Notes on - Doctor Who: The Story and the Engine

 

The Story and the Engine notes

Love thre comic images of the stories being told in the barber shop. Not clear if it’s diagetic or not

*** The Doctor!  We need him now! It needs feeding!

Do we need to restate the season trying to get Belinda home concept every episode

Omo’s palace is a barbershop

Lagos really is a major hub for communication for sub-saharan Africa

The Doctor: Omo, the owner, is a friend of mine. We met in a fire.

The TARDIS does the Doctor’s haircuts. I’d wondered

The Doctor: It’s a little hard to explain.

Belinda: OK. Try explaining.

I love that they’re acknowledging that this is the first time he’s been black

Having a place where you’re not different is so important.

The Doctor: We laugh. We tell stories. They…

Belinda: Treat you like one of their own?

The Doctor: Yeah.

It’s so cool that Belinda understands why having this place is important to the Doctor

I love the outfits, the colors, the hats, just everything.

Why is there a turn back sign?

The missing posters are the guys we saw in the barber shop

Omo Esosa

It’s hard not to love everything about Omo’s Palace

The door shutting was bad.  Why is it hurting Belinda in the TARDIS?

The Doctor identifies them as the missing men immediately

We’ve been seeing the Barber in the background

They have to keep telling stories while getting their hair cut in order to power the shop/machine

Yo Yo Ma

Music is about reproducing identical things in order to package time. I like that.

Rashid

Oh, so the drawings in the window are really appreaing.

In order to work you have to be in the chair under those clippers

The Barber: It is always hungry

I like the visual of their hair growing back

OK, everytime someone closes the door the TARDIS goes red and attacks Belinda

The Doctor knows Abby from somewhere.

Nice logistics that someone brings them food every day

Omo’s told everyone the Doctor’s story

We’re told very early that the Barber and Abby both used to work for her father

The men are trapped in the barbershop telling stories until they reach a mysterious destination and can’t either stop or leave

The only clients that were allowed to be trapped are the ones that love the shop

The girl with the blue earrings

All of their stories are so real

Of course the Doctor would volunteer to go next

Love the tribal face carved into the clippers

You’d expect the Doctor to tell a big space epis, but he tells a story about a single human sacrificing herself to help someone in need

Belinda appears to be a really good nurse

Belinda gave up her nan’s birthday to help a stranger

Of course the Doctor’s story is going to be the most powerful

I thought the woman died

Oh look, Mrs. Flood in a brief cameo

You almost never find out if people lived, let alone get thanked

Of course the Doctor’s story fully powered the battery

The first time you’re in the story chair is the hardest

Omo is trying to sell the Doctor to the Barber in exchange for letting everyone else go.

Abby wants the Barber to go somewhere, take a kingdom and rule fairly? What’s that about?

They’re definitely in a machine. The ‘Engine’

The TARDIS is accepting voice commands from Belinda? When did that start happening? Story convenience, I suppose.

The Doctor moved through Lagos with joy and Belinda is stumbling against the grain.

The Doctor: Because I have no home I’m what, I’m expendable?

Omo: Their families need them.

The Doctor: And I have none, so I don’t matter?

I love how much both hof them have completely understandable positions here.

The Doctor: I love this shop. I loved YOU, Omo.  I thought it was a home for me.  Shit, that shift to past tense hurts.

The Doctor’s refution of Omo is so painful

Beetlejuice rules on going out the door

OK, I was not anticipating a great big robot spider

Belinda sees a creepy ‘I’ll be important later’ child

I wonder how much Lagos looks like this

The shop is in outer space and in Lagos. The Doctor should understand that.

The Barber: The Nexus. I used to call it the World Wide Web, until the humans named something far uglier after that.

Only Abby and the Barber can go out the door

The spider begs us to assume it’s Anansi

The Doctor knew that Belinda would come find him

Abby: Did he tell you to wait?

Belinda: No. I told him to go, actually.

Why does Abby have such a personal grudge against the Doctor?

They’re leaning into the web metaphor

LOVE when Ncuti leans into the African portion of his accent. Orlando Jones excelled at the same thing

Now the Barber is claiming to be all of the story gods ever.

I actually believed him until the Doctor laughed him off

Should the Doctor have met that many literal gods?

Good way to seed the Abby revelation though

Belinda is already calling bullshit on his claim before the Doctor blows in up

Abby is rolling her eyes at the Barber’s claims as he makes them

Cutting off his dreads is a powerful visual statement

I like the idea of The Doctor and Saga watching Marvel movies.  – Norse connection

Oooo, camera on Abby when he mentions Anansi losing a bet to get the Doctor to marry one of his daughters.  Nice touch.

The Doctor: I know the gods. You are not them.

He was once human and the act of telling stories made the storytelling gods more powerful. That tracks with everything we’ve seen.  He documented the stories that made the gods

Should the nexus be literal?

Metaphorically, stories do create a web of connections between cultures and ideas. Tying that into Anansi is a pretty clever move.

He’s talking about stories about telling stories. Pub stories. Chaucer

Ooo. Callback image to Lux’ movie theater

He powers the vehicle with stories. Which we knew, but didn’t know his motivation

The face on the spider is the face on the clippers

Abby is the daughter of Anansi, who we just heard about the Doctor ditching marrying Abena

Why couldn’t he take her with him.

Oh, amazing transition to Jo Martin!

Abby wants to get the shop to the heart of the nexus so that she can install the Barber as storyteller supreme. All because the Doctor abandoned her.

I love how the barber’s hair changes from shot to shot

The Barber wants to cut the gods out of memory

He’s making a world without stories. Which would be a bad thing.

Abena isn’t willing to hurt her father

Is this true? Did they weave maps into their hair?  That’s amazing

I’m not clear why the Barber would have a maze leading to freedom in the back of the shop, but the historical reference makes me not care about the logic.

An engine powered by stories

Belinda: A beating heart inside a brain?

The Doctor: Brilliant. What else is a story?

Hemmingway books were planted on the shelves.  Why would the Barber be into him?

It’s a little unclear if the six word story really happened

I LOVE that they resisted the urge to tell the six word story

The fact that the Doctor regenerates and is therefore too big for one story is the key to defeating him?

I do like a montage

The Doctor’s compassion for the Barber even now is very moving

Not totally clear why the spider that was the outside is now inside coming outside…

The Barber: All I wanted was to be credited for my work.

The amount of grace and forgiveness in these last couple minutes completely floors me.

Omo reaching out his hand to the Barber

The Barber: I don’t deserve this kindness.

None of us do, pal. That’s why giving it matters

The mention of the spooky kid feels a little forced