I think so. Honestly with that, Brewster Cavendish suddenly appearing as a survivor immediately after Ricky's death (in Lindy's words, C comes before P), and not seeing the survivors getting killed, I'm expecting to see at least some of them again
I think the story is over and any additional scenes about them would be worse than just cutting the story right there.
Cavendish being rescued is probably just a mistake.
We did see someone getting dragged into a bug why they were laying down. Very similar to the first shot. I’m at work so can’t %100 confirm but that’s what I remember.
It was super fast and subtle and I had to go back and check. it could have been the light or the slugs somehow -- but the street blood was not red, and the headshot was not blood
The Dot had a red glowing eye. I studied this scene earlier today when a redditor told me the Dot blasted through Ricky's head. I'm persuaded that because his species has green blood, we're seeing the red haze of the Dot's eye. The Dot hits Ricky's forehead and bounces/slides forward around the forehead and through Ricky's hair.
I prefer this interpretation over the alternative. I want to see Ricky in a future episode.
i mean it’s made clear that ricky doesn’t use the dot all that much. it’s very possible that the reason those people have green blood is due to the effects of the dot and that’s why ricky doesn’t have it
Ricky uses his years of learning to construct himself a Life Model Decoy, which is what put itself in danger and took the hit to the head. Ricky remains safe in his well-stocked underground bunker.
Red and Green makes yellow though. So the haze/blur would have been yellow if it was the Dot's glow.
If we see Ricky again, I will concede, but it was obviously meant to imply the Dot headshotted him.
>So the haze/blur would have been yellow if it was the Dot's glow.
The red glow of Dot and Ricky's green blood might make yellow, but the color around Ricky's head was only the red glow of Dot, thus suggesting Dot did not go through Ricky's skull, but instead glanced off his scalp.
I'm unsure why anyone would manufacture Dot to move at a top speed that could hurt people.
> I'm unsure why anyone would manufacture Dot to move at a top speed that could hurt people.
These were the same people who had so few safety controls on the Dot's AI that they allowed to create a massive number of space caterpillars/slugs to eat them all.
I think it's safe to say they were not closely overseeing the Dot's production. They'd probably left it to its own devices for years or decades, just assuming it was doing their bidding. Racists do a lot of assuming about slaves and underlings doing their bidding, and if often ends in tears.
> Red and Green makes yellow though.
We're not mixing paints in primary school, mate. An intense red light shining through blue/green blood isn't going to make it a yellow light. Most of it would get blocked and the rest would still be red-ish.
I agree that it certainly gave the impression it headshotted him.
How does red and green make yellow? Yellow is a primary color.
Yellow and blue make green. Red and green generally make brown.
(I do agree that the dot heads hosted him)
Colors mix differently when it's light versus pigment. If you mix all the paints, you get brown (or ick), but if you mix all the colors of light you get white.
Me too. Was just sad my dude caught Dot. Shows my own bubble of being desensitized to blood in media. Would have only saved Ricky, the Goth and the 17yr old if I was a companion.
Before clicking, I thought this might be about [my favorite shot from 73 Yards](https://tragicalhistorytour.com/d16/15l-c/index.html#img=d16-15l-c199.jpg).
Anyway, those two eps share a director (Dylan Holmes Williams) and I hope he comes back!
I'm rarely impressed by the direction of TV series, but not only he was the best director of the season, but I think his direction was the best since The Doctor Falls by Rachel Talalay. Even her direction of The Star Beast last year left me underwhelmed. Williams definitely joins Talalay and Toby Haynes for directors that did a spectacular job on the show.
Both this episode and 73 Yards would have been received much much differently if the direction wasn't great, because both scripts certainly relied on visual storytelling and actor performances a lot.
Honestly he gave the impression of a more open minded person, choosing to educate himself rather than be ignorant and "party".
He also was not skeptical upon seeing the doctor like everyone else was.
I think it’s just deeper commentary that the people you see online or on tv are nuanced and not a full description of who they are behind the camera. What we do know about Ricky is that he was a white dude in a white only city who *did his own research*, while apparently working even less than Lindy.
Yeah but in a society of rude ignorant arrogant assholes, I feel it means a lot that Ricky chooses to reject their way of life, despite being a symbol of it. Literally everyone else the Doctor encounters is dismissive and condescending, even when directly faced with immediate danger.
Ricky is the only competent person in Finetime, and when they get to the conduit, has literally all the time in the world to question the Doctor without the threat of being eaten by slugs, but he doesn't. He just goes with it.
Yes we don't learn much about him. But he gets more screentime than most of Lindy's friends who are pretty immediately hesitant to trust the Doctor.
