The Story & the Engine

"The Story and The Engine" is a fine episode, though not without its flaws. It starts off rather slowly, and the plot can be quite confusing at times, making it a challenge to stay fully engaged in the early half. That said, there are highlights. Most notably, the appearance of the Fugitive Doctor, which adds a jolt of energy to me and to the episode. The hour overall wasn't completely wasted, but it didn't captivate me like other episodes this season have. It's certainly the strangest entry so far, not necessarily in a bad way, but not entirely in a good one either. I wouldn't call it my least favorite, but it's definitely not among the ones I enjoyed most.

This comparable to the first episode.

What I liked: Some great and relevant eater eggs.

What I didn't like:

It had weird pacing, weird plot, weird setting, fails to get you invested.

All actors who don't really matter for the plot were kind of good, those who do were bad and unconvincing.

I understand they wanted to do an episode in Africa, like that one episode in India (with Jodie). But this one is a fail, because the characters are incredibly shallow. And some dialogues are really bad.

It honestly felt amateurish in many ways.

Too bad because the last few episodes had been great. I hope the rest of the season won't be as disappointing.

This episode is important, and while I do have my problems, it's great that this story can be told on Saturday night TV.

That being said, despite the good acting, brilliant cinematography, and like i say, great concept, the pacing was beyond poor. At the end of the day this was a 10-15 min idea that was stretched out across a 50 min episode. This series has had a pacing problem from the off, but usually it's that there's too much content and not enough time, but this is the inverse.

I felt like it should've been a Big Finish episode, it would've worked so much better as an audio story. I don't agree that this episode is anywhere near a 1 star, but the reviewer who gave it that score IS right when they say this episode is a load of waffle. We needed more from it, not just some tacked on fan service.

A solid, if perhaps narratively not particularly satisfying, addition to this series that features some of the themes of the season.

The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) arrive in Nigeria in 2019 to both plan another marker to assist with getting her home, and for the Doctor to head to a barbershop he's frequented before, owned by his friend Omo (Sule Rimi). When he enters, he discovers that Omo and a few other patrons are trapped in the shop, caught in a timeloop of repeated hairgrowth and tasked with telling stories whilst a new and intimidating barber (Arlyon Bakare) cuts their hair. The stories seem to temporarily satisfy the barber - and the shop - but the Doctor is a story that can feed the shop indefinitely.

Like the previous episode, one of the themes of this is how a character copes when the Doctor is no longer in their life and the affect that has on them. In this case, it unites with another theme of the season - jilted romantic partners driven to a degree of villainies. Whilst I'm talking themes, there is another cameo for Anita Dobson, as Mrs Flood this time confirming that she had been in and around Belinda before she met the Doctor. There's also a small cameo for Jo Martin - as the Fugitive Doctor, which acknowledges that storyline at least hasn't been dropped entirely. We're also, again, talking about "gods" as drivers of the stories, rather than aliens - which is interesting. There's also no fear to the Doctor in this episode, he's almost imperious, which makes sense as he's in an environment he's comfortable with.

I liked the set up of the episode more than I liked the ending. The threat is never entirely clear to me, if the stories stop then the engine stops. . then what happens? I understand they can't escape but what will the barber do to them?

Again, feeding into the wider story is nicely done, even if perhaps the episode itself might have done a better job with its own plot.

Another brilliant episode, it was entertaining because the pacing was good as it had different stories with colourful backgrounds and that's always nice to see, I wish the Spider could've been used more as the design and props team has nailed it's ascetics and it looks really cool on the big screen.

The Episode was just a fun story, the episode had shed loads of emotion as the atmosphere was expanded to a room, corridors and a spider feeding off stories to form a larger web, that's what was creepy and scary and fun. The bright colours of the missing people was cool to see, the ambience and I'm glad it added abit of supernatural. Hopefully an episode explores on that more. Hopefully it'll become a future episode.

I'd give this a solid 7 as it was Fun and engaging, the props were beutiful and the stories were wonderfully illustrated. Doctor who is back!

7/10.