The second episode of this series of Doctor Who gets weird, much like the second episode in the previous series, which ends up not being a coincidence. The big thing in the advertisements going into the episode was the whole “cartoon come to life” and that was handled brilliantly. Sadly they also stepped into the fourth wall breaking, “what if the Doctor came into our world where he’s a TV character!” trope that, as I’ve said a few times on this site, I HATE. Oh well… let’s see how these two aspects balance out, shall we?
In order to get Belinda (Varada Sethu) back home to May 2025 The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) needs to use some random technobabble machine to anchor them there and avoid the mysterious force bouncing them away so they arrive in 1950s Florida, where a cinema has been locked up thanks to a cartoon character stepping out of the screen and seemingly killing all the people watching, as we the audience saw in the pre-credits sequence. After a quick visit to a diner (where The Doctor and Belinda have a quick chat about the segregation that was still around at the time and given their skin colour that might be an issue) they head into the cinema and soon meet Mr. Ring-a-ding (voiced by Alan Cumming) whose catchphrase is “don’t make me laugh” and when The Doctor asks why he replies with the same laugh as the Toymaker and reveals himself to be Lux, the God of Light much like The Toymaker and the Maestro were also Gods of the same pantheon from the previous series. They get a quick helping hand from the projectionist Reginald Pye (Linus Roache) but he’s not willing to help kill the creature as it uses its power to bring his dead wife out of the screen from one of his old home movies.
I think this episode is the first to have The Doctor realise that his current body might be an issue depending on the Earth time period he arrives in… though it hasn’t hurt in a few trips to the past in the previous season!
Lux catches up with our main duo and uses a pair of projectors to transport them into a cartoon reel, which they eventually get out of by giving their own “characters” depth and emotion, before pushing out of a TV screen and seemingly into the real world where a trio of super-nerdy Whovian stereotypes are watching the show and geek out, parody the worst kind of internet fans and then admit they’re not actually real and The Doctor and Belinda are before essentially telling them how the episode will end “because its so obvious” and then our main duo manages to pop out back into the real world to face off with their enemy one final time…
As I said, I really enjoyed “Mr. Ring-a-ding” as a villain in the same way I really enjoyed The Maestro from Episode 2 of the previous series, I do like a good cheesy villain and a bit of fantasy here and there, but boy-oh-boy did I hate the scene in the “real world”. Hearing The Doctor trying to say how his recent episodes were better than fan favourite Blink was … ugh, and again why they had to be social awkward shut-ins that confess to being really annoying I don’t know. Russel T. Davies does know that they’re not the majority of viewers, right? I mean, I’m all for ripping into fans who take things too seriously, but this kind of endearing nerdiness seems an odd thing to strike at. Also, were we supposed to feel sorry for them as they “died” due to not being real as The Doctor left? Did The Doctor really have to shed a tear, AGAIN, over a tiro of fictional nerdy characters we met five minutes ago? Gah, never mind, it was five minutes in an otherwise really fun 50, so I’ll move on with my life…
The Continuity:
Things have come a long way since “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” …
Not a lot to say. Lux is as mentioned a member of the same pantheon as seen with The Toymaker in “The Giggle” and The Maestro in “The Devil’s Chord”, as well as Sutekh being retroactively made one in the pervious series finale “The Legend of Ruby Sunday / Empire of Death”.
I’ll also mention that this isn’t the first time The Doctor has broken into a version of “our world” and interacted with fans (or the actor who plays him, which is thankfully not a trope they went with here…), the Eighth Doctor comic “TV Action!” and the Eleventh Doctor comic “The Girl Who Loved Doctor Who” are two that immediately come to mind.
Overall Thoughts:
The Doctor mirrors most fans’ expressions when they read the synopsis of the episode…
“Lux” has some great fun with its literal cartoon villain and even stops to make a point about racism, but it also stops for five minutes to rag on Doctor Who fans for being nerdy and annoying before carrying on the with the plot, which some might fan endearing or amusing but I found it just took me out of the story completely and generally annoyed me. Still not enough to make me score it badly though, the rest of the story was just that good…
Lux ties The Doctor up and begins to force regeneration energy out of him as it’s so pure and life-giving and begins to get a 3D body out of it, while Belinda acts on the information the trio of nerds gave them about the “so obvious” ending and makes a pile of film reels to burn and create an explosion, but before she can find a match Mr. Pye arrives, tells her to leave and then starts the fire himself… and then just stands there throwing match after match instead of running himself and then seemingly dies in the explosion, so… he chose suicide over being without his wife again, I guess. Now THAT’S worth shedding a tear over, Doctor…
Goodbye Mr. Pye, you’ll never be forgotten… wait, everyone’s already forgotten about you. Oh well.
The Explosion causes a large hole in the wall that not only frees The Doctor but bathes Lux in sunlight, causing him to grow and grow and grow and then eventually get absorbed into the light of the universe itself, becoming one with it and fading from consciousness. The Doctor and Belinda escape and free the 15 people who were absorbed into the screen when Ring-a-ding first stepped out of it for a happy ending, well, apart from Mr. Pye but nobody mentions him. We do get a mid-credits scene where the three Whovian geeks are revealed to somehow still be alive though! …
Hogan Reviews 