Doctor Who fans talk a good game about how the series can go anywhere and be anything, but it's comparatively rare that an episode comes along that feels genuinely new. Last year offered us '73 Yards' – a real one-off that quickly became a strong contender, along with 2015's equally singular 'Heaven Sent,' for my favorite Doctor Who episode of the last 20 years. This season offers us the intriguingly-titled 'The Story & The Engine,' an inventive episode which feels quite unlike any other in Doctor Who's long history.
The Doctor and Belinda are still trying to get back to London in 2025 but are hitting dead ends. The Doctor has a stroke of inspiration – a quick trip to Lagos, Nigeria in 2019 should help. He also wants to pay his old friend and occasional barber Omo (Sule Rimi) a visit.
All is not well in Omo's Palace, however. A nameless barber (charismatically played by Ariyon Bakare) has taken charge of the shop and now Omo and his customers are trapped inside, forced to endure endless haircuts while feeding the Barber's mysterious engine with a steady stream of stories to stay alive.
Spoilers for 'The Story & The Engine'
From that synopsis you can probably tell that 'The Story & The Engine' is not your typical Doctor Who script. Written by Inua Ellams, the playwright behind Barber Shop Chronicles, it has an idiosyncratic structure that sees the Doctor stumble onto a mystery – which he immediately solves. He then spends the majority of the episode trapped in a barbershop that is simultaneously in Lagos and on the back of a giant mechanical spider crawling across a web in outer space. The first time I saw the episode I was entranced, but also more than a little baffled.
Despite this eccentricity, 'The Story & The Engine' has its roots in a familiar TV format – it's almost, but not quite, a bottle episode, with the vast majority of the episode taking place within the barbershop. Ellam's script twists this framework, transforming the episode into a strange and evocative rumination on the nature of gods and stories.
That makes it a fitting part of this era and this season in particular, given we've recently had an episode where the Doctor fought one of the Pantheon before discovering that he is, himself, a fictional character (admittedly a revelation that didn't stick – in a cheeky switcheroo it was revealed that we, the audience, were the fiction, which actually makes quite a lot of sense given the general weirdness of space year 2025).
'The Story & The Engine' is quite different to 'Lux', 'The Devil’s Chord' and 'The Giggle,' however. Although it's never stated, it seems clear that the gods the Barber is referring to here are not the same as the villainous figures the Doctor has been battling since 'The Giggle.' Dionysus, Sága, Bastet... these are all figures from ancient mythologies. They are our stories given life, forces that enrich humanity rather than subjugate it. The Barber is a storyteller, vexed at the lack of credit he's received. He wants revenge, to depose the gods, but that would be catastrophic for humanity.
That's a very mythic approach to storytelling, one that's quite different to the show's more literal usual style. Ellams' script makes it feel like a natural fit by rooting it in established continuity (oh, hello the Fugitive Doctor!) and reminding us that the Doctor's own mythology is as complex and contradictory as any god you might care to think of. The Doctor's personality, race, and gender are all flexible attributes, their adventures are often messy and contradictory (classic Doctor Who famously sunk Atlantis on two separate occasions), jigsaw pieces that don’t quite fit together. Gallifrey has been destroyed, saved, and destroyed again. But that's a feature not a bug of this forever idiosyncratic television show.
The never-ending story
It's this approach that enables the Doctor to turn the tables on the Barber using just six words* – "I'm born. I die. I'm born." He is, as the barrage of clips from the show's history reminds us, a never-ending story. That's a heartening message, especially in a time where Doctor Who's future on TV feels a little uncertain.
This is also a story about the Doctor as a Black man. That's something the show has touched on a couple of times now, in 'Dot & Bubble' and 'Lux.' In those episodes the Doctor was the target for racist abuse.
'The Story & The Engine' is quite different. In Lagos, the Doctor is shown only love. He greets almost everyone he bumps into on the street like they are his family. The lonely wanderer is here treated "like one of their own," as Belinda puts it. That's important. If Doctor Who is going to talk meaningfully about the Doctor's Blackness, then it's vital that the character is not solely seen through the lens of stories about white racism.
* An unconscious echo, perhaps, of the time the 10th Doctor deposed Prime Minister Harriet Jones in a similar manner.
Of course, a lot of the audience watching Doctor Who aren't tuning in to see a "strange and evocative rumination on the nature of gods and stories" (and please forgive me for quoting myself, there). They want action-packed adventures where the Doctor gets into scrapes, battles monsters, cracks a few jokes, and does something clever to save the day. 'The Story & The Engine' is not a traditional episode in that regard.
It is, however, one of the most original and ambitious episodes this show has produced in years, and one that earnestly celebrates the Doctor as a mythic hero, a living and breathing story that started back in 1963 and is still somehow finding new ways to surprise and delight us in 2025.
Doctor Who: 'The Story & The Engine' is out now on Disney Plus and BBC iPlayer.
Check out our ongoing guide to Doctor Who season 2 Easter eggs, as well our guide to the best new shows coming your way in 2025.