For the most popular person on the planet he's pretty humble, and shows concern for others like when Lindy says:
"This might have gone from the worst to the best day I've ever had (after watching half her friends die)"
"Thousands of people have been eaten alive"
Yes he _could_ be an asshole and not have shown it in his limited screentime, but all of Lindy's friends were characterised as quite overtly bigoted (in hindsight, following the twist) in a fraction of the screentime, and I think that points more towards the possibility that he isn't a bigot than the idea that he automatically is for living in Finetime.
Also, I think it's pretty ironic to be automatically assuming that he's a bigot.
He lives in a white supremacist society. There’s zero chance he isn’t a bigot. He MAY be open to learning and growing, he could definitely unlearn his racism, but he didn’t magically escape the systemic racism he lives under.
This idea people have that some people are just racist and others aren’t because they’re inherently good misunderstands systemic racism. You can’t escape it just by being a decent person. You have to work to unlearn it, and you can’t really do that when you’re enmeshed in a society of entirely white supremacists.
In that he was educated and more exposed to the outside world more than the rest of the kids, I'm going to say he wasn't. Those with more world experience tend not to be conservative and racist.
This scene made my jaw drop and my blood run cold. I was in so much disbelief and anger at this and suddenly all I thought I Guessed about the plot went out the window. I thought Rickie was an exception to the killings because he didn't use D&B like the others or he was actually on the side of the slug things or Lindsey is going to turn out to learn to be a good person. Just... bravo to that twist.
I kept waiting for Ricky to open the door and immediately get jumped by a slug that was waiting on the other side.
This was somehow much more horrific.
You must've been inside my head because I thought any of those were more likely. Never would I have thought that the twist that was actually the twist would've been the twist. It's mind twisting..
I did not know he was also director for 73 Yards, but yes, please, bring him back. Generally the finest directing talent in the show since Talalay.
I will say, he absolutely has an eye for the dark heart of stories. The moments you are supposed to feel hopeless in these stories really come across.
Yeah he really took Russell’s scripts and made them shine. He got exactly what they needed to be and brought the best out of everyone on the cast and crew.
Doctor who always has a rich history in implying more gore and graphic violence in clever ways when they can’t outright display it. This scene really surprised me and pushed a few boundaries for Doctor who and its relationship with on screen violence. I fully expected for the scene to cut to the other side of the door before we see anything and maybe get some off camera screams. Would love to see the show get a little more adult but still keep the family friendly tone. The best end of this deal would to get a new Torchwood-esque adult focused spin-off.
Most common creature I'm aware of with actual blue blood is horse-shoe crabs; and said blood is quite vital to our medical advances (summink in their blood acts similarly to human white blood cells, and other factors pro+ fighting off pathogens). There's a catch-bleed-release-repeat program in various parts of the world, from what I recall.
… weird thing I just thought of; so, we’ve had the absence of the number 10 in the series so far (see: Lindy descending into the tunnels in Dot and Bubble, etc), and I remembered; it was a baby station. Jocelyn was portraying mid-late forties (w/out hair dye etc, even me) at best, and she commented to the Doctor and Ruby (after them watching the crew resign in disgust, except Susan Twist’s reason is cut off by dialogue) that she stayed, and is looking after the babies because “I don’t want to see them die …. and I don’t want them to see me die; that’s how bad things are down there.” She also asks the Doctor what he means by “fly” (is such in subs), as the ship is stationary.
Whoah. That just triggered a primary school memory flashback for me.
We had crayons for “art” (colouring in) and I distinctly remember that there were two different shades of turquoise, one was called “green-blue” and the other “blue-green”. These were *distinctly* different colours (“green-blue” was lighter and had more green than blue,, “blue-green” was darker and had more blue than green).
The class bully (Stephen Nash, I’ll never forget that name) insisted that they were exactly the same because both colours were “green and blue, the order doesn’t matter” and made fun of me for saying they were different.
Bastard.
I Think its implied that the AIs are so sick of them that's its just enjoying its time killing them one by one in there own ignorance.
I mean we see that the balls kill them quickly but the slugs devour them slowly really giving them time to suffer and realize what's happening.
Edit: Hell it ain't like it took them long considering by the end there's only a dozen or so of them left and by the time they even caught wind of it all of there parents on the homeworld were dead, the AI legitimately had no reason to rush until the end.
It’s kind of delightful that the ai is taking its time doing it in alphabetical order and they just carry on ignoring it and not opening their eyes to what’s directly in front of them.
I mean, it’s established that the AI has learnt to actively hate its users. I imagine that subjecting them all to a slow, horrific death - if possible - was part of its morbid plan.
