Vincent van Gogh gingerly flirts with Amy Pond while Doc is chased by the space chicken in his godmother's rearview mirror
White-power walkers are too busy influencing to notice the epic slugfest around them
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In the immaculate city of Finetime, Lindy hops out of bed for another day of two hours’ work on substack processing, before spending the rest of the time hanging out with her Close Friends in her head-orbiting bubble, an arrangement she might call piss-easy if she ever had to urinate.
But the peppy Ms Pepper-Bean has been peppered with unsolicited requests from first a moustachioed rando, then some offensive Finetime Enterprises apparatchik asking her the most stupid and obvious questions, oh my gasp. It’s enough to make a bean-counter dyspeptic!
Turns out that Finetime’s gardeners have been slack about putting down pellets, because an invasion of giant slugs is slowly munching through Lindy’s friends list. And Doc can’t perform his trick of dropping a line of salt in front of the bad guys because of a pesky mono-sealed door.
Can Lindy direct her own legs without the aid of her personalised support drone, or will this orphan die in Plaza 55? Will Ricky September live to see October? Where were these slugs when Earth faced the Seeds of Doom? And will Ruby have to stand up at any point this week?
Great
Hi folks
Taking ‘Eat the Rich’ a little far, lol. You know, I kinda wanted the slugs to win. The colonists are so..Urgh…it should either be slugs or the guillotine.
It will be interesting to see how this one ages. Depressingly, we’ll probably know how we humans seem to behave.
It seems strange to have an effectively Doctor lite ep after an actual Doctor lite one. This series/season is just too short. There’s only three more episodes to go and two of those are a two parter!
I dunno what to exactly to feel about this one. My initial feeling is kinda mid so a 3/5
Cheers
Kieren
Hi everybody,
Again, that was a very unusual story for Doctor Who. Here are some of my thoughts.
UPS:
• Lindy strode a very fine line between sympathetic and intentionally annoying (right until she callously sacrificed Ricky September), but she was well portrayed and proved to be an engaging protagonist for this narrative.
• As a black comedy enthusiast, I particularly enjoyed the moment when the Doctor connected Lindy to another survivor, only for said survivor to be devoured seconds later.
• The bleak ending. The Doctor’s laugh and subsequent cry of despair and frustration was haunting to watch. The Murray Gold music sting and the Doctor’s final facial expression before stepping into the TARDIS perfectly capped off the story for me. Ncuti was incredible in this scene and this was his best moment as the Doctor so far.
DOWNS:
• A social media network that grows to hate the shallow youths using it and creates slug monsters to eat them all in alphabetical order? Hmm. I don’t know if that twist is inventive social commentary on today’s millennial culture or very telling that this script was written by someone who’s well into his middle ages now. Is it time to bring out the Grampa Simpson “Old man yells at cloud” meme yet?
• As effective as the Doctor’s role in the story was, it’s a shame that the scheduling of this series placed 2 Doctor-lite episodes back to back. It stills feel like just we’re only just starting to know this Doctor. It’s unfortunate that these last two episodes have been scheduled in this way for a new Doctor’s first season.
Overall, a chirpy yet cautionary Black Mirror-esque tale with a sombre and thought provoking conclusion. Much better than I had expected!
RATING:
4.0 Distracting Renditions of “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”
I liked this one a lot. The concept was interesting, great acting by Doc and Rubes, and the whole thing just looked very nice. I was once again very absorbed watching this. Retrospectively I see the hints pointing to racism, though while watching it I read the behavior more as self absorbed. HfA and I were guessing the reason behind people vanishing was population control. A little disappointed it was just sentient AI getting fed up. Oh, that’s a good pun, I should keep that.
I might be alone in my biggest complaint: the flow of the episode felt disrupted at a particular part. Basically it didn’t make sense as to why the Doctor insisted they all needed to come with him instead of braving the Wild Woods on their own. We saw that at least one of their number was resourceful. Couldn’t others have already rejected the need for 24/7 Dot usage, and learned to explore? And surely the Doctor has a long history of leaving people without resources to fend for themselves, having just saved their lives? He’s not the Red Cross. Wait is he the Red Cross now? I’m so confused.
Rating: Ugh slug snack
No schtick this week.
I believe this episode to be the most consequential one of Doctor Who. Ever.
It isn’t just that all of the inhabitants of Finetime are white, or that they all live in a socially distanced bubble of influence 24/7, or that they are all children of the 1%.
It isn’t just the comments, or the microaggressions, or the body language.
It’s the fact that I can’t help but feel that this is the first time The Doctor has ever experienced racism himself. Personally.
There was never a chance he was going to save those people, regardless of whether they deserved his help or not.
His help was never welcome, wanted or required.
Remember The Great Abrogation, before the city was sealed. Something Ricky learned from his love of studying the history of Finetime.
Abrogation – to repeal a law, act or right.
Ricky isn’t any less racist. He may just be slightly more tolerant. After all – he knows about pulse codes.
And so, the survivors head out to re-tame The Wild Wood, the place they were never ought to go, emulating the pioneers of old.
The ones who chose to cast out anyone who didn’t look like them. As The Doctor would say “History is a white wash”.
5 out of 5. A bunch of racist orphans sail away from their problems, and maybe we now have proof The Fugitive Doctor comes later on. I can’t imagine The Doctor would forget what racism feels like.
Hi Gang,
I love when Doctor Who pulls the rug out from underneath you, but this story doesn’t just pull the rug it pulls the entire damn carpet store!
What starts out looking like a critique on the whole young people being too involved in their phones/ social media is flipped on its head and actually turns out to be a a story about a group of white supremacist, racist and over privileged people instead. Is
there anyone else in the history of the show you end up hating so much?
Callie Cooke really sells it as Lindy, and the whole episode really hangs on her first asking us to sympathise with the character before the utter betrayal that leads us to hate her guts.
The death of Ricky September is horrible, the last time I think I can remember something so graphic is Condo being shot in Brain of Morbius.
My only retro-rewrite would be instead of killing the residents of Finetime in alphabetical order why not do it by the number of social media followers instead?
The final scene with the Doctor begging to save these racist assholes is so engrossing. Ncuti is phenomenal and it’s definitely his best Doctor performance of the season so far. This story is right at the top along with 73 yards as my favourites of the season.
I award this 4.8 racist fucks sinking their boat and dying within 3 minutes out of 5
Andy Parkinson
@caffreys71