Spending life in an actual social media bubble, Lindy Pepper-Bean (Callie Cooke) barely blinks an eye when her equally, terminally online peer group start going offline one by one. Even to the point where she ignores the pleas of one onscreen friend who seems to have noticed that people are disappearing.

Enter the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and his companion Ruby (Millie Gibson), who’ve found a way into the all consuming social network. Can they help Lindy break away from the bubble for long enough to find out what’s actually going on, and save her life?

It feels weird, particularly in such a short season (which is composed of just 8 episodes, not including the Christmas Special, The Church On Ruby Road) to have another story that feels quite Doctor-lite, which is the case in Dot and Bubble.

Especially when it comes directly after the ‘full’ Doctor-lite episode of the season, last week’s 73 Yards.

Yet, even though the Doctor and Ruby have a much reduced physical presence in this episode, and by the end Gatwa manages to land one hell of a gut punch with one truly emotional scene.

Much of the action revolves around Cooke’s painfully pampered character, and thankfully she carries the episode with aplomb. She’s quite the (deliberately) frustrating and irritating creation, with Russell T. Davies this time (this season of Doctor Who having already featured plenty of overt commentary on different elements of the current political climate), setting his sights on race and class.

It doesn’t go unnoticed that all of the inhabitants of Dot and Bubble’s world, Finetime, are young, rich, white and unable to see (or even function) beyond a literal bubble of privilege.

If you’ve seen the trailers for this episode and the season, it’s no spoiler to reveal that there are also more traditional Doctor Who monsters in this episode. They’re brilliantly squishy and slimy-looking; an excellent and distinctive creation to add to this season’s pantheon of new beasts.

Oh, and Susan Twist makes another appearance, as she has in every episode this season, as Penny Pepper-Bean. Interestingly, there is an acknowledgement that we’ve seen her before (following Ruby’s brief moment of recognition in 73 Yards), so something is definitely, well, bubbling to the surface as we head towards the end of ‘Season One’.

There’s some fabulously tense, as well as darkly humourous, moments in Dot and Bubble, which mostly play on Lindy’s utter hopelessness to function in the real world, beyond the pop art confines of the bubble (which is projected by a tiny metal ball, named Dot).

It’s very well done, and there are some surprisingly grim moments here too; there’s a particularly shocking and callous moment that is very revealing for one character in particular.

Another thing to point out about this episode’s political commentary is that the undercurrent of racism is (reasonably) subtle by Davies’s standards, but there is an incredibly powerful scene in the final act, which once more demonstrates just how perfect Gatwa is as the Doctor.

Despite the fact that Dot and Bubble is another enjoyable and effective episode, given that we barely spend time with our time travelling duo again, it’ll be good to see Gatwa and Gibson back and working together for a full episode with next week’s Regency period story, Rogue, however.

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