DOCTOR WHO, 15.5 – ‘The Story and the Engine’
The Doctor discovers a barbershop where stories have real power...
Ncuti Gatwa’s African heritage has not been a major part of any Doctor Who story, until now, so it’s great to finally have an episode that leans into the fact the Fifteenth Doctor is a Black man. In “The Story and the Engine”, The Doctor (Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) arrive in Lagos, Nigeria, only to find a local barber is holding his customers captive, forcing them to tell stories as they continually get their hair cut before it magically grows back. And once The Doctor also becomes trapped inside the shop,
Nigerian-British playwright Inua Ellams wrote this episode, having once written a play called Barber Shop Chronicles that wove six stories together, which also starred Sule Rimi, who plays The Doctor’s old friend Omo in this episode. Ellams visited 60 barbers’ shops around the UK as research for that theatre production, but with “The Story and the Engine” he takes the ideas into a more imaginative, American Gods-flavoured direction.
The episode struggles to get going, primarily because the situation seems a bit ridiculous on the face of it. A scary Barber (Ariyon Bakare) forcing a group of men to tell him stories while getting haircuts, which are then visualised on a nearby window, with them all unable to leave through the front door, has a weird quality to it that initially feels laughable. And the screenplay doesn’t succeed in giving most of its characters any real sense of identity and personality, instead putting the emphasis on the intimidating barber, friendly Omo, and eventually the Barber’s accomplice Abena (Michelle Asante).
Gradually, however, things become more interesting, even if the explanation for what’s happening just gets stranger. But the episode’s strength is its ideas about the power of storytelling —here, fiction literally fuels a giant space-spider creature that’s carrying the barbershop on its back, Discworld-style. I’m not sure writer Inua Ellams knew how to bring his ideas together perfectly, but luckily for him this new run from Russell T. Davies plays even looser with science-fiction concepts and increasingly leans more into magical realism. It’s just a shame viewers aren’t given any tangible information to latch onto about the situation until halfway through. And the stakes are also unclear, as we’re never shown what would happen if any of the barbershop customers refused to tell a story in the chair. Perhaps they didn’t want to let the Barber have blood on his hands, once he’s redeemed at the end, but it would have made sense for us to watch someone refuse to play along and face dire consequences.
Once loose answers present themselves, “The Story and the Engine” makes hay with the idea of stories as powerful tools and a means for traditions and ideas to be passed down the generations. There’s a wonderful scene talking about how African slaves would weave messages into their hair, which plantation owners wouldn’t notice. The best moments of the episode feel like Ellams is imparting some of the fascinating research he’s picked up, which to some extent he struggles to make cohere into a fully-rounded Doctor Who adventure. It also can’t escape feeling ‘stagey’ at times, as it’s mostly a single-location “bottle episode”, perhaps helping cut down costs.
There’s also an enjoyable cameo for the ‘Fugitive Doctor’ (Jo Martin), one of the few elements of the previous Chris Chibnall era that fans responded positively to, even if her brief appearance upturns The Doctor’s early remarks about “the first time having this Black body”. That’s evidently not true because he’s been Black before, although I suppose Fifteen doesn’t remember being any of his other incarnations before the First Doctor, so I can let it slide.
The last third of “The Story and the Engine” is surprisingly strong once a tangible threat and better pacing is added into the situation. But some of the ideas it throws up aren’t explored deeply enough, sadly, as there’s simply not enough time to do them justice. The Barber’s grandiose intention to erase the Gods from every culture throughout history, for example, feels like it deserved more time to work through the ramifications of what that would mean for humanity.
I also appreciated that the first episode to deal with The Doctor now being a Black man avoided a story lazily focusing on the historical or social negatives of his ethnicity, with a serious story about slavery or racial segregation. Instead, “The Story and the Engine” was a more vibrant and positive tale, for the most part, and the dynamics were of The Doctor returning to a place on Earth where he feels more accepted and has deep friendships. Interviewed by The Guardian, Ellams once described barbershops as “safe, sacred place where [Black people] can go to relax, escape racism, and talk freely”, and that certainly feeds into the atmosphere of this story.
The Barber also made for a fascinating villain, as he’s introduced as a rather inscrutable figure, quickly becomes an unnerving antagonist for The Doctor to make sense of, sometimes feels like he’s just a right-hand man serving a greater power, is eventually revealed to be a liar and charlatan, before ultimately redeeming himself and finding acceptance amongst those he endangered. It’s a great arc and one of the better journeys a Doctor Who baddie has been on, brilliantly portrayed by Bakare, who you may recognise from all manner of genre films and TV. He was in The Dark Knight (2008), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2015), Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Life (2017), His Dark Materials (2019–2022), and even previously appeared in the Twelfth Doctor story “The Woman Who Lived” as Leandro back in 2015.
Overall, “The Story and the Engine” contains plenty of elements that worked and proved both interesting and entertaining. The sense of culture that Inua Ellams brought to the table was immersive, helped by director Makella McPherson, and the ‘power of storytelling’ theme of the narrative worked well. The problem is the somewhat bonkers explanation requires a lot of hand-waving, and the story doesn’t give us much to grasp onto until much too late. The stakes are also unclear and too many of the supporting actors had very little to do, which only gets worse once the fantastical nature of what’s going on — giant spiders, the web-like Nexus, Norse Gods — is revealed and the human quality of the story is diminished.
UK | 2025 | 44 MINUTES | 16:9 HD | COLOUR | ENGLISH
Cast & Crew
writer: Inua Ellams.
director: Makella McPherson.
starring: Ncuti Gatwa, Varada Sethu, Ariyon Bakare, Sule Rimi, Michelle Asante, Stefan Adegbola, Jordan Adene, Michael Balogun, Anita Dobson, Simon Bailey, Adrian Pang, Tessa Bell-Briggs, Inua Ellams & Funmi James.
