The Time Warriors and Beyond

By Owen Quinn author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

Hold onto your seats folks when I say this but Dot and Bubble is the cleverest epiode so far. However woke does manage to taint it although slightly.

Watching it I can see the youngsters of today stuck in their social media bubbles just as in the Age of Steel I could see the explosion of earbuds around me. Because of this I never did get wireless earbuds. I like my flesh where it is thank you very much.

The story focuses on Finetime, a colony under a dome surrounded by the wild woods. Every citizen is a rich kid who lives through their internet bubble. This is powered by the Dot; a robotic device that levitates and surrounds the user with the internet bubble. This bubble tells you when you pee, what direction to walk, group chats and keeps you in constant communication with the other citizens. They have to work for two hours a day then party for the rest of the time. Ruby compares it to Love Island. It even has its own celebrity, Ricky September, who dances to Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini with everyone living there following him.

However people are disappearing and going offline. And nobody seems to care. The story is seen through the eyes of Lindy, part of the population of Finetime.

Just like today, the first thing we do is reach for our phones in the morning just as Lindy does. She cannot even brush her teeth without the bubble. But to open a story with a person in front of the mirror while a monster lurks in her living room is a great hook.

I very much felt the same here as when I watched the Silent and the Weeping Angels on screen. They are just hovering over your shoulder, a prelude to disaster and death. The big slug crab monsters here have that same feeling unlike the 73 Yards Woman last week. A bit like Blink the Dotor and Ruby can only access Finetime via the internet pleading with Lindy to see what is happening. Not even they can penetrate the dome.

Bubbles usually protect whomever is inside but this time they are a hindrance. There is very much a frightening atmosphere throughout not just because the monsters are eating everyone alive all around you without anyone noticing but you can see our own generation in their behaviour. They are stuck in a digital world where everyone are besties. Life is big party and the result is they don’t have to think for themselves. The new generation is putting on weight and their appendages are changing with console technology. Constant exposure to a computer screen affects the eyes and dulls the reflexes. And they see only what is in front of them oblivious to even the calls from parents for dinner. What they could have done is include heavier people in this episode; I saw none, to illustrate how indulence through reliance on technology is on the human body.

This is best seen in the creepy sequence where Lindy drops her bubble and sees she is in fact working in an empty office where a colleague is being devoured by one of the creatures. Urged by the Doctor and Ruby she tries to leave but can’t even walk properly because she doesn’t know how to. She is so used to following the bubble’s directions, this basic bodily function is damaged. There are shades of Wallee in this which is why I don’t want to live in a house where I don’t have to turn a light on by voice command. Additionally, Susan Twist appears as Lindy’s mummy but this time is recognised by the time travellers. Is she a Clara type form splintered across time watching over Ruby no matter where she goes?

Woke does get its finger in here when the Doctor and Ruby fight over how hot Ricky September is which totally jars against the fourth Doctor’s classic line, “She’s a beautiful woman. Probably.” Yes the Doctor has been more lover boy since the new era but do we really need a Doctor who quite obviously would do rude things with Ricky? He gave up Rose to a cop of himself because he couldn’t bring himself to try and live a life with her that way. He has grandchildren so has done it with a fellow Time Lord. It’s not the Doctor no matter what the agenda people want you to think. You have to be true to the character and its history, not what you think the wokes think you should be doing on television.

An interesting point here is that the Doctor cannot speak to Lindy in terms she understands. She is a real bitch to him. Despite this new love for life incarnation he is still a socially awkward Time Lord. Ruby sees what Lindy is and is able to get her to trust her through complimenting her blouse and love of Ricky September. Materialistic items and how she looks is all these people care about.

To save her the Doctor tells her to go to a conduit where there is an underground river they can use to escape. These monsters are really good and remind me of something that came from beneath the waves. That scene where Lindy comes face to tentacle with one in a lift and when she is close to the conduit the Doctor told her to go to but the alley is blocked by four of them sticks in the head. Saved by Ricky September, Lindy is hugged for the first time. Obviously, the party does not include physical contact which is a large part of the party lifestyle. She has a crush on Ricky and we think by freeing them from their reliance on the bubble, we will see a people ala Wall-E where they really see each other for the first time. What sort of offspring would these people produce?

But the truth is darker than the Doctor and Ruby thought. The mystery as to why some people are eaten and others aren’t is so rooted in reality it is chilling.

The Dot is the villain as AI is seen today.

It has grown to hate the humans and their behaviour. It created the monsters to get rid of the humans and their sloth ways. In a way the Dot is a hero and knows how such a lifestyle is not healthy for any society. It does not like the type of people Finetime is breeding. Lindy has been rude and dismissive to the Doctor and Ruby until she needed them to get out of the city. The most efficent way to do that is kill the populace off alphabetically. Lindy and Ricky surnames begin with P and S. If a computer system wants to kill us then that would be the most efficient way.

