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shivverNope, didn't get to actually sit down and write anything about "The Story and the Engine" last week, so I have to bundle it with "The Interstellar Song Contest". I just have no idea where my time is going nowadays.
This is turning out to be an amazing season! Four excellent episodes in a row, and "The Robot Revolution" wasn't a slouch either.
I'm not sure at this point if I would name "The Story and the Engine" as the best episode so far this season, but it's a strong possibility for so many reasons. I loved the different style of storytelling, which is something that I think the general audience of DW is not used to. The show does explore non-British and non-Western culture on occasion (probably not as often as it should), but does it within a British and Western storytelling tradition. The writer, Innua Ellams, melded the usual episodic television format with Nigerian traditions, and this influence was apparent in both the episode itself and in the stories that the characters told.
I think, though, that the thing I enjoyed the most was the exploration of storytelling as a necessity for human life, that humans created storytelling but also need it to live and grow, just as much as the engine needed it to continue moving. This parallels "The Devil's Chord", where the absence of music slowly destroys the world, and as I think about it, it's another interesting non-Western theme, coming from a country where storytelling and music are integral to the culture and everyday life.
All of the characters were interesting, and even though, of the barbershop group, Omo and Tunde were the most important, Obioma and Rashid had distinct personalities and contributed to the overall story. The most significant scene for me, though, was the Doctor's anger at Omo's betrayal, giving us a good look at how the Doctor thinks and what he values. He had told Belinda earlier about how he needed Omo's barbershop because it was the only place where he was considered no different than anyone else, and then, Omo works to bring him because he is different; the Doctor has lost his safe place. It takes a lot to anger the Doctor, and this was it.
I'm really not sure what else to write without going into a long treatise about the episode, so I think I'll cut it here. Oh, I will say that it was great to see the Fugitive Doctor again, that the show is continuing to develop her and the history of the Doctor in the beforetimes.
Also, I wonder what the significance of Tunde's Nike shirt was? DW and other TV shows usually don't display any commercial brands (because if they did, they'd have to negotiate with the company for the rights), so it's got to be significant. The BBC wouldn't go through all that trouble for nothing. Maybe it's because Nike is a Greek goddess, bringing things back to the whole gods theme? Or that she's the goddess of victory, referring either to the eventual victory in the show or the storytelling gods' victory that the Barber was trying to overthrow?
Ooo, didn't quite make it to five in a row. Don't get me wrong: "The Interstellar Song Contest" was fine. It just wasn't excellent.
I admit that I had to go look up who Rylan was. I know what Eurovision is and identified that this was a galactization of that concept, but I've never seen it and don't know the particulars. You can't really blame this on my American-ness, though, because I also wouldn't recognize American shows and contests of the same type, like that one on TV *honestly goes and looks it up* -- haha American Idol. Seriously, I had to go look up that title. I'm just generally ignorant, not just US-(ego-)centered.
Basically, while the episode was fun and fast-paced and had some incredible visuals, the overall story and its handling was a bit banal: an oppressed person attempting revenge and the population learning that the oppression was fabricated. You can tell the same basic story over and over again, but what makes it fresh and interesting is how it's told.
This one focused on the Doctor and his struggles to save the space station full of people, and left the main conflict to be resolved through Cora's reveal and later her song. The problem is that the saving of the station was incidental to the core plot. So, we spend most of the episode's time watching the Doctor (and the others, yes) fixing things and overcoming obstacles, only to have the actual conflict be solved by Cora's song, and we're supposed to believe that a single performance of a song in a language that no one understood overturned the history of prejudice against the people of Hellia. It just didn't work for me, especially after Cora's own songwriting partner completely turned against her despite their long history and close relationship. Why would a stadium full of people toss aside their prejudices after a single song?
One stunning thing in this episode was the Doctor's anger. He's been angry before -- last episode, in fact, a deep personal anger with his friend -- but this time, it made him cruel, torturing Kid with the hardlight hologram. Where in the world did that come from? The Doctor has had to stop and/or punish people who have tried to kill thousands or millions of people before, but he's never resorted to torture. With the inclusion of Susan (more on her later) stopping him, this reminded me of the Doctor's treatment of the Racnoss and Donna's "You can stop now," but there, though the Doctor had lost control and was punishing the Empress by killing her children, he wasn't being deliberately cruel. Is this a new side to the Doctor that is unique to Fifteen?
