"But the TARDIS does your hair."
IN THIS ONE... A barber shop in Nigeria forces patrons to tell stories.
REVIEW: It's perhaps not Ghost Light, but this episode is about as complex as things gets in NuWho, and part of that is Nigerian writer Inua Ellams' use of Nigeria as a location, a culture, and probably, African myths western audiences aren't in touch with (the house on the back of a spider, for example, or the cornrow maze). So there's an originality here that's entirely due to his point of view. But where Ellams really succeeds is in stretching the storytelling filter to include many more mythologies, dropping the names of gods across the all of human culture into the same, consistent web. And the Doctor has apparently met them all, in untold stories, which certainly fits the more "magical" era of Ncuti's Doctor, but certainly fits the Doctor's encounters with Sutekh, Fenric, et al. (And in some cases, he might even be lying to bluff the Barber.)
Within a season where stories have been known to come to life (the myth that spawned Belindachandra, living cartoons, podcasting as global threat, Mrs. Flood's 4th wall breakage), The Story & the Engine takes the theme even further, and perhaps even creates a framework for it. Whatever contrivances have been felt since The Giggle, here, we don't question them. We know there are gods, or at least, entities that call themselves gods. People's belief in them giving them power is an old trope that goes beyond Doctor Who, and given a lot of entities in the Whoniverse feed on emotions and other abstract foodstuffs, it's a credible notion (also think of the Land of Fiction, "if remembered, it can come back" in the Moffat era, and all of Paul Magrs' contributions to the extracanon). The Barber is a figure that ties it all together, an equally immortal being whose fascination with collecting all the stories of humanity (and perhaps other beings) has led to the gods being remembered beyond their due date, and now wants to go back to the center of the cultural web to destroy his work and any memory of the beings he feels enslaved him. In turn, this will destroy human culture and history, stakes officially raised. That's the heady sci-fi plot, but what's the story?
The episode centralizes the action on a barber shop (where stories are told) and introduces into it the Doctor who - shades of The Rings of Akhaten - has a surplus of story, is indeed, by the end of this, marked as the "story that never ends" (are we then hopeful this ISN'T the last season?) that overloads the Engine. The stories are told, sometimes in animation, on a wall - nice effect - and the Doctor's own choice of tale is of Belinda's self-sacrifice (and insight!) at her nursing job (chalk another up to RTD's fascination with "normal lives"). His OWN story is too much for the story engine to take, with clips from all the past Doctors playing on cue, INCLUDING (and you're a smarter fan than I if you had this on your bingo card) the Fugitive Doctor appearing in the flesh. Though Doc13 dumped the Timeless Child memories down the TARDIS tubes, I suppose some are retained (see Theories), like the story of Anansi's daughter, which puts a different spin on what we think Abena is talking about. (I would imagine this makes it the only episode of the franchise that does not star any white actors, except as file footage.)
The episode isn't flawless, but because it's a celebration of STORY, even the flaws can be excused by the theme. So for example, Nigeria is a great place to put a Vindicator because we say so; Belinda spouts off technobabble like she's reading from the Doctor's script; the Doctor is a bit too angry at Omo for throwing him under the bus (and I'll admit I found it a little out of character for the Doctor to be this enamoured of Nigeria, out of nowhere)... But in a story, there might be errors of transcription choices in performance, plot holes, contrivances and interpretations. It's not reality, but a telling of it. Real world talk, though: I put very little of this as the writer's feet since it seems like the clunky connective tissue was really added by the showrunner.
THEORIES: Another one for the maverick bingo card is the appearance of Captain Poppy from Space Babies. Following the theme, that was an episode where the boogey monster was created from a story, so an appearance by the same, now toddler, actress is perhaps just that - a thematic reference. Could it be more? Are stories just "leaking" out of the barber shop? Or are we going to see more of the Space Babies, because RTD can't help but troll the audience who termed the episode the worst in all of Whodom? Because of all these meta-textual stories, some wild speculation has risen up to say Gatwa's Doctor has been trapped in the Land of Fiction for a while, but perhaps that's just fans eager to turn Space Babies into Bobby Ewing's dream.
And going back to the quote I used at the top of the article, it looks like confirmation of my recent theory about the TARDIS now magically being able to pick the exact right costume and hairstyle for the occasion. Some of this may have been operating at least since The Idiot's Lantern or Mummy on the Orient Express, but it's hard to say. As for all the fans screaming about the Doctor not having access to the Fugitive Doctor's memories, that's not entirely true. The TARDIS has them and could, as asked in Flux, release them when needed. This could be such a release. Might even explain the red lights and alarms.
VERSIONS: Omo's story of the fire, the first told in the episode, refers to the prequel, "What I Did On My Holidays By Omo Esosa", a text piece released online the day before the episode aired. It recounts the first meeting between a young Omo and the Fifteenth Doctor, and can be found HERE.
REWATCHABILITY: High - A rich tapestry fans will continue to dissect for years to come.
Comments
It was classy touch bringing Inua Ellams on board, nicely interpolating his own Barber Shop Chronicles, Doctor Who and the Anansi myth. Much like our supposed visit to Miami earlier this season, we could have done with more
in the way of scene setting, establishing a general sense of place, rather than simply being huddled down a poorly lit (if impressive) street market scene and then onwards to a rather nondescript alleyway setting, but it's also become markedly evident this season that 6 million dollars simply doesn't buy much production-wise in 2025, three sets maximum per a standard episode, it seems.
That said, I enjoyed the camaraderie of the cast once inside of the barbershop setting itself and the novel animation framing device employed. Although I admire the writer's tenacity in attempting to weave in as many differing strands of the Anansi tradition as possible, I think a clearer through line overall would have aided general viewer comprehension, Abena's inclusion fore-instance feels almost oedipal in this context.