Every now and again my crazy journey through Doctor Who in order of it’s relationship to the chronology of Earth (as charted in Lance Parkin’s seminal A History volumes), meets a brand new episode in the same time zone I am working through. At the moment, I am working through the 1950s and last week, the 15th Doctor and his newest companion, Belinda, arrived in 1952 in the story, Lux.

I struggle a little to review stories as brand new as this in my marathon. Most of the stories are ones I have watched or listened to before, sometimes more than once (especially in the case of the classic series) and therefore I already have thoughts and opinions formed in my head.

A new episode is a different beast. I’m still formulating my thoughts on the episode as well as reading what everyone else thought. On the whole, this is an episode which seems to have gone down pretty well in general. The combination of animation and live action is unique for Doctor Who and the meta elements of the story, while obviously dividing opinion as that sort of thing often does, have at least made a relatively positive impact.

As a story set in the 1950s, but in Miami, this story evokes more the episodes of Quantum Leap I’m currently watching set in this era, than it does the stories from Doctor Who I’ve reviewed from this time – The Idiot’s Lantern and The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith are stories more rooted in the previous decade, and so are some of the audio stories like An Ordinary Life and The Creeping Death are ‘drab’ and ‘working class’ in their aesthetic.

Lux is vibrant and flashy. The bright colours of the diner; the magic of cinema with the deep reds of the upholstery and the curtains and the flickering images; and of course Mr Ring-a-Ding himself, bursting out of the cinema screen in all his technicolour glory. It’s a huge contrast from something like The Idiot’s Lantern which also sees an image on screen start to talk to its audience. In that, the Wire more or less stays black and white for the entire story (with a couple of brief exceptions) and this is in keeping with the focus on television which, of course, wouldn’t see colour for quite a while after the 50s. Lux, however, is about cinema and the sparkle of the USA at this time. Even when the story is showing us black and white films or Mr Pye’s wife steps out of a movie in black and white, colour is never far away – the films are always framed in the context of the red, plush auditorium and Mr Pye’s wife gently turns to colour as they dance (in a scene which has echoes of the film Pleasantville).

The mirroring of The Idiot’s Lantern continues in the fate of Mr Ring-a-Ding’s victims which isn’t a million miles from the fate of the Wire’s victims in the former story. All are pulled into the screen and condemned to a living death inside the TV or filmstock. And then it also happens to the Doctor and Belinda as they are dragged into the animated world.

I was very excited when it was revealed that the Doctor and Belinda were to be animated in this story. Obviously, it’s been done before in sci-fi and fantasy TV, notably in Farscape and Supernatural, and it also formed the whole basis of the 8th Doctor novel, The Crooked World, but it was still exciting to finally have scenes like this on screen in Doctor Who.

And I wasn’t disappointed – well, not completely. I was a little disappointed that the animated Doctor and Belinda stayed in one scene (a cool, night-time Miami) but the rest was what I had hoped for, even if, ultimately it was quite a short sequence. The most striking thing for me was how Gatwa and Sethu subtly adapt their performance style to suit the medium they are in. It’s ever so slightly stylised and forced and fits perfectly.

The story then takes a further sharp turn into being fully meta as we reach the, no doubt heading for infamy, ‘fan scene’. Pushing out of the screen, the Doctor and Belinda find themselves in an ordinary sitting room confronted by three Doctor Who fans who have been watching them on the television. The scene is packed with easter eggs and it’s fun but, on reflection, doesn’t really work in the narrative. It very clearly starts with a ‘the Doctor and Belinda are fictional characters’ perspective but then switches partway through with no lead in or narrative indication to the fans are fictional and part of the trap. It’s a switch that doesn’t work because it’s just a complete change from what it starts out establishing and there aren’t little clues or hints leading up to it. The perspective just changes because the story needs it to change and it means the scene loses some of its impact, charming though it is.

More successful, I thought, was the scene where the Doctor and Belinda think they’ve escaped back into the real world only to be confronted by a police officer and a bucket of racism. The Doctor realising the details are wrong meaning they are still trapped works well in a way the fan scene doesn’t.

The ‘meta’ element is obviously also reminiscent of last season’s second story The Devil’s Chord and this works as a companion piece to that not least from the fact that Maestro and Lux are both members of the Pantheon. But the fourth wall breaks, the Doctor and companion getting kitted out to a contemporary soundtrack and the general tone of the whole thing are very similar and echo the way that during his first tenure, RTD would often start each series with thematically similar stories (a present day, a future and a celebrity historical start Series 1, 2 and 3 and even though The Fires of Pompeii doesn’t have ‘celebrity’ status, Series 4 still follows that format). There definitely seems to be a style similarity, again, between the three stories at the start of Season 1 and Season 2.

The special effects in this story are excellent – Mr Ring-a-Ding is realised incredibly well in both his ‘Roger Rabbit’ 2D form and his ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ 3D form. Indeed his three-dimensional transformation is a thing of nightmare. Other effects such as the Doctor and Belinda approaching the screen and pushing against it to escape into the ‘real world’ are so convincing I was actually a little unsettled by the thought that they were about to climb into our living room. There was something about the clarity of the image and the stark white background that really worked.

The rest of the production is suitably polished as well from the performances, especially Linus Roache as Mr Pye, to the period trappings of the cinema, diner and costuming.  And of course, Alan Cumming is utterly brilliant as Mr Ring-a-Ding!

Historically, the fact that the story doesn’t shy away from the systemic racism of the time and the segregation of public spaces is great, particularly with our two leads now both being ‘of colour’. It’s handled really well by the script and builds a little on Dot and Bubble’s blunter and deliberately rug-pulling, but no less effective, inclusion.

The ending is, possibly, a little unsatisfying (especially with the echoes of ‘death + death = life’ from last year’s finale) with Mr-Ring-A-Ding ascending to the heavens and becoming light (brought to life by the God of Light as he was) and it remains to be seen where the Pantheon arc is taking us, but I have no issue with Gods in the Doctor Who universe as they have been a feature since the 60s so are not some anathema to the show’s central conceits.

Overall, though, this was a gorgeous, funny, exciting production which pushed at the edges of the envelope of what Doctor Who can do ever so slightly and continues to build around the brilliant relationship already struck up between Gatwa’s 15th Doctor and Sethu’s wonderful Belinda Chandra.