Ricky tries to contact their homeworld but it has been destroyed. All human life is gone presumably by the Dot. I don’t blame the Dot at all as these type of people are awful in this day and age never mind on another world. They are the upper class that you see on Dr Phil who say their parents should pay their way and they cannot get by on less than £3,000 a week. Work is a dirty word and popularity and how you look is priority to them. How many likes do I have? Does my new hairstyle make others jealous? How much do people want to be me?

Ironically Ricky is the poster pop star good looking guy yet he is the most human in Finetime of them all. He only uses the Dot to upload his videos then spends the rest of the time learning and reading which is how he also know about the river escape.

Sadly, we learn the bubble hasn’t been the cause of their me, me, me behaviour; it only enhanced it. These are horrible people as Lindy, to save her own life, betrays Ricky to the Dot. She reveals his real surname is Coombs, not September so should already be dead and should die before the Dot kills her. The Dot smashes right through Ricky’s head allowing Lindy to escape. This is a shocking moment I had to watch twice to be sure of what I was seeing. Yet it exemplifies just how false their society is and wher their morals and values lie.

This is even more telling when Lindy meets the Dcotor and Ruby in the underground river port along with other survivors. These are all safe thanks to the Doctor and Ruby. The Finetime survivors are preparing to ship out and tame the wild woods and create their new society. Lindy lies as to what happened to Ricky and the Doctor’s suggestion that he can take them all in the Tardis to a new home is met with disgust. Lindy says they cannot go with him as he is not one of them and she barely tolerated his tapping in to her bubble. His claims are dismissed as voodoo and they leave before they are contaminated by the Time Lord. It wasn’t until I watched Doctor Who Unleashed that they refused his help because he was black hence the voodoo reference. I genuinely thought it was because he was an outsider, not rich and not part if the bubble friends group.

Those closing shots of Lindy staring back at the Doctor from the boat are unnerving and powerful. He tells them they will die and as the episode closes, the scariest thing is that these people may well succeed and create a brand new society; a society built on the murder of a man that dared to turn the Dot off and help someone. It will be a society where colour is unwelcome. This ending reminded me of the seventh Doctor standing over the blubbering body of Helen A as she mourned the death of her pet Fifi in the Happiness Patrol. She didn’t care her world had just collapsed then either.

Without saying a word, Ncuti Gatwa’s rage and frustration at their leaving speaks volumes. No good deed goes unpunished and this is one time he should have let them die. The only person worth saving is lying dead unmourned and buried beneath a lie. It is a powerful reminder friends on social media are not really FRIENDS. None of the friends Lindy lost affect her in the slightest.

This is a great episode that is so full of social commentary, and I mean relevant social commentary, it really does make you look twice at people with their faces stuck in phones. The next time you see a video on the net where someone walks into a lamppost, you will think of Dot and Bubble and wonder just how far are we really from this scenario. Excellent.

By Owen Quinn disabled author of the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues

ME IN MY WHEELCHAIR PRAYING SANTA DOESN’T THINK I’M EVIL LIKE DAVROS!

Definition of disability under the Equality Act 2010 (does not apply to Northern Ireland)

You’re disabled under the Equality Act 2010 if you have a physical or mental impairment that has a ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities.

What ‘substantial’ and ‘long-term’ mean

• ‘substantial’ is more than minor or trivial, eg it takes much longer than it usually would to complete a daily task like getting dressed
• ‘long-term’ means 12 months or more, eg a breathing condition that develops as a result of a lung infection

There are special rules about recurring or fluctuating conditions, eg arthritis.

Progressive conditions

A progressive condition is one that gets worse over time. People with progressive conditions can be classed as disabled.

However, you automatically meet the disability definition under the Equality Act 2010 from the day you’re diagnosed with HIV infection, cancer or multiple sclerosis.

What isn’t counted as a disability

There’s guidance on conditions that aren’t covered by the disability definition, eg addiction to non–prescribed drugs or alcohol.

Before writing this article, which was prompted by how Russell T Davies’ changed Davros into a two legged Grand Moff Tarkin clone, it is important to understand that I am in a wheelchair (when I am not using my prosthetic leg) and what the definition of disabled actual means. I became an amputee a little under a year ago, adjusting to this new condition over that time, only to watch Davros grow legs just so people like me don’t associate evil with wheelchairs or be seen to be evil because someone may mistake me for Davros; which is utter pedigree nonsense. My wheelchair nor my disability define me so how dare someone else define people like me. How can someone as groundbreaking as Russell T Davies think that even makes sense? Shall we get rid of small moustaches and side shades for people with black hair in case someone mistakes them for Hitler? That may seem absurd but the illogical logic is the same.

