Operating a separate terminal under Lua control

[Dirk Laurie <dirk.laurie@...>]

I thought this would work:

$ lua
Lua 5.3.4  Copyright (C) 1994-2017 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
> term = io.popen('xterm -e "lua"',"w")
> term:write"Some Lua input\n"
file (0x1ef95f0)
> term:close()

After the first line, the new terminal appears. Encouraging.
After the second line, nothing changes on the terminal,
I thought it would pass my Lua input to it and run it.
After the third line, MY terminal dies. Ctrl-C brings it back,
killing the other terminal.

What I want to do is to make the other terminal execute
some Lua commands, as if I had been typing them in
there.

Am I trying the impossible or missing the obvious?