Their capital city being a bunch of egg-shaped buildings around a giant birdcage building was a hilarious touch.

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).

Actually this brought up a completely buried memory for me. For a few years I lived in the same neighborhood as him – at the time, cool guy that I was, I had a Starfleet badge on my coat, and one day I was at the grocery store and had an awkward moment with him where our carts got sort of wedged together negotiating the too-narrow checkout lanes. He saw my pin and gave me a Vulcan salute as he moved into his lane. He seemed nice and a bit sheepish. The staff at the coffee shop I used to go to told me he was extremely lovely.

Breaking the fourth wall is a Doctor Who tradition - the First, Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, Eleventh, and Twelfth Doctors all directly address the camera in addition to the Fifteenth, as do River Song, Martha, Clara, and various Classic villains. I don't understand why people suddenly need some sort of in-universe explanation for it. It's a narrative technique, and Doctor Who is a goofy camp show that's always been flexible enough, playing with various tropes, that it works. Davies explains it perfectly in the link: "I mean, you would [be taken out of the story by it] if it was Pride and Prejudice, that would be odd. But there’s something showy about Doctor Who, there’s something proscenium arch about it. There’s something arch about it, full stop."

This sort of needing an in-universe explanation for every theatrical device or inconsistency is how you get garbage like Trek's Klingon augment virus.

Real M'Benga erasure here

I struggle to think of a Trek character more Star Trek than Saru. DSC has its (sometimes severe, sometimes not) flaws, but it has an impressive track record of occasionally absolutely nailing how to make some of the trekkiest Trek characters.

It's going to be interesting where the series ends up in the inevitable reevaluation once a few years have passed.

Man, you have to watch the one with Giant Spock ("The Infinite Vulcan")

I just finished watching Space Babies - I have to say, I missed this. It’s been a long time since Doctor Who was fun - I love all Doctor Who, even the bad ones (especially the bad ones) but my heart is really with the bizarre, campy, man-in-a-rubber-suit style episodes like this one. If anyone was worried this was going to get Disney-fied, this is RTD at the most RTD. I might as well have been watching the Ninth Doctor take Rose to the End of the World. Ncuti is the Doctor the very instant he steps on screen, and the Doctor/Ruby chemistry is absolutely perfect. I don’t love her being a mystery box but as long as the explanation is suitably weird I’ll go with it.

A bit of a new experience for me in that this time I got to watch it with my daughter — she’s nine and a huge Trek fan. She liked Church on Ruby Road and we watched a bit of other doctors, but I wasn’t sure she’d take to this, but she was just beaming the whole time. Bit of a new experience for me because other than some Tom Baker episodes on old VHS tapes, I was an adult by the time I came to DW. It’s fun to see it through the eyes of a child.

Also, uh, did the Doctor just suggest that the world of Star Trek is real in his universe?

I don't know how you could get past Capaldi's first series and not see what an incredible Doctor he is.

I tried so hard to like things in the Chibnall era –– I was so excited when Whittaker was cast and I think she did the best she could -- but after reading Elizabeth Sandifer's evisceration of the Chibnall ethos in her piece on Kerblam! (which I think also applies to ENT, tbh) I think I've come to terms with the fact that I'm not really going to get there.

As much as I want every Star Trek show to now have one musical episode once a season –– just to annoy Subspace Rhapsody grinches –– I don't think it's funny enough for Lower Decks. I would love to see an episode where, like, the same anomaly happens but it makes everyone speak exclusively in limericks, or some shit like that.

Totally, thank you. Star Trek is goofy as hell sometimes. I think if the Kelpian kid had been a plot device isolated to a single episode, no one would have batted an eye if it were on TNG or VOY. But as the reveal of a season long mystery, it was a big woof for a season and a concept that I was really into.

That said, season 4 really picked up that briefly dropped ball. I think the last two episodes of S4, plus the one with the debate at Federation HQ, will go down as Trek classics once Disco ages a bit.

Are you implying that there’s a joke in a Canon Connections post? Inconceivable.