'Doctor Who' Gets Animated in Love Letter Episode "Lux"

The introduction of any new companion to the world of Doctor Who tends to follow a few predictable patterns: The Doctor usually meets a new traveling partner on Earth, introducing them to the existence of things like aliens and the concept of time travel in a familiar environment before whisking them off on their initial adventures, which are almost always a trip to the future and a trip to the past.

Thanks to the season premiere, "The Robot Revolution," which saw the Doctor follow Varada Sethu's Belinda into space, she has already experienced the weirdness that comes with discovering other worlds and their cultures (and even has a planet named after her to show for it). It makes sense, then, that the season's second outing, "Lux," sees the pair journey into the past on their first proper adventure.

It's a bit of an unwilling trip for Belinda, who wants nothing more than to go home to the planet she's left behind. But since something is preventing the TARDIS from returning to Earth on the day she left it (May 25, 2025), the Doctor has to think outside of the box to honor her request. He builds a McGuffin-like device he calls the Vindicator (a Vortex Indicator), which is meant to triangulate a way back to Earth, but only after they land in a few places to calibrate it. (Convenient, isn't it?)