Doctor Who heads to Nigeria for The Story And The Engine. Here’s our spoiler-filled review of season 2 episode 5.
This review contains spoilers. Our review of last week’s episode is here.
After a terrific few weeks, Doctor Who season 2 (nnngh at calling it that still) arrives at a tale I really wanted to like, but felt it fell a reasonable way short. I hope my opinion is a minority one.
The Story And The Engine, penned by Inua Ellams, takes the Doctor and Belinda to Lagos in Nigeria. Considering the Doctor spends so much time on Earth, it’s odd that his travels tend to be primarily UK-based, with the occasional trip to America and Europe. Lagos, we’re told, is the best place to put the ol’ vortex vindicator thing, as he struggle continues to get Bel home.
And it’s stories that take centre stage here, notably a barber shop that initially gives space for Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor to feel a little more included. We learn it’s the place where this Doctor goes when he needs a refresh, a haircut, and a feeling of being able to be a bit more included. The sequences of him walking through a bustling market, saying hello to people who treat him as a friend rather than someone they need something from, are nicely done too. It’s never lost of me too that Doctor Who is watched by a young audience as well as old, and conversations about race and fitting in through mainstream entertainment have impacts we never get to see.
As you’d expect, the Doctor doesn’t half pick his barber shops, and he goes through several haircuts in one episode, His backstreet shop of choice is one where The Barber has taken control. Played by Ariyon Bakare, who’s brilliant, The Barber needs stories to provide power, no matter who tells them. He also wants to be credited for the work he’s done. That’s a theme that’s bedded in here, and heck, is that relevant to the current world as well.
Tales told in barber shops have made for fun cinema before, notably Coming To America and the Barbershop series of movies. What Ellams does is dig into them as a home of storytelling, allowing him to settle his episode into primarily a single location. A fun one too, packed with characters who come along at 1, but won’t arrive until 3. Director Makella McPherson wrings a lot out of the room, decorating the episode with drawings that visually interpret the stories being told.
Plotwise, people are missing, we learn, but also, they seem to be getting a haircut. One familiar face is Michelle Asante, who isn’t new to the world of Doctor Who. And we get the Doctor and Bel, bonding and understanding each other more than in any other episode to date, separated too for a fair amount of time.
What you don’t get though, after a promising set up, is a compelling story. The more The Story And The Engine pulled back to show us its greater foe, a big space spider thing, the less interesting it got for me. There are really good moments and ideas here, not least the smock the Doctor wearing in The Barber’s chair that restricts him. Also, seeing a safe place for The Doctor becoming less safe – “I love this shop. I loved you. I thought it was a home for me” – is not without impact.
But once The Barber started talking about Norse gods, about the spider, telling us of the Nexus, the air started going out of the tyres at speed. Quite quickly, too.
Lines land, not least the wanting to be recognised, and the sequence where a maze is cut into the Doctor’s hair is a highlight (not meant as a hair gag, but I’ll take it). Furthermore, feel free to show me imagery of former Doctors in an episode (and a device at the end that looks a little TARDIS-interior-like), I’m never not wanting to see it.
The surprise was Jo Martin back as The Fugitive Doctor. A suggestion in there that timelines and the ‘when’ of what we were seeing was a little up in the air. The Fugitive Doctor happily stokes that with the line “frankly darling, I was busy in a different story, that might be finished one day.”
But we’ve had that a few times now, and there’s some stuff here that ties to broader threads of this season of the show. As the Doctor drops in at the end of the episode, stories are leaking out, and getting mixed up. That feels significant. We’ve had little throwaways like Mel being in Sydney last week, and Bel seeing a child that the Doctor didn’t in this episode.
Plus: Belinda and Mrs Flood have crossed paths before, with the latter needing her pills. Wonder what they’re for? Last week, we had the character of Conrad who seemed to be ahead of the Doctor in terms of chronological knowledge, Mrs Flood has always – from the first time we met her – seemed in the know. Questions, again, remain about what’s happening, and when it’s happening.
We’re also getting namechecks of Daleks, Weeping Angels and Cybermen, the roster of hit villains that are notable by their absence from the second Russell T Davies era. Three episodes left, and one of those is a hat tip to the Eurovision Song Contest. Are the highest profile monsters going to stay locked away? When Davies first took over Doctor Who, he deliberately held the Daleks back for the first half of the openings series, knowing it’d be a fresh blast of publicity when they appeared. Is he up to something like that again?
We’ll know more in the weeks ahead.
For now, The Story And The Engine feels important, but it doesn’t feel – as an episode of Doctor Who – particularly strong. The subtexts felt, to me at least, more interesting than the text.
It’s a narratively ambitious piece of television, that couldn’t quite gel its ideas into a 45 minute television episode, but still, with enough threads to pick at on a rewatch. Perhaps it’s just because it’s come at the end of a strong three episode run of stories, and I’m being a little harsh. The setting worked, the barbershop worked, and there’s stuff to chew on. I might go back and give it another go, ahead of the incoming tonal shift, as the Doctor and Bel head off to a song contest…
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