Sexiest TV

NOTE: There are many speculating “leaks” ahead of the first episode floating around online – they will not be discussed in this review unless they have happened in the show already. If you want to talk about the leaks for future episodes, please use spoilers.

And we’re back with traditional Doctor Who after the series premiere – The Doctor and Belinda arrive in the 1950s outside an old cinema where several people have just gone missing. Instead of a simple mystery – they find out that not only is something not preventing Belinda from traveling back to exactly her time (why they’ve mentioned they can’t just land her a day before or after yet I don’t know) is up in the air – but instead, Lux sends us on a Scooby-Doo mystery – except The Doctor is Velma and Belinda is Lux. Belinda may be pissed off to The Doctor but she’s able to use his charm against him – The Doctor brushes off the fact that Galifrey is gone like everyone else; and Belinda counters by saying that she needs to be taken home because she’d like to see her parents again. She’s manipulating The Doctor just as much as he is trying to manipulate him – they’re a perfect match.

This feels like the Doctor Who of old; special and impactful with Ncuti’s performance really being top notch. The interactions with Lux and the revelations that Lux was another one of the Pantheon – the infamous Giggle being the peak of the “Don’t Make Me Laugh” one-liner sent chills down my spine, and I loved the weaponizing of the film reels against The Doctor and Belinda, and Lux using light to make an impact. Mr Ding-A-Ling is a funny, 50s name for a funny 50s character with a sinister undertone – and the time-period allows for a commentary on segregation that makes the seemingly perfect small town feel appropriately sinister and unwelcoming for Belinda and The Doctor, who are instantly accused of being involved in the crime – capable of knowing too much. It feels like a return to form – the formula of old, pre Chibnall and perhaps even pre Moffat – this is very much a Russell T Davies second episode for all the good and ill that comes with it.

One of the problems with the show is that seemingly everything has been leaked about what will happen in the eight episodes so far; and the writers are aware – if you were involved in the fandom at all chances are The Doctor interacting with fans of the show and learning he’s on television was spoiled first hand. This took away the element of the surprise – but the fans knowing it was leaked raises questions – was this an edit? Was the leaks themselves some kind of meta-conspiracy about what’s to come? Were they even intentional? There’s so many theories that could be span out of it – but my number one critique of this is it must be nice to go into watching a series of Doctor Who without knowing most of what happens before – which is something that seems impossible to do these days.

I like with Who and its meta twist it has never tried to convince the audience that it was real in the first place; allowing for a kind of make believe that makes it perfectly suited for the meta dynamic, which is applied with just the right amount of care – the three friends who have become friends as a result of Doctor Who do what we’d all do when we meet The Doctor – immediately tell him that his favourite adventure was Blink and not any adventure that 15 went on despite his protests otherwise. And that’d be fun to explain to Belinda for example; how he treated Martha in The Family of Blood. It’s not new territory for Who – we’ve seen Osgood take the role of the fan-insert before, but this is the first time Doctor Who has been able to cross that line completely; in a skilful way that doesn’t break the immersion completely but goes for a Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Element that keeps an air of sinister undertones beneath its light-hearted tone.

Linus Roache was fantastic as Reginald Pye, a cinema owner who lured by the power of Ring-a-Ding trapped himself in the cinema with the threat of cinema reels being destroyed robbing him of his attachment of missing his wife – which Lux has been able to create for him, the memories that keep him trapped in the past. The episode builds around the chemistry between Ncuti Gatwa and Varda Sethu that feels effortless – they spend much of this episode together on the same screen – and the highs of dressing up in posh costumes are immediately undone by being subjected to racist police treatment. Lux is capable of dovetailing into darker themes when it wants to – and makes the most out of the Disney budget to look absolutely amazing.

Next week, we’re doing sci-fi Alien-esque horror. Oh, only Doctor Who…

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