Buckle up, friends. We've got a lot to tackle with this one.
I'll get the big disclaimer out of the way: I'm a white person writing about this episode set in Africa. This is not my culture, but I can tell it is shown with love and pride and I admire that greatly. I admire its setting, and the fact that Doctor Who is going places besides modern England, showing different cultures and races and telling their stories. I admire it, and it is not my place to discuss further what it gets right about this, the intricacies of that culture. I have no doubt that there are many critics of color out there who do have that lived experience, and can offer you a deeper insight on that aspect of the show. That's not me. What I can offer (and I in no way say this as a way to minimalize the specific African experience of this episode) is that this is a fundamentally human story at its heart and soul. It's about us. Our experiences, our stories, the things that make us quintessentially and so incredibly human. It flirts with divinity, yes, but in a very different way than the rote Pantheon formula we've followed almost one handful of times now. The Barber flirts with the idea that he is all of the gods, the divine experience distilled down and explained into one monomyth... and the Doctor and Belinda laugh that idea right out the door. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT JOSEPH CAMPBELL, DON'T LET IT HIT YOUR ASS ON THE WAY OUT!!! What we get instead is the origin of stories themselves. The first storyteller, the first one to tell the tales of the gods long long ago when the world was new. He and the daughter of a god, using stories to power their infernal engine, to cast down the old gods, to take revenge, to make a world fundamentally human but in all the wrong image... and what power they have harnessed for their misguided scheme.
Our stories have power. Our lived experience, the roadmap of all of our internal landscapes laid out there for all to follow, have a power. It becomes a literal map in the climax, when the story of slaves seeking freedom is weaved into Ncuti Gatwa's hair to help him save the day, but our stories are what resonate with other people, what let us see and relate to their true selves, what bring us closer together as human beings. It can be as simple as some dork sharing why an episode of Doctor Who made them feel profound emotional resonance, it can be a shared secret between two lovers whose hands are held and whose hearts are intertwined, it can be someone you trust sharing a deep and jagged scar to their emotional well-being, in the hope that you will understand and sympathize with them. Our stories bring us together as people, the ultimate conceptual alchemy. Forget lead to gold. Our stories transmute separation into connection, confusion into mutual understanding. The simple power of a human story is enough to transform and change all of the non-human players in this episode. The Barber gets to understand the scope of his misdeeds, and begin the path to redemption and understanding for them. Abi gets to understand the very human idea of pain and betrayal, and at the same time understand the way to healing from it. Even the Doctor, at the beginning, remarks that he's not human, and yet his desire to have a safe space for his current body as a black man is remarked upon by Belinda as the most intimate of human desires: to have a place to belong.
It's here I should make a comparison to another episode of this show that I love dearly, from over a decade ago: The Rings Of Akhaten. That episode was built on an entire system wherein sentimentality and stories had power and currency, in which the macrocosm of Doctor Who as a story was not enough to satiate the lonely god, but the infinite potential of Ellie Oswald's microcosm was. Intimate, interpersonal, human. Now compare that to this episode, wherein the story engine is successfully overtake and satiated by the infinite story of Doctor Who. What changed? Two things. First, that connection to the human I mentioned above. Second, the breaking down of the fourth wall. You even see it in this episode, where the opening credits appear on the memory wall. Doctor Who's story power has grown beyond what it was in the Smith years, has encompassed far more than just a fun phone box show. It's telling that this should air during all the constant Chicken Little panic about Doctor Who being DEAD FOREVER and how it'll be cancelled any day now. As if you could truly kill a story like Doctor Who. It will go on forever, even if it once again escapes the confines of television as it did in 1989. It will be as immortal and everlasting as the tales the first storyteller told of the gods, long ago in the dark of night with only a blazing camp fire to keep warm. This is a story of exploration, of self-discovery, of love and loss. Doctor Who is far more than just the story of a Time Lord, or a Timeless Child. It's the story of something so intimately human, and we must end with something to match that power. Here is my crunched leaf, what I offer. Here's a story of a hurt person seeking redemption and healing.
There's one aspect of the story I saved for last: the brief invocation of Jo Martin's Fugitive Doctor, and the implications of her backstory with Abi. The canon welders will, of course, have a field day with it, wondering what this means for her timeline and how our Doctor can remember it and all of that. I'm delving into those lands a little bit, but bear with me as I tell the story. Once upon a time, there was a blue-haired dork who loved blogging about Doctor Who. Then the Chibnall years happened, and they almost quit talking about it due to a disastrous episode called Survivors Of The Flux. A week later, the Flux storyline concluded with The Vanquishers, and the writer decided to take all the implications and promise of Doctor Who's missing memories and drop them into a deep hole in her TARDIS, never to be mentioned again. At the time, I railed against this, and I will now take you back to those times. Focus on that last paragraph. Focus on the hurt, the betrayal, the anger at all of this seeming to have meant nothing save for stringing the viewer along. It is far from the deepest scar upon my internal landscape, but it is one that still caused a pain and required a good dose of Scott Bakula to heal from.
Now, healed from that trauma, I come here and realize my folly. The watch didn't matter. None of this canon shit matters. Jo Martin is just here, luxuriating in this space for but a moment, here so that both Doctors of color can be present in this Afro-centric episode. The implications and promise are back, but now I see them as more than just a hollow tease keeping me engaged. I see freedom. Canon-weld all you want, say that Doctor Who opened that watch sometime offscreen. Say the memory bled through. We can do anything. We're free. I, a person hurt by the myopia of the Chibnall years, finally finding my redemption and path forward with this one little cameo. It doesn't matter, truly, just like it doesn't matter to me (though concerns me a little) that so many people are critiquing this episode based on the events not really cohering. The nitty-gritty is not what matters here to me. It's the vibes I'm concerned with, and they are immaculate and beautiful. There's a power to this story, and it resonates with me. I hope it does with you, as well. One final element to this beautiful story, to close: the concept of the six-word story. Summarizing your own internal landscape, the journey which makes you you and continues to drive you forward in the story of life, with such impeccable brevity. Doctor Who manages to do it. Let me do it, too. Let me close with my six-word story.
Failure. Then they learned and grew.
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