*Episode premise spoilers*
I really enjoyed this episode, which offers up an interesting story, cool visuals, and a new Earth locale. Not to mention, it’s the best the show has done so far in talking about Fifteen’s race! Let’s get into it.
The Doctor and Belinda make a stop so the Doctor can visit his favorite barber shop in Lagos, Nigeria, but the shop is under siege. Everyone there is being held by a mysterious figure known as the Barber, who’s using their stories as fuel for a machine. Now the Doctor is trapped too. For the Barber, the Doctor’s stories could hold the key for everything he’s trying to accomplish.
Quick quibbles first. The episode feels a bit handwavy at times, especially when it comes to the rules that dictate how the Barber operates. And because this is pretty close to a bottle episode, with everyone trapped in the barber shop for most of the story, that means parts of the episode get a little more tell than show, and the villainsplaining feels clunky at points.
But those are pretty superficial issues, nitpicks of the mechanics without an excellent story. The rest of it, for the most part, I absolutely love. It’s great to get an episode set in Nigeria—vanishingly few Who stories give us adventures outside of western Europe or the U.S., so it’s always good to increase that number. Even though, again, we’re constrained to the inside of the barber shop for much of the story, there’s a lovely scene of the Doctor moving through an open-air market beforehand, soaking up the community and enjoying himself. The scene is short, but it depicts this Lagos neighborhood as a vibrant, bustling place, full of life and beauty.
For all sorts of reasons, I like that a barber shop is the specific setting for this story. As the Doctor explains to Belinda, the shop has become like a home for him during this regeneration—now that he’s in a body that’s subjected to human racism, this is a place where he always knows he’ll be accepted.
THE DOCTOR: “We laugh, we tell stories, they…”
BELINDA: “…Treat you like one of their own?”
THE DOCTOR: “Yeah.”
Beyond that, a Black barber shop—especially a Nigerian one—is a natural setting for an episode that’s all about the power of stories. At its heart, this is a story about community, and the community is built on oral traditions, shared beliefs, and the passage of stories. And yes, hair. It’s neat to see the oneshot characters uphold different aspects of this, and it’s interesting to see how the Doctor is incorporated into that. Throughout the episode, I was reminded of Barber Shop Chronicles, and it turns out I had good reason to be: playwright Inua Ellams wrote both!
A few familiar faces in the guest cast—I knew I recognized them, but I wasn’t able to place them until I looked up the episode on IMDb. The Barber is played by Ariyon Bakare, who also played Lord Boreal on His Dark Materials. And Omo, the owner of the shop, is played by Sule Rimi, who I know better as Lt. Gorn in the first season of Andor. Plus, there’s a cool Who cameo that I hadn’t been expecting!
I like the backstory that’s revealed for Abby, a woman who’s helping the Barber, and how she interacts with the Doctor. I enjoy the stories told by the different characters and the visual techniques that bring them to life. The design on the Barber’s machine is fantastic. And I really love how the adventure resolves in the end—even though it’s a device the show has used before, it’s always done well and it’s used to especially good effect here.
Belinda is separated from the Doctor (and all the action) in the first half of the episode, but she makes up for it in the second half. When she arrives at the barber shop, Abby taunts her with, “Did he leave you behind? Tell you to wait?” Without missing a beat, Belinda replies, “No. I told him to go, actually.” And once she gets in on the adventure, her intelligence and compassion shine through.
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