What I'm really hoping is that this is the real hint to the overall season arc. As Belinda pointed out when the Doctor was threatening Kid, "That's not him." She's seeing that something is wrong, and whatever it is, it wasn't resolved in this episode (not even like it was in "The Runaway Bride", where Donna made the Doctor realize he was at the edge and he pulled himself back from it), so I have to hope that it's made clear in the finale and addressed then. Perhaps this is part of what Mrs. Flood is doing.
The plot wasn't helped by the amazing amount of coincidences that made sure everything went along smoothly. Belinda seems to be the only person in the private boxes who was able to save herself from flying off. (In case you don't remember, Cora had been saved by Wynn closing her box's shield.) The only other two people who survived, Gary and Mike, had exactly the correct skills the Doctor needed to manipulate the station's systems, bring the frozen people back in, and revive them. The station happens to have a stasis pod, for keeping Rylan around forever, that's perfect for reviving frozen people. There's more, but I'll stop here.
We also got a bit of reversion back to the style of storytelling that was common in Thirteen's run, where the Doctor does all the thinking and problem solving, then tells everyone else what to do. It would have been far more interesting and satisfying to have Gary and Mike propose solutions to at least some of the problems.
And just cos this bugs me: omg, bad science! But I'm not going to go into details. ;)
And then there's Susan. When she appeared on screen, I gasped and we stopped the playback to fansquee a bit, but that dissipated quickly as the scene continued. While it was great to see her, she didn't make any sense in the story. Why would the Doctor, floating frozen in the mavity field, need anyone to convince him to wake up and start fighting again? You'd think he'd just do that without any outside prompting, especially since he had already known something bad was about to happen. The second instance wasn't as bad, though honestly, it would have made a better story if Belinda had been the one to snap the Doctor out of his anger, much like Donna had seventeen years earlier.
I have to trust that RTD had the writer include Susan here because she's going to be a major part of the finale, and that the writer simply did a poor job of using her. Because, by the time we got to the end of the story, she felt to me like her appearance was simply fan service, capitalizing on the huge amount of speculation last season that she was going to return then and the general excitement the fandom has for that character. I wouldn't feel this way if she'd actually made sense in the story.
Was there any good here? Yes! First, without looking at it too deeply, it was definitely fun. Fun is fine; DW doesn't have to be groundbreaking and meaningful every time. I did like how it portrayed the prejudice against the Hellions throughout the episode, starting with what sounded like a throwaway remark ("You're monsters!" "That's what people have said to me my whole life. Cos of the horns.") and then the conflicting descriptions of who everyone thought the Hellions were, because that's how prejudice actually works in real life. The episode also dealt with the Corporation well, having Cora show what it had done and why, and the effects of its actions, rather than the way DW has done this in the past, with a speech from the Doctor on the "evils of capitalism". We see the excesses the Corporation perpetrated, the propaganda they've twisted everyone with, and how it can be fought against. This is a useful lesson. Very well done.
So, bottom line, a good episode that does some things well and some things poorly.
Edit: So after writing this, I read another review of TISC and discovered that we'd missed the post-credits scene, because we always turn off the episode when the theme comes on, so that we aren't spoiled by the next episode's trailer. So, I ran off to go watch it.
Disappointing. Mrs. Flood is just the Rani, who has it out for the Doctor. As far as I recall, the Rani did not care particularly for defeating/killing the Doctor. I thought she was an unethical scientist who simply fought the Doctor when he got in her way. I don't like this take on the Rani. Maybe there's some hope in that she does imply that the Vindicator was her actual focus and targeting the Doctor is a secondary goal.
I'm also not pleased that bi-generation is now a common thing. Wasn't it supposed to be either induced by the Toymaker or such a small chance that it had actually never happened before? And I don't like that old!Rani is so subservient to new!Rani.
