Doctor Who: The Story and the Engine: Review
The fifth episode of the second season of Ncuti Gatwa's Doctor heads to Lagos where the mysterious Barber reigns supreme.
Still trying to get Belinda home, the Doctor decides Nigeria is the best place to pick up a better signal to help - and while briefly landing there, convinces Belinda that he needs to go to the local barbershop where he's been accepted before.
However, when he heads to the shop, he finds his old friends trapped and a mysterious new Barber in charge of running the show...
There's an inherent story here about culture and the place of oration that lends itself to the Doctor Who mythos. New writer Inua Ellams immediately imbues the show with a sense of place that it's never had before while on Earth - from the vibrancy of the market through to the colourful outfits, this is a culture serve that Doctor Who has previously missed.
And the Doctor's acknowledgement of how humanity treats him now through racism is poignant too - a sad reminder that the world's greatest protector is also the one who can be hurt the most.
While there are Easter eggs thrown in for fans of the show, the story itself feels a little tantalisingly underdeveloped in parts, a chamber piece that relies too much on its own mystery to develop too far too quickly, The concept of the barbershop as a community hub for African-Americans is not a new one, but the novel twist The Story and the Engine gives it feels more wanting than it should.
Yet there is a feeling there's a richness here that's worth deeper introspection, an examination of the power of stories, of the way they connect people and the strands they weave deep within us. Perhaps the final episodes of this run will add more potency to what's transpired here - because the wider story of the relevance of the Spider and the Barber's connection is not quite as strong as the episode would want us to believe.
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Jo Martin only appearing for one minute in the recent Gatwa episode is a prime example to me of why making her Doctor a past version was a bad idea; feels like a waste. Would have been better to have made her Jodie’s successor. The retcon of the character as a previous incarnation was criticised by fans. Merryana Salem of Junkee criticised the reveal that the Doctor had previously been a woman as undermining Whittaker’s significance as the first female incarnation and felt the Fugitive Doctor invoked “harmful stereotypes”.[26] Screen Rant's Ray Alvarez criticised the Fugitive Doctor as a previous incarnation, feeling that the character became "a cheap plot device rather than a nuanced character with agency".[27] Bleeding Cool's Adi Tantimedh felt Chibnall had "robbed Jo Martin and the show of the fanfare of the first woman of colour to play The Doctor, reducing it to a throwaway gag".
ReplyDeleteIt does feel a real shame that one previous character is reduced to just a cameo
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