Review: Doctor Who: Lux

Way back in the late sixties, Doctor Who presented a story set in the Land of Fiction. 'The Mind Robber' included the Medusa, a Unicorn, Clockwork Soldiers, the Minotaur and a strange man named Gulliver ... Doctor Who is no stranger to episodes which push the boundaries and play fast and loose with 'reality' as we know it. And so 'Lux' is the latest entry to go down this route and to present a story which is very inspired by the TV series Sapphire and Steel as well as allowing the characters to have a little fun with the nature of film and television.

Unlike 'The Robot Revolution', 'Lux' is fairly simple. At a cinema, the Palazzo, in 1952 in Miami, Florida, a stray beam of moonlight reflects off a spoon and joins with the light from the projector and brings a cartoon character called Mr Ring-a-Ding to life. The character then traps the patrons of the cinema in a strip of film where they live on forever.

Unable to get to 24 May 2025, the Doctor decides to try and use a circuitous route, and so arrives in 1952 to find the cinema locked and chained, and segregation in place (the cinema and the coffee shop across the road are 'whites only'. The Doctor being the Doctor ignores this, and gets some information from a lady in the coffee shop, before he and Belinda break into the Palazzo to confront Mr Ring-a-Ding.

Turns out that he is one of the Pantheon of Gods mentioned by the Toymaker, the God of Light, and introduces himself with the laugh from 'The Giggle'. He turns the Doctor and Belinda into animated versions of themselves, and they have to try and work out how to escape.

I liked the idea of giving them 'depth' by adding emotion and backstory to their 'characters' which brings them back to themselves, but they're still trapped in the 'film'. In true Loony Tunes/Screwy Squirrel style, they break through the screen at the front and are confronted by three fans of Doctor Who ... it's all gone proper meta with them arguing that the best story was 'Blink' and that they love the show. But the Doctor and Belinda have to return to the screen to continue the fight, so they do this and end up back in the cinema, where they call on the projectionist Reg to burn the acetates and destroy the cinema. He is encouraged to do so by his dead wife who he had a reel of film of, and the explosion blows out the back of the cinema and allows sunlight in.

Mr Ring-a-Ding bathes in the light and grows larger and larger until he grows so large he eclipses the Earth and floats off into space! It's a little strange as it left me wondering what Mr Ring-a-Ding's plan was ... he could never, by his own admission, leave the cinema because the sunlight would do this, so what was he hoping to gain?

So the Cinema is saved, and the people trapped in the film strip are returned to life and leave to find their families and friends. All is good.

Except that Mrs Flood is there again, telling people the show ends on 24 May ...

This date is quite clever at this point, as it's when the penultimate episode of this season is expected to air ... so how did they know that when they made the show a year or whatever ago. I suspect plans for this season have been in progress for some time, and this included the air dates ... and maybe, just maybe, all the fan 'noise' at the moment predicting doom and gloom and the show's cancellation and whatever (Doctor Who must be the only show on television where a proportion of the fanbase actively campaigns for it to be taken off air. Very bizarre!) is smoke in the wind, and there is a plan ... the BBC, Bad Wolf, Disney and BBC Studios just aren't prepared to reveal it as yet ... all part of the fun and games of the season.

We shall see!

So here I loved this story, It's simple to follow, a neat idea, and riffs on another of my favourite shows. Mr Ring-a-Ding is marvellously created, and I liked how he became 3-D as he drew in the Doctor's energies (but how much energy does a bi-regenerated Time Lord have? Quite a bit it seems!!) and Alan Cumming's vocal talents for the character were superb.

The subsidiary character of Reg was nicely played, and the whole segregation thing was more throwaway - it didn't probably need to be there at all - but overall the effect was very pleasing. Even the fourth wall breaking and the meta-playing was OK for me. The three Doctor Who fans were a little stereotypical (recalling the character of Whizz Kid in 'The Greatest Show in the Galaxy') but one had exceptional taste in wearing a 'Telos' T Shirt. Thanks Russell! Overall again it worked ... achieving something that probably only Doctor Who could achieve in this day and age.

I'm reminded of the episode of UFO where they end up running around the real TV Studios where the show was made ... but is there an episode of any science fiction TV show where the characters actually meet the actors who play them ... in a very meta way? Some alternate dimension type thing? I'm sure people will let me know if there are.

A great second episode for this season. Clever and self-aware in a way rarely seen in Doctor Who before.