Logline
The Doctor’s quest to get Belinda home takes the TARDIS to Miami in 1952, where an abandoned cinema is hiding a terrifying secret. Can the Doctor uncover Lux’s power?
Written by: Russell T Davies
Directed by: Amanda Brotchie
Loved it.
First off, the premise is great. It’s a trope that’s been done quite a lot now (childhood toy/show/experience gone wrong), but it still works well. Great animation and voice acting on the cartoon characters, including the Doctor and the Nurse when they as they went from 2D out to 4th wall-busting characters.
A thought occurred to me while watching - right now the BBC is partnered with Disney. If they had partnered with HBO instead like they have on other dramas… we would have had an episode full of bugs bunny and “What’s up doc”, a la Space Jam. I’m not sure if that would have been better or worse. :)
Breaking the 4th wall and going meta can be difficult, but I think it paid off. The “real” fans poking fun at the show’s nonsense was self aware which helps. All the fans saying “Blink”, an episode the Doctor was hardly even in, was hilarious.
I am glad they did keep follow on with Belinda really wanting to go home and not mess around in an abandoned building for at least one more episode.
I still have no clue what’s going on with the larger plot about Mrs Flood.
I am glad they did keep follow on with Belinda really wanting to go home
Belinda’s character seems a lot more nuanced at this stage than, say, Martha Jones was in her second episode. She was very open to a little adventure…as long as it didn’t delay her trip home.
Sent to me by a friend:
I have to say, to me, this is as much an instant classic as “73 yards” and “Dot and bubble”. Maybe even more so. This one warrants a rewatch or two. So bloody good!
I don’t usually do this “immediate reaction” thing, but what the hell. This episode was quite exciting, so I’m going to nerd out.
These are my notes as the episode went on:
Is [the atom bomb] the pinnacle of man’s creative genius?
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Uh, no. But a good plant for later on.
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Nice cold open, I’m getting flashbacks to “Idiot’s lantern”, and I dont mind at all. Surely it’s intentional that the projectionist is called (Mag)Pye, right?
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We had a TARDIS scene! Where they’re just moving ahead with character pieces from last episode! That’s a nice change of pace over last season. And did I detect a musical Amy flourish when Belinda talks about her family?
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Will that V(ortex )indicator work as expected? I’ll reserve judgment for later episodes. Does “as expected” really involve getting out and involved in segregated Florida? Belinda just wants to gtfo, as any sane person would, given the chance.
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Speaking of, I like how the segregation was handled with seriousness, but wasn’t turned into a hamfisted Teaching Opportunity. We have two coloured leads, they react and that’s all we need.
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The empty theatre is chilling… especially given we have two POC who just broke a padlock to get in. Oh crap, did they just ruin the sound of tap dancing for everybody?
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F—, the giggle…! 😬 The “gods of chaos” shtick is getting a little formulaic already, but there is more meat to this episode than to “Devil’s chord”, and as much flavour.
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So that’s the week’s big bad woof, Lux Imperator. And their harbinger is Rock Hudson…? Okay, I’ll roll with that, but also note that of all the “gods” rattled off in “Legend of Ruby Sunday” — this one wasn’t mentioned at all.
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“Don’t expect back story” is a terrific line coming from Mr Ring-a-ding, and it carries over to Belinda and the Doctor acquiring (emotional) depth once they’re animated.
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The hand animation on Mr Ring-a-ding is absolutely lovely, but I think they got notes from the BBC home media department that animations of Belinda and the Doctor mustn’t at any point outshine the low budget animated reconstructions of lost episodes?
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Again, the period racism plays in. When it turns out Lux is weaponising it against the Doctor and Belinda, it just adds to his villainy. I was shocked initially at Mrs Lowenstein switching sides like this, happy it was a deceit.
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Oh, I LOLed when the Doctor and Belinda paused to consider the fourth wall! Rarely have I felt so literally seen by a TV show 😄 And there was a real thrill of not knowing what was going to happen next — which is even rarer.
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“OMG, I’m on TV!” The (fictional) fans were lovely, and tragic, and clever — and they’re right, “Blink” is the best. Until, maybe, now? I hope there is a full deleted episode of them just chatting with the Doctor and Belinda.
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And we’re back in the real world. Odd that, in an episode featuring an animated character, Linus Roache’s projectionist seems the most cartoonish? It’s really his backstory that needs fleshing out. Not much depth to him, sadly.
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Turns out, 3D Lux has serious Five nights at Freddie’s vibes! But in the end — Fiat Lux, and he’s all flat again. But growing. There is an unspoken element here that fear and imagination has power in the dark, but I like the implication that Lux just gets diluted in all the light of the universe. I think there was a similar resolution in an '80s Fantastic four comic?
