‘Doctor Who’ Season 2 Episode 2 review: “Lux”

It’s so much easier to review something that’s bad than something like this. Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 2 is a jumbled mess of ideas that only barely makes it over the finish line. But some of those ideas are begging to have full episodes to focus on them. The creativity that makes the show so fun is on full display. The threads connecting that creativity are stretching their limits, however. That makes the entirety of “Lux” a very mixed bag, even if Doctor Who wants to call me out directly for saying so. 

A Florida adventure, for some reason

“Lux” sees The Doctor and Belinda arriving in 1950’s Florida as a part of the season plot set up. The plan is to create a sort of chronological bait and hook to bypass whatever is blocking the TARDIS from Belinda’s time period. It’s a clever way to set up the next few episodes right away instead of just making them random stops. Of course, The Doctor being how he is, he can’t help but notice a local movie theatre with every door chained up. Even with Belinda’s hesitancy, Ncuti Gatwa’s charm breaks through and they investigate. 

Soon, they discover that the attendees of the theatre have disappeared without a trace. Their families, especially one teenager’s mother, have no idea why or how, and that sadness helps The Doctor win over Belinda to allow him to try to resolve the situation. Gatwa gets to play his soft side when speaking with the mother (Lucy Thackeray) in a moment of real kindness. It’s particularly nice in comparison to what else happens in this beginning part. 

To the credit of the episode, the sort of obvious issue of race segregation is touched upon as part of this investigation. This period of our troubled history is not something new to Doctor Who, but it is new in who embodies the character. Unfortunately, that also changes the meaning of that character’s words. In response to Belinda’s discomfort about the overt racism, The Fifteenth Doctor chooses to brag about his own prowess at toppling evil, but that he sometimes “lets” people do it themselves. 

And now, the part where we have to talk about politics

I get the fundamental issues with time travel stories and the most atrocious moments of human history. One must be willing to suspend belief and accept that there are reasons why a time traveler can’t just go about stopping every bad thing. There’s an episode of this show called “Let’s Kill Hitler” that does not, very notably, do that. I honestly don’t like having to stop talking about science fiction and start talking about politics every week. But Russell T. Davies is going to insist upon it, so here we go. 

This episode didn’t need to be in Florida. It didn’t need a sidebar about segregation. In fact, outside of the diner waiter specifically not enforcing it and a fake out later in the episode, it’s not even an inconvenience for the larger plot. It’s just here. The Black actor playing The Doctor is asked to keep it calm and quiet, to effectively say that “it’s okay, eventually these Yankees will sort themselves out” even as it’s becoming ever more clear that we have yet to sort our bigotry issues (and the same could be said for the UK.) It’s disappointing for a character who has grown so much. Twelve punched a guy for being racist towards his companion, for crying out loud. The excellent “Dot and Bubble” was just last season. I can’t unsee the double standard. 

The second Davies run of Doctor Who needs to decide how much it cares about the politics it presents. They either matter greatly or they don’t. For this episode, they don’t. That’s disappointing, but let’s focus instead on cartoons. 

Don’t make me laugh

Because that’s what Belinda and The Doctor find in the theatre. A walking, talking cartoon named Mr. Ring-A-Ding (guest star Alan Cumming.) He’s escaped from the animated short he originates from, due to what is quickly revealed to be the machinations of another member of The Pantheon. The titular “Lux” is the self professed god of light is now occupying the body of Mr. Ring-A-Ding and ironically cursed to his mannerisms. 

It doesn’t take much to get a handle on what’s going on from here – The Doctor has found himself in yet another game with the goal of finding the one quirk that can banish this entity from this existence. Naturally, Lux is also behind the disappearances, trapping the theatergoers in film and holding the projectionist hostage with visions of his dead wife from a family film. 

More like the god of movies

“Film” might feel like a more fitting theme for Lux, but Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 2 doesn’t spend long in the theatre. Instead, Lux traps The Doctor and Belinda in an animation cell like the one he escaped from. This gives the two the first real opportunity to talk to each other properly. In order to stop being 2D, they are forced to “gain depth” by sharing their fears – Belinda’s that The Doctor can’t get her home, and his that she might be right. It’s a good moment that leverages the weekly story to actually progress the relationship at the season’s center. 

