As I’ve been watching and then writing about this second season of the current era of Doctor Who, I haven’t been able to help noticing the similarities that many of the stories have with their parallel episodes from the previous year.  For instance, both first episodes were big silly outer space adventures, both second episodes dealt with members of the so-called Pantheon, both third episodes were more harder-edged science fiction stories set in isolated alien environments, and both fourth episodes were Doctor-lite stories featuring Ruby Sunday.  I thought at first this mirroring effect didn’t really apply to The Story and the Engine, the fifth episode of the series (and Dot and Bubble, the fifth episode of last season, but then I thought of some stuff.

Spoilers!

First, there is the naming conventions that both stories share (This and That).  Second, significant elements of both stories spring from the fact that the Doctor is being played (almost) for the first time by a black actor.  And third, both stories don’t hold up under rigorous story scrutiny, but it doesn’t really matter because in both cases the execution makes it work anyway. 

And nicely, The Story and the Engine, by newcomer to the series Inua Ellams (writing a story that is apparently inspired by his own play, Barber Shop Chronicle), has less problems than Dot and Bubble, or at least less noticeable ones–so I’m pleased to be able to say that I quite liked this episode.  It may indeed be the first one in a long time that hasn’t done anything that I found outright annoying.

The story takes the Doctor to Nigeria, which he believes will help strengthen the ability of his “Vindicator” to help bring the TARDIS back to the day Belinda left earth (the ongoing storyline of the season).  There, in spite of Belinda’s desire to return home, she gives the Doctor permission to go and visit his favorite barber shop, “Omo’s Palace”, a place he likes because he feels absolutely accepted in his persona as a black earthman.  However, when he arrives, he finds, well…all sorts of crazy things.  

The barbershop has been taken over by a guy claiming to be every story-related god of human mythology, who gives Omo and some other trapped people haircuts in exchange for them telling stories, which power a “story engine” that looks like a giant mechanical spider walking on a cosmic web.  Even weirder, the barbershop, while residing on earth, is also on the back of this spider.  The barber’s goal is to power the engine sufficiently to bring him back to the story gods where he plans on killing them all (turns out he was lying about being them) because in reality he’s the storyteller behind all of them and he wants credit for all his work.  He’s accompanied by Abena, the daughter of one of those storytelling gods, whom the Doctor once unwillingly “won” in a bet.  And the Doctor ultimately is able to stop the Barber by overloading his machine with his own story (allowing us a whole bunch of groovy flashbacks to almost all of the main past Doctors).

It’s pretty off-the-wall bonkers, and kind of confusing on a first pass-through, but told with enough heart and sincerity to make it all work.  The Nigeria setting is not exactly convincing (it feels as authentic as any random alien planet that we might have landed on) but it’s such a different look than we normally get of planet earth that it’s a lot of fun.  The guest cast is good, particularly the three main guest stars Ariyon Bakare (the Barber), Michelle Asante (Abena) and Sule Rimi (Omo).  

And maybe most exciting of all, Ncuti Gatwa gets a lot to do as the Doctor.  in this story, he gets to be astonished, confused, terrified, angry and disappointed—it’s a detailed and engaging performance that holds the episode together well.  The idea of a place that the Doctor likes to go where he feels he can completely relax is quite a cool one, and so it’s meaningful when he feels like that’s been taken from him.  And then it’s equally meaningful when he’s calmed down and reconciles with Omo at the end. 

But that brings up some of the story weaknesses that I mentioned as well.  The Doctor’s anger at Omo for betraying him feels justified, but what is never clear is how Omo pulled off the betrayal.  He supposedly planned for the Doctor to show up and take their place as the Barber’s storyteller…but how did he do that?  He has no mechanism for summoning the Doctor, as far as we can see—all he does is tell the others about his original encounter with the Time Lord.  And related to this, why does the Doctor go to Nigeria at all?  He suddenly thinks that this is a way of boosting the vindicator, but he offers no explanation for this other than the fact that Lagos has a strong communications technology industry.  It’s like there’s a deleted scene missing which would show Omo’s storytelling somehow prompting the Doctor’s decision, but this is not what we see in the episode.

