Doctor Who Recap: Last Night Was a Movie

Allow me to channel the TARDIS for a second and take us back in time — specifically, to the 2007 episode “The Shakespeare Code.” Martha Jones, the first full-time Black companion in Doctor Who history, has just traveled back to Elizabethan England. “Am I alright? I’m not going to get carted off as a slave or anything?” she asks the Tenth Doctor. When he questions why she’d ever think that, she gestures to herself and says, “Well, not exactly white, in case you haven’t noticed.” Ten replies that he’s not even human and advises, “Just walk about like you own the place. Works for me.” Regardless of how safe Martha might have been during that period of history, it was an oddly flippant way of addressing a valid concern.

More than a decade later, Russell T Davies is Doctor Who’s showrunner again, and Belinda and Fifteen represent the first-ever TARDIS team that is entirely made up of people of color. And now it’s the Doctor who is telling his companion how race impacts the way they both can move through this moment in time. They can’t necessarily walk about like they own the place when the place in question is Miami in 1952 — and by a whites-only diner and a whites-only movie theater. As Belinda reckons with the reality of segregation, the Doctor offers, “Sometimes I wait for people to topple the world. Until then, I live in it, and I shine.” And he quite literally does shine in this episode, because this week we’re meeting a new Pantheon being: Lux, god of light (voiced by Alan Cumming, god of The Traitors).

Lux is a weirdo. And so it’s no surprise that the show is trying to match his freak and make this a more wacky, experimental episode. We see what Lux can do before we know who he is. With the help of moonlight, Lux enters the universe by bringing life to Mr. Ring-a-Ding, a singing blue cartoon character with a pig nose. He terrifies a movie theater crowd by climbing out of the screen and warning them not to make him laugh. The next time we see the theater, there are flowers outside, and a police notice tacked to a chained-up door. All 15 people in that audience have been missing for months.

The TARDIS ends up at the crime scene because the Doctor’s vortex indicator (or “vindicator,” as he proudly dubs it with his hands on his hips) is trying to reel him and Belinda back to May 24 via a different route. When they land, Belinda can’t resist the chance to step into a different time. But is her attire appropriate? The Doctor’s charisma knows no end as he tells her, “This is the fun bit, honey.” The way he then slings her down the hallway to get changed, or does a little jig as they run back out in costume … it’s hard not to feel happy when you see him vibrating with excitement like that. His body language is so open. Once he notices the locked cinema, for example, it’s obvious that he can’t resist. “You’re Scooby-Doo,” Belinda realizes. Affronted, he replies, “Honey, I’m Velma.”

Even though the vindicator is ready to go, the Doctor convinces Belinda to do some investigating at the diner. (An employee and the mother of one of the boys who went missing are both willing to “bend the rules” at 4 a.m. when no one’s looking.) Belinda already seems a little swayed when she hears Mrs. Lowenstein say that the appearance of the TARDIS gave her hope since it’s a police box. When they learn that projectionist Reginald Pye has stayed inside playing movies to an empty house every night, Belinda fully gives into the mystery and becomes the Fred to the Doctor’s Velma.

Mr. Pye watches in horror as the pair break in and meet the living Mr. Ring-a-Ding. I’m not sure how this relates to powers of light, but the living cartoon has his own soundtrack; there’s a record-scratch when the Doctor asks about the missing people. But after Mr. Ring-a-Ding repeats one too many times not to make him laugh, the Doctor realizes that this has something to do with the gods, which is confirmed when Mr. Ring-a-Ding laughs the giggling melody of the Toymaker. Lux then identifies himself as the god of light, the “dazzle in the heart of the Pantheon, the glint in the eyes of the mad, and the last thing you see before you fall into the abyss.” Unfortunately, this doesn’t quite strike terror into my heart. Sutekh’s dusty powers as the self-proclaimed god of death kind of set the bar high. Even Lux’s harbinger, a movie marquee for the nonexistent Rocky Hudson movie The Harvest Bringer, feels less dramatic compared to the humans the last two gods got.

Mr. Pye buys time by playing a cartoon that Lux, for some reason, has no choice but to dance and sing to, despite the fact that he initially had no problem breaking from whatever Mr. Ring-a-Ding was scripted to do. As a result, we have enough time to get Reggie’s backstory, which is that he’s still “feeding” Lux films because the living cartoon can bring his dead wife back to dance with him. When Lux finally catches up, he is cryptic about how he can be defeated (“Just think, what have I not done?”) and quickly turns Belinda and the Doctor into images, just as we’ve learned he did to the 15 people who went missing.