Ah well. We'll see how the finale goes.
This is turning out to be an amazing season! Four excellent episodes in a row, and "The Robot Revolution" wasn't a slouch either.
I'm not sure at this point if I would name "The Story and the Engine" as the best episode so far this season, but it's a strong possibility for so many reasons. I loved the different style of storytelling, which is something that I think the general audience of DW is not used to. The show does explore non-British and non-Western culture on occasion (probably not as often as it should), but does it within a British and Western storytelling tradition. The writer, Innua Ellams, melded the usual episodic television format with Nigerian traditions, and this influence was apparent in both the episode itself and in the stories that the characters told.
I think, though, that the thing I enjoyed the most was the exploration of storytelling as a necessity for human life, that humans created storytelling but also need it to live and grow, just as much as the engine needed it to continue moving. This parallels "The Devil's Chord", where the absence of music slowly destroys the world, and as I think about it, it's another interesting non-Western theme, coming from a country where storytelling and music are integral to the culture and everyday life.
All of the characters were interesting, and even though, of the barbershop group, Omo and Tunde were the most important, Obioma and Rashid had distinct personalities and contributed to the overall story. The most significant scene for me, though, was the Doctor's anger at Omo's betrayal, giving us a good look at how the Doctor thinks and what he values. He had told Belinda earlier about how he needed Omo's barbershop because it was the only place where he was considered no different than anyone else, and then, Omo works to bring him because he is different; the Doctor has lost his safe place. It takes a lot to anger the Doctor, and this was it.
I'm really not sure what else to write without going into a long treatise about the episode, so I think I'll cut it here. Oh, I will say that it was great to see the Fugitive Doctor again, that the show is continuing to develop her and the history of the Doctor in the beforetimes.
Also, I wonder what the significance of Tunde's Nike shirt was? DW and other TV shows usually don't display any commercial brands (because if they did, they'd have to negotiate with the company for the rights), so it's got to be significant. The BBC wouldn't go through all that trouble for nothing. Maybe it's because Nike is a Greek goddess, bringing things back to the whole gods theme? Or that she's the goddess of victory, referring either to the eventual victory in the show or the storytelling gods' victory that the Barber was trying to overthrow?
Ooo, didn't quite make it to five in a row. Don't get me wrong: "The Interstellar Song Contest" was fine. It just wasn't excellent.
I admit that I had to go look up who Rylan was. I know what Eurovision is and identified that this was a galactization of that concept, but I've never seen it and don't know the particulars. You can't really blame this on my American-ness, though, because I also wouldn't recognize American shows and contests of the same type, like that one on TV *honestly goes and looks it up* -- haha American Idol. Seriously, I had to go look up that title. I'm just generally ignorant, not just US-(ego-)centered.
Basically, while the episode was fun and fast-paced and had some incredible visuals, the overall story and its handling was a bit banal: an oppressed person attempting revenge and the population learning that the oppression was fabricated. You can tell the same basic story over and over again, but what makes it fresh and interesting is how it's told.
This one focused on the Doctor and his struggles to save the space station full of people, and left the main conflict to be resolved through Cora's reveal and later her song. The problem is that the saving of the station was incidental to the core plot. So, we spend most of the episode's time watching the Doctor (and the others, yes) fixing things and overcoming obstacles, only to have the actual conflict be solved by Cora's song, and we're supposed to believe that a single performance of a song in a language that no one understood overturned the history of prejudice against the people of Hellia. It just didn't work for me, especially after Cora's own songwriting partner completely turned against her despite their long history and close relationship. Why would a stadium full of people toss aside their prejudices after a single song?
One stunning thing in this episode was the Doctor's anger. He's been angry before -- last episode, in fact, a deep personal anger with his friend -- but this time, it made him cruel, torturing Kid with the hardlight hologram. Where in the world did that come from? The Doctor has had to stop and/or punish people who have tried to kill thousands or millions of people before, but he's never resorted to torture. With the inclusion of Susan (more on her later) stopping him, this reminded me of the Doctor's treatment of the Racnoss and Donna's "You can stop now," but there, though the Doctor had lost control and was punishing the Empress by killing her children, he wasn't being deliberately cruel. Is this a new side to the Doctor that is unique to Fifteen?