Beyond this,  Belinda’s roll here is pretty underwhelming (not the fault of Verada Sethu).  The Doctor acts all excited when she shows up in the barbershop, but why?  Her arrival doesn’t bring him any new resource or help or information, and now she’s just trapped as well.  She tags along with the Doctor after that but doesn’t do anything of any significance, and the script gives her this ridiculous line where she tells the Barber that his machine is going to overload with all the Doctor’s story inside of it, even though there’s no reason she would know such a thing.  It’s purely expositional, but there is no sciencey character around to say it, so it gets shoved into Belinda’s mouth instead. 

And finally, the Barber’s motivations seem a little confused.  If he wants credit for his work as a storyteller, why is he pretending to be the storytelling gods he says took that credit away from him?  The whole scene where he lies about his identity is kind of pointless, it seems to me, and with Belinda laughing away at him in the same way that the Doctor does, the script again seems to be giving her information she’d have no reason to have. 

But these problems are far less egregious than we had in Lucky Day or The Robot Revolution, or in most of the episodes last season.  I still really enjoyed the story, for the novelty of the setting and the situation, the strength of the performances and the depth of the characterization. 

I also liked the way that the story’s (presumed) links to the overall season arc were tucked away so they didn’t get in the way of the story that this episode was telling.  Mrs. Flood’s requisite cameo came near the beginning of the episode, during the Doctor’s story about Belinda’s nursing (the best usage of Belinda as a character in this episode, incidentally), which is far better than the previous three episodes which repetitively ended with “sudden” appearances by the character.  

The much more bizarre appearance of Poppy from Space Babies (the mysterious child that Belinda sees) brings up interesting questions, but truth be told I didn’t even recognize her, and only realized this was a returning character after seeing a Youtube video on the episode’s Easter eggs.  I don’t mind that, though—it just goes to show that it’s the perfect sort of hint like this, since I literally didn’t recognize it and it didn’t take away from the episode I was actually watching at all. 

Finally, we can’t finish talking about The Story and the Engine without talking about its biggest surprise, which was the inclusion of Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor.  She appears for about ten seconds so, that we in the audience would know when in the Doctor’s life the previous encounter with Abena took place.  It’s exciting to see her…kind of?  I think the Jo Martin version of the character has got as much potential as anyone, but she hails from a period of the show that I really didn’t enjoy, where she introduced in a way that felt like a shock for shock’s sake, with nothing meaningful done with the character since.  It’s amusing that in this episode, she says of herself that “I was busy, in a different story…that might be finished one day.”  

Surely Russell T. Davies wouldn’t allow a line like just as a cruel jab at Jo Martin’s fans, would he?  I assume he’s got plans to get back to that character and her story, but that it probably won’t be in this season.  Just like Mrs. Flood started appearing last year, to set up this year’s big surprises.  Will it explain when the Doctor started remembering details of his life when he was a fugitive from the Division? I’m going to guess probably not.

Other Thoughts:

• It’s funny that in the very episode where Jo Martin shows up in a surprise cameo, the Doctor says something which implies that this current body of his is the first time that he’s had black skin.

• I enjoyed the array of flashbacks we got to previous Doctor’s and previous stories, and especially the way it kicked off with both some audio and video of Patrick Troughton from The Tomb of the Cybermen. I think Troughton’s contributions to the show often get overlooked, so it was nice to see him used so prominently.

• The only “main” Doctor who I didn’t catch on screen at all was Sylvester McCoy, who apparently was represented in a clip on set that didn’t make it into the final edit.  However, thanks to the big twist in the next episode (even more spoilers!) clips of both him and Colin Baker are in the promotional material around Wish World, the first part of the two-part series finale.  

• The visualisations we get of the Barber telling his story include images that look just like the spaceship from The Robot Revolution and the movie theatre from Lux. What’s going on with that? I don’t know how the big reveal from the episode that follows this could fit with this at all, but there does seem to be an awful lot of things that the show has given us in the last two years which are pointing to some strange blurring of the lines between fiction and reality.