Doctor Who: Series 15 (or 40 depending on how you count): Episode 5: The Story & The Engine by Inua Elams.
Y’know, the number of god-like beings the Doctor is encountering is making me wonder if Russell T is going to reveal that our Time Lord is one of their number. It isn’t as though he hasn’t been laying the groundwork for a long time now. The real question is do we want the Doctor being god-like. He tried that before as Time Lord Victorious which didn’t exactly go well for him.
This time they are in 2019 as the Doctor is still attempting to get Belinda Chandra home and thinks the clue will be in Nigeria in a Lagos barber shop.
Now here’s a puzzle, if the TARDIS can give the Doctor a haircut, why do so many of the regenerations choose to let their hair to grow long?
The Doctor sees missing people posters and goes to the barbers and finds them there. They have their hair cut and it quickly grows back. Even his. The Doctor decides to return to the TARDIS and finds the barber shop is on the back of giant spider in its web and has to shut the door or be sucked out.
I’m a bit puzzled that the barber has to explain to the Doctor what is going on as, usually, it’s the other way around.
I’ve ended up watching the end of this story several times trying to unravel what was actual going on. This has to be one of the most cerebral stories ran in ‘Doctor Who’ and wondering what the younger audience would make of this.
Without going spoiler but this might contain spoilers lets see what I understand. The barber collects and relates stories, drawing everything in, including the earlier Doctor (actress Jo Martin). The current Doctor has to break this link so everything goes back to what is ‘normal’.
Now here’s the problem. If the early Doctor was trapped for so long, how much did this disrupt their timeline or did it become part of it? What we do know about when Doctors cross over their own timelines, the previous regenerations tend not to remember the events or not be bothered by memory absences. This explains why the current Doctor has no recollection of the events he is now living again or how he solved it.
A heavy story, hope you enjoyed the experience.
The ‘Doctor Who Confidential’ has Russell T indicating that he wanted Inua Elams’ ‘Barber Shop Chronicles’ play merged with ‘Doctor Who’. Also lessons in how to turn the studio into a Lagos market with 80 extras. It’s odd with the catering, no one appears to want cereal.
Looking over what I’ve written, I think the biggest problem here, speaking with a pale skin, is no knowledge of the Nigerian background that this story is based around. Would we hang around in a barber shop just for the atmosphere than getting our haircut? I haven’t been to a hairdressers in a couple decades but we tend to be pretty quiet until we get into the barber’s chair. However, if you accept alien realities the Doctor frequently meets and treat it as an unusual one of these then it probably makes sense. You might want to see Elams’ play to see how much of it was used.
GF Willmetts
10 May 2025