There has been a rising bad feeling about this new Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who. He has been gender slapped in The Star Beast by Rose for assuming the Meep’s gender, yet five minutes earlier Rose did exactly that when she cried out upon seeing the Doctor in her home, ‘there’s that man’. Assumption much?

I smell a double standard right there. It happened again when Donna calls him a male presenting Time Lord. The jury is still out on the fifteenth Doctor with many seeing the influence of the mouse behind the scenes with things like wheelchair access to the Tardis, a person in a wheelchair working for UNIT with weapons in said chair.

Also Isaac Newton was played by a man of colour going against historical fact that he is indeed white. I am wholeheartedly behind inclusion as you see in my books the Time Warriors and Zombie Blues. The human race is a diverse multicultural organism and while the whole world is mad at the moment we all love, hate, bleed red, cry, feel out of place, piss and shit. We look different on the outside but the human race is identical all over the world in our hearts and feelings but historical fact is historical fact.

Doctor Who began life as an educational programme so it must continue to be to a certain degree but to randomly use inclusion for the wrong reasons makes no sense. It feels like programme makers of today are falling over themselves to be seen as inclusive and woke for fear of offending someone somewhere to the point it seems facts are irrelevant.

Now that does not really impact my life but the disability part does. I wrote my review of Children In Need; Destination Skaro thinking it was set at a time just before Davros’ accident. It would be pointless bringing out the iconic Davros we know (due to cost) for only a minute or so of screen time. But I was wrong. In the Doctor Who Unleashed episode Russell T Davies caught me off guard and said this. 

“Time and society and culture and taste has moved on and there’s a problem with the Davros of old in that he is a wheelchair user who is evil. And I had problems with that and a lot of us on the production team had problems with that, associating evil with disability. And trust me there is a very long tradition of this. I’m not blaming people in the past at all. But the world changes then Doctor Who has to change as well. So we made the choice to bring back Davros without the facial scarring and his wheelchair or his support unit which functions as a wheelchair. I say this is how we see Davros now. This is what he looks like. This is 2023. This is ours lens. This is our eye. Things used to be black and white. they are not in black and white anymore. And Davros used to look like that and he looks like this now. And that we are absolutely standing by. I think because it’s Children In Need night. It’s a night where issues of disability or otherness or being excluded from society come right to the front of the conversation so of all the nights to make this change it was absolutely vital to do this and I’m very, very, very proud of the fact we have.”

My initial excitement at this new second golden era hit a wall right there. I’m not proud of that at all.

Ok so let me point something out. A wheelchair is not a support unit by any means in the way Davros Dalek half is. This stupidity is also done in The Giggle when Donna tells Mel tat calling themselves companions makes them sound like they park the Doctor on the seafront at Weston uper Mare. She then looks to scientific adviser wheelchair user Shirley and asks is ‘parked’ rude. Shirley says it is borderline. No it bloody isn’t, We park our wheelchairs when not in motion so to even suggest this by using a disabled character is insulting ; that offends me.

This is again an example of what happens when able bodied people who haven’t asked an actual person in a wheelchair their opinion. It is then translated to the audience that this is what disabled people think too. Believe me, it is far from the truth.

Now in the far future we may have mobile support units that regulate the person, filled with circuitry and weapons but we live right here, right now. If I get hit by a car while in my chair, I ain’t coming back unlike Davros in Destiny of the Daleks. The support unit saves him and puts him in stasis. Lumic was scarier but he was a man trying to beat death. 

So the Doctor Who team are acting from their own assumptions and labels of what being disabled means to someone and the devices we use to live day by day. Secondly, he states that they got rid of the facial scarring before bringing Davros back. How does that make people with such injuries feel? If Davies thinks it is fine to brush away someone with extensive scars for fear of them being identified as evil by the world then someone really needs go away and think about their lens and eyes. What Davies and the team have effectively done is say people with facial disfigurement or in a wheelchair can’t be seen as bad. Aren’t people good and bad despite what they look like? Haven’t they just drawn more attention to people with scarring and not necessarily in a good way? How does this encourage people to embrace this idea which is clearly trying to justify a world that does not exist and an ideology that thinks people cannot think for themselves or form their own opinions?

Add to that Davros will no longer be disabled but a Grand Moff Tarkin type as seen in the Children In Need mini-episode and I have a problem about that. Wipe out an iconic villain because it may offend? Who is it offending because it doesn’t offend this disabled person or anyone else I know. Indeed at a recent podiatry appointment I was told that several other patients felt they had lost their representation due to the Davros reinvention. As for disability being associated with evil is just bollocks. Yes villains are sometimes but not always disabled; scars do not count as a disability. Russell T Davies in the behind the scenes show Doctor Who unleashed has been very vocal that this is why Davros now walks on two legs but is it him speaking or the mouse?

