Out of all of the episodes in Doctor Who Season 2, Lux is the one I've most been looking forward to. A Doctor Who episode that combines live-action and animation is such a cool idea, and offers something new that the show hasn't done as a plot device before. Yes, there have been animated stories like The Infinite Quest and Dreamland, but this is the first time it's used as a narrative device.

The cold open is one of the best the show has seen in recent years. The shots of the animated Mr Ring-A-Ding cartoon are beautifully realised, and Mr Ring-A-Ding's interactions with the audience of 15 before he steps out of the screen and they go missing does a brilliant job at establishing the threat. Straight away, we get a sense that Mr Ring-A-Ding is a malevolent being.

When Mr Ring-A-Ding enters the live-action realm, the animation work is sublime. There have been reports that some of the same people who worked on Who Framed Roger Rabbit lent their talents to Mr Ring-A-Ding, and you can see the influence. Mr Ring-A-Ding is so expressive, and his move from 2D to 3D brings some wildly imaginative imagery.

I do think it's a shame though that more time isn't spent on the Fifteenth Doctor and Belinda becoming trapped inside a cartoon. The small sequence we do get is a superb piece of animation, especially when they progress to 3D animation, but they could have expanded on this further with different animation styles. The reviews mentioned different uses of animation, which made me think we were going to get 15 and Belinda crossing into different styles of animation, like stop-motion for instance, or the anime style that people go crazy over (although that's never done much for me).

I'm also not sure how I feel about the Doctor and Belinda meeting Doctor Who fans. It feels a little too meta for me, especially when they start discussing how their favourite Doctor Who episode is Blink. I feel it would have worked better had they been played by real fans, like Crispy Pro and Harbo Whole's. Hiring actors to play Doctor Who fans is a strange choice when you could use real-life Whotubers.

On the plus side, Lux does an excellent job at exploring the racist attitudes in 1950s Miami. It's a subtle yet effective approach, showing brief references to segregation in the cafe and later when the Doctor and Belinda are confronted by New York policemen in the cinema. It shows the unfortunate reality of two people of colour travelling to the past, which is something that needed to be addressed.

Overall, I'd give Lux an 8/10. The animation work is fantastic and Mr Ring-A-Ding is easily one of the best antagonists of RTD2. However, the episode doesn't realise the full potential of 15 and Belinda trapped inside a cartoon, and their meeting with Doctor Who fans could be a step too far into breaking the fourth wall.