An Hour of Who a Day: 10/12/25

October 12: "The Story & the Engine"

The Doctor decides to visit his old friend Omo at his barbershop in Lagos -- but something else has taken the shop over, and it demands stories...

"The Story & the Engine" is by Inua Ellams, who's a well-regarded poet and playwright and who also happens to be the first black male writer for the show (and the fourth black writer overall). And as you perhaps might expect from someone known as a poet, what we get here is something magical and lyrical. It starts out rather sweetly, with an explicit acknowledgement of the Doctor's skin color: "It's the first time I've had this black body. In some parts of the Earth, I'm now treated differently. But here, in Africa, in that barbershop, I'm accepted. I'm able to forget." It's a nice moment without making too big a deal of it (and it implies that this Doctor has travelled a lot more than we've seen).

But that's just the setup. The heart of the episode involves people trapped in a barbershop in Lagos, being forced to tell stories to power an engine created by a character called the Barber. It's a cool idea, bringing to mind both things like One Thousand and One Nights and the general idea of a "story engine", as in the literary device that drives a story. These stories are needed for a transport that resembles a spider, crawling along a web made of cross-cultural concepts so that the Barber can destroy the gods (such as Anansi and Loki) by cutting off their access to stories. (Or something like that. It seems a bit daft when I explain it like that, so just trust me that the episode does a far better job of making this seem natural.) The Barber, it seems, was the one who went around telling the stories of the gods so that they would grow in power, and while doing so created the web of concepts (the Nexus), doing such a good job that the gods decided they no longer needed him. Now the Barber is furious that his part in their myth has been forgotten (and here seems like a good place to note that one of Ellams's inspirations for this story was the fact that, until very recently, the French word for "ghostwriter" was the same word as their version of the N-word, in the slavery-coded meaning of "someone who does the work while someone else takes the glory"), and he wants vengeance. Hence his Story Engine, making its way to the heart of the Nexus.

In some ways this is one of the harder episodes to discuss analytically, because it sometimes feels more like a dream logic at work here. But it's a consistent and coherent internal logic, one that sets out its own rules and sticks to them. It's a script that simply sparkles with magic and delight. Part of the joy is from the stories that are told: we hear about a shaman singing a song, someone's life that Belinda saved as a nurse (in the only part of the episode to feature white actors), how the Doctor helped with a fire... Even when it's in service of the engine, there's a joy present in the telling of these stories that helps elevate the whole tale.

But what really makes this work, more than the script or the stories, is the committed performances from everyone here. For the most part this story is confined to a single room -- one with a magic window that can visualize the stories as they're being told, but a single room nonetheless. So it's to the credit of Gatwa, Sethu, Sule Rimi as Omo, Michelle Asante as Abby/Abena, and Stefan Adegbola, Jordan Adene, and Michael Balogun as Rashid, Tunde, and Obioma, respectively, that this never feels like it's just spinning its wheels or sagging in the middle. And special credit to Ariyon Bakare as the Barber, who plays the character at just the right intensity so that he feels like a believable threat without going too far into ranting territory. The Barber and Abena make a formidable duo, and Abena's desire to punish her father Anansi for trying to wager her away is also a believable motivation -- and even though it's too quick, I really like the cameo from Jo Martin as the Fugitive Doctor, as she tells Abby that she couldn't take her along as she was in the middle of a different story then. It feels important, somehow, for the only other non-white Doctor to date to make an appearance in this story. (A proper appearance, I mean, not like the (thrilling!) appearances of all the other Doctors (save the 7th, for some reason -- maybe he just was in the background when they showed his clip) when the 15th Doctor takes control of the Story Engine.) And it's also a nice reminder that Davies is willing to engage with the Chibnall era (despite what some fans hoped, presumably).

But my favorite part comes at the end, after Abena decides to help the Doctor and he hijacks the Story Engine. Rather than have the Barber die with his ship, still raging against the gods, the Doctor makes a point of saving his life -- and, more importantly, everyone forgives him. "I don't deserve this kindness," the Barber says, but it still shows the best of humanity. I also like how the Doctor forgives Omo, after having initially raging against him for trying to leave him alone with the Barber so the others could go free, and how Omo apologizes to the Doctor. This ending is the key moment of the whole story. As Belinda tells Abena, "Hurt people hurt people. ... The difference between good and evil is what we do with that pain." The Doctor and his friends show that there's another, better way.

So maybe that's the magic of "The Story & the Engine". The way it takes a slightly fantastical concept and weaves (sorry) a spell of hope and compassion in the face of despair is something we could all use more of these days. The fact that this is mixed with a fabulous cast and some marvelous storytelling along the way only sweetens the pot.

Series 15 has gone five for five in high-quality episodes. This is shaping up to be the strongest run of Doctor Who in quite some time. How long can they keep this up?

(Oh, and what's the deal with the cameo from Poppy from "Space Babies"? Even knowing how series 15 ends, it's still odd. Maybe the Doctor's right; maybe a future story was leaking out...)