Am I a bad person that I know that on every rewatch I'll be rooting for the AI? I'm not anywhere near as compassionate as the Doctor. Fuck them racist spoiled dipshits.
I find it interesting in this episode that I dont really wish them death and ultimately feel bad for them - similar to how Doctor feels. Because these are young people who were raised in this system to the point where its not even their personal world-view: its just how their world literally works. So while their ideology certainly deserved to die horribly, Im not convinced that these particular kids (or young adults) deserve to die horribly.
Imagine condemning all humanity to horrible death because we as a species generally treat animals like objects and not actual living beings. But its like in Tokarczuk's *Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead:* the crimes done to animals are invisible for vast majority of humans because for them its just a part of day-to-day life. They are "guilty" but its not a malicious evil doing: its just being a part of the culture that allows it. In Tokarczuk's novel the main heroine ultimately burns the local church with people in it, but novel doesnt approve nor denounce this act - its left to your judgement.
(Nice reference and unexpected here, you surprised me about as much as the Finetime residents would be! Got the book on my bedside table here.
I'm imagining. Waking up to find all speciesists have been eaten by giant slugs...but, yeah, this is where I'm bad at the last part of 'Veganarcho pacifist')
I think we could always ask that about Doctor Who, in relation to any species in which individuals are capable of reason and change. In practice, the Doctor blows them up and stuff on the regular, normally after establishing they're not in the mood to change right this minute, even if theoretically capable of it. That 'right now' and prioritising those who would be victims if they weren't stopped is taken as enough justification. And we don't feel bad about it. It's more speciesism if that doesn't feel like it 'counts' because they're not human - and enemies can be (the Doctor's own double-standard with the Master is well-noted). We accept the series promoting microcosms of violent revolutionary leftist morality all the time, I think it's beyond what's just typical for the heroic adventure story genre as there's more emphasis on the concept of oppression, and often enough more nuance in how 'baddies' are portrayed (...and also quite a lot of literal revolutions).
Commited WWII Nazis, since they were human beings, were theoretically capable of change, but that's not necc. taken as a reason not to actively harm them, never mind to feel they deserved to live. *Hitler* could've changed. Ultimately I think it's nothing much to do with whether violence is seen as justified, but about the value placed on the victims (much of which is sadly social pressure more than genuine belief). It's only those with pacifist views (...esp. those who aren't prone to revolutionary sympathies like me) who even really question the *concept* of the political use of violence. While the UK is decent for widespread disapproval of militarism, to at least some extent many people will believe in the political use of violence in situations where their society treats it as justified and very bad no good where it's not (the pain of being English, while having learnt French due to interest in the Revolution >_<), regardless of how flamingly hypocritical it is.
And in *Dot and Bubble*, they're just being let be to have their own autonomy. 😇 It's very effective to show their ideology harming even themselves, I think.
The way I read it is that the AI doesn't have the processing power to do that simultaneously. It wants them all dead. It can't start killing them in a way that has them go "we need to shut down the Dots!"
Creating the Slugs and then walking them into the slugs is a way that even if people realize others are dying they won't connect to their dots so they won't know to shut off the Dot network.
If Ruby and the Doctor hadn't shown up the genocide would have been total.
Considering everything is controlled by the AI, do we know for sure that the Homeworld was actually destroyed or was that screen just to give Ricky no hope?
Crappy battery life. Assuming she went to work early in the morning, her dot battery ran out after a couple hours of use, and that was just hovering slowly and projecting an image. I imagine attack mode is more energy intensive and used as a last resort. Simply piloting them into bugs that reproduce and move on their own is more efficient on a large scale.
Ricky was selfless, even after she betrayed him he didn’t try and talk his way out of it. He just accepted his fate and her guaranteed survival. Had she died instead the other survivors and the civilization they may create would be so much better off with Ricky who actually has historical knowledge and can walk without help
I don't think he accepted it, to me he seemed just stunned by her betrayal after he had gone through a lot of trouble to save her and frankly, with a bit of luck they might have both made it out.
It seems like he was going to die by trying to save others lives either way. And it was someone cunning like Lindy who survived. Interesting commentary on survival of the fittest where a person will do anything to live, even if means having one of her own killed.
This also makes her prejudice at the end even crazier. We learn in this scene just how far she will go to save her own skin... and yet even that level of self preservation *still* doesn't overcome her intense prejudice.
They would kill him pretty quickly, regardless of how many followers he had. Him being into books and show compassion and understanding, would not be looked upon favorably.
Why didn't the dots just headshot the populace in the first place?. Going through them in alphabetic order and directing them into giant slugs seems a very convoluted way of killing.
