I was a bit snowed under with reviews last week (not to mention actually dressing up as the Tenth Doctor for another Con!), so I didn’t get around to covering Doctor Who’s Season 15 (or 2, as it’s often billed, given that last year’s season was packaged as another reboot for the show) opening episode, The Robot Revolution. So now we have two episodes to cover in one!

In The Robot Revolution, the Doctor is chasing Belinda Chandra, who’s been abducted by beautifully shiny, retro-futuristic robots from outer space. Chasing their equally B-movie styled rocket in the TARDIS, a glitch in time sees the Doctor arriving at their destination months in advance, and gets caught up in what’s really going on, with Belinda’s past catching up with her on the planet which has a very familiar name.

It was a great introduction to Belinda (Varada Sethu) herself, and did a good job of addressing the fact that the Doctor has encountered a character played by Sethu before (in Season 14, or 1, episode Boom). Russell T. Davies shoehorned in some fun little digs at male entitlement, once again showing a knack for poking exactly the right kinds of bear. It was a strong opener, glossily shot and looking absolutely gorgeous, with Ncuti Gatwa on typically fine form as the Fifteenth Doctor.

Which brings us to Lux. The second episode of the season sees a cinema in early 1950s Miami taken over by a malevolent cartoon, with the audience present for his awakening all disappearing. With the Doctor unable to return Belinda to the date she left home, the TARDIS drops them off to solve the mystery of the missing movie fans.

It’s an absolutely wild episode, full of visual and narrative inventiveness that would have been a real struggle to convincingly do in any other era of Doctor Who.

The effects are stunning, Alan Cumming is superb as the sinister toon, Mr Ring-a-Ding (a sublime creation all round) and there’s some mind-boggling fourth wall breaks, along with some knowing, affectionate teases aimed at Doctor Who fans.

Lux is quite the ride, and, paired with the weaker, but still enjoyable The Robot Revolution, gets this season off to a much stronger start than last year’s disappointing Space Babies and The Devils Chord. Though both of those episodes had their moments, in hindsight they weren’t great, especially with how the teases of The Devil’s Chord played out by the end of the season (the final episode of last season was a massive letdown, unfortunately).

Lux plays in a similar playground as The Devil’s Chord, and even teases bigger things in the same way, but its stylistic approach to playing with cinematic form is much more effective than The Devil’s Chord’s musical rule breaking.

It may wrap up a little too neatly, and with another frustrating tease from a recurring character, but it does end on a high with a further mid-credits pseudo-fourth wall break.

Lux is a very good episode indeed, and it makes me optimistic that we’re on more solid ground with Doctor Who than we were last season. Fingers crossed that we have a bit more of a consistent run this time around; there’s certainly something very interesting being built up, but of course Russell T. Davies has been guilty of being unable to fully pay off his intriguing teases, including with last year’s disastrous finale.

Still, let’s keep that optimism alive, eh? After all, that’s what we Doctor Who fans do best.

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