In Doctor Who season 15, episode 2, we end up dealing with a villainous cartoon character. Once again, this foe threatens to take The Doctor’s life, as he realizes just how much of a big deal The Doctor is.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for Doctor Who season 15, episode 2.
When Russell T. Davies took over the series again, he brought to life an arc that was clearly intended for multiple seasons. Sure enough, that arc is continuing with the new episode. He’s not done with the pantheon of gods, and I don’t even think this episode is the end.
Who is the villain in Doctor Who season 15, episode 2?
Since the TARDIS can’t get back to May 24, 2025, The Doctor ends up in Miami, Florida in 1952. There’s a quick mention of segregation of the time, but this episode makes it clear that not everyone was bothered about segregation. Some didn’t view Black people as the enemy, and we see that through the diner worker and the mom who just wants her teenage son back.
I also appreciate The Doctor’s speech to Belinda about not being able to change everything. It’s why he just moves through time and sometimes accepts the way people are. It isn’t just about segregation of the past. There are elements of other worlds that he doesn’t necessarily agree with, but he can’t fix it. One person can’t, even a Time Lord. The Doctor is there to help the people he can.
In this case, it’s the people who went missing at the cinema — picture house as the diner worker calls it. And so, we end up on a mystery that involves 15 people going into the movie theater one night only to never return. The guy running the movie theater saw what happened and was arrested, but there was nothing to hold him. However, he’s been in the movie theater ever night playing movies to an empty place.
Well, The Doctor finds this interesting, and off he goes in to find out that the guy playing the movies isn’t doing it to nobody. He’s doing it to a villainous cartoon character, who is far more dangerous than you would initially think. It doesn’t take long for him to explain that he is a god, and The Doctor works out that he is another from the pantheon of the chaos gods.
Mr. Ring-a-Ding (voiced by Alan Cumming) is Lux Imperator, and he realizes that The Doctor is the one behind the destruction of The Toymaker, Maestro, and Sutekh. Lux doesn’t quite capture the screen in the way that Maestro did, but there are a lot of similar feelings and there is still the threat toward The Doctor. He’s not as scared as Lux as he was Maestro, though. I guess that comes from destroying multiple other gods in the space of a year.
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The Doctor becomes a cartoon in Doctor Who
With Belinda calling The Doctor “Scooby” and him deciding he’s Velma, it wasn’t too surprising to see the two of them turned into animated versions of themselves. They start off as 2D animation, and as they gain more depth, they become themselves again. Seeing the development of animation was a lot of fun, but what was even more fun was the series getting meta.
At first, The Doctor and Belinda move the frame fast through each section, and they think they get back to the real world. However, a quick clue of the policeman wearing an NYPD uniform in Miami gives it all away. They are still stuck, so they decide to go through the screen and into a living room of three people watching Doctor Who.
The show gets extremely meta, with The Doctor and Belinda learning they are fictional characters. These fans make it clear that the entire plotline is predictable. Lux has already told The Doctor how to get rid of him, and I think this is telling us as viewers that we were supposed to guess it all long. It was all to do with light. The trio then explain that they’re the fictional ones, and while Fifteen and Belinda are sad for them, I didn’t feel like we got to know them enough to really care.
Our two heroes go back into the TV, figuring out another way to get out to the real world. They need to burn the film, and this time it works. Now it’s time to deal with the villain of the story.
I will admit that I think there wasn’t enough time to deal with this story. There’s a lot going on in Doctor Who right now, and I feel like the pacing is off a little. It’s been like that since Ncuti Gatwa became The Doctor and Davies took back over. Is it a Davies issue or a Disney issue? That part I can’t tell.
Sometimes you just can’t destroy a god
The episode ends with Lux deciding that he will take the lifeforce of The Doctor to become larger and larger. He wants to blast the nuclear light around Earth, destroying it. As The Doctor is strung up, he tells Belinda to get out. One thing about being a Time Lord is that he knows what time it is.
It doesn’t take too long for Belinda to figure out that it’s daylight. Plus, the comments from the fictional trio about how easy it is for these old movie theaters to go up in flames tells Belinda what she needs to do. She needs to set fire to the films so that they explode and let in light so that Lux can feed off that.
She needs the movie theater guy to help as he has matches. This guy didn’t initially want to get rid of Lux, because Lux had shown him a world where he was married to a beautiful woman for 20 years. Well, all of that was fiction, and she appears to him to make him do the right thing. He sets fire to the films, causing an explosion that takes out part of the wall of the theater.
However, it doesn’t destroy Lux. Instead, he feeds off it, and he becomes bigger and bigger. He gets to the point where he’s floating into space, feeding off the power of the sun, and he actually turns into light himself. You can’t always kill and destroy a god, but you can turn them into something else.
As for the people who were lost from the movie theater, it turned out that they were in a film reel in the movie theater. With the god gone, they were able to escape and leave the movie theater.
The Doctor and Belinda manage to leave 1952 Miami, but we remain behind just for a little while to see Mrs. Flood talking to some of the people. So, she can also time travel? Is she another of the pantheon, or could she be The Doctor’s granddaughter in the way we thought Susan Twist’s character was? I hope we get some answers this season.
The Doctor airs on Saturdays on Disney+.
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