Doctor Who Season 2, Episode 5 Review – “The Story & The Engine”

“The Story & The Engine” cleverly frames itself wrong the precise enactment of storytelling, successful a mode that feels much akin to the show's resourceful past than a monolithic Disney accumulation (and that's a compliment). While Doctor Who has intelligibly moved past the days of wobbly sets and rubber costumes, it's inactive astatine its champion erstwhile it channels the tone of inventiveness that powered truthful galore past episodes, making the astir of a constraint alternatively than trying to outspend it.

That resourcefulness finds a fitting lucifer successful the setting: a barbershop successful Lagos, Nigeria, seemingly suspended extracurricular clip and reason. It's wrong this intimate abstraction that the Doctor and Belinda find themselves ensnared successful an occurrence that feels little acrophobic with coherence than with capturing the thrill of telling a communicative arsenic a live, unpredictable act. Scenes veer betwixt tones and ideas with a benignant of deliberate looseness – strange, playful, occasionally nonsensical, but ever with the volition to entertain.

Inua Ellams’ delightful publication leans heavy into the thought that stories person a magical and innate value and power. The Story Engine of the rubric is little instrumentality than metaphor, a hazy but potent thought astir connection arsenic a unit that tin crook reality. Say the close thing, successful the close way, astatine the close time, and the satellite shifts. It’s a wonderfully poetic premise, and the conception of the Doctor arsenic the mythic taxable of an oral past passed down done generations wrong the barbershop is simply a astute hook that adjacent plays connected Doctor Who's ain legacy.

But, to its detriment, “The Story & the Engine” can’t defy the Disney era’s recurring obsession with gods and demigods. makes a much convincing spell of it than most, but the magical deity space is starting to consciousness similar the default alternatively than a deliberate choice. The latest iteration of this trend, The Barber, is suitably eerie, and the ideas down it are grand, but the divine transportation plays similar different overreach successful Doctor Who’s ongoing bid for cosmic scale. Each caller deity dulls the impact, and portion there’s ambition successful casting the Doctor arsenic a story caught successful celestial games, it edges the amusement distant from what makes it distinct. A superb conception and execution helped “Lux” sidestep a akin issue, but the aforesaid can’t beryllium said for “The Story & the Engine.” If the writers could conscionable instrumentality a measurement backmost from the cosmic shenanigans for a second, they mightiness announcement their amusement is astatine its champion erstwhile it keeps things a small much human. I’m not saying ditch the weirdness entirely, but erstwhile the large sci-fi worldly is rooted successful smaller, much idiosyncratic truths, it hits harder. You tin consciousness that successful “The Story & the Enging” arsenic well, adjacent if it keeps trying to outpace itself.

That’s what makes Belinda Chandra specified a invaluable portion of the existent era: She keeps the amusement tethered to thing real. There’s a quiescent intent successful however she’s written, ever circling themes of attraction and healing rooted successful her inheritance arsenic a nurse. Her compassion mirrors the Doctor’s ain “be kind” ethos, and unneurotic they make a dependable affectional thread done the wilder ideas successful “The Story & the Engine.” It’s not subtle, but it’s large nonetheless. Their quieter scenes are immoderate of the strongest here, not due to the fact that they outshine the spectacle, but due to the fact that they punctual you what it’s each meant to beryllium for. I’ve said it each week this season, but Belinda’s accelerated becoming the bosom of this run, and it’s paying disconnected successful ways some large and small.

That affectional groundwork is besides what keeps the closing moments from tipping into self-inflicted parody. Yes, it’s different montage of past Doctors projected connected a screen, the aforesaid instrumentality “Rogue” pulled little than a twelvemonth ago, and 1 that Who leans connected a small excessively often. It’s casual shorthand for legacy, a self-mythologising flourish that should, by now, consciousness tired. But successful an occurrence already driven much by temper than structure, it works precisely due to the fact that it leans into that vibe, letting the Doctor’s communicative swell beyond logic and onshore determination emotionally successful the mediate instead. We’ve seen this before, and we’ll astir apt spot it again, but it plays retired with honesty present – the goosebumps it gave maine bash not lie.