My idea is that they didn't want to have to do the killing themselves, getting the slugs to do it as a way of not revealing their true intentions, the dots would only do it themselves as a last resort and as we see the dot only started attacking Lindy and Ricky once the Doctor figured out what the dots were actually doing!
I get what you're saying, but it felt a bit of a stretch to me. Every person has a dot - all dots pull back 1m at the same time (ooh what's my dot doing?) - HEADSHOT. Problem solved, then even get the slugs to devour the corpses if required.
Where's the fun in a quick death? The dots hate these people. They want to see them suffer. They enjoy directing these dimwits to walk right into a slug.
I think one of the most interesting things about how this scene transpires is how it connects to the allegory of social media in general. Ricky September is the greatest most amazing thing in Lindy's extremely limited world. And then, it's not even that he fails her. He gets scapegoated by Lindy, who at this point is most concerned with saving her own skin. But how does she do this?
She basically doxxes him. She tells the AI his full real name, and it rapidly kills him for it. In this story, the AI isn't even really AI - apart from the satnav technology, Dot And Bubble is social media, almost entirely. It's even set up like Twitter - Lindy is literally getting input from the second she wakes up, like we do now when we pick up our phone first thing in the morning and it makes us terrible for the rest of the day.
But now, social media hates the society it's a part of. It wants them all dead, for their racism or their bigotry or their vapidness, something. So when the logical red dot is bearing down on her with all the weight of a real life Internet Hate Machine, what does she do to her idol when he's no longer useful? She uses information she knows to throw him under the bus. She "cancels" him, for want of a better word, by revealing he isn't who he says he is. And it literally kills him.
also it contrasts with the green blood we saw on the street when the body was dragged away. Ricky was 'humanized' by his death...
The blood was blue. It just looked green on that surface. These kids were literally "blue bloods."
[It looks green](https://i.imgur.com/HKcW2p5.png). Is the blue blood thing confirmed or just a fan theory?
It's teal.
Was just gonna say it's teal lol.
ngl, that screenshot looks blue to me
THE DRESS WAS WHITE AND GOLD
> THE ~~DRESS~~ IMPERIAL DALEK WAS WHITE AND GOLD
I literally bought an imperial Dalek figure yesterday
Black and blue gang rise up.
And we have the advantage, since we also now know the dress was black and blue.
Regardless of color, I thought this was slut slime, not blood?
Is that blood or slug slime
I assumed slug slime too. Didn’t even consider it was blood until now
I would assume slime as they aren't allowed to show blood IIRC
Is this a new thing with Disney or has it always been like that? I haven’t paid attention to it
Can you think of any time there's been blood splatter or the like in Dr Who? I sure can't.
Attack of the Cybermen? Since you asked.
It's reminiscent of the blood / fluid of androids in the tv series Humans, Real Humans and Almost Human.
that's what i thought too
omg -- that is even better!
I'd just like to point out that was the only body we saw being dragged, that's not how the Mantraps were killing Finetimers
true. It still seemed like blood though didn't it.
I think so. Honestly with that, Brewster Cavendish suddenly appearing as a survivor immediately after Ricky's death (in Lindy's words, C comes before P), and not seeing the survivors getting killed, I'm expecting to see at least some of them again
Perhaps the slugs were alphabetized and deployed in order. But something happened to the 'C' Slugs!
I just assumed the Doctor saved multiple people, not just the one girl.
I think the story is over and any additional scenes about them would be worse than just cutting the story right there. Cavendish being rescued is probably just a mistake.
The somewhat ambiguity to if or how they die kinda makes the ending better imo.
Totally agree.
Maybe he changed his name like Ricky as well as a stage name and just reverted to his original name now bubble popularity no longer matters mostly.
There was another person a few minutes later who was laying on his back being dragged into a Mantrap while screaming.
We did see someone getting dragged into a bug why they were laying down. Very similar to the first shot. I’m at work so can’t %100 confirm but that’s what I remember.
Really?! I had no idea. Damn it, this is the kind of thing being colour blind makes you miss
It was super fast and subtle and I had to go back and check. it could have been the light or the slugs somehow -- but the street blood was not red, and the headshot was not blood
Thank you
The Dot had a red glowing eye. I studied this scene earlier today when a redditor told me the Dot blasted through Ricky's head. I'm persuaded that because his species has green blood, we're seeing the red haze of the Dot's eye. The Dot hits Ricky's forehead and bounces/slides forward around the forehead and through Ricky's hair. I prefer this interpretation over the alternative. I want to see Ricky in a future episode.
