Season 2 continues on Saturday with... The Story & The Engine. Time for another episode by a guest writer and this time it's the turn of Inua Ellams with his first script for Doctor Who; he'll also appear in the episode briefly as a market seller. Not much is known about this episode at all besides a couple of rumours but it will feature an all-black cast (Mrs Flood's weekly appearance aside) as well as both the writer and director being black too - Inua and Makalla McPherson respectively.

In Lagos, 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?

8am on iPlayer, and 7:10pm on BBC One.

Discuss the episode here ~

A prequel for this episode has been released ( first prequel we've had in a long time!), What I Did On My Holidays by Omo Esosa written by Inua Ellams.

Written from the perspective of Omo [a friend of the Doctor's] as a schoolboy, we discover how he and the Doctor met in the midst of a terrible forest fire in Etsako before the events of The Story & The Engine.

Read here!

I didn't feel very smart watching this episode. The entire plot went over me 😩

Enjoyed the brief unexpected cameo though

Didn't understand a thing of what was happening, this is where doxtor who goes wrong when it gets to complicated something that only started in the peter era

Absolutely hate it when majority of the episode is waffling on in the same location about nothing, we need an old enemy back asap (cybermen, ood, clockwork robots, somtarans)

 

I genuinely don't have a clue what I just watched really lol or what happened

Was it really that complicated though? I've seen a few comments like that and not understanding why haha? Doctor goes to barber shop to meet old friend, shop has been taken over by person that holds the legend/stories of all gods together, barber shop also now stuck feeding an engine stories.

I think my only complaint about that episode was that it inferred (by directly showing the Palazzo from Lux too) that one man was responsible for keeping the gods seeded and intertwined throughout human history and ultimately alive and kicking to cause all the mayhem they have been. Really?

Other than that though I think it was a really strong episode. Not quite as amazing as the run of Lux, The Well and Lucky Day we've just had but still really good. Ncuti was fabulous and Unleashed really showed too just how much it meant to him to have a story like that told on the show.

Theory

Poppy from Space Babies showing up though, oh boy... here we go. I'm already having wild thoughts about what it could mean! Is Belinda (and/or Ruby) going to end up being one of the space babies and the space station they were on was all engineered by Mrs Flood as a supply of companions for her to place with the Doctor?

It was a really wholesome episode, I loved the display of black culture through the eyes of the Doctor and his home from home in his current incarnation. The cast were strong and the episode itself felt quite experimental in its approach, the visuals for the stories were gorgeous and I enjoyed the breathing space.

I didn't find it hard to understand, but it was very talky at times and I do think I need a rewatch soon to absorb some of the details properly. That's my only criticism of it though!

Jo Martin's cameo felt... right. The first black Doctor appearing in an episode centred so much on blackness (and celebrating it, not through the eyes of racism) was a genius touch, however brief.

Just finished it and it was okay I guess, but somewhat ironically it's definitely not a story I'll remember.

Not sure why people are finding it hard to understand @Calum pretty much summed it up

The fugitive doctor cameo was a nice touch and was a nice celebration of black actors and history, I feel like it will be more remembered for that than the actual story

Again I echo the comment that it's the weakest story of the season, not a bad thing as the season has been so strong

A curious episode with much to admire. Looked great, interesting idea, well cast and performed. Decent enough script and this Doctor finally starting to feel like there's some depth to him, somewhere.

Yet somehow it all just felt a bit... lifeless.

A big let down after the last two cracking episodes and less divisive than the first two of the series but all a bit nothing. Still a big improvement on the majority of Gatwa's first series.

This one definitely felt undercooked, I really loved the focus on African culture and myths and legends and think it had a lot of potential, but it was just too rushed. The play-like execution and single setting just doesn't really work in such a short runtime, there was a lot of talking but they weren't actually saying much apart from exposition and the supporting characters all felt very sidelined, It took seconds for Abena to change allegiances! A shame, but I guess not every experiment they're trying this season can work.