Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 2 Breaks The Fourth Wall To Pay Homage To The Fandom
This article contains spoilers for “Doctor Who” season 2, episode 2, “Lux.”
“Doctor Who” is no stranger to animation. Apart from comparatively minor projects like the 2020 “Daleks!” animated show and larger undertakings like the BBC’s long-running project to rescue some of the 100-plus lost “Doctor Who” episodes with the power of animation, assorted creatives have proposed animated “Doctor Who” shows of varying outlandishness for years. So, when the “Doctor Who” season 2 trailer teased the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) getting quite literally animated, ardent fans were no doubt keen to find out what the series has in store for them.
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As it turns out, the animation episode, “Lux,” is nothing less than a love letter for dedicated fans … just not the way they might have anticipated. When the moonlight-animated living cartoon Mr. Ring-A-Ding (voiced by Alan Cumming) turns out to be Lux Imperator — the god of light from the same pantheon as the likes of Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon) and Sutekh (Gabriel Woolf) — the villain traps the Doctor and Belinda Chandra (Varanda Sethu) in a series of animated and live-action movie moments. Fortunately, they realize that they’re able to manipulate the rules of the film universe in order to escape, which allows the pair to, in a very literal sense, break the Fourth Wall and climb out of the show … and into the living room of a trio of enthusiastic, merch-wearing Whovians who’ve been watching the episode.
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Lux proves that Doctor Who knows and loves its fans
“Doctor Who” has a famously enthusiastic fan base, which the Doctor learns firsthand when he and Belinda climb out of the TV set and into the cozy house of a trio of super-fans. By proving that they’ve been watching the episode and know all about the show and its characters, these Whovians quickly convince the Doctor that he’s a creature of fiction, which the Time Lord is surprised and even a bit delighted to learn.
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The conversation proceeds in a way many fans might day-dream about an interaction with the star of their favorite show going. The Doctor and the fans quickly build a rapport and have a good-natured debate about the best “Doctor Who” episode. (The Doctor attempts to promote several episodes from his own tenure, while the fans unilaterally favor the excellent “Blink” from the first David Tennant era.) Eventually, the show embraces the fandom’s ability to nitpick and interpret clues and details, as the trio admit they’re just a particularly devious layer in Mr. Ring-A-Ding’s film trap. In a truly meta moment, it turns out that the fans are fictional, and they choose to help the Doctor and Belinda escape … at the cost of their own existence.
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The scene is a fun and unique homage to one of the most dedicated sci-fi fan bases out there. It’s also a hilarious commentary on fandom’s fickleness, given one fan’s prickly tendency to condemn the episode’s plot points and spew hashtagged hate on the newest “Doctor Who” era. As one final nod to the show’s viewers, the supposedly fictional trio is even resurrected for a mid-credits scene – which “Doctor Who” generally isn’t known for — where they comment on the quality of the episode after seeing it in full.
New episodes of “Doctor Who” drop Saturdays on Disney+.
