Doctor Who embraces rich storytelling in ‘The Story and the Engine’ and puts a whole new spin on a well-worn formula. This episode sees The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) and Belinda (Varada Sethu) head to Lagos, Nigeria for a visual tale about storytelling and how powerful stories can be.

The Doctor heads to see his favourite Nigerian barber, Omo (Sule Rimi), somewhere he feels comfortable, when Earth hasn’t always felt safe for his new black regeneration. The show doesn’t spend a lot of time on the theme of feeling an outsider as a black man on Earth, but it says enough. Little comments have been smartly placed throughout his time on the show, hinting at the world’s microaggressions towards POC. Perhaps too subtle for those who need to hear it, but enough for those who get it.

The bulk of the action of this week’s episode takes place in the Lagos-based shop of a mysterious barber (Ariyon Bakare). He forces his customers to tell him stories in order to feed the machine. And who has better stories than The Doctor?

A Bottleneck Episode About Culture, Stories, Friendship, and Love

Directed by Makalla McPherson and written by Nigerian/British poet Inua Ellams, the episode makes purposeful steps to push The Doctor to a new space. It’s rich with Nigerian culture and blackness.

The episode predominantly takes place in the barber shop and has a limited cast of eight people. Michelle Asante, Stefan Adegbola, Jordan Adene, and Michael Balogun also play roles in the episode. The small cast and claustrophobic setting really let Ncuti command the role. His theatre actor background is very clear in the way he maneuvers the room and never makes the ordinary setting feel ordinary.

The barbershop setting is incredibly relevant to the story’s themes. In Nigerian cultures, for example, the barbershop serves as a hub of conversation and a space where stories are sold. Inua Elams smartly mixes this tradition with science fiction tropes well recognized by Doctor Who fans.

Early in the episode, it’s revealed that the barbershop is actually a spaceship, and the people there are held captive by the mysterious barber. When the alarms go off, they must tell a story to keep the engine going. The timelord soon uncovers a plot for revenge that spans centuries and universes.

The Doctor has plenty of stories about monsters and jeopardy, but there is nothing “more powerful than an ordinary life,” so he tells the group a story about Belinda working as a nurse on the hospital ward. It’s the first time we find out something about Belinda, someone who has been kept at arm’s length away from audiences. It’s very on the nose, especially for Brits who went outside to clap for the NHS during the coronavirus pandemic.

The episode is a rare chance to spend time with Belinda away from The Doctor. She is initially left in the TARDIS when he visits his friend, but has to come to the rescue when the barbershop goes awry. This feels like the first time Belinda has felt like a well-rounded character, not a plot device for a missing Earth. 5 episodes in, and we still have no idea who Belinda is.

Instead of elaborate set pieces and slightly wobbly sets, the stories in ‘The Story and The Engine’ are depicted through different animation styles. Fans of the fast-paced action of modern Who may find themselves frustrated with the gentler nature of this tale. It requires the audience’s full attention to understand the nuances of the writing. This is not an episode to have as background noise while scrolling.

While the story is specific to Nigeria, the themes are universal. The story talks of friendship, belonging, and community. The scenes where the timelord shows his disappointment that his one safe space has been compromised are touching, especially in this day and age when outsiders are struggling to find their community.

The one bigger series theme that the episode touches on is gods and mythology. What is the difference between religion and the tales passed down from ancestors? This series overall has focused on Gods and omnipotent power, and this episode addresses this on a smaller scale.

The quality drops when the show dips into its monster-of-the-week finale. The episode almost didn’t need that cliché ending where The Doctor has to save the day. The CGI on the episode’s big bad is very dated to the point it becomes distracting. If they couldn’t deliver an even half realistic creature, they perhaps shouldn’t have tried. The story was so beautiful, it didn’t need to show the big metallic monster and its 2003 effects.

The episode could have ended in a more subdued way, no need to run around spaceships and attack engine cores. It’s by no way bad enough to distract from the quality of the episode, but it feels shoehorned into the narrative because it’s a legal requirement for Doctor Who to have at least one spaceship corridor chase scene.

Doctor Who Is Still Pushing Boundaries

‘The Story and The Engine’ feels visually and narratively unlike anything Doctor Who has done before. Some have complained that using old, well-worn tricks this season feels too samey. This episode is nothing like any previous adventures, and this is very intentional by the creatives.

Africa is stamped on every corner of this episode. Some may criticize that tonally is feels too distant from the other episodes in this second season. But some of Doctor Who’s most iconic episodes have felt tonally different from others in their series. The Vincent Van Gogh episode, written by Richard Curtis, is one of the tearjerking episodes in history, and the episode (albeit written by Neil Gaiman) where the TARDIS is personified as an eccentric woman is a fan favorite. Neither really matched the monster of the week format associated with the BBC show, and that is why they stand out. The joy of Doctor Who is that you can play around with the characters and location, using science fiction as a mirror to real-life society.

Sometimes, it has felt like the writer’s struggle to know how to make the most of Ncuti’s talents. ‘The Story and the Engine’ finally understands how to use Gatwa’s power as an emotional actor. Eccleston was angry, Tennant did the sweeping romantic gestures and Smith felt alien in their role as The Doctor. Gatwa is all heart, he wears his emotions on his sleeve and feels everything so deeply. Finally the writing and the actor perfectly come together, because at times there has felt like there was a distance between the two.

The 2024 reboot of Doctor Who is much more self-contained than previous series of the science fiction show. The writing is obsessed with larger themes and overarching characters. This episode strays away from the larger story of The Doctor not being able to get Belinda home to 2025 Earth, of Mrs Flood or the threat of Conrad Clark on Earth. But, despite not being directly connected to the main plot of season 2, it uses themes that are sure to become more relevant in the closing episodes.

‘The Story and The Engine’ is a beautiful bottle neck episode about the importance of passing down stories. After all, as the eleventh Doctor said: “We are all stories in the end, just make it a good one eh?” This episode is another reminder of how powerful a little science fiction show can be and just how creative Doctor Who can be.

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