Hogan Reviews

“The Story and The Engine” is another episode of this Doctor Who series that tells a good story, is well acted and has some positive messages at its heart but once again I find myself longing for something a bit more… Doctor Who-y. I’m happy episodes like this exist but I would prefer not to have so many of them in a row is what I’m saying, throw in a few base under siege / generic alien invasion stories here and there to break things up maybe… Well, anyway, let’s take a look!

The episode of course opens with The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) needing to “anchor” the TARDIS with the Doctor’s gizmo again and they arrive in 2019 Nigeria where out titular Time Lord reveals that since he regenerated (or bigenerated or whatever) into this black body he’s found it hard to find places that accept him until he landed in Nigeria and found a friendly barber shop, so he decides to pay them a visit with Belinda’s blessing. After seeing some warning signs and posters asking for help about missing people he enters the barber shop and finds that its owner Omo (Sule Rimi) and three of his regular customers in Rashid, Tunde and Obioma (Stefan Adegbola, Jordan Adene and Michael Baogun respectively) are being held hostage by a mysterious barber (Ariyon Bakare) and a woman called Abena (Michelle Asante). Not any kind of regular hostage situation though, instead their hair constantly grows back and when they get their hair cut they have to tell a story to keep the “Story Engine” powered otherwise they’ll all die, oh and the story is depicted on the wall like a story book.

The Doctor is hurt that his favourite place that always accepts him wanted him to arrive in order to save them rather than just hang out (not sure I get that, they didn’t summon The Doctor there he went on his own power, so why does The Doctor treat Omo like crap when he admits he wanted him there to help them?) before The Doctor is forced to sit and tell a story, which he picks one about Belinda being a great nurse and helping a sickly old woman get better which fills the Story Engine like never before. The Doctor then tries to open the door only to see they’re on the back of a giant spider-like creature/machine that’s travelling a massive web in a space-like void, before managing to close the door safely. Meanwhile Belinda leaves the TARDIS, sees a random little girl that is clearly made out to be a story point of some description in the future and then ends up in the same barber shop just in time to hear the Barber reveal who he is… although everyone laughs and nobody buys that he’s a God of many cultures and instead he admits he was once a human who met the Gods and created the Story Engine and the “World Wide Web” (which he later renamed when the regular humans used it for something else) which is a nexus structure that “connects concepts, cultures and ideas” that people then rejected, including his God-like masters. So a world wide web that should have united cultures and ideas turning its back on it instead and becoming the opposite. Gotcha…

Never before has the image of someone cutting somebody’s hair had such a sinister undertone…

The Doctor finally remembers where he’d seen Abena before and that she is the daughter of the Anansi the Spider God who he, as the Fugitive Doctor (Jo Martin) who appears just to recite two sentences, was due to marry but he ran instead. Or she ran, I guess, because “her story still hasn’t finished”… I doubt it ever will, as Chibnall clearly didn’t actually have a planned arc in mind, sadly… Anyway, The Doctor gets the Barber to reveal his real goal: to kill these Gods by severing the Web, but The Doctor says that will end storytelling and kill countless people, though that doesn’t seem to bother the man. The Gods being killed did seemingly bother Abena though…

I’ll put the rest in the spoilers but yeah… as I said in the opening paragraph I’m getting a bit tired of these high concept, preachy episodes and I’m really longing for more Doctor Who in my Doctor Who. When The Doctor sits down to tell the story about Belina its like he was personally having a go at me, “Oh, you want a story about Daleks, Cybermen and Ice Warriors? Too bad, here’s a story about an old woman dying and being looked after by an NHS nurse, both reminding you of the mum you lost a couple of years ago and how the people in power have buggered the NHS up! Enjoy!” Great, thanks for that. Very nearly escaped the harsh reality of the world into a fun fantasy show there. That was close! The fact that in a scene towards the end past Doctors appear on a bunch of TV screens just reminded me of the show I wanted to watch but sadly wasn’t any more… This isn’t a “Boo Doctor Who is woke now!” bollocks either for the record, as a cursory glance at this site will tell you I’m very much “awake” and have been happy with many of the episodes since RTD came back on board, but it’s just how I feel at the moment. Hell, Star Wars: Andor’s three episodes that aired earlier this week had a lot of parallels to the real world but it was so well written, filmed and acted that I wanted to stand up and give a round of applause to my TV screen, so sending a message and creating a great bit of escapism TV is doable, but sadly these past few episodes have been far more message and far less great bit of TV.

*Steps off soap box* … Anyway…

The Continuity:

Belinda… walks down a street. Yeah, this another case of having to use press release screenshots. Sorry…

Beyond a brief appearance from the Fugitive Doctor, who first appeared in Thirteenth Doctor story “Fugitive of the Judoon” and was further… mildly fleshed out in other stories, there isn’t really anything to connect this story with any other, though as far as we’re aware The Doctor didn’t read the info about his pre-Hartnell selves and definitely shouldn’t have any memory of his time as the Fugitive, so… that was a bit odd. I mean I assume it was done purely because this episode is entirely white person free (as a story set in Nigeria should be!) so they couldn’t resist having the other black Doctor appear, but in-universe I’m not sure it makes sense. Oh well, who cares? The Fugitive Doctor doesn’t make sense in general anyway and Jo Martin is always good in role.

Overall Thoughts:

“Look, there’s a Dalek!” “Really?!” “Oh, wait, no… it’s actually a pepper pot this time. Oh well.”

While I enjoyed the fresh location, acting and core concept of the story I’m kind of getting annoyed by the distinct lack of fun and Doctor Who-ness Doctor Who is having at the moment. These messages are often important but when you’re the choir that’s being preached at all your left with is a version of your favourite show being aimed at your ignorant enemies instead of something fun for you to watch yourself.

Abena causes a distraction long enough for The Doctor and Belinda to ran into the back of the shop and find the Story Engine itself and start to fiddle with it, The Barber arriving to stop him but its too late, The Doctor has connected the Engine to himself, causing endless stories featuring his past selves to fill the screens and viewing walls (?) across the shop. The Doctor manages to get through to his enemy that he was in the wrong while Belinda, Abena, Omo and the other hostages escape the shop, followed by the other two escaping just as the Spider thingy explodes due to being over-loaded with story power, I guess. The web that binds our cultures is still intact, if only more of us used it etc.

The Story Spider… Thingy. Great design, if nothing else!

The Doctor forgives Omo for asking for his help (still don’t get that…) and leaves while Omo retires from being a barber and gives his shop over to the man who just nearly killed him and all ideas and stories in the world, because the immortal barber deserves a second chance, which is fair enough I suppose. That’s Doctor Who-y at least… Well, some Doctors anyway…