To come back and claim it is going to be a brand new way of storytelling prepared no one for the fact woke has taken away probably the most iconic villain to have ever graced the screens. Such was the initial impact of Davros on fans that he came back several times and crossed generations last seen battling the twelfth Doctor. As Davies says writing changes which is true but to have an agenda seriously change the nature of the show and rewrite the past is outrageous. You might as well tip me out of my wheelchair and kick me in the balls right now. In fact wheel me off a mountain in case anyone is offended by my one leg and two wheels.

Changing Davros is totally contradicting what Davies thinks he is doing. For someone that does love the show so much and it’s a part of his soul, it is not clear if he is acting under orders here from the Disney side or not. Let’s look at it.

According to Davies and this new woke bollocks, Davros’ image reminds us that disability is evil. So what do I do with my 12 inch Davros figure and my other Davros figures. I’d better get rid quick because everytime I look at them I see how evil I and others like me are. Let’s point out that the bottom half of Davros is not a wheelchair but a Dalek. It is a life support system to keep him alive. By this very logic this means that every Dalek is also disabled and a painful reminder that an entire army of mutated beings in wheelchairs are the absolute evil. There is no good in them at all (bar a couple of exceptions like Rusty) and will give viewers the wrong impression of us wheelchair users. So therefore Davies must convert all future Daleks into versions of Dalek Sec from Daleks Take Manhattan. That way disability will not cloud anyone’s view of disabled people who are all good and kind people.

Rubbish.

Just like any section of the populace you have good and bad. There are no disabled James Bond villains, bar Dr No with his metallic hands. As I said before, scars do not constitute a disability. They impact the person’s view of how they see themselves much in the same way a birthmark on the face can make an individual feel uncomfortable. But those that love them see the person not the birthmark or the injury. Are we now to only see wheelchair users as good guys? I’ll let you into a little secret; when I am in my wheelchair, when I cannot use my prosthetic leg, I pretend I am Davros and have a laugh. “Welcome to my new empire Doctor!”

I’m 55 years young.

How is that detrimental to me or those around me? Our kids see me as great craic because they get to push me round and the youngest sits on my lap like a chauffeur driven limo. Am I missing the evil connotations here Russell? Thank God the world will now be filled with wheelchair and disabled heroes and legends. Oh wait, it already is.

Let’s not forget that Professor X from the X-Men is probably the most famous disabled person for kids to look up to out there. Matt Murdoch as Daredevil is blind. Echo is an amputee so is Luke Skywalker with his hand. Echo is a great ecample of diversity and inclusion done right. Norton Drake in the 80s War of the Worlds television series is wheelchair bound as is Barbara Gordon shot by the Joker becoming Oracle in Birds of Prey. Winter Soldier and Nebula have prosthetics as does War Machine to help him walk. Did you know Hawkeye wears a hearing aid? There are three wheelchair users in that paragraph alone.

We can’t forget the Bionic family which includes Lee Majors, Lindsay Wagner, Sandra Bullock and our very own Michelle Ryan herself plus Katee Sackhoff and Max the bionic dog.

We also have Captain Christopher Pike in Star Trek the original series in the two parter; Menagrie. In the same universe is Geordi La Forge, the blind engineer from Star Trek the Next Generation. Now if you ever want to highlight a disabled character that offends; Geordi is it. Before returning to Picard, Levar Burton raised these concerns. Geordi was written so badly as such a loser with women that he became a literal stalker via the holodeck. Now there are people that do that able-bodied and disabled but Geordi should stand as an example of owning what life has dealt you and making it part of you. With disabled characters show-makers should be treated as anyone else; they have good and bad days, are pissy and welcoming. Sometimes I think writers are not sure of how to write for disabled people but the key word is people.

By labeling us wheelchair users and disabled people as ‘snowflakes’ that need to be patted on the head in case someone compares us to Davros or any other evil character offends big time. That will only make us speak up and tell you were to go. In that assumption without asking our view you are not honouring society but putting us in a pigeon hole that you have made up. Restore the iconic Davros now before you end up erasing a villain that spans generations just as Darth Vader does. Stop creating a false view of people that young viewers will believe until they get older and realise life is completely different. Talk to the people you think are going to take offense and make an informed decision on their advice. Most people will tell you to wise up and leave as is.

Doctor Who has always kept the best interests of children at its core. With moves like this, agendas seem to take priority rather than people in general. We are part of the audience that keeps those ratings up. Piss people off and ratings fall. Wake up, not woke up.