Director: Amanda Brotchie
Writer: Russell T Davies
Main Cast: Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu, Alan Cumming, Linus Roache
Streaming Service: Disney+, iPlayer
(⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2)
“I’m a two dimensional character, you can’t expect a backstory!” – Lux (Alan Cumming)
Recap time, baby!
“LUX” opens with an audience inside a movie theater watching newsreels before their film. The projectionist, Mr. Pye (Linus Roache), puts on an old cartoon featuring the character Mr. Ring-A-Ding. Through some unexplained light magic, the character on the screen is given sentience when the god of light, Lux, is transferred into the fictional figure. He crawls out of the screen and then attacks the audience.
It then cuts to where the previous episode left off, with the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) unable to take Belinda (Varada Sethu) home. They ended up making a stop in 1952 in Miami, FL, to try and create a signal that could help them bypass whatever barrier kept them from returning to the proper time and place. However, while there, they stumble upon the movie theater from the opening scene, which has now been long closed. Sensing something is wrong, the Doctor goads Belinda into solving the mystery. And thus begins another Doctor Who adventure…
After getting some information from people in the diner across the street, as well as some well-placed reminders that this is ’50s America and Jim Crow is still in effect, the two make their way to the theater and learn of Lux and eventually what he did to the audience at the beginning of the episode – trapping them on film stock. Mr. Pye is still alive, however, and has been feeding Lux different features to give him energy because Lux has allowed Pye at times to play a home video of his deceased wife, which in turn enables that image of her to leave the screen, and Pye can interact with her.
We learn that Lux is one of the gods and he traps both the Doctor and Belinda within the screen. They’re animated for a moment, but through some absolutely wonky dialogue are able to become fully 3D again. The Doctor and Belinda attempt to escape and when they do they suddenly find themselves surreally in the “real world,” or a facsimile of it, where the two meet longtime Doctor Who fans who watch the show. We’ll talk more about that in a bit.
After their escapades within Lux’s manifestations, the Doctor and Belinda go up against Lux again. Lux then traps the Doctor and begins to absorb the Doctor’s regeneration energy (now called bigeneration energy), which turns Lux into a truly terrifying, full-realized, 3D monster. Belinda and Mr. Pye set the theater’s film reels on fire, causing an explosion and subjecting Lux to the night sky. Taking in the infinite light, Lux then becomes infinite light himself, now harmless and unable to hurt anyone.
The missing audience members are freed, and the Doctor and Belinda leave. Mrs. Flood makes one final appearance, claiming the show ends on May 24th – which is the date they can’t return to currently. Interestingly, that date in our real world corresponds with the release of the penultimate episode of this season, which means the bad guys are super sure they’re going to win…whatever it is they’re fighting.
Along Came the Gods
The Pantheon storyline, which began way back in “The Giggle” with the return of the Toymaker, has been kind of a mess so far. We’ve so far met the Toymaker (a returning villain), the god of games; Maestro, the god of music and the Toymaker’s progeny; Sutehk, the god of death (another returning villain) who was only recently made the god of death and wasn’t always that; now Lux, the god of light; and elsewhere we know the Trickster from The Sarah Jane Adventures is the god of traps; it’s been confirmed that Mara (another classic era villain) is the god of beasts; and finally in a recent 15th Doctor comic the Doctor and Ruby go up against the Scream Sommelier, the god of screams. And somehow Mrs. Flood ties into all of this.
That’s a lot of gods, but we still have absolutely no inkling of what their whole deal is yet. It’s certainly an interesting idea to have the Doctor go up against so-called Gods within the Whoniverse, especially after the insinuation that Jesus and thus the singular God exist in this world, which is the note that Joy To The World, last year’s Christmas special, ends on. With DW consistently trying to get bigger and bigger every season, you can’t really get any bigger than this.
The problem is that we get these adventures with the Doctor going up against a god, and then at the end, we’re just left with cryptic messages for what’s to come, with very little substance to tie us over until the next showdown. The adventure itself may be fun, but the mystery so far has just been so diluted that personally, I don’t care. Not yet, anyway. My patience can only go so far when you’re putting a mystery so front and center, but none of the clues add up to anything that can be traced.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what happens on May 24th.
