Florida 1952 and an audience gathered to watch the latest Rock Hudson movie have their viewing pleasure interrupted during the cartoon. Can the Doctor and Belinda save the day? Don’t make me laugh…

Since Disney became involved in Doctor Who it seems apposite that our hero would become even more animated than usual. If you were expecting the lion’s share of this story to be two dimensional then you may be disappointed, the majority of the tale happens in some version of the real world.

Our antagonist is Mr Ring-a-Ding, a not-quite human looking fellow voiced by Alan Cummings, previously seen in the flesh in season 11’s The Witchfinders. I was generally impressed by the quality of the animation here, it has the feel of old Fleischer cartoons and there’s clearly no cut corners. However I would have enjoyed more of it as we headed towards the climax

Being set in segregated America presents obvious challenges and while this isn’t Rosa, and isn’t trying to be, I appreciated that the issues weren’t just waved away even though they don’t really impact the story at all. This is at heart a light and frothy tale and the confined settings and small cast allow the obvious problems to be largely swerved while still being acknowledged. Appropriately enough Rock Hudson’s tragic place in history is also mentioned.

This is overall very reminiscent of last year’s episode 2 The Devil’s Chord in tone and indeed content. I wasn’t a fan of that episode although I know many enjoyed it, although I feel that some of the more oddball episodes work better once we have the context of the whole season. For now this feels like a fun little episode which seems to kick off more of the overarching storyline for the rest of the season.

Verdict: Probably not for everyone and it tested my patience at times, but it has enough self-belief to just about work. 7/10

Andy Smith