"Lux" Is Doctor Who's Heartfelt Love Letter to Fandom

Doctor Who’s Fourth Wall Breaking Love Letter to Fandom Is Something Every Sci-Fi Franchise Could Learn From

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“Lux,” the second episode of Doctor Who’s second season on Disney+, is memorable for many reasons. The hour not only features a creepy, singing animated villain voiced by Alan Cumming, but a trip back to 1950s Miami, a few choice bits of film history, and a rare fourth-wall breaking, supremely meta moment that sees the Doctor literally forced to question his own reality in a brand new way. An hour that’s both an entertaining adventure and a heartfelt rumination on the power of storytelling to change the world for the better, it’s Doctor Who at its most joyous and relevant, in ways that every one of its genre siblings could stand to take note of.

This episode marks the first proper TARDIS adventure for Ncuti Gatwa’s Fifteenth Doctor and his new companion, Belinda Chandra (played by Varada Sethu). The pair is still getting used to one another—poor Belinda just wants to go back home and the Doctor is struggling to figure out why he can’t get her there—when they arrive in historical Miami and are thrust into the mystery of a seemingly haunted cinema where over a dozen people vanished without a trace one night. The culprit is a god called Lux Imperator, a singing and dancing cartoon with the power to control light. Lux traps our heroes within the world of film—as animated versions of themselves, no less—and to free themselves, the Doctor and Belinda must, quite literally, break the fourth wall. In doing so, they step into a world that bears a striking resemblance to our own—right down to the excited fans sporting Tom Baker scarves, Matt Smith fezzes, and T-shirts adorned with illustrations of Cybermen and the Meep.

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What follows is one part plot device, one part tongue-in-cheek meta commentary, and one part full-hearted celebration of the power of stories that not only reminds us all why we’ve come to love this show in the first place, but that it has a genuine power to do good in the real world. Lizzie (Bronté Barbé), Hassan (Samir Arrian), and Robyn (Steph Lacey) are not just tongue-in-cheek representations of hardcore Doctor Who fans, they’re evidence that the lessons of the show exist well beyond any particular Time Lord’s adventure.

Like any franchise that’s been around as long as this series has, Doctor Who has an occasionally fraught relationship with its fandom. It’s not quite as toxic as, say, Star Wars, where belligerent fans have sent leading stars, LucasFilm executives, and big-name fans so many death threats that it’s made national news more than once. But Who fandom has grown increasingly noxious in recent years. Yes, viewers have always complained about in-series narrative decisions or plot twists, and some of the extended debates about specific showrunners got more than a bit heated (ask anyone who was around at the time their thoughts on the Steven Moffat years).

But it was the decision to cast Jodie Whittaker and Ncuti Gatwa as the Thirteenth and Fifteenth Doctor, respectively, that seemed to bring the hardcore haters out of the woodwork. From complaining loudly about the show’s allegedly “woke” worldview to deriding the performances of the new leads and insisting its stories had grown too political because they regularly acknowledged things like race and sexism, it’s been a veritable dumpster fire at times. And social media has given the absolute worst sorts of people an outsize bullhorn to demean the franchise and hate on everyone who loves it.

However, despite what an increasingly vocal minority might insist, Doctor Who has always been political, in ways both subtle and overt. The franchise is nothing so much as a consistently hopeful exhortation—to reject cynicism, embrace our best selves, and be the people that the Doctor surely already thinks we are. Yes, “Lux” pokes gentle fun at some of the fandom’s most ridiculous and over-the-top elements, from spoiler culture to the seemingly endless back-and-forth debate over the franchise’s best episode. There’s a nod to the BBC’s relentless merchandising (though I’m not pretending I didn’t order that “Telos” Cyberman shirt) and an admission that the prosthelytizing of hardcore Whovians is sometimes extremely annoying. But if “Lux” is anything, it’s a love letter—to the hero that has captivated audiences for six decades, the fans who have kept the show alive for so long, and the power of this particular fandom to change the world for the better. And it does it through the introduction of three seemingly unimportant bit characters that almost any other series would have simply tossed aside.

Sure, some viewers undoubtedly found Fifteen’s scene in which Lizzie, Hassan, and Robyn attempt to convince him the Doctor is a fictional construct on a popular television program far-fetched or even downright silly. Plenty more likely found it insulting, yet another example of a popular genre series punching down at the same audience that’s helping keep it afloat. (See also: Sherlock mocking fans for wanting an explanation for how the detective faked his death in “The Empty Hearse”.) But the thing is, while it might feel as though this moment exists to mock those who love he show best—it doesn’t. In fact, Lizzie, Hassan, and Robyn’s affection for both the Doctor specifically and Doctor Who writ large is a charming tribute to the absolute best of what this show (and those who love it) is capable of becoming.

Not only are these three characters the reason Fifteen and Belinda can save the day—they’ve seen enough episodes to suss out Mr. Ring-a-Ding’s true weakness—they’re only able to find the strength to do so because they watched the Doctor do it first. Lizzie, Hassan, and Robyn proactively choose to stand up for what’s right and to become heroes even when doing so comes at great personal sacrifice. Watching the Doctor taught them how to do that, the same way that our Doctors, whether they’re Gatwa or Tennant or Troughton, have passed those very same lessons along to us, the real folks watching at home.

Yet the scene’s most important lesson is perhaps even more profound: it’s Doctor Who that’s brought these three seeming misfits—and by extension, all of us—to each other. That, the show seems to be arguing, is its great gift. Not all its episodes are particularly great (and some of them are most assuredly bad!), but despite some dodgy monsters or weak writing, this show has given us all this utterly mad, often completely bizarre community of weirdos who find hope and joy and, yes, sometimes heroic purpose in the adventures of a two-hearted alien and his blue police box. And that is no small thing.

Doctor Who Season 2 is streaming on Disney+.

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter and Bluesky at @LacyMB

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Doctor Who’s Fourth Wall Breaking Love Letter to Fandom Is Something Every Sci-Fi Franchise Could Learn From