The Light at the End
The episode is pretty good compared to the season opener. At least it’s a lot more fun thanks to the experience of the villain. Alan Cumming is great as Lux/Mr. Ring-A-Ding, he’s got a lot of great lines and is chewing the scenery. We don’t really get any sort of explanation for why he comes to life, and it’s still confusing to me how a god of light that was already harmless light is defeated by becoming harmless light. Was it just reverting him back to his previous state? He seemed really happy about that, maybe he hated being physical and was just excited to go back to his previous existence. This is the kind of stuff I’m talking about when I’m talking about this pantheon storyline being a mess so far. Those are interesting ideas, but there is very little exploration of those ideas.
I really enjoyed the Doctor and Belinda’s rapport with one another this episode, more so than last. They both looked incredible in their 50s outfits. I do think Belinda will end up enjoying this adventure with the Doctor, the more it goes on, but it’s understandable how hesitant she is at first. Mr. Pye was fine; we get the one fact about them that’s supposed to make us care about him as a character, so that when he sacrifices himself at the end, it’s heartbreaking. I don’t think Davies balances that aspect particularly well on paper, but the performance given by Linus Roache helps a lot.
It may come across as me being harsh on this episode, and I’m sorry if it does. To be clear, I enjoyed this episode quite a bit, mostly because of the Lux aspects and how much I just enjoy Gatwa and Sethu as actors. The finale, when Lux becomes one with the universe, was filled with incredible imagery; it’s a real highlight moment. I also liked the scene where the Doctor and Belinda are trapped on the screen, flipping through different screens and trying to figure out where they can escape. This playing with format we’re getting, including last episode’s mind-tripping imagery in that finale, has been the most fun of this season.
Who(vians) are we?
That brings me to discussing the outlier in the room. The Whovian scene. I could take it or leave it. The Doctor and Belinda sitting down to chat with in-story stand-ins for real fans can either be well done and funny, or cringe beyond belief and this straddles that line. Think Galaxy Quest as representing the really fun version.
We’ve had a lot of fourth wall breaking in the last season and now this season of Doctor Who. Before then, I think the only actual fourth wall break was the first Doctor (William Hartnell) wishing people at home a Merry Christmas in the episode The Feast of Steven. And though that was an impromptu thing, it seems Davies is somehow trying to make that sort of an ability within the show? I don’t know.
Anyways, the fans are fine. They are kind of annoying, but being around fandoms of many kinds enough I can confirm that a lot of us are annoying. Still, at points they fell like caricatures and perhaps that was the point given they’re ultimately something Lux conjured up and mention they don’t get last names within the story. I just think more nuance could’ve been given to the scene as a whole.
The insistence from the fans, saying that “Blink” is their favorite episode, a Tenth Doctor story, was really funny. I’ll give them that. Whovians, especially fans growing up with the show within the last twenty years, love to say that’s their favorite episode. I have too, before, so I’m not immune to it. That was certainly a necessary callout. Lol. I also like that these characters survive in the end, meaning somewhere out there they’re living, attending Gallifrey One, and telling everyone about how they met the Doctor.
The Doctor and his Vindicator, © BBC and Disney 2025Making fun of your own fanbase, or a known fanbase, can be hit and miss. It really requires knowing exactly what parts to make fun of (lovingly) and what parts deserve being called out. I don’t think this hits either completely, but it’s not offensive. It just exists, and it feels like it doesn’t have to, which is probably the most egregious part. If you’re going to include it, make it actually mean something.
Ultimately, a fun episode with some fun ideas and concepts. Great imagery, fun dynamics, good on Davies for not whitewashing American history – it wasn’t the point of the story to deal with it, but it’s necessary for part of the plot and the world building that it be brought up – and the villain was one of Who’s more interesting creations. He might be my favorite god so far.
Still, it’s uneven and there are many little parts that I didn’t care for either. I do appreciate the ways in which Davies is trying new things within the episodes themselves, but I just wish he’d land some of them better. I know he has it in him. I watched his entire previous run as showrunner and his work across three whole Whoniverse shows at the time. Including some standout stories from the last two years.
Excited for the next episode, though, “The Well.” Let’s see what’s in store!
