Review: Doctor Who, “Lux” | Season 2, Episode 2
Doctor Who delivers its most meta episode ever
Just when you think you’ve got Russell T. Davies figured out, he goes and surprises you. Last season, it was with “73 Yards,” which started as small-scale folk horror only to explode into one of the most inventive episodes in Doctor Who history. And this season, it’s with “Lux,” which starts like a one-off 1950s historical romp in the vein of “The Idiot’s Lantern” only to shift into a lore-centric, deeply meta, absolutely bananas reflection on NuWho’s legacy.
Like Davies’ previous riff on fandom in “Love & Monsters,” I suspect this is going to be a divisive episode—particularly the sequence where the Doctor literally pops out of a TV to share a cuppa with some of his nerdiest fans. But like “Love & Monsters,” it’s an episode that worked like gangbusters for me because it leans into the unique mix of melancholy heart and bittersweet hope that’s so distinct to RTD’s writing.
Indeed, back in my review of “Joy to the World,” I talked about how you can develop parasocial relationships with the showrunners of your favorite long-running series—the sort of extra-textual connections usually reserved for famous actors and auteurs directors. Even the flaws of “Joy to the World” were charming because they reminded me of all the years I’ve spent with Steven Moffat’s writing. And “Lux” is an episode that similarly gained a lot of power because of my awareness that Davies is the man who wrote it, which I’m not sure I would have felt in a vacuum. (To be fair, Doctor Who’s onscreen title sequence has always made viewers much more aware of each episode’s writer than you average TV show.)
