The Reel Rejects - DOCTOR WHO “THE STORY & THE ENGINE” 15x5 Breakdown & Review

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Starting point is 00:00:30 Do you have the age legal for consuming to alcohol. No, no churner at key. Thank you to Liquid Ivy for sponsoring this video. More on them in just a bit. Let's watch a sex episode of Doctor Who.

Starting point is 00:00:43 A fandom that I have really loved being a part of lately. Absolutely. So thank you, guys. If you're listening to us out or Spotify, or maybe on our clips in Schwarzschilder. We got clips of Georgetown now, by the way. We just watched Doctor Who. the latest episode um i'm gonna hand it off to john what i will say is we don't have too much time

Starting point is 00:01:06 to talk um and i will say the one thing first is this might be my favorite episode of the season yeah um but john i imagine you know a lot to say you're pretty vocal throughout so please take it yeah i love this and i might i might i mean i think this has been a strong season there have been a lot of striking episodes but this was definitely like a really nice it's interesting when a show like dr hood that's like anthological can give you sort of like oh this is a breath of fresh air. I'm used to variety, but, you know, this feels like something kind of new and untrodden. And I loved the idea that we would start the episode off directly kind of acknowledging. Like, we have it happen in others contexts when we go to the past or whatever. But,

Starting point is 00:01:46 you know, for the doctor to actually be like, I am now in this black body and it gives me these different experiences and I'm privy to a different kind of inroad into human culture this way. I thought it was really interesting and a lovely thing to touch upon and I feel like this is an episode where I am anxious now to hear other people's opinions especially to hear the opinions

Starting point is 00:02:10 of black folks who might be watching the show because I'm sure there's a ton of cultural stuff that we are not exactly directly privy to but I really like the way that it seemed like they really immerse themselves into the culture here with a simple touchstone at the start the barbershop it's something that exists here i'm sure it exists you know in any part of the world

Starting point is 00:02:32 where you know black culture thrives and flourishes to some degree or another um and yeah i feel like you know the theme of this had to do probably heavily with appropriation this idea of you know i have been here telling these stories and they have been you know taken and people have run with them and they've forgotten who authored the stories who collected the stories who you know has been out here, you know, risking whatever and, you know, putting the energy into keeping the stories alive. And that's, you know, to me, that touched into like the way that, you know, the sounds of a lot of music and the timbers of a lot of art are traced back to black cultures and African cultures that are, you know, erased when those stories and sounds are taken and

Starting point is 00:03:15 run with by other people who maybe don't even mean it maliciously, but are causing, you know, again, the authors or the originators to be forgotten in some way, shape, or form, and to have a character who, you know, is sort of driven by this want and this desire and this, you know, sort of endless search of, yeah, the recognition for being the custodian. And you don't get the sense that it's like a completely selfish thing. Like, it's because that acknowledgement has gone, you know, unacknowled, it hasn't been presented for so long. you get his bitterness and you get why he would want to kind of create this realm of stories where he can be in control and can obliterate the gods who have, you know, sort of, yeah,

Starting point is 00:04:01 not given him his due for helping keep them alive and helping keep them, you know, relevant to all of humanity. I thought it was really neat and interesting personification. I loved the, you know, design of this episode from like the little flourishes like the clippers or the moving paintings that tell the stories, the touching on. you know it's like the corn rose thing i don't know if that's 100% true my guess is that it is because that just sounds way too plausible to be a fabrication comment below if you know but you know that i thought was a fascinating thing and i love that they used that and it felt perfectly

Starting point is 00:04:37 in line with the episode in line with the show but also yeah like a kind of fantastical or a new interesting thing to do a new clever way to work out of a situation uh yeah Yeah, there's so much to say about this. But I thought this was really, really cool. And I'm really glad that they took the time and compiled such a wonderful cast to do it with. What did you think? Well, like I said, I think it was one of the best episodes.

Starting point is 00:05:05 This is my favorite episode of the season. And I think that it's one of those where, you know, like with any show or movie, you try to figure out what they're talking about, what they're saying and then at the end of the day all you can really do is go with your point of view or your own interpretation of what they're saying and i can only leave with my point of view here and what i think this was at least what it highlighted to me when you cast shooty got what to be the first black doctor um male black doctor actually now you

Starting point is 00:05:41 think about it looked it up while john was talking briefly joe martin is the doctor from before yeah um and shooty gotwa there's like two versions of how you could go about when you do a different race or even gender is you either just treat it like as normal and you don't really acknowledge it or you lean all the way in yeah and i think with chutee they have progressively leaning more in as time has gone on and this is the most lent in they've done yeah and i think sometimes specificity actually equals more

Starting point is 00:06:20 identifiable traits equals more empathy equals more universal speak versus separating or feeling niche you know like this is a very hyper specific episode of race and culture and appropriation

Starting point is 00:06:36 and I think that the way they handled it while being a bottle episode by having this one motif where you can technically venture into like different little short film vignettes was so smart on like a structure level and it got me thinking about quite a few things thematically that were a little bit more outside of specifically African culture which yeah I'm not going to be the guy to talk about that really that's the part of the coolness of getting shootikawa is that you can really lean into this and perhaps explore an

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Starting point is 00:08:47 Thank you again, Liquid Ivy for partnering up with us yet again. Love you so much. To me, that's just awesome to see. That's the kind of diversity I like seeing. And this, so to me, what I was thinking about was how in a lot of ways the doctor can be considered a god. And in some ways, he is like the god. god of stories the god of collector of different he traverses the universe traverses different planets traverses time and helps out and collect stories and culture and everything and what they talk the way they