What I'm really hoping is that this is the real hint to the overall season arc. As Belinda pointed out when the Doctor was threatening Kid, "That's not him." She's seeing that something is wrong, and whatever it is, it wasn't resolved in this episode (not even like it was in "The Runaway Bride", where Donna made the Doctor realize he was at the edge and he pulled himself back from it), so I have to hope that it's made clear in the finale and addressed then. Perhaps this is part of what Mrs. Flood is doing.
The plot wasn't helped by the amazing amount of coincidences that made sure everything went along smoothly. Belinda seems to be the only person in the private boxes who was able to save herself from flying off. (In case you don't remember, Cora had been saved by Wynn closing her box's shield.) The only other two people who survived, Gary and Mike, had exactly the correct skills the Doctor needed to manipulate the station's systems, bring the frozen people back in, and revive them. The station happens to have a stasis pod, for keeping Rylan around forever, that's perfect for reviving frozen people. There's more, but I'll stop here.
We also got a bit of reversion back to the style of storytelling that was common in Thirteen's run, where the Doctor does all the thinking and problem solving, then tells everyone else what to do. It would have been far more interesting and satisfying to have Gary and Mike propose solutions to at least some of the problems.
And just cos this bugs me: omg, bad science! But I'm not going to go into details. ;)
And then there's Susan. When she appeared on screen, I gasped and we stopped the playback to fansquee a bit, but that dissipated quickly as the scene continued. While it was great to see her, she didn't make any sense in the story. Why would the Doctor, floating frozen in the mavity field, need anyone to convince him to wake up and start fighting again? You'd think he'd just do that without any outside prompting, especially since he had already known something bad was about to happen. The second instance wasn't as bad, though honestly, it would have made a better story if Belinda had been the one to snap the Doctor out of his anger, much like Donna had seventeen years earlier.
I have to trust that RTD had the writer include Susan here because she's going to be a major part of the finale, and that the writer simply did a poor job of using her. Because, by the time we got to the end of the story, she felt to me like her appearance was simply fan service, capitalizing on the huge amount of speculation last season that she was going to return then and the general excitement the fandom has for that character. I wouldn't feel this way if she'd actually made sense in the story.
Was there any good here? Yes! First, without looking at it too deeply, it was definitely fun. Fun is fine; DW doesn't have to be groundbreaking and meaningful every time. I did like how it portrayed the prejudice against the Hellions throughout the episode, starting with what sounded like a throwaway remark ("You're monsters!" "That's what people have said to me my whole life. Cos of the horns.") and then the conflicting descriptions of who everyone thought the Hellions were, because that's how prejudice actually works in real life. The episode also dealt with the Corporation well, having Cora show what it had done and why, and the effects of its actions, rather than the way DW has done this in the past, with a speech from the Doctor on the "evils of capitalism". We see the excesses the Corporation perpetrated, the propaganda they've twisted everyone with, and how it can be fought against. This is a useful lesson. Very well done.
So, bottom line, a good episode that does some things well and some things poorly.
Edit: So after writing this, I read another review of TISC and discovered that we'd missed the post-credits scene, because we always turn off the episode when the theme comes on, so that we aren't spoiled by the next episode's trailer. So, I ran off to go watch it.
Disappointing. Mrs. Flood is just the Rani, who has it out for the Doctor. As far as I recall, the Rani did not care particularly for defeating/killing the Doctor. I thought she was an unethical scientist who simply fought the Doctor when he got in her way. I don't like this take on the Rani. Maybe there's some hope in that she does imply that the Vindicator was her actual focus and targeting the Doctor is a secondary goal.
I'm also not pleased that bi-generation is now a common thing. Wasn't it supposed to be either induced by the Toymaker or such a small chance that it had actually never happened before? And I don't like that old!Rani is so subservient to new!Rani.
Ah well. We'll see how the finale goes.