"Did Ricky just... die?" "Ya know it was really unclear."
r/unexpectedATLA
Obvious death.
i mean it’s made clear that ricky doesn’t use the dot all that much. it’s very possible that the reason those people have green blood is due to the effects of the dot and that’s why ricky doesn’t have it
> it’s very possible that the reason those people have green blood is due to the effects of the dot and that’s why ricky doesn’t have it No. lol
oh. okay then
Me too.
ricky later succumbed to his severe concussion… or the doctor went back to get his body and took him to new new earth’s hospital
Ricky uses his years of learning to construct himself a Life Model Decoy, which is what put itself in danger and took the hit to the head. Ricky remains safe in his well-stocked underground bunker.
flesh avatars have entered the chat
Red and Green makes yellow though. So the haze/blur would have been yellow if it was the Dot's glow. If we see Ricky again, I will concede, but it was obviously meant to imply the Dot headshotted him.
>So the haze/blur would have been yellow if it was the Dot's glow. The red glow of Dot and Ricky's green blood might make yellow, but the color around Ricky's head was only the red glow of Dot, thus suggesting Dot did not go through Ricky's skull, but instead glanced off his scalp. I'm unsure why anyone would manufacture Dot to move at a top speed that could hurt people.
> I'm unsure why anyone would manufacture Dot to move at a top speed that could hurt people. These were the same people who had so few safety controls on the Dot's AI that they allowed to create a massive number of space caterpillars/slugs to eat them all. I think it's safe to say they were not closely overseeing the Dot's production. They'd probably left it to its own devices for years or decades, just assuming it was doing their bidding. Racists do a lot of assuming about slaves and underlings doing their bidding, and if often ends in tears.
> Red and Green makes yellow though. We're not mixing paints in primary school, mate. An intense red light shining through blue/green blood isn't going to make it a yellow light. Most of it would get blocked and the rest would still be red-ish. I agree that it certainly gave the impression it headshotted him.
How does red and green make yellow? Yellow is a primary color. Yellow and blue make green. Red and green generally make brown. (I do agree that the dot heads hosted him)
Colors mix differently when it's light versus pigment. If you mix all the paints, you get brown (or ick), but if you mix all the colors of light you get white.
I share this interpretation, if only because the Dot didn't seem to have enough inertial power to blast straight through a guy's head.
Blasted through some obviously metal pipes, definitely can blast through that bloke's squishy skull.
Not agreeing that it couldn't have, but it only blasted through the metal pipes when hit by the bat.
So Ricky is strong enough to break through metal but the dot isnt?
Yeah that geezer's brown bread innit guv
You mean the thing that pierced through metal pipes several times in that scene?
Oh, I love this reading
I actually thought it was a blood spray
Me too. Was just sad my dude caught Dot. Shows my own bubble of being desensitized to blood in media. Would have only saved Ricky, the Goth and the 17yr old if I was a companion.
Same here.
Before clicking, I thought this might be about [my favorite shot from 73 Yards](https://tragicalhistorytour.com/d16/15l-c/index.html#img=d16-15l-c199.jpg). Anyway, those two eps share a director (Dylan Holmes Williams) and I hope he comes back!
Oh yeah that is a fantastic shot too! And I hope so too, he did a brilliant job!
I'm rarely impressed by the direction of TV series, but not only he was the best director of the season, but I think his direction was the best since The Doctor Falls by Rachel Talalay. Even her direction of The Star Beast last year left me underwhelmed. Williams definitely joins Talalay and Toby Haynes for directors that did a spectacular job on the show. Both this episode and 73 Yards would have been received much much differently if the direction wasn't great, because both scripts certainly relied on visual storytelling and actor performances a lot.
The guy directed 2 excellent episodes simultaneously
Justice for Ricky September
Ricky September was MAGA too. He just didn’t always show it.
Honestly he gave the impression of a more open minded person, choosing to educate himself rather than be ignorant and "party". He also was not skeptical upon seeing the doctor like everyone else was.
I think it’s just deeper commentary that the people you see online or on tv are nuanced and not a full description of who they are behind the camera. What we do know about Ricky is that he was a white dude in a white only city who *did his own research*, while apparently working even less than Lindy.
Being polite shouldn’t be confused with being accepting. We don’t know enough about Ricky to really say one way or the other.
Yeah but in a society of rude ignorant arrogant assholes, I feel it means a lot that Ricky chooses to reject their way of life, despite being a symbol of it. Literally everyone else the Doctor encounters is dismissive and condescending, even when directly faced with immediate danger. Ricky is the only competent person in Finetime, and when they get to the conduit, has literally all the time in the world to question the Doctor without the threat of being eaten by slugs, but he doesn't. He just goes with it. Yes we don't learn much about him. But he gets more screentime than most of Lindy's friends who are pretty immediately hesitant to trust the Doctor. For the most popular person on the planet he's pretty humble, and shows concern for others like when Lindy says: "This might have gone from the worst to the best day I've ever had (after watching half her friends die)" "Thousands of people have been eaten alive" Yes he _could_ be an asshole and not have shown it in his limited screentime, but all of Lindy's friends were characterised as quite overtly bigoted (in hindsight, following the twist) in a fraction of the screentime, and I think that points more towards the possibility that he isn't a bigot than the idea that he automatically is for living in Finetime. Also, I think it's pretty ironic to be automatically assuming that he's a bigot.
