Spoilers Doctor Who 2024 (spoilers)

[Paul Farquhar]

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 not that living in a bubble without room for any opinions, or facts, that you may not like, turns you into a truly horrible person, which was the actual message.

 

[Necropolitan]

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.

The AI being self-aware and malicious wasn't necessary and in fact detracted from the message because it made there be an actual villain. It's like having a story where the message is against drunk-driving by having there be an AI that seizes control of your car and crashes it if you drive while drunk. Just have the actual thing the message is against be the problem!

And the slugs killing people by name was a pointless mystery. It never even reveals why the AI is doing it in alphabetical order for crying out loud! It's a red herring rendered meaningless by the rest of the reveals.

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?

The slugs could be omnivorous scavengers who mostly feed on vegetation and dead animals but now have an easier food source that literally walks into their mouths. Easy as that. And they got in because the Finetimers didn't bother maintaining whatever it was that kept them out of the city because it was boring/hard. Heck, that would add to the allegory.

 

[MarkB]

The AI being self-aware and malicious wasn't necessary and in fact detracted from the message because it made there be an actual villain. It's like having a story where the message is against drunk-driving by having there be an AI that seizes control of your car and crashes it if you drive while drunk. Just have the actual thing the message is against be the problem!

"Villain" is subjective. Antagonist, certainly.

And the slugs killing people by name was a pointless mystery. It never even reveals why the AI is doing it in alphabetical order for crying out loud! It's a red herring rendered meaningless by the rest of the reveals.

It doesn't matter why. What it solves is that it is the AI - that the thing they're using to isolate themselves from the rest of the world is what's killing them.

The slugs could be omnivorous scavengers who mostly feed on vegetation and dead animals but now have an easier food source that literally walks into their mouths. Easy as that. And they got in because the Finetimers didn't bother maintaining whatever it was that kept them out of the city because it was boring/hard. Heck, that would add to the allegory.

"We need to maintain stronger walls to keep the Bad Things out" is definitely not the message they were going for.

 

[trappedslider]

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.

yes but we're nerds so there must be a meaning to everything.

 

[Tonguez]

"We need to maintain stronger walls to keep the Bad Things out" is definitely not the message they were going for.

but "Boring, we cant be bothered" was

 

[Necropolitan]

"Villain" is subjective. Antagonist, certainly.

It doesn't matter why. What it solves is that it is the AI - that the thing they're using to isolate themselves from the rest of the world is what's killing them.

"We need to maintain stronger walls to keep the Bad Things out" is definitely not the message they were going for.

Murdering people for fun is villainous even if they're bad people, especially if you're doing it by having monsters eat them. The AI committed genocide since it murdered EVERYONE. "Does a society deserve to be saved" isn't the same question as "Should you murder everyone in a society that doesn't deserve to be saved?"

And it does matter why because that's the entire point of the episode and we don't even get an answer beyond The Doctor guessing despite knowing very little about the situation. Which goes back to my complaint about this season relying way too much on telling over showing.

And my point about the wall was about social media causing people to neglect (or actively tear down) the things that keep society safe and functioning. "Get vaccinated or you'll get sick and endanger others," "Vote or fascists could get into office," etc. are important messages that social media is actively trying to deny and drown out for crying out loud.

yes but we're nerds so there must be a meaning to everything.

Every other Doctor Who threat gets some kind of explanation. The Doctor even acknowledged the times he can't like in The Giggle when he was explaining he couldn't explain The Toymaker's powers.
In fact one of the plots in this season is the supernatural leaking in and how it doesn't play by the rules of our universe.

"The AI got slugs it can control from somewhere" isn't a satisfactory answer when Doctor Who has been so good at this before. Fans deserve more than the equivalent of "Somehow Palpatine returned."

Space Babies was better about explaining things than this episode and it was entirely exposition!

but "Boring, we cant be bothered" was

Exactly. It's what we're seeing in real life where people are complaining on social media about doing the boring/hard but necessary things to keep society functioning and safe.

If they want an actual satire have people deny the slugs even as they're watching them eat people, have them keep insisting that all you need to do is sprinkle salt on yourself to keep them away even as they see that salt does nothing, claim the slugs are only eating bad people, purposefully try to get people eaten by them, have people compete in "The Get As Close To A Slug As Possible Without Being Eaten Challenge," etc.

ACTUAL problems with social media as opposed to an AI villain who didn't even need to exist for this episode to work.

It's like this:

I will say that I'm glad they finally gave The Doctor stuff to say that wasn't exposition or anecdotes and I loved it.

 

[Hussar]

The slugs didn’t get explained because defeating the AI was never the point of the episode. The slugs were just a plot device. They could easily have been replaced by zombies, or anything else.

Could they have explained them? Sure. But since defeating the slugs and the ai was never the point, it isn’t really necessary to do so.

I mean I find the fact that the characters learn to walk without their bubble almost instantly to be more jarring honestly.

 

[Necropolitan]

The slugs didn’t get explained because defeating the AI was never the point of the episode. The slugs were just a plot device. They could easily have been replaced by zombies, or anything else.

Could they have explained them? Sure. But since defeating the slugs and the ai was never the point, it isn’t really necessary to do so.

I mean I find the fact that the characters learn to walk without their bubble almost instantly to be more jarring honestly.

You can't just handwave plot holes because "They weren't the focus." The point of red herrings in a mystery plot is to draw the viewer's attention from the actual clues. Which there weren't, it was all just to create fake suspense. I would have expected that from Moffat (there was a ton in Sherlock), but I expect better from Davies.

All viewers got was The Doctor hypothesizing about what was happening. For all we know the AI could have been hacked by aliens who want to watch people get eaten by slugs. It'd be the exact same plot because that's how pointless the AI plot twist was. The episode didn't need more suspense, it needed more of what actually made it good.

The episode had so much wasted potential. For example it was hinted there used to be nonwhite people in Finetime who got murdered after the city was completed. That was never followed up on.

Instead we got pee jokes, a stupid plot twist about yet another evil AI, and slugs from nowhere.

I was not surprised to learn this episode was first thought up in 2010 and subject to numerous rewrites since then. Most likely the majority of the dangling plot threads are the result of parts of the story that would have been expanded on but got cut.

 

[Hussar]

To me it’s not a plot hole at all because the slugs and the ai were never the plot.

The story was never about the slugs or the AI. That was just setting. No different than why there were tunnels under the town. Or how the Doctor happened to be on the planet in the first place.

It just doesn’t bother me.

 

[trappedslider]

To me it’s not a plot hole at all because the slugs and the ai were never the plot.

The story was never about the slugs or the AI. That was just setting. No different than why there were tunnels under the town. Or how the Doctor happened to be on the planet in the first place.

It just doesn’t bother me.

The tunnels got explain but why the doctor was there to begin with was never spoken of.