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“Those things we said when we were really scared? They’re still true.” Another of many good lines in this episode.
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Hello Mrs Flood! Again with the metatextual commentary? At least she wasn’t speaking to the camera this time, that would have been too much of a good thing. Oof, if “the show ends on May 24th” they better broadcast the season finale on that day, too. Otherwise it’s going to be a real short season.
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The fans lived! And did I notice they had surnames in the credits? If so, that’s probably very intentional.
No need for spoiler tags in these threads, people should know what they’re getting into!
I don’t think I’m quite as high on it as you are, but that was a lot of fun.
I’m getting flashbacks to “Idiot’s lantern”
For sure - I know that’s not a terribly well-regarded episode, but this was a good execution of that basic premise. I thought a lot about “Flatline” as well.
I like how the segregation was handled with seriousness, but wasn’t turned into a hamfisted Teaching Opportunity.
I’ve often thought that there’s a core tension with addressing civil rights issues on DW - they’re important, and they absolutely should be addressed…but they also run the risk of dominating every single episode in which they’re relevant (which, unfortunately, is a lot of them). I think it was handled pretty well in the Whitaker era, and that continues here.
F—, the giggle…!
A blindingly obvious connection that I didn’t expect (mainly because I don’t spend a lot of time speculating). I’m actually glad RTD continues to lean into these incomprehensible beings that play by their own rules.
The (fictional) fans were lovely, and tragic, and clever
I look forward to the rage of people who feel like they’ve been attacked. The fans were a lot of fun, and I fully expect to see them again in “Wish World.” It just seems like they have a larger role to play, and their whole deal seems to overlap with Mrs. Flood’s.
All in all, a really deftly-handled episode. A fun, one-off story that also manages to further the Doctor/Belinda relationship, and continue to seed the season-long arc.
My biggest complaint? Logan, the diner employee. I feel like this show has a long history of trying and failing to write natural-sounding American dialogue, and Logan unfortunately got the worst of it. The time period helps to paper it over to an extent, but it bumped me almost every time he said more than a handful of words.
I spoiler tagged this in part because between iPlayer and BBC One the show has such an incremental release schedule, and perhaps most because my watch notes were so long. I don’t want to leave a foot long first post that scares others off 😄
I look forward to the rage of people who feel like they’ve been attacked.
Oh, as far as I have seen Reddit Who is about to explode 😂 I thought this was a very mild, even gentle depiction of Whovians. A bonus re RTD’s recent comments on “democratising” cosplay is, now you can just wear your store bought merchandise and be one of the honest-to-canon fans.
I hadn’t for a second thought that they might reappear later in the season. Maybe they’ll reenact the Wilderness Years in the finale, saving the Doctor from Mrs Flood’s “cancellation”. I mean, it’s not going to happen, but that would be a very meta thing to do, and in keeping with the fourth wall breaking. Also, it would totally fly over casual viewers’ heads.
In terms of the “American” accents, I’m not a native English speaker, so a lot of that detail goes by me unnoticed. By now I know that if I can tell a specific American dialect is spoken in a TV show, it’s probably a fairly ludicrous parody to native speakers 😉
I thought this was a very mild, even gentle depiction of Whovians.
Oh it was, but…Reddit’s gonna Reddit, and the internet’s gonna internet.
In terms of the “American” accents, I’m not a native English speaker, so a lot of that detail goes by me unnoticed.
Honestly, it’s not even the accent. I think the guy’s accent was…adequate (full disclosure, I’m Canadian, so I can’t judge US accents too harshly). But the dialogue often seems just a little stilted to me, with word choices that don’t quite seem to align with what an American would say.
The most egregious DW example to me is from way back in “The Poison Sky”/“The Sontaran Strategem”, when the ostensibly American Luke Rattigan kept ranting about how “clever” he was, which is simply not something an American (or Canadian, for that matter) would say. Nothing in this episode rose to that level, but it just seemed a little off.
the dialogue often seems just a little stilted to me
Ah, right. Reading back now I see you were talking about the writing, not his reading of it. That probably comes from Davies’ British vocabulary, and the fact(?) that there is no American involved who could’ve given it a language checkup.
Not even the Disney liaison bothered to comment on it apparently, and if you believe some of the online fan discourse out there, they dictate everything that goes on screen 😄
I mean, is it any COINCIDENCE that this episode was set in FLORIDA?
It’s a Disney, Disney, Disney, Disney World.
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