Mr Ring-a-Ding

Voiced by Alan Cumming

“Don’t make me laugh!” 

The sprightly grin and tap-dancing skills of Mr Ring-a-Ding hide his real, more malicious identity lurking within. In reality, he is Lux, a god set on absorbing all light and destroying humanity. Able to manipulate the world of light like a film reel, Mr Ring-a-Ding exists as a two-dimensional cartoon. He can also capture living beings in light; trapping them in his domain as images or animations. Like the other gods, Mr Ring-a-Ding is a formidable foe for the Doctor and Belinda but his nature and obsession with light is his ultimate downfall.

Character Bio

The star of 1935 cartoon ‘Mr Ring-a-Ding Goes to Town’, Mr Ring-a-Ding is an all-singing, all-dancing entertainer – until the light of his film’s projection is hit by an unusual bout of moonlight. As his catchphrase “Don’t make me laugh” begins to take on sinister undertones, Mr Ring-a-Ding rises out of the screen and manages to cause the disappearance of fifteen cinemagoers – by trapping them within filmstrips!

Encountering the Doctor and Belinda, Mr Ring-a-Ding’s loveable exterior soon reveals the malevolent truth: he is Lux Imperator, the God of Light and member of the Pantheon. Trapped in the abandoned cinema by Reginald Pye, Mr Ring-a-Ding convinced the cinema projectionist to keep “feeding” him by playing old films; in return, Reginald was gifted a brought-to-life projection of his late wife.

Although bound by rules like the rest of the Pantheon, Mr Ring-a-Ding is able to manipulate the light of the cinema projectors to trap the Doctor and Belinda in a 2D cartoon world, which they can only escape by adding more ‘dimensions’ to themselves by opening up emotionally. Mr Ring-a-Ding then sets his sights on the Doctor, and the light of his Time Lord regeneration energy – which the god plans to take for himself and use it to build himself a more substantial body.

As Mr Ring-a-Ding absorbs the Doctor’s energy, he manages to become 3D, growing and growing due to his increased capacity for the absorption of light. Together, Belinda and Reginald manage to save the Doctor by setting the cinema’s film stock alight – blowing a hole in the cinema and exposing Mr Ring-a-Ding to the light of the sun!

The absorption continues and renders Ring-a-Ding  infinite as he eventually becomes light without end; at one with the universe and ultimately harmless.