Lux - a review

There's a fan theory which has been doing the rounds recently, that all is not quite as straightforward as it seems with recent stories. The idea is that some god-like entity has been playing with the Doctor and he's actually trapped in something akin to the Truman Show. I believe this arose from Mrs Flood's breaking of the fourth wall. She isn't, says the theory. 

She's actually talking to whoever is observing the Doctor, rather than we, the TV audience.

I bring this up now as I just spotted something similar in the preview clip they showed for Lux at the beginning of the week. The Doctors says "Cut!", then wonders who he is asking to do this. 

This may tie in with some of the episode titles later in the series, such as The Reality War.

But enough speculation, what of Lux itself?

Well, once again this isn't exactly original at first glance. Cartoon characters coming to life, or other fictional characters stepping out of the screen into the real world, has been done many times before - as has our heroes being transformed into cartoon form (such as when the Winchester brothers had an encounter with Scooby Doo and his gang in a later Supernatural episode.

The Winchesters also met fans of their's, who had been reading of their adventures rather than watching them on screen).

The initial setup is reminiscent of the Torchwood instalment Out of the Rain, in which figures emerge from celluloid and attack people. In that instance, the Ghostmaker stole his victims' lifeforce, whereas here the villain of the piece traps them in celluloid. He is the 'Lux' of the title, who proves to be another of the ancient pantheon - the God of Light, who is related to the Toymaker and Maestro. He finds form thanks to moonlight reflecting off a teaspoon into the light from a cinema projector, a cartoon of Mr Ring-a-Ding being shown at the time - leaving him in this two-dimensional form.

It transpires that the bigeneration has left the Doctor with a reservoir of artron energy, and Lux plans to tap this to give him proper corporeality so he can exit the cinema into the outside world and consume some of the incandecence of that lovely new atomic energy.

The action takes place in a well-realised art deco Florida setting of 1952. There is much talk of the racial segregation of the time, especially significant for this particular TARDIS pairing.

This was obviously an important element of Rosa, but the companion worrying about the social mores of a historical period goes right back to Martha Jones. It's discussed here, since this is the companion's first trip into the past, but isn't relevant to the plot.

Spotting a chain locking a door at 4am might not be the most obvious thing which might lead the Doctor to investigate something. I would have said that the cinema being lit up at 4am was far more suspicious.

The Doctor and Belinda hear about some cinemagoers who went missing 3 months previously from the venue, and meet the mother of one victim. Finding out that the sole survivor, Reg the projectionist, is inside provides the impetus for our heroes to break in.

A minor quibble: at one point the mum mentions her son loving "the pictures". This sounded really odd, and I'm sure it's because an American is far more likely to talk about going to the movies, rather than to the pictures. Feel free to let me know if I'm mistaken.

It's once the Doctor and Belinda have met Lux that the story takes a series of bizarre turns. First they are turned into cartoon versions of themselves, and find they are trapped on celluloid. The phrase "a well rounded individual" takes on a whole new meaning as they try to find a way to escape. This involves playing with the visual language of film, as they try to manipulate the film frames. Then, things go really weird as they break out of a TV screen and are faced with... Doctor Who fans.

With Cyberman and Meep t-shirts, fezes and overlong stripy scarves, they represent the younger end of the nerdy fan spectrum. Last time RTD represented fandom in a story, he came in for a bit of stick. Here, they are presented more sympathetically. The Doctor discovers that he's a fictional character, in a TV show, but - of course - it turns out to be a fiction within a fiction. If there is some Truman Show thing going on, it's not being revealed this early. Interestingly, there's a post modern, post credits sequence (actually mid credit) in which the fans realise that they aren't fiction - which might imply that the Doctor is the subject if a TV show after all...

The resolution wasn't anticlimactic in any way. The Doctor's being drained, and both Belinda and Reg step up to save him and defeat Lux. Rather than the God of Light being destroyed, he actually gets what he wants and transcends to a cosmic plane.

Poor Reg dies, but he's okay about this as he hopes to be reunited with his deceased wife. The missing folk are brought back. It's just one of the more emotional sections of the episode, the other big one being the sequence with the fans. Warning: the Doctor cries yet again, but this time it feels justified.

As the Doctor and Belinda depart, Mrs Flood turns up. This is the first time we've seen her away from a contemporary setting, and she doesn't talk to the screen for a change.

Overall, a most enjoyable episode with striking imagery and some bizarre twists and turns. Performances are great across the board - special mention to Alan Cumming for voicing Mr Ring-a-Ding / Lux. Linus Roache (son of Corries William Roache) is the tragic Reg, and Lucy Thackeray is the missing Tommy Lee's mother, a sympathetic character who refuses to give up hope and who clearly has no time for the race laws. It's quite a shock when she appears to have betrayed the Doctor and called the cops on him, but it's one of those fictions within fictions.

This series is managing to shape up nicely so far. Next week's episode looks well impressive (no pun intended).