Starting point is 00:09:21 illustrate the gods here uh in this show has been about gods who weaponize power and power being more of the focus they even liken that to human beings in this episode when they're talking about hey the people they produced music it was a thing that was alive and then as metropolises grow as industrial as industrialization happens suddenly we are now going like how can we ape this how can we copy it how can we monetize it what's the factory version of this assembly that we can put together and how can we keep it like frozen in time and perfect and then how can we control it and how do we control the people because human

Starting point is 00:10:07 beings who often reach for such a level of power want to be that is their weird version of connecting of being like god so god's equaling power and you have the doctor here who could very much be a god it does not weaponize that power which then drives home further the strength of what that's what makes the doctor special like you even have the barber is is a great example of someone who was mistreated by individuals with power. And now he seeks power. Now he wants what he feels is owed to him. Now he wants recognition. And then that lack of power, that lack of empowerment from people in power breeds resentment, breeds rebellion, breeds, rebellion, breeds anguish, breeds vengeance. and I think they managed to communicate all this in a way that managed to flow

Starting point is 00:11:07 whilst being like, no, the true people in power should be the ones who know how to connect the most to humanity and humanity people in power should be helping people less fortunate than themselves. And that is the doctor. He is that great illustration of what makes the doctor the doctor, the healer of the people. And, you know, then to top it all off by having something that has amazing camera techniques has great, like everything felt very precise when they wanted to mix up their angles or keep this in a longer shot or do these little zoom-ins and going over like his hair for the map and then going up on the ceiling, watching them navigate a map that looks reflective of his hair. I'm like, damn, this is fucking cool. and then the music here for a thing that calls attention to music very early on the whoever composed this was fucking brilliant because it felt alive

Starting point is 00:12:09 it felt like there was like a band off screen or like they put them in a room it was just like giant like flowing it felt like the music was motivated by that thing he said about like you know the song when i played it the first time there was an elk over there and there were clouds and then when i played it the second time it was a totally different situation the music's different And it felt really personified. It felt like a personification of that. Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Starting point is 00:12:33 And everything you said, absolutely. I would completely echo all those same sentiments. And, yeah, on top of that, with, like, great performances from everyone all around. This was one of the, like, this is like a carcophony of stuff that managed to feel like an appropriate cacophony. Yeah. And I'm sure it'll ruffle some feathers for some stuff. stupid fucking reason, but I think is, I thought this was a great episode. Yeah, absolutely. And to have the resolve be that he just goes and takes over the barbershop,

Starting point is 00:13:05 he's handed down this place of stories from somebody else who's been the custodian of this place. That was really nice. And also, just the personification of like the story engine. I thought was really cool. It's like, yeah, a brain with a heart inside. What a great metaphor. Also, too, it kind of resembles lungs, which you use to provide the air that takes the story flight, you know. And the, yeah, all the different artifacts that power the engine calling back to the Hemingway things. Oh, the razor. And the razor, yeah, like the design of that. I know.

Starting point is 00:13:37 How cool with that. I'm like, what a cool doctor who like Easter egg like toy you could buy it. That was a fucking cool ass. Like that was that really bad ass. That would be me appropriate in African culture. But that's the razor I want. Well, but too, like even that thing of like that because, you know, like there's that whole thing about cornrows. and like when white people get cornrows and stuff like that

Starting point is 00:13:59 and people are like you don't quite understand like it it was great to be struck with that I never got I never was aware of like anything about hair culture being I thought it was more like truth be told like a part of stereotype that I could not talk about like black people in the barbershop you know like more of like I was supposed to say that it's just a community a communal thing that black people would have

Starting point is 00:14:22 but you know but the whole thing with like the hair specificity I'm like oh damn I never even like considered that that was a thing well and you can then again provided that all this is is based on like accurate culture then you can sort of trace the roots of like oh no wonder a barbershop has this sort of cultural significance as being like a place of gathering because there's probably earlier versions of that and yeah like not just in america totally and and so yeah that idea of like oh it's not just about like it's our thing it's our style it's like there was a purpose here that is also now being completely erased from right this tree

Starting point is 00:14:56 tradition and so like yeah to be struck with that was really cool and uh you know that that razor i saw it and i was like man whoever made that if they can make like the next sonic screwdriver that would be wicked sick you know that'd be very cool um we do got to get out of here uh we have to make this one a much shorter one yeah but i i love this episode uh i thought it was great no notes love spider normally there's like at least one thing i would say being like you know what i could use more of or maybe they could attend this and uh this is like the this is the first episode this season where i don't have like anything that i would rather uh change that's because i just don't want to look racist yes no great no notes and i well and even the timing like it didn't feel too

Starting point is 00:15:39 rushed like i feel like of all the pacings of the episodes of the season this one has felt they've felt increasingly proportional and this one feels the most proportional yet and very doctor who uh with dialogue that felt like lyrics and poetry uh It was a very poetic dialogue that was gripping. Like, it was written. And you hope to get back to hear his six-word story. You do, yeah. I am born.

Starting point is 00:16:05 I die. I am born. What a great way to, you know, charge it up and to have this climactic story-based moment. Great character arcs around. So thank you guys for joining us. Can't wait to watch the Who Culture video on this. Thank you so much for being here. And we'll see you next week, Hoovians.

Starting point is 00:16:23 Peace. Thank you.

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The Reel Rejects - DOCTOR WHO “THE STORY & THE ENGINE” 15x5 Breakdown & Review

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