After the Doctor-lite episode “Lucky Day”, the Doctor and Belinda return and see the Time Lord go to a new location, Nigeria’s biggest city.
The Tardis lands in Lagos in 2019, and the Doctor sees it as an opportunity to visit his old friend, a barber called Omo (Sule Rimi). When the Doctor arrives at the barbershop, he finds that Omo and his patrons are held hostage by a being called The Barber (Ariyon Bakare), and the barbershop feeds on stories. The Barber wants The Doctor’s stories since he has them in abundance.
“The Story & the Engine” was written by Inua Ellams, a British playwright from a Nigerian background. His biggest plays, The Half God of Rainfall and Barber Shop Chronicles, have focused on African themes and settings, and “The Story & the Engine” gave him a chance to bring these themes to a wider audience. “The Story & the Engine” was an episode that aimed to show Nigerian culture to the masses: oral storytelling, local gods and beliefs, and even African hairstyles. “The Story & the Engine” was the first Doctor Who episode to feature a cast made up of a majority of people of color.
“The Story & the Engine” felt like an episode made during the Chris Chibnall era. During his tenure as Doctor Who’s showrunner, he expanded the show beyond European and American settings. One of the best episodes during his run was “Demons of the Punjab,” which was set during the partition of India, and “The Story & the Engine” borrowed some stylistic images from the episode “Can You Hear Me?” Ellams came from a similar background to the writers who worked under Chibnall, since many were playwrights or were known for writing dramas.
“The Story & the Engine” shared some of the same issues as the affected episodes during the Chibnall era. “The Story & the Engine” was a restrictive episode since most of it took place in the barbershop, and it was a dialogue-heavy experience. This showed the writing’s stage origins, but this made the episode into a long debate. It was hardly compelling TV.
Even though “The Story & the Engine” had a new setting, it revisited ideas that were explored before in Doctor Who. There have been many episodes where entities fed on stories, and The Doctor has lifetimes of them. The Series 7 episode “The Rings of Akhaten” explored those ideas where people had to sing to their sun. The Barber was revealed to be a godlike being, and the Disney+ era has become dependent on godlike villains. The Fifteenth Doctor has already faced four members of the Pantheon of Discord, and The Barber has taken the identity of many trickster gods.
“The Story & the Engine” was a noble attempt to expand The Doctor’s horizon on Earth, but it was lackluster because of its undercooked ideas. The episode did not live up to its potential.
