Doctor Who Season Two, Episode Five
“The Story & The Engine”
Posted by Kim
Whew, that was an EPISODE of Doctor Who.
I mean that in the most complimentary of terms, dear readers. “The Story & The Engine” is one hell of a Doctor Who debut for Nigerian playwright and poet Inua Ellams, the first ever Black man to write for the show. (An unbelievable statistic for a show over sixty years old and a stark reminder that production still has a lot of work to do when it comes to amplifying marginalized voices.) Ellams’ script is dense and complex, tackling themes like Black masculinity, rituals and traditions of Black hair, the fundamental need for community, the nature of storytelling and myth, basic creative ownership, and the very concept of gods and mortals. So, yeah. Just a couple of light concepts to mull over with your Saturday morning coffee.
It’s a script that probably could have benefitted from having an extended runtime, really. It packs a LOT into forty-five minutes and it gets a little muddy in the third act. I’ve watched the episode twice and there are parts of the story and character motivations that I still don’t fully grasp. But the writing and the performances are so compelling that those nitpicks don’t matter to me. I love that it’s trying to do something NEW while still fitting in pretty seamlessly to the overall narrative that’s propelling the season. I’ll take an ambitious if a little overly complicated scripts like this one over the majority of the ham-fisted nonsensical ones RTD has been churning out ANY DAY. (Welp, now I’ve said it.)
I just cannot stress enough just how important is to have a story for Ncuti’s Doctor written by a Black man. Over the course of Ncuti’s tenure, we’ve seen the reactions to the Doctor’s Blackness through the racial micro and macroaggressions of others, specifically in “Dot and Bubble” and “Lux,” but we haven’t gotten perspective on how The Doctor feels about his new body and identity as a Black man until now. (I mean, I am GLAD RTD and the other white writers on the series didn’t touch this before but I wish we’d gotten a writer of color sooner than halfway through Ncuti’s second season!) That opening scene with Belinda in the TARDIS had a level of authenticity and vulnerability we hadn’t quite seen before as the Doctor shared what it was like finding community in the barbershop. And the way Belinda saw and understood him in that moment just felt really special too. Two people of color! In the freaking TARDIS! Sharing what it feels like to be surrounded by people who look like them and how it feels to find a place where they can feel free and accepted! A scene like that is why representation matters.
Ncuti’s take on The Doctor has always had a obvious joy, but it felt like he really came alive as he walked through the Nigerian market. That giddiness made the pain of Omo’s eventual betrayal that much deeper. We all need our safe spaces – even Time Lords that are thousands of years old – and Ncuti really made that betrayal and sense of loss feel palpable and PERSONAL. As much as I like when The Doctor is all “Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference,” I really loved that The Doctor didn’t let this particular betrayal slide. Because let’s be real – had Omo told The Doctor from the beginning that he needed his stories in order to save the lives of a group of Black men, the Doctor would have done it willingly. We’ve seen it happen before! Remember how The Doctor willingly offered up all of his memories to satisfy a hungry god in “The Rings of Akhaten”? I guarantee he would have done the same thing here, if Omo had just been honest with him. It’s the deception that cuts him to the core, and while they do eventually come to a place of forgiveness by the end of the episode, it felt really important that The Doctor was NOT COOL with being tricked this way.
As for the impetus for the story, I feel it mostly works. Doctor Who has clearly turned in more of a mythological fantasy direction as of late, going all in on the concept of gods as physical manifestations vs. metaphorical beings made up to explain why natural phenomenon occurs. (I gotta say, I miss the Science Fiction of if all, I do!) If we’re gonna do gods, this feels like the way to do it. The Barber may not be part of the Pantheon of gods that’s been the Big Bad for two seasons now, but it feels like he’s Pantheon adjacent. Really, The Pantheon seems to as much of a nemesis of The Barber’s as they are The Doctor’s. The Barber is just taking more of a scorched earth approach when it comes to fighting back against them. As a creative who has had my writing stolen and repurposed, I completely understand The Barber’s rage regarding not getting credit for his work. It’s a great motivation for a villain, though I am not sure it was executed in the best way. I still don’t fully understand why we needed to travel to the heart of the Nexus in order to destroy it (it’s a WEB, you can destroy that anywhere) or what the Barber was planning to do once he was installed as Storyteller Supreme, but as I said at the start of this recap, it’s messiness I can forgive because there is so much conviction in the script that I’m like, yeah sure, this all makes sense even when it doesn’t.
I was also able to forgive The Barber’s mess because Abena was just so damn compelling. (Both the character and the actress!) The whole time it was clear she knew The Doctor, but the question was HOW? It is such a GENIUS move to reveal that Abby had encountered the Fugitive Doctor. I guess was a well known leak that Jo Martin would back at some point this season? I am so glad I don’t pay attention to any Doctor Who chatter outside of my direct bubble because I literally yelped when the camera panned to reveal her face. A would-be companion or a someone whose sole encounter with The Doctor changed the trajectory of their life is one of my FAVORITE Doctor Who tropes and we’ve now had that pop up two episodes in a row. (Coincidence or Intentional? Discuss.) Unlike Conrad, The Doctor and Belinda are able to get through to Abby before it’s too late, softening her heart and inspiring her to tell her own story. It’s such an interesting contrast – and whenever The Doctor talks about the trail of destruction he leaves in his wake, this is what I think of more than destroyed planets. I think of the people he’s encountered and how, unfortunately, sometimes he changes lives for the worst. But MOSTLY, he strives to change lives for the better and that’s what happens here in Lagos, Nigeria. Everybody lives, Rose. Just this once. Everybody lives.
Timey Wimey Observations
- I LOOOOOOOOOVED how the beginning of the opening credits appeared on the story wall of Omo’s Palace.
- WHY was there a cameo from Poppy from “Space Babies”????? WHY? Is it simply trolling or an Easter Egg or is it part of the bigger picture? And how are haters of “Space Babies” going to feel if this episode turns out to be a key part of the puzzle? (“Space Babies” is not as bad as all of you say it is, deal with it.)
- IDK why The Doctor tried to invoke the Weeping Angels on the Barber Shop story screen when we all know that the image of an Angel can become an Angel. I understand the name recognition of Weeping Angels here, but wish a different villain had been named!
- I need to know more about this party with Dionysus.
- Glad that even the gods agreed that the MCU went to shit after Endgame.
- I need Belinda’s denim jumpsuit.
- I loved that the spider ship’s body appeared to be made entirely out of tribal masks.
- Weaving in (literally) the story about women braiding maps into hair was SO well done and really powerful. Also, I loved the style on Ncuti. Is there ANYTHING that doesn’t look good on him? (No.)
- I love love loved shouting out Hemingway’s famous six word story. “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.”
- Flood Watch! Just a wee little cameo from Mrs. Flood this week as she passes Belinda on her way to pick up her prescriptions. If we’re doing this mystery the way we did Susan Triad last season, we can expect to get the big reveal in the final two minutes of Episode Seven. I, for one, can’t wait to get there so we can just GET ON WITH IT.
- Saving the multi-Doctor moment for last! I will always be a sucker for it. An episode can have a multitude of sins (this one did NOT but you know what I mean) and I will STILL tear up when they pull previous faces of The Doctor out of their backpocket. No, YOU audibly groaned when Peter Capaldi appeared on screen, I don’t know what you’re talking about.
What did you think of “The Story & The Engine”? Let us know in the comments.
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