'Doctor Who's' "The Story & the Engine" Is a Powerful Ode to the Stories We Tell

"We're all just stories in the end" is an idea we've encountered on Doctor Who before. But although this line was originally spoken in the Season 5 episode "The Big Bang," the Eleventh Doctor's famous phrase has rarely felt more prescient (or tangible) than in the Fifteenth Doctor's second season. "The Story & the Engine" is perhaps the show's most direct continuation of that concept. It's an hour that posits that we are defined by the stories we tell — they shape us, how we are remembered, and are a key tool to understanding who we are, as individuals and as a broader species.

It's a love letter to the power of storytelling, from how stories change and evolve across different cultures to the communities formed around the act of doing the telling. It's one of the franchise's stranger episodes: visually striking, with a distinct feel of magical realism and a refreshingly different kind of narrative that's so concerned with character dynamics and big philosophical ideas that it forgets to give its central threat real teeth. (Terrifying giant spider thing aside.) Yet, it's another critical step in a season that feels like it's experimenting with big ideas about how Doctor Who can keep itself fresh and forward-thinking in its sixtieth decade.

Look, we've all heard the rumors about the show's future, whether star Ncuti Gatwa is leaving or if the series is slated to go on an extended hiatus following the Season 2 finale. But if anything, episodes like "The Story & the Engine" prove the show (this version of it, particularly) still has so much to say.