The Cutprice Guignol

I have been watching Doctor Who for more than twenty years – which means that, for an episode to surprise me as much as this one, they’ve really got to put something fresh in that projector, you know?

God, after that a drudge of a season last year, it feels bloody fantastic to be able to write about an unqualified success. And not just a success within the parameters of the existing Who show, no – a success that feels bold, new, and joyfully unique in its sense of experimentation and playfulness. So, without further ado, let’s get into Lux, and the best episode of Ncuti Gatwa’s run to date.

This was always an episode I was looking forward to, mostly due to Alan Cumming (a fellow Scottish bisexual icon) starring as the antagonist, Mr Ring-A-Ding, a 1950s cartoon serial character brought to life by a member of the Pantheon. I’ve had mixed feelings towards the Pantheon’s appearances in the show thus far – The Giggle, brilliant, the dog God of death, not so much – but this was a really strong entry into the canon of these villains, perhaps my favourite so far. That gleefully subversive use of a cheerful cartoon character as a villain to the grotesque live-action version the capturing of victims on celluloid, the introduction of the laugh from The Giggle, the backdrop of the art-deco cinema, it was exactly what I had hoped for from this episode, and, if it had just been that, I would have been very happy with it.

But it wasn’t. No, Lux is an episode of utterly meta brilliance – a love letter to the show, to the fans, to the medium of storytelling itself, all of it. I hardly even know where to start with rhapsodizing about the stuff I liked in this episode, so I’ll try and focus on the big stuff and work my way down. The episode as a whole took a really fun approach to using storytelling tropes to further the plot; I loved the bad rendering of the police officer that served as brief red herring, in particular. Visually, it’s a really impressive episode, with stacks of distinct animation styles that were all executed with surprising panache. But let’s talk about the central sequence of the episode, where Belinda and the Doctor are transported into a cartoon world and must find a way to escape – I really thought the use of this very literal character development to get us over a few storytelling hurdles that might otherwise have felt rote was so damn clever, and enormously fun to boot.

But then, the Doctor and Belinda shove their way out of the frame – and into the living room of some Doctor Who mega-fans.

Now, engaging with the fandom is a tricky business for any show, let alone one as enormous as Doctor Who – for my money, the nod towards it we got with Osgood in the Matt Smith is the closest we’ve come, and that felt more like a bit of a piss-take than a welcoming nod. And, as soon as the Doctor and Belinda stumbled out of that TV and found themselves surrounded by fans, I was a bit concerned, worried that things might go the same way. But Russel T Davies (who wrote this episode) played it perfectly for me, an affectionate love letter to the fans that allowed for the Doctor to have that brief moment of interaction with them without breaking the rules of the show (at least, entirely, yet – though I’m expecting big things for this season’s finale, if this is where episode two has taken us). The acknowledgement of the show’s tropes, strengths, even a few of last season’s dodgy outings, it was a perfectly-pitched moment, and comes at just the right time in Doctor Who’s run. With so many fans losing faith and interest in the show (and not unreasonably, to be honest), this moment was a nod and a wink with a whole lot of love behind it, and I’m obsessed.

Even beyond the obvious gimmicky nature of this episode, the story beats hit in a way they haven’t in Davies’ writing in a long time. The character of Reginald (Linus Roache), the bereaved widower keeping the cinema alive so he can keep seeing his deceased wife in celluloid form, was as bittersweet as it was beautiful – I mean, the black-and-white dancing sequence? Ridiculously lush. Much like the early Jodie Whittaker episode Rosa, I appreciated the way Lux handled issues of race – it’s an inescapable part of having these characters visit a time and a place like this one, but the matter-of-fact presentation of it keeps it from getting caught up in the fantastical elements of the story and feeling less serious as a result. The Doctor and Belinda already feel like a stronger match than he and Ruby did, and Varada Sethu has another banger episode here as the chemistry between her and Gatwa settles into something really rather special. After last year’s second episode, which skipped us six months into the future and assured us that the Doctor and Ruby really were best friends, honestly, trust me, this is a sorely-needed course correction and I’m happy to see it.

Lux, as an episode, really, really excited me, and that’s the best thing I can say about it. I truly thought the show was flagging hard at this point, even with the decent opener of The Robot Revolution, but to see Russel T Davies not only take on such a bold, meta story, but to pull it off so brilliantly and with such great writing surrounding it…I can already tell that this is going to be a special episode for me in the show’s run. I’m going to need a few more at this level to convince me that we’re out of the slump for real, but this is a damn good start.

What did you make of Lux? I get the feeling that this is going to be a divisive one given the meta-nature of it all, so I’m really keen to hear what you think about it in the comments below!

If you liked this article and want to see more stuff like it, please check out the rest of my Doctor Who reviews! I’d also love it if you would check out my horrible short story collection, and, if you’d like to support my work, please consider joining me on Patreon!

(header image via The Doctor Who Companion)