do this performative, lazy bullshit and then leave the actual commentary up to your fans while accepting all the plaudits. That’s worse than lazy, that’s… that’s…

This entire debacle just speaks to a very simple fact: the first season of Doctor Who with a Black Doctor needed Black writers. Instead what we get is a white writer using our lived experience for a hollow plot twist that is only minimally effective because of Ncuti Gatwa’s acting. I’m sure we’ll see the Doctor grapple with this moment in later episodes, maybe he’ll even revisit the experience when talking to another Black character, but as I come away from this episode, I can’t help but wonder why this seemingly progressive new direction for Doctor Who is so devoid of colour in the most powerful places. It all just feels so very…

P.S. I’ve just seen that BkChat Ldn is back, man this has not been a good day for us.

P.P.S Although I’m focusing on Black representation, I would like to send solidarity to Asian Doctor Who fans who had to suffer through this moment: