Spoilers for Doctor Who: Lux.
Welcome back to another episode of Doctor Who. This review will have only mild spoilers for “Lux,” but as usual, here is a bit of extra Doctor Who trivia if you want to avoid the spoilers but don’t want to feel like you wasted the click.
Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor famously remarked that “bow ties are cool.” Turns out, he was right. After Smith’s Doctor started wearing a bow tie consistently during his adventures, the British men’s retailer Topman reported that sales of bowties spiked 94 percent thanks to The Doctor. Onto the review.
“Lux” might be the greatest episode of Doctor Who in a decade. It was a near-perfect meld of cosmic horror, heroism, and heart. From beginning to end, it was simply magical.
The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) are still trying to get Belinda home, so they stop in Miami, Florida in 1952 to basically ask for space directions. Once they’ve landed, they are pulled into a haunted house mystery involving a cinema where 15 people disappeared after a cartoon character named Mr. Ring-a-Ding comes to life.
The scariness of Doctor Who villains generally does not have anything to do with how impressive the special effects are. The original Mondasian Cybermen and the Sontarans in “The Sontaran Experiment” are ball-retractingly terrifying, and those suits probably cost less than the wig Gatwa wore in “Lux.” In modern Who, a school outfit and a random gas mask gave an entire generation of nerds nightmares. Heck, the monster in “Midnight” is only a set of vocal tricks with no corporeal form at all, and I still won’t rewatch it after dark.
Mr. Ring-a-Ding is a rare exception. Doctor Who loves to use the Mouse’s money and resources, and if anyone was going to bring a cartoon character out into the real world well it was going to be Disney. Voiced by Alan Cummings, Mr. Ring-a-Ding has a plastic madness about him that transcends all sense and reason about him. The reveal that he is yet another Lovecraftian entity let loose by the Fourteenth Doctor’s ill-fated trip to the end of the universe is almost dull in comparison. It was like if you saw a Muppet walking down the street. For a second it would be enchanting, then the complete collapse of all reality would leave you insane.
At the end when he tries to hijack The Doctor’s regeneration energy to form a body, slowly growing into a three-dimensional figure that looks like something out of Bendy and the Ink Machine, my entire family was screaming.
The horror is only half of the equations, though. The Disney Who era has hardly lacked for emotional moments. which is curious considering how often the Fifteenth Doctor moves from crying to alien coldness. In “Lux,” so many wonderful moments were earned.
There is is the lonely old projectionist grimly serving Mr. Ring-a-Ding because the monster gave him a film reel of his late wife that allows him to hold her again; the metatextual moment in the middle when The Doctor and Belinda meet fans of the show who know they are just Mr. Ring-a-Ding’s projections but are just so happy to meet him anyway; and, of course, one of those wonderful “everybody lives” endings that make the world seem less dark. Russell T Davies’s script tackles each of these moments methodically and with wry humor, letting them seem human and real rather than preached out.
My one possible complaint with “Lux” was the scene with the cop. Throughout the episode, The Doctor and Belinda deftly navigate the racism of the segregated American south. Saving people who would happily deny people like him rights is old hat for this Doctor (and often, his predecessor as well), so there was no surprise in his grace under a bigoted system.
No, what bothered me was that the actual racism only comes into play once in the episode when Mr. Ring-a-Ding tries to trick The Doctor and Belinda into thinking a woman they had comforted earlier had called the cops on them. The Doctor quickly realizes it’s an illusion, but that means they never have to actually face the racism that permeates the environment around them. Everyone else is tolerant, forgiving, grateful, and helpful. Only the prop is actually racist. Please read a Black critic’s take on this somewhere because I am drifting out of my lane, but the scene made me wonder if the script couldn’t have benefitted from a pass with a Black American writer or consultant.
There is a rumor that that entire season is building up to a return of The Master of the Land of Fiction from the Second Doctor adventure “The Mind Robbers.” The exploration of The Doctor as a fictional character in the middle, another appearance by the fourth wall-breaking Mrs. Flood, and a Telos T-shirt pointing to the Second Doctor’s era are all good signs this is where we are headed. The Land of Fiction fits neatly into the Pantheon of chaotic gods that have been the dominant villains since launching on Disney, and Doctor Who has rarely gone this meta before.
If this is the ultimate destination, then “Lux” is even better. This was an episode about the power of stories and presentation. As a former projectionist myself, I can tell you that there is a magic about watching film in the dark that no home viewing will ever match. Mr. Ring-a-Ding is only powerful when confined to the dark. Once he is dragged into the screaming light of sun and stars, he dissipates into something so intangible it is meaningless.
It’s kind of a bold move for a show defined by people watching it on their sofas. I’ll be the first to say that while I adore Doctor Who reaction videos, they don’t have the mass of something like a live audience cheering at Avengers: Endgame. And yet, the shared worship of tales in light binds so many people together and elevates them. “Lux” is an unapologetic proselytization of the church of story’s glow, even with a villain that is born from the same power.
And at the end? Even the parts of the story that say they are bit players with no surnames survive the tale and get last names in the credits. It’s not just that everyone lives; it’s that no one gets left in the dark. That’s the great evolution of this era of Doctor Who.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