It’s at this point that “Lux” begins to get far more hectic. Gaining the third dimension doesn’t free The Doctor and Belinda from Lux’s machinations. Instead, they find themselves trapped in the frames of a film reel and have to get creative about escaping properly. There’s a gag where they pull on the actual frames of the show to try to unseat the real. When that doesn’t work (and we get a pointless reminder that this is in segregation Florida), Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 2 points in a new direction: the screen. 

Blink is really that good though

Of course, Doctor Who has winked in the direction of the fourth wall plenty of times over its run. Some fans even predicted that this very episode would include what ends up playing out: The Doctor crawls out of a local UK television to discover that he is a TV character, surrounded by a group of mega-fans. 

Frankly, it’s a pretty great bit; right down to the fez and scarf. There’s a small amount of ribbing at the expense of viewers – insisting “Blink” is the best episode of the series over and over again is particularly funny – but not in a derogatory way. Instead, The Doctor and Belinda sit down with the three and engage with the fans of the show honestly. Gatwa’s charisma is such a boon for things like this, he exudes such a genuine curiosity and engagement that eschews the cockiness and detachment of previous incarnations.

Spending more than five minutes helps make a character sympathetic

And that’s why I feel like “Lux” is in a strange spot. I would have preferred this episode be a two-parter that cut off at the shock reveal of the audience inclusion. That way, there would have been even more time to sit in the fun of this moment. This isn’t just an indulgent critique, much like the animation detour this sequence should have given Belinda a chance to learn more about The Doctor through discussing some of his other adventures. It would also help make the emotional impact that this scene tries to elicit hit hard. 

Obviously, the show can’t have The Doctor just go off and Deadpool his way through the rest of the series. So, in the last few moments of the scene, the fans reveal that the entire scenario is more of Lux’s game. They’re not actually TV characters and these new friends will cease to be once the episode moves on. It’s played up very emotionally, including Gatwa’s silent tears, but the entire sequence moves so fast that it’s hard to feel anything but awe that they did it at all.

Lux is a gorgeous episode

The fans do give The Doctor a proper hint on how to escape: film burns if stopped. The two stop the film reel completely and burn it out. The Doctor suffers a burn during the process but uses reserve regeneration energy – which might as well just be magic at this point – to heal. That tips off Lux to what exactly is special about The Doctor’s body and decides to try to take that power to make himself fully 3D and unleash chaos.

Lux’s transformations at this point highlight how visually strong this episode is. Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 2 is easily one of the best looking episodes of the current run. Costumes are appropriate and vibrant without looking cheap. The switch from context to context is well done and each challenge of the production is up to the task. The pinnacle is Lux himself, whether he’s Roger Rabbit’ing around or becoming a grotesque 3D nightmare complete with “edgy” shading. 

One too many ideas

But before long, it’s all up in smoke. Not just the film reels in the theatre storage, but “Lux” as well. The animated god expands in size when exposed to sunlight, eventually merging with and becoming the very concept of light itself. There’s probably a meme in the continuously expanding face of Mr. Ring-A-Ding, but it left me with a lot of questions about how the Pantheon works. For example, The Toymaker and Lux both seem to be their own Harbingers, but “The Giggle” hadn’t established that concept. Sutekh and The Maestro both did in fact seem to have dominion over their aspects, but by all accounts Lux didn’t even fully grasp his own concepts. 

That might be because “Lux” is playing with so many ideas that there’s a possibility that being a god of light wasn’t the centering factor of the character. Those ideas weigh heavily on the episode overall. I would have gladly taken a full episode of The Doctor trying to escape a movie, even an animated one. Same for an episode where he somehow meets some real Whovians. And yes, I would gladly have taken an episode in which the first Black numbered Doctor directly confronts a very real instance of racial bigotry. My hope is that future episode writers see these ideas and decide to run with them.

Doctor Who Season 2 is available on Disney+.

Featured images via BBC/Disney