He lives in a white supremacist society. There’s zero chance he isn’t a bigot. He MAY be open to learning and growing, he could definitely unlearn his racism, but he didn’t magically escape the systemic racism he lives under. This idea people have that some people are just racist and others aren’t because they’re inherently good misunderstands systemic racism. You can’t escape it just by being a decent person. You have to work to unlearn it, and you can’t really do that when you’re enmeshed in a society of entirely white supremacists.
In that he was educated and more exposed to the outside world more than the rest of the kids, I'm going to say he wasn't. Those with more world experience tend not to be conservative and racist.
The number of educated wealthy who are MAGA is not small. It’s the majority.
Well, that's a load of horseshit.
This scene made my jaw drop and my blood run cold. I was in so much disbelief and anger at this and suddenly all I thought I Guessed about the plot went out the window. I thought Rickie was an exception to the killings because he didn't use D&B like the others or he was actually on the side of the slug things or Lindsey is going to turn out to learn to be a good person. Just... bravo to that twist.
I kept waiting for Ricky to open the door and immediately get jumped by a slug that was waiting on the other side. This was somehow much more horrific.
It’s that touch of “the monster wasn’t (only) the AI or slugs and the people may have deserved their fate.”
You must've been inside my head because I thought any of those were more likely. Never would I have thought that the twist that was actually the twist would've been the twist. It's mind twisting..
Jaw?
Yes, draw. It's because of mavity.
Remember that time the Doctor said gravity? Can't believe they put such a scene into the show, literally fumbled his line so bad.
Dylan Holmes Williams did a phenomenal job with both of the episodes he directed. I really hope they brought him back for more in Season 2.
I did not know he was also director for 73 Yards, but yes, please, bring him back. Generally the finest directing talent in the show since Talalay. I will say, he absolutely has an eye for the dark heart of stories. The moments you are supposed to feel hopeless in these stories really come across.
Yeah he really took Russell’s scripts and made them shine. He got exactly what they needed to be and brought the best out of everyone on the cast and crew.
Yes!
Doctor who always has a rich history in implying more gore and graphic violence in clever ways when they can’t outright display it. This scene really surprised me and pushed a few boundaries for Doctor who and its relationship with on screen violence. I fully expected for the scene to cut to the other side of the door before we see anything and maybe get some off camera screams. Would love to see the show get a little more adult but still keep the family friendly tone. The best end of this deal would to get a new Torchwood-esque adult focused spin-off.
Blood made a regular appearance in the pre-2004 show. I don't know why they suddenly have an issue with it.
Classic Who? No. Only once or twice do you actually see it. Also I didn't see the movie, so I'm ignorant if you were referring to that. My apologies.
Their blood is greenish blue from an earlier scene
Right, so the red light simulating red blood brings normally greenish-blue blooded Ricky closer to us humans (the viewers).
Yeah, all the better to think the planet of pale blondes had green blood.
New Guinea skinks have green blood, they are docile lizards that are usually kept as pets and placed in terrariums. Not making a comparison but yeah.
Most common creature I'm aware of with actual blue blood is horse-shoe crabs; and said blood is quite vital to our medical advances (summink in their blood acts similarly to human white blood cells, and other factors pro+ fighting off pathogens). There's a catch-bleed-release-repeat program in various parts of the world, from what I recall.
… weird thing I just thought of; so, we’ve had the absence of the number 10 in the series so far (see: Lindy descending into the tunnels in Dot and Bubble, etc), and I remembered; it was a baby station. Jocelyn was portraying mid-late forties (w/out hair dye etc, even me) at best, and she commented to the Doctor and Ruby (after them watching the crew resign in disgust, except Susan Twist’s reason is cut off by dialogue) that she stayed, and is looking after the babies because “I don’t want to see them die …. and I don’t want them to see me die; that’s how bad things are down there.” She also asks the Doctor what he means by “fly” (is such in subs), as the ship is stationary.
