This is a hard one for me. I had such high hopes going into The Story & the Engine, and I feel I was foolish with that because it just dissapointed me. Superficially, I felt that the episode looked very good. I liked the sets, the costumes, the visual effects, the acting and the directing. However, the writing really let it down for me.

It felt like the sequel to several Doctor Who episodes that don't exist. In theory, references to unseen adventures are great! However, here, I felt genuinely lost. The worst offender for me in this episode was the stuff with Abby. It confused me so much and really took me out of the viewing experience. (However, I felt that the Fugitive Doctor cameo was excellent - it's just a shame that it was part of a sequence that I disliked so much. Having said that, it didn't make much sense for the Doctor to have the Fugitive Doctor's memories - was this even edited? It doesn't feel like it sometimes).

Moreover, much of the plot felt confused, directionless and messy. There were tons of ideas that felt interesting to me, but they were fleshed out so little that I was just left confused and hollow. Then there's the stuff with the gods. I don't like the ongoing gods storyline this era. However, I liked this portrayl of it. That's because it's completely different to everything else this era has done with gods. Taken in isolation, I felt that this portrayl was much more interesting and nuanced. However, when considered alongside the other stuff with gods in this era, it felt confusing, directionless and messy. This sours an otherwise good bit of the episode for me.

Another segment that I disliked was the bit where the Barber just did exposition for about 2 minutes. It was clunky. And why was he cutting off his hair? It didn't make any sense to me, literally or symbolicly. Also, I think he kind of had a point.

Now the ending. I felt that it was completely rushed and, frankly, bad. Maybe I missed something, but how was the Doctor connected to the Engine? How did he destroy it? None of this is clear to me, and it really harmed my viewing experience. Then, the Barber changes his tune almost instantly on the flip of a coin! I feel like the ending should have been allocated more time in the episode. That likely would have fixed many of my issues with it, by giving it more time to breathe and explain itself.

Now for another, small, positive: I liked the segment with the Doctor's story about Belinda a lot. It felt properly grounded, and gave Belinda some nice characterisation. I also liked that this is where Mrs Flood appeared, not at the end. I am not a fan of her storyline, but this is a better way of doing it, in my opinion, then forcing her in at the end each time, so basically making it even more similar to Susan Twist, a plotline that the Mrs Flod plotline already has many similarities with, and that was better than this one. Seriously, why are they doing such a similar series-long plotline again so soon!?

The thing is, I did quite enjoy the first third or so, but then the plot got so messy, so rushed, so disorganised, that it's really soured my opinion on the episode as a whole. Overall, I'm dissapointed.