This week, Doctor Who offered up a love letter to the art of story and storytelling, a beautiful meditation set in Lagos against a larger backdrop of the African diaspora. In this space, popular contemporary storytelling stands side-by-side with classic folklore, like the story of Tortoise falling from the sky and ending up with a cracked shell. Overall, ‘The Story and the Engine’ offers an exciting new look for the Whoniverse, even if it gets a bit tangled in its own web, takes some unnecessary swings, and risks dividing the fandom along its weakest faultline.
Doctor Who’s fifth entry into the second season of its Disney+ era starts out strong. The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa, Sex Education) absolutely lights up when he realizes that he has an excuse to visit Lagos, a technological hotspot, to charge the Vindicator (plot) device that he has been using to anchor the TARDIS to Belinda Chandra’s (Varada Sethu, Andor) missing timeline. He gives voice to some of the loudest subtext in the latest era: existing as a Black man changes the way some people treat The Doctor, but inside the welcoming walls of his favorite barber shop (and in the streets of Lagos), he is welcomed as a brother.
This is a particularly touching observation when we consider how well Season 2’s episodes have matched up with the trajectory of Season 1 (see last week’s review for more details); back in Season 1’s ‘Dot and Bubble,’ The Doctor helped mastermind the rescue of a young woman who ultimately rejected his help based on the color of his skin. Gatwa’s performance of The Doctor’s anguish in that moment remains, perhaps, his most layered scene in the role to date, but it felt wonderful to see him so connected to a community this time around.
Things quickly go downhill for The Doctor. Even before he lands at the barber shop, he notices the faces of the proprietor, Omo Esosa (Sule Rimi, The Day of the Jackal) and several customers on “missing” posters in an alleyway. When Fifteen steps into the shop, everything seems to be in order, until he realizes that there has been a change in ownership to a mysterious Barber (Ariyon Bakare, Life) with creepy clippers, a distressing alarm system mounted to the wall, and a one-way magic door to a liminal storytelling space; they are trapped inside the shop (which is mounted on the back of a giant mechanical spider walking the literal web of this story space).
In a bit of a misstep for an episode that created so many good vibes at the start, The Doctor rips his friend Omo a new one for daring to share stories of their time together and hoping that the Time Lord might show up to free them from their imprisonment. It’s a bit of a confusing scene since Omo didn’t seem to take any actions that would specifically lure The Doctor into this trap. Plus, we learn that this mechanical spider runs on a literal story engine. Omo and his clients are prisoners who fuel the engine by telling stories from the barber’s chair, caught in a neverending haircut loop. It’s unclear if The Doctor’s rage toward these prisoners stems from an earlier version of the script, or if he was just so upset at seeing his safe space become a trap that he lashed out at the nearest person. In any case, they make up by the end of the episode.
While The Doctor’s anger toward Omo doesn’t introduce the best vibes, the barber shop’s magical story wall makes you feel just like you’ve stepped into an episode of Reading Rainbow. In fact, one of the biggest disappointments of the episode comes when The Doctor’s story about Belinda’s selflessness appeared as video footage instead of a custom animation. It spoils the magic a bit, but hey, ‘Lux’ probably crushed the animation budget.
After sharing his story and feeling a painful energy drain, The Doctor slowly unravels the mystery behind the Barber. Despite a very convincing villain monologue in which he claims the title of multiple story gods and gods of mischief, The Doctor and Belinda laugh him right off of his high horse. The Doctor knows many of these gods personally, and he sees through the lie. In quick succession, we learn that the Barber is an immortal being who was once human. He paints a picture of himself as the original storyteller, and in a concept ripped from the pages of American Gods, we learn that this storyteller birthed and strengthened the gods through his stories. While he may not be the trickster god-spider Anansi, he has teamed up with Anansi’s scorned daughter, Abena (Michelle Asante, Top Boy). Not only was she scorned by her father, but also by The Doctor; Abena was abandoned as little more than a bargaining chip in a game between her father and The Doctor. She has had it with powerful immortal beings. Now, she is helping the Barber climb to the center of this abstract story web to claim his well-deserved place as king.
Unfortunately for the Barber, he has not used his immortality to cash in on the James Bond filmography, because he spends the back half of the episode Bond-villaining his plans away to The Doctor with very little convincing. No sooner is Abena revealed to be his accomplice than she is shocked and appalled by the revelation of his real plan to kill the gods for their treachery.
