Spoilers Doctor Who 2024 (spoilers)

[Ryujin]

I'm pretty sure they were deliberately engineered for maximum irony and agony. As mentioned and demonstrated, the Dots were perfectly capable of killing their users themselves. I think they deliberately built creatures that were so slow and cumbersome that anyone who wasn't constantly stuck in their own bubble could have easily outrun them, and whose ingestion process was intentionally drawn-out and painful.

Being so horrible that your own technology hates you is pretty much dooming yourself.

And based on how their society functioned, it was implied hat the system controlling the Dots did everything. Engineering an organism might have been as easy as reprogramming a food production facility.

 

[John R Davis]

I really liked dot n bubble ( apart from the bit were the AI could kill you if it wanted anyways).
Nice social commentary.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I haven't been watching the new season, but my friend recommended this episode, even though I hadn't, so I watched it, and yes, holy crap, that's the best episode of Dr Who in a very long time.

I particularly liked that, not only was it tremendously well-executed on a basic level (the editing, pacing, and shot-framing and so on), but we had multiple good twists (even if I guessed the final one within literally 3 minutes of the episode starting - it was still effective), and several separate and interrelated ideas.

EDIT - Can't believe I forgot to mention how good the performances were - because they were. Gatwa was barely in it but managed to absolutely kill in the final scene.

Guess I'll watch the rest!

 

[Necropolitan]

I'm pretty sure they were deliberately engineered for maximum irony and agony. As mentioned and demonstrated, the Dots were perfectly capable of killing their users themselves. I think they deliberately built creatures that were so slow and cumbersome that anyone who wasn't constantly stuck in their own bubble could have easily outrun them, and whose ingestion process was intentionally drawn-out and painful.

Being so horrible that your own technology hates you is pretty much dooming yourself.

Yeah, but nothing was shown or said that indicated the AI had the ability to bioengineer giant slugs that would eat people in the order the AI wanted them to. Or how it became self-aware to begin with.

It's a question of means, not motive. Pretty much every other Doctor Who threat says where the non-cosmic villains got their stuff from or at the very least explained enough to let viewers guess. There's nothing else in the society that has anything to do with bioengineering so the slugs are unexplainable.

And there being actual intelligence behind the city's downfall takes away from the actual satire about social media. It'd be like having a message about looking both ways before crossing the street when the threat is from an AI hijacking cars to run people over.

And based on how their society functioned, it was implied hat the system controlling the Dots did everything. Engineering an organism might have been as easy as reprogramming a food production facility.

Then the show should have added a scene that shows the slugs being created.

Or in one of the chat scenes have a character mention the time they had the AI create a whole elephant that they had it kill and cook for them, thus showing their callousness (creating a living thing just to kill it despite being able to make artificial meat) and shows the AI has the capabilities to create large living organisms.

Or have one of the characters say they had the AI create a pet elephant for them that they have the AI take care of and have elephant noises from off-screen. Heck, since it's off-screen they could say they had the AI bioengineer them a unique pet, just have something to show that the AI actually had the capabilities to make slug monsters instead of just having The Doctor guess that the AI made them.

Every time the Daleks clone a new army (Power of the Daleks, Revelation of the Daleks, Remembrance of the Daleks, The Parting of the Ways, Revolution of the Daleks, and I'm certain numerous others) it's shown how they recreated themselves instead of just acting like they can generate new Daleks out of nowhere, I don't see why it couldn't be done here.

In both Space Babies and this episode an AI creates a monster. Except only in Space Babies were we told/shown that the AI had that capability.

 

[Tonguez]

I'm pretty sure they were deliberately engineered for maximum irony and agony. As mentioned and demonstrated, the Dots were perfectly capable of killing their users themselves. I think they deliberately built creatures that were so slow and cumbersome that anyone who wasn't constantly stuck in their own bubble could have easily outrun them, and whose ingestion process was intentionally drawn-out and painful.

A murderous AI that understands irony and agony is going a bit too far though, and if the AI is that imaginative then surely it would have confronted the Doctor and Ruby rather than letting them save some of its hit list.

So yeah I enjoyed the episode but do agree that the AI weren't necessary for the social commentary to unfold.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Yeah, but nothing was shown or said that indicated the AI had the ability to bioengineer giant slugs that would eat people in the order the AI wanted them to. Or how it became self-aware to begin with

It’s generic sci fi tech, seen in Doctor Who many times before. There is no reason it wouldn’t be able to do those things.

According to Doctor Who, the British built a self aware evil AI with mind control powers in 1966. How did the AI have mind control? Not explained, but there was another, also with mind control, in 1973*.

*Or 1979. There is some confusion over the dating of UNIT stories.

 

[MarkB]

A murderous AI that understands irony and agony is going a bit too far though, and if the AI is that imaginative then surely it would have confronted the Doctor and Ruby rather than letting them save some of its hit list.

So yeah I enjoyed the episode but do agree that the AI weren't necessary for the social commentary to unfold.

The monsters are needed for the horror and mystery aspect - what's going on is terrifying, and nobody can figure out why they're being so selective. That drives the first half of the story.

The AI is needed for the social commentary aspect, to pull this back from being an external threat to being one of their own making.

 

[Tonguez]

The monsters are needed for the horror and mystery aspect - what's going on is terrifying, and nobody can figure out why they're being so selective. That drives the first half of the story.

The AI is needed for the social commentary aspect, to pull this back from being an external threat to being one of their own making.

Lindy not being able to walk straight without instruction and blundering into the slow moving slugs because they were constantly in a bubble of social media was commentary enough along the lines of "living in a bubble made them blind to an obvious menace they could easily avoid"

 

[MarkB]

Lindy not being able to walk straight without instruction and blundering into the slow moving slugs because they were constantly in a bubble of social media was commentary enough along the lines of "living in a bubble made them blind to an obvious menace they could easily avoid"

But making that threat external would still weaken that whole "sowing the seeds of their own destruction" thing - and would bring up hard-to-answer questions of its own, like how did such a slow and plodding carnivorous species evolve, and what do they eat when they can't get oblivious humans?

 

[Hussar]

Considering the monsters in this case were just a plot device and not the point of the story explains why they don’t get explained.