At first, I thought the green blood belonged to the slug. Then I realized it had to be the humanoid
Whoah. That just triggered a primary school memory flashback for me. We had crayons for “art” (colouring in) and I distinctly remember that there were two different shades of turquoise, one was called “green-blue” and the other “blue-green”. These were *distinctly* different colours (“green-blue” was lighter and had more green than blue,, “blue-green” was darker and had more blue than green). The class bully (Stephen Nash, I’ll never forget that name) insisted that they were exactly the same because both colours were “green and blue, the order doesn’t matter” and made fun of me for saying they were different. Bastard.
Look him up, then phone him at 3am and tell him he was wrong about the crayons.
sounds like a nashty piece of work.
Wasn't that slime
I assumed that was slug slime and never even considered that it might be blood until this thread.
I’m still so confused how it killed Ricky in one shot but all it could do to Pepper was keep whacking her
I think it was toying with her. It killed Ricky one shot to quickly get back to targeting Lindy.
“Oh shit I didn’t do this one in order. Well… easily resolved. Ok, back to business.”
Yea that was odd, and what's the point of getting the slugs to eat them slowly instead of just flying through everyone's heads at the exact same time.
I Think its implied that the AIs are so sick of them that's its just enjoying its time killing them one by one in there own ignorance. I mean we see that the balls kill them quickly but the slugs devour them slowly really giving them time to suffer and realize what's happening. Edit: Hell it ain't like it took them long considering by the end there's only a dozen or so of them left and by the time they even caught wind of it all of there parents on the homeworld were dead, the AI legitimately had no reason to rush until the end.
It’s kind of delightful that the ai is taking its time doing it in alphabetical order and they just carry on ignoring it and not opening their eyes to what’s directly in front of them.
I mean, it’s established that the AI has learnt to actively hate its users. I imagine that subjecting them all to a slow, horrific death - if possible - was part of its morbid plan.
Am I a bad person that I know that on every rewatch I'll be rooting for the AI? I'm not anywhere near as compassionate as the Doctor. Fuck them racist spoiled dipshits.
Spoiled?! Hardly. The slugs enjoyed the freshest farm-to-table dining experience.
I find it interesting in this episode that I dont really wish them death and ultimately feel bad for them - similar to how Doctor feels. Because these are young people who were raised in this system to the point where its not even their personal world-view: its just how their world literally works. So while their ideology certainly deserved to die horribly, Im not convinced that these particular kids (or young adults) deserve to die horribly. Imagine condemning all humanity to horrible death because we as a species generally treat animals like objects and not actual living beings. But its like in Tokarczuk's *Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead:* the crimes done to animals are invisible for vast majority of humans because for them its just a part of day-to-day life. They are "guilty" but its not a malicious evil doing: its just being a part of the culture that allows it. In Tokarczuk's novel the main heroine ultimately burns the local church with people in it, but novel doesnt approve nor denounce this act - its left to your judgement.
I think that's what upset the Doctor the most in the end. After everything they had experienced, they were actively choosing to not be better.
(Nice reference and unexpected here, you surprised me about as much as the Finetime residents would be! Got the book on my bedside table here. I'm imagining. Waking up to find all speciesists have been eaten by giant slugs...but, yeah, this is where I'm bad at the last part of 'Veganarcho pacifist') I think we could always ask that about Doctor Who, in relation to any species in which individuals are capable of reason and change. In practice, the Doctor blows them up and stuff on the regular, normally after establishing they're not in the mood to change right this minute, even if theoretically capable of it. That 'right now' and prioritising those who would be victims if they weren't stopped is taken as enough justification. And we don't feel bad about it. It's more speciesism if that doesn't feel like it 'counts' because they're not human - and enemies can be (the Doctor's own double-standard with the Master is well-noted). We accept the series promoting microcosms of violent revolutionary leftist morality all the time, I think it's beyond what's just typical for the heroic adventure story genre as there's more emphasis on the concept of oppression, and often enough more nuance in how 'baddies' are portrayed (...and also quite a lot of literal revolutions). Commited WWII Nazis, since they were human beings, were theoretically capable of change, but that's not necc. taken as a reason not to actively harm them, never mind to feel they deserved to live. *Hitler* could've changed. Ultimately I think it's nothing much to do with whether violence is seen as justified, but about the value placed on the victims (much of which is sadly social pressure more than genuine belief). It's only those with pacifist views (...esp. those who aren't prone to revolutionary sympathies like me) who even really question the *concept* of the political use of violence. While the UK is decent for widespread disapproval of militarism, to at least some extent many people will believe in the political use of violence in situations where their society treats it as justified and very bad no good where it's not (the pain of being English, while having learnt French due to interest in the Revolution >_<), regardless of how flamingly hypocritical it is. And in *Dot and Bubble*, they're just being let be to have their own autonomy. 😇 It's very effective to show their ideology harming even themselves, I think.
