Doctor Who – Series 2, Episode 5: The Story and the Engine

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Doctor Who – Series 2, Episode 5: The Story and the Engine

Over halfway through the series now, and things are looking good! Viewer numbers might be down, but the general consensus about this series is that pretty much all aspects are infinitely better than the previous series! As usual, I’m watching this on iPlayer ahead of tonight’s transmission, but I won’t post this until after 8pm, tonight.

Trailer

Synopsis

“In Lagos, Nigeria, the mysterious Barber reigns supreme. The Doctor discovers a world where stories have power,
but can he stop the Spider and its deadly web of revenge?”

Any Good?

This was a very imaginative story from Nigerian poet and playwright Inua Ellams. It wasn’t the darkest story of the series, but it headed in the right direction. I’d award it a ‘5’ of my DSoD Monitor (that’s the ‘Dulux Scale of Darkness’ Monitor where ‘1’ is lightweight and frivolous and ‘9’ is a deep and meaningful, super-serious episode). It’s also one of those episodes where there’s more talking than action – nothing wrong with that, of course, but there was a lot of it! Also, this week saw the Doctor (temporarily) at his weakest, but thankfully, no shedding of tears by our hero (a much-hated characteristic of series 1!).

CGI is a staple of Who, and this week’s tale was no different. Good to see some innovative use of visuals, but it did vary a bit from ‘really?’ to ‘now that’s impressive!’. In some respects, it’s quite a claustrophobic setting, with 99% of the episode taking place in a single small room. Or does it??? 🤔

Just when you think you know the direction of the story, the twist comes in at around the 30-minute mark, where we’ve been introduced to this week’s ‘big bad’ just 10 minutes before – I didn’t see that coming! Other points to note – there are two references to Marvel in this one – did you spot them? And a nice short montage of previous faces of the Doctor was woven into the storyline without it looking like they’d shoehorned it in.

So, in summary: it wasn’t my favourite episode of this series, but it was well acted with plenty of tense moments that made it feel very ‘Who-like’. Would I watch it again? Probably not, but that’s not because it’s a bad story, it’s just that it didn’t grab me in the same way as others have, so far this series.

Next Episode?

Next week’s is entitled: The Interstellar Song Contest. The history of Who episodes where there’s singing involved have always rated low by me. Cripes! A WHOLE episode that pivots around a Song Contest. It’s also got Rylan Clark in it (he of the super white teeth). So far, that’s TWO different reasons to be very worried about this episode! 🙁

See you then! 🙂✍️