The Doctor and Belinda are first dropped in a 2-D cartoon. They have to get vulnerable about their fears — and in the Doctor’s case, the genocide of his people that he didn’t mention the first time she brought up “Timelordia” — in order to acquire enough depth to become more 3-D. When they try pulling down on the frame they’re in, they find themselves back in the theater. A police officer rushes in with an accusatory Mrs. Lowenstein. She did a pretty damn good job of pretending like she was fine talking and touching the Doctor’s hand in the diner, but now she’s all suspicion and stereotypes. After a few disappointed beats, the Doctor points out that the police uniform isn’t correct and that this entire racist scenario is an invention of Lux’s.

The Doctor and Belinda then try looking straight at the camera and pushing out. This gets them to climb out of a TV and meet Doctor Who fans named Lizzie, Hassan, and Robyn. Yes, we’re getting meta. RTD even gets in a few jabs about online leaks and the disproportionate love for Steven Moffat’s “Blink.” The fans suggest that the ending of this episode is a “bit obvious” because Lux has verbally stated that film stock is explosive. They also seem to have better understood the god’s hint about what he does not do, though they won’t spoil the answer. The fans have become self-aware enough to relalize that they’re fictional and part of Lux’s trap.  Everyone in the room ultimately arrives at the conclusion that when the Doctor and Belinda go back, this trio will “blink out of existence.” After one last declaration of love, Lizzie pulls down the frame and sends them off.

The Doctor and Belinda finally free themselves by just pushing up to stop the celluloid. The resulting heat will either get them out or burn them to death, but Belinda seems remarkably okay with the odds. Once they successfully return, Belinda tsks that the Doctor should let her treat his burned hand. I do enjoy seeing a companion treat him like a child. But he says bi-generation has left him with extra energy and shows her how he can heal himself. Lux immediately wants to use the light inside of the Doctor to build himself a body, because apparently every cartoon wants to be a man. The theater’s reels reel the Doctor in and hold him in front of the projector. “‘Cause that’s what I never do, my lovely friends,” Lux says. “I never go outside.” And now I’m finally scared of Lux, because the god looks so horrifyingly demented as he becomes more and more fleshed out with the Doctor’s light.

Belinda, who now fully trusts the Doctor, follows his instructions to run out of the room. She realizes that as a Time Lord, he can tell that it’s daytime, and she starts to understand that his plan hinges on all the film reels going up in flames. Reggie decides to help because his wife (or a projection of her, or whatever she is) hands him the matches. The subsequent explosion blasts a hole in the building that lets sunlight directly into the theater. The Doctor drops to the floor as the rays reach Lux. The god reverts to his 2D form and shoots upward, pulling a Gayle King and Katy Perry by going to space. “I am everything … and I am nothing,” Lux says faintly, as the power of the sun makes him expand to fill the universe. “Goodbye.”

So … a god of light has been destroyed by light? Apparently so. The Doctor notes that humans can drown even though we’re mostly made of water. I’m not sure if that’s the perfect comparison, because people are not gods — wouldn’t it be a little odd if Poseidon drowned in the Pacific Ocean? — but before I can think about the logic too much, the missing people are stepping out of the theater.

Belinda and the Doctor watch the happy reunions. But because of the racist laws, they don’t linger long before getting back into the TARDIS. We learned in “Dot and Bubble” last season that the Doctor will try to save even blatant racists, but the fake policeman scene was tense enough. I’m glad that our duo doesn’t have to suffer through any face-to-face microaggressions or racist remarks and can make a quiet exit. They might’ve dematerialized without anyone noticing if Mrs. Flood didn’t pop up to tell Mrs. Lowenstein, her son, and the diner boy to look. She then hints that the “show ends” on May 24 and makes a quip about a “trick of the light.”

As the closing credits roll, we cut to Hassan, Lizzie, and Robyn reviewing the episode. (They give it a seven out of ten, and I appreciate that RTD can laugh at himself a little bit by making them offer some plot critiques). Suddenly the fans realize that this discussion means that they still exist, which I suppose means all of us still exist, given that we’re part of the universe where Doctor Who is a fictional show. In a feel-good gesture, Hassan, Lizzie, and Robyn all have last names in the credits, even though we knew that they thought they were not important enough characters in the show to have them. Awww, RTD. Is this your way of telling us how much you care?

Cut for Time (Lord)

• While the Doctor says Belinda’s name closer to how I would say it (“Belind-uh”), when Belinda introduces herself, she makes it sound more like “Belind-er.” Which I’m obsessed with. We gotta keep an eye out for Belinder.

• How is Mrs. Flood traveling through time and space? The questions with her never end.

• Every time Alan Cumming said, “Don’t make me laugh,” my desire to hear Alan Cumming cover “Popular” from Wicked in the style of Mr. Ring-a-Ding grew.

• Before they head back into the TARDIS, Belinda tells the Doctor that everything they said when they were scared and animated is still true, and adds that they will now go out and face it together. I wish the companion-Doctor dynamic from last week could’ve lasted a little longer, but it looks like Belinda is fully on board now. Although the events in next week’s preview do seem stressful enough to maybe test that newfound trust …