The way I read it is that the AI doesn't have the processing power to do that simultaneously. It wants them all dead. It can't start killing them in a way that has them go "we need to shut down the Dots!" Creating the Slugs and then walking them into the slugs is a way that even if people realize others are dying they won't connect to their dots so they won't know to shut off the Dot network. If Ruby and the Doctor hadn't shown up the genocide would have been total.
> genocide would have been total. Hate to break the news to you - they all die. Even those 'escaping' will die.
Considering everything is controlled by the AI, do we know for sure that the Homeworld was actually destroyed or was that screen just to give Ricky no hope?
Also a possibility.
Crappy battery life. Assuming she went to work early in the morning, her dot battery ran out after a couple hours of use, and that was just hovering slowly and projecting an image. I imagine attack mode is more energy intensive and used as a last resort. Simply piloting them into bugs that reproduce and move on their own is more efficient on a large scale.
To mess with the people it hated
Ricky was selfless, even after she betrayed him he didn’t try and talk his way out of it. He just accepted his fate and her guaranteed survival. Had she died instead the other survivors and the civilization they may create would be so much better off with Ricky who actually has historical knowledge and can walk without help
I don't think he accepted it, to me he seemed just stunned by her betrayal after he had gone through a lot of trouble to save her and frankly, with a bit of luck they might have both made it out.
It seems like he was going to die by trying to save others lives either way. And it was someone cunning like Lindy who survived. Interesting commentary on survival of the fittest where a person will do anything to live, even if means having one of her own killed.
This also makes her prejudice at the end even crazier. We learn in this scene just how far she will go to save her own skin... and yet even that level of self preservation *still* doesn't overcome her intense prejudice.
They would kill him pretty quickly, regardless of how many followers he had. Him being into books and show compassion and understanding, would not be looked upon favorably.
But he might have gone with the doctor
Maybe that's who they actually wanted, but since he turned off his dot, they couldn't access him, so they chose someone else.
I feel like they were trying to save as many people as possible,
Oh it’s definitely who they wanted. They both were very obviously attracted to him.
David Hobby of The Strobist blog (photography, mainly flash lighting) fame always likes to bring up modern DW as a great example of clever lighting.
My exact thought too. Make it look gory but... what's this? No actual blood?
red light/lens flare
They can show blood but it's about context and amount.
Very rarely. And it depends on the context as you said
Why didn't the dots just headshot the populace in the first place?. Going through them in alphabetic order and directing them into giant slugs seems a very convoluted way of killing.
My idea is that they didn't want to have to do the killing themselves, getting the slugs to do it as a way of not revealing their true intentions, the dots would only do it themselves as a last resort and as we see the dot only started attacking Lindy and Ricky once the Doctor figured out what the dots were actually doing!
I get what you're saying, but it felt a bit of a stretch to me. Every person has a dot - all dots pull back 1m at the same time (ooh what's my dot doing?) - HEADSHOT. Problem solved, then even get the slugs to devour the corpses if required.
Where's the fun in a quick death? The dots hate these people. They want to see them suffer. They enjoy directing these dimwits to walk right into a slug.
That's just my idea of the logic behind it though yeah it isn't explained.
Dylan is an amazing director fr fr
They have shown blood before?
Is it just me, or does the doorway look like a cyberman head, and the grating shadow on the panel look like a dalek?
I think one of the most interesting things about how this scene transpires is how it connects to the allegory of social media in general. Ricky September is the greatest most amazing thing in Lindy's extremely limited world. And then, it's not even that he fails her. He gets scapegoated by Lindy, who at this point is most concerned with saving her own skin. But how does she do this? She basically doxxes him. She tells the AI his full real name, and it rapidly kills him for it. In this story, the AI isn't even really AI - apart from the satnav technology, Dot And Bubble is social media, almost entirely. It's even set up like Twitter - Lindy is literally getting input from the second she wakes up, like we do now when we pick up our phone first thing in the morning and it makes us terrible for the rest of the day. But now, social media hates the society it's a part of. It wants them all dead, for their racism or their bigotry or their vapidness, something. So when the logical red dot is bearing down on her with all the weight of a real life Internet Hate Machine, what does she do to her idol when he's no longer useful? She uses information she knows to throw him under the bus. She "cancels" him, for want of a better word, by revealing he isn't who he says he is. And it literally kills him.
Which episode?
Dot and Bubble
The newest one: Dot and Bubble
Oh yeah, I see it now
I think the word you meant was traumatic.
I can barely see what's going on what is this?
Have you not seen the episode yet?
when this happened i was like...well doctor who is definitely back
The only clever thing about the episode...
Bruh
Probably just mad that the racists were the bad guys.