Doctor Who S2E2 Lux ★★☆☆☆

This review contains spoilers.

Better than last week but still feels like a jumble of ideas that don’t come together very well.

In The Church of Ruby Road I really liked the goblins. I enjoyed Doctor Who just unselfconsciously embracing silly fantasy elements and I wish that Mr. Ring-a-Ding had that same air of playfulness to it. That he could have just been a weird cartoon man that operates on his own set of rules and motivations and not tied into this set of gods that are increasingly bogged down by their own set of signifiers and rules. It seemed like the show was expanding the boundaries of what it could do and be but it also seems scared to keep going. It has pulled back and made a new box for itself to sit in. The rules only get broke in a specific type of episode with a specific formula and that formula is having diminishing returns for me. Or I am just judging this series too early. We did also have 73 Yards last year as well so there is hopefully weirdness still to come unrelated to this pantheon. That said it does seem increasingly likely that Mrs. Flood is just going to be one of these gods as well, which I will be very disappointed in if it turns out to be true.

Other thoughts: I love Belinda in this episode and I am also disappointed that she seems to have fully gotten over her doubt and worries about the Doctor by the end of the episode. It seemed like there was going to be a more interesting dynamic there that seems to have been closed off now. The bit with the fans was sweet and only a little bit annoying. I enjoyed the subtle self-deprecating humour of Davies holding up Steven Moffat as the better writer, both in making everyone’s favourite episode Blink but also having Gatwa’s Doctor thinking that Boom is his best adventure so far. The Doctor and Belinda being turned into cartoons was disappointingly slight and I rolled my eyes at the Doctor supposedly being given depth by him repeating the last of the Time Lords title, something from two decades ago at this point that Chris Chibnall’s tenure on the show has reset us back to.