"This ship is in outer space, and in Lagos, at the same time..."
Yet again, we get another bloody good episode, full of heart and crammed with so many ideas. Not a dud yet this season: every episode has been good or better. And this may be one of the better ones.
After so many episodes concerned with the arc, characters from the past and so forth it's such a relief to get a story of the week. Yes, Mrs Flood appears, but only briefly... and yes, we get a surprising and welcome cameo by Jo Martin. And, although it seems at one point that we're getting another member of the Pantheon, Anansi, that's a clever bit of misdirection. And even if, as seems possible, stories are the concept at the centre of the season arc, the focus on story here is merely thematic.
So we have, near as dammit, a story of the week, with original concepts and a brand new villain. Good. It's also great to have an episode set in Nigeria- the TARDIS can go anywhere, not just an island off the coast of northern Europe. Episodes like this give the series a sense of scale... although one thing about the setting did amuse me: it's 2019, not quite the present, because Belinda can't be in 2025 until the plot demands.
The cold open gives us a fascinating mystery, and I love the little animations as the stories, so wonderfully reminiscent of west African folklore, are told. Omo, the Barber and Abena are stronger characters than the other young men, but this is not a story peopled by redshirts. These characters are far from two dimensional. And there's a fascinating character point for the Doctor, too: he's Black now, and having to adjust to how he's perceived in certain times and places. So why not spend time in Lagos, in a barber's shop, getting to know people in a place where his blackness makes him comfortingly anonymous?
The mystery builds wonderfully, and I love the concept of a barber's shop that is both in Lagos and... not. Even better when the Doctor discovers they're on the back of a giant robotic Anansi spider. This is brilliant. We're in West Africa, Anansi is the most widely known figure from West African folklore, so why not riff on him? And I love the misdirection: The Barber is not Anansi, god of stories (although surely Anansi, like Loki, is more of a trickster god... perhaps the same as the Trickster, come to think of it?), but rather a disgruntled former employee who wants to kill all the gods, which will have consequences for human culture, an excitingly fertile thought. Then there's Abena, another mythological character, who has a grudge against the Fugitive Doctor.
As good as all these breathless, brilliant, science fiction ideas, though, is the Doctor's very human story about Belinda, a simple tale of nurses and what heroes they are.
The ending is perfect- reconciliation and forgiveness for everyone, the Doctor managing to save the day only because of Abena's wonderful story, loads of tension. Maybe I'm still not fully grasping who and what the Barber was, but I don't think I really needed to. This episode was entertaining, ingenious, and deeply, deeply satisfying.
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”. 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". 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".
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