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Doctor Who: Unleashed Highlights Writer Inua Ellams Recreating Lagos

During Doctor Who: Unleashed, we see how everything that went down during S02E05: "The Story and the Engine" came together and much more.

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In this week's episode of Doctor Who: Unleashed, host Steffan Powell interviews writer Inua Ellams and uncovers how Lagos, Nigeria, was brought to South Wales to film 'The Story and the Engine'. Powell takes a stint as a caterer to 250 hungry people on set. "The Story and the Engine" is a special story as Ellams set the story in his native Lagos and also drew on his personal experience of barbershops and the culture of camaraderie and storytelling at barbershops. They're a place where men form friendships, and the stories they tell continue the tradition of oral history and folklore.

Doctor Who: The Story and the Engine: Interview with Inua Ellams
Inua Ellams on set for "Doctor Who" – BBC

Ellams' script is a masterclass in form and content, theme and plot in its meditation on myth and storytelling, and a love letter to Doctor Who. The other highlight of the episode is the recreation of a whole street in Lagos and its alleyways in a studio. There is no exterior location in the whole episode. And the barbershop set, where most of the story takes place, is like a stage set. The actors are acting out a play similar to Ellams' acclaimed original play The Barbershop Chronicles, which established his career as one of the most interesting British playwrights working now. Ellams is a prolific poet, playwright, illustrator, performer, and now screenwriter in the UK whose voice comes through in his script for Doctor Who without breaking with the tone of the series.

Doctor Who
Image: BBC & Disney+

Once again, Doctor Who: Unleashed is your weekly film school as it walks you through another facet of filmmaking, this time, how extras are used, and how they have to be fed on set. Yay, craft services. It's kind of amazing that catering is now a lot more accommodating for people with vegetarian diets on top of the usual British food (if you're a Brit, you know what that is).

Doctor Who: Unleashed is on the official YouTube channel outside the UK. It was released simultaneously as the BBC iPlayer after the episode Doctor Who was released.

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Adi TantimedhAbout Adi Tantimedh

Adi Tantimedh is a filmmaker, screenwriter and novelist. He wrote radio plays for the BBC Radio, “JLA: Age of Wonder” for DC Comics, “Blackshirt” for Moonstone Books, and “La Muse” for Big Head Press. Most recently, he wrote “Her Nightly Embrace”, “Her Beautiful Monster” and “Her Fugitive Heart”, a trilogy of novels featuring a British-Indian private eye published by Atria Books, a division Simon & Schuster.
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