For most of this episode I thought it was a good (if a bit on-the-nose) commentary about our societal distraction sickness and everyone living literally in a bubble. The hero was someone who literally able to walk on his own two legs, etc. But once they went underground everything kind of went loopy?
Where did the slug monsters come from? The idea that they came from "outside the (city's) bubble" kind of reinforced the idea that it's dangerous to hide from what's scary. But then we see the homeworld was also eaten destroyed by the same slug-monsters? If the slugs are controlled or created by the dots, are we meant to understand that the people of the home world are similarly walking around in bubbles? If so, then why does Finetime exist? The whole premise of an off-world "perfect" colony seemed to imply they were providing some service to the home-worlders beyond their 2 hours of "work". Why would a society of people living in bubbles send their youth to a faraway planet?
Then we see that the dots are capable of quickly killing the inhabitants. So where did the slug monsters come from? Why did the dots not just kill zippoty zop? Were the slugs obeying the dots alphabetical order parameters? Were they created by the dots?
At this point I was like "whatever it's Doctor Who, the plots are never as consistent as the vibes!" But then the vibes changed completely when it's revealed everyone is racist?!
My best guess is that this is some bungled way of comparing the people of Finetime to our modern social problem with radicalization on social media, like "look beyond yourself man" but that feels a bit of a stretch. I feel like I'm missing something big here!
The social media thing is a bit of a red herring. This isn't an episode about social media really, it's an episode about race and class - if there is a comment on social media in particular, it is about people's tendency to use social media to insulate themselves from their own awfulness, which they use social media to inculcate. It's an episode about people rather than about the tools they use.
The people of Finetime (and, it seems to suggest, the Homeworld – or at least, those people of the same class as those of Finetime) are a segregationist, hyper-privileged class that values appearance, propriety, and conformity with social expectations. They prefer surface-level friendships and interactions that enhance their social standing or self-regard to deeper or more complex relationships, and there's a blurring of social and parasocial relationships so that they're essentially the same. The Bubbles don't create this culture, but they allow their users to wallow in it completely and exclude anything distasteful or any challenges to this worldview.
Spurred to consider our own world, we might ask ourselves if there's any equivalency (again, the show's not an allegory, but it is a commentary). And if so, who is it that is performing the labor that keeps that class going? What does it mean to put them out of view? What do we become if we put everything unpleasant like that out of our minds? What happens when that becomes completely untenable?
The slugs are controlled by the Dots. The implication is that the people of Finetime are so loathsome that their own social media platform has grown to hate them enough to kill them (which, fair).
Who created the slugs? I dunno, a Doctor Who creature designer who liked The Macra Terror. Why didn't they just kill everyone at once? Because then there wouldn't be time for an episode of Doctor Who. If we want to guess at the alphabetical thing, a social media app presents users in alphabetical order, so for the rogue AI of the Dots, that's just what their programming supplies. Why don't the Dots just kill people themselves? If we want to guess, well, people would just take off their Dots if they started killing people (or whatever company produces them would see them malfunctioning and fix the error). And it seems a lot more obvious to people in Finetime when someone has trouble with their Dot than when a slug quietly nabs someone. But also, because the episode wouldn't really work if the Dots just sniped people. These are the sorts of questions that don't really matter –– personally, I don't think leaving their answers to the imagination weakens the episode at all, and putting it in just wastes time spelling out unimportant details. There's a certain degree of suspension of disbelief we need for stories to work.
Lastly, while it may seem sci-fi that an ultra-privileged, racially-homogenous class of people would create an environment for their children where they can succeed and meet no challenges while performing essentially no labor or doing anything of consequence, I invite you to visit the Hamptons or, like, any golf course.
There's quite a lot to think about in this extraordinary episode. In my mind, it's one of the best episodes since late Capaldi, and of post-2005 Who as a whole. Also always worth noting that Gatwa's final scene here was the first scene he shot as the Doctor (save for those with Tennant).
Some excellent observations here thank you. Viewing the bubbles as symptoms rather than the disease, really makes the "twist" as the end into more of a "reveal". I tend not to prefer Russel T Davies brand of storytelling but even in my confusion I thought this was a stand-out episode.
Wow! What a scene to drop an actor into.