If you’d seen the “Doctor Who” season 2 trailers, you already knew that cartoon character Mr Ring-a-Ding would climb out of a cinema screen like some kind of malevolent Roger Rabbit. As well as being a great visual, it’s a handy metaphor for the show’s newfound disregard for the so-called fourth wall — in the modern Whoniverse, fictional characters acknowledging their audience is becoming increasingly standard.
In new episode “Lux”, the Doctor and new companion Belinda Chandra travel to 1952 Miami, where an evil ‘toon has literally captured moviegoers on celluloid. We soon learn that, when it comes to smashing the fourth wall to smithereens, Mrs Flood’s asides to camera were just the tip of the iceberg…
Caution! Spoilers for “Lux” ahead.
Who’s been breaking the fourth wall in “Doctor Who”?
Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) is the prime “offender”, and has been making a habit of addressing the camera directly ever since her first appearance in the 2023 Christmas special “The Church on Ruby Road“. This continues in “Lux” — “Better warn you, though,” she tells a teen in awe of the TARDIS dematerialising. “Limited run only. Show ends May the 24th [the date of the season finale]” — though how she’s able to turn up in 1952 Miami looking exactly the same as she does in the United Kingdom of 2025 remains a mystery.
Mrs Flood is not the only character with this ability, however. In season 1 episode “The Devil’s Chord“, music god Maestro (Jinkx Monsoon) ends the cold open by looking directly into the camera. They then launch into a rendition of the “Doctor Who” theme on the piano. (In canon, the signature tune’s characteristic rhythm echoes the beat of the Doctor’s two hearts, and was pivotal to the “The Sound of Drums” / “Last of the Time Lords” story that brought arch-enemy the Master back to the Whoniverse in 2007.)
Later on in “The Devil’s Chord”, the Doctor assumes some music is “nondiegetic” (background music heard only by viewers), winks at the camera, and launches into an elaborate song-and-dance routine called “There’s Always a Twist at the End”. Adding to the levels of meta, actor Susan Twist played multiple characters throughout the season.
Why is the fourth wall break in “Lux” different?
Because it actually suggests that “Doctor Who” exists as a TV show within “Doctor Who” canon — rather like “Red Dwarf” did in 2009 three-parter “Back to Earth”, when Lister, Rimmer, Kryten and the Cat learned they were characters in a long-running sci-fi sitcom.
In “Lux”, the eponymous Lux Imperator (Alan Cumming) — the god of light from the same Pantheon as the Toymaker, Maestro and Sutekh — imprisons the Doctor and Belinda in a traditional hand-drawn cartoon. They gradually recover their three-dimensional status by exploring their characters’ emotional depths, and subsequently smash their way out of the screen. This proves to be most literal fourth wall break of them all when they end up in a sitting room where three people are watching a TV show called… “Doctor Who”.
As luck would have it, Lizzie (Bronté Barbé), Hassan (Samir Arrian) and Robyn (Steph Lacey) are hardcore fans who’ve invested heavily in “Who” merch, watched every episode, and are perfectly placed to use their in-depth knowledge of the series to supply handy plot exposition. Lizzie points out that the moment is “so ‘Galaxy Quest‘”, while the more cynical Robyn admits, “I knew this would happen because it was leaked online. #RIPDoctorWho.” They all agree that “Blink” is the best ever episode.
But, as was the case in those “Red Dwarf” episodes (where a despair squid was responsible for an elaborate group hallucination), it turns out that “Doctor Who” hasn’t really gone full “Deadpool”. Instead, it’s the Doctor and Belinda who are real, while Lizzie, Hassan, and Robyn — “…the sort of characters who don’t have surnames” — are fictional constructs, doomed to disappear from existence as soon as the Doctor and Belinda have returned to 1952.
Rumours of their demise prove to be greatly exaggerated, however, when they’re resurrected during the end titles. Not only are they back in one piece to critique the episode we’ve just watched, the credits confirm that the trio do, indeed, have surnames.
Was the fourth wall susceptible to breakage before the Ncuti Gatwa era?
As far back as 1965, William Hartnell’s First Doctor addressed the audience directly during “The Feast of Steven”, an episode from “The Daleks’ Master Plan” serial. He temporarily breaks from conversation in the TARDIS to say, “Incidentally, a happy Christmas to all of you at home.” (The episode was broadcast on December 25.)
Then, in 25th anniversary story “Remembrance of the Daleks” (1988) — set in November 1963, the date of “Doctor Who”‘s first broadcast — a TV continuity announcer can be heard saying, “The time is a quarter-past five and Saturday viewing continues with an adventure in the new science fiction series, ‘Doc…'” We should add, however, that writer Ben Aaronovitch has since admitted the latter was intended as an in-joke rather than a moment loaded with meaning.
What does the fourth wall breaking all mean in the modern Whoniverse?
“That hasn’t been explained,” showrunner Russell T Davies acknowledged in SFX magazine last year, “and it might never be, frankly. It’s very interesting, within the ‘Doctor Who’ offices, we know exactly why that happens, and yet I’m showing no sign of putting that on screen. There is actually a reason for it that was in a very early draft of ‘The Star Beast’ [one of the David Tennant-starring 2023 specials].”
Whether we ever find out for sure, it seems safe to assume that only beings with a degree of command over time and space have any awareness of the audience — suggesting Mrs Flood could be very powerful indeed.
New episodes of “Doctor Who” debut on Saturdays on BBC iPlayer in the UK and Disney+ in the rest of the world.