Moved by The Doctor’s claim that the destruction of the gods would dismantle humanity itself, as well as Belinda’s passionate pleas against lashing out with our own emotional baggage, Abena turns on her accomplice and braids a map into The Doctor’s hair while recounting the story of slaves using this method to share messages without interference from slave owners. It’s a touching moment that reminds us of how much charm is flowing through a somewhat untidy story. Once again, The Doctor has been welcomed into a community.
After following the map, The Doctor threatens to overwhelm the heart of the story engine by mainlining all of his past lives and stories into the machine. We’ve seen this strategy before, but hey, if ain’t broke, don’t fix it. In the end, The Doctor’s gambit creates enough tension to convince his adversary to put his ego aside and keep collecting stories. The doctor even nods to his buddy Ernest Hemingway’s six word story (For sale: baby shoes, never worn). Everything works out in the end, so we might as well wrap it up with a six-word story of our own:
Our heroes heal; the spider explodes.
While this may not be the tightest episode of Doctor Who, it carries a message of joy and healing, explores some fun wibbly wobbly time/space questions, and allows The Doctor to bond with a whole new community. Ultimately, this episode deserves our love and respect.
That being said, The Doctor’s passionate plea for the sanctity of abstract gods feels a bit out of place with his two-season and 60th Anniversary Special arc that sees him regularly destroying abstract gods. I suppose the lore-based answer is that The Doctor has been fighting the “gods” of the Pantheon of Discord, rather than these “cool” ones? Some gods are good and others are abstract constructs? Oh well, apples and oranges…gravity and mavity.
Speaking of lore, this episode makes a somewhat irresponsible move with lore from Doctor Who’s Chibnall era in a way that has the potential to alienate people across the fanbase. First, the good news: the Fugitive Doctor (Jo Martin, The Marlow Murder Club) is back for a quick cameo. In an artful pan across the screen, the Fugitive Doctor briefly replaces Fifteen on screen while recounting the story of abandoning Abena in the past. The Fugitive Doctor sits at the core of a beloved Chibnall-era mystery that revealed The Doctor lived a host of other lives before the Fifteen iterations that fans have fallen in love with for the last 60 years.
This sounds like nothing but good news, but, Whovians know that Thirteen (Jodie Whittaker, Broadchurch) chose to leave her past in the past. As far as we know, all of The Doctor’s early memories are locked away inside of a fob watch in the heart of the TARDIS. This week’s reveal seems to ignore the context of Thirteen’s character development in a way that will disappoint fans of the earlier series. At the same time, centering a Chibnall-era storyline will spark sniping from the corner of the fandom that broadly and nonchalantly dismisses the Chibnall years. It doesn’t take too much imagination to invent a way they could pull off this reveal later on, but even the suggestion that this plot development happened off screen feels like picking at a wound on the fandom that is already struggling to heal. On the bright side, The Fugitive Doctor always makes the most of her moments on screen, and this reviewer won’t let any toxicity get in the way of enjoying Jo Martin operating behind the wheel of her Doctor.
Speaking of the toxic corner of Doctor Who fandom, this entire season has fought against various forms of toxic masculinity. At times it has felt a bit hamfisted, but it’s very on-brand for The Doctor’s brand of heroism. Even inside of this episode, The Doctor accuses the Barber of being nothing more than a glorified internet troll. That’s all well and good, but the message gets diluted when you have The Doctor do some textbook trolling of his own: taking a shot at the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yup, you heard that right. The Doctor reminisces about the time he spent with Norse Goddess Sága watching Marvel movies “up until Endgame.” It seems weird for a show so plagued by toxic discourse to tap into one of the internet’s favorite veins of toxicity.
That being said, let’s end on a positive note. Stories are powerful. They can move mountains and change hearts and minds. Stories can be weaponized against us and we can use them to keep others down – to keep ourselves down. Stories can build one community and villainize another. All of this complexity was at play in ‘The Story and the Engine.’ In the end, every character committed to using stories for good, to build bridges and celebrate humanity. If that’s not the core of a good Doctor Who story, I don’t know what is.We’ll see you next week for ‘The Interstellar Song Contest!’
