Cutting through
Doctor Who writer Inua Ellams gives DQ the inside track on penning The Story & The Engine, his first episode of the iconic sci-fi franchise, and discusses staging a story set in a single location and the craft work involved in building a puzzling denouement for the Doctor.
In the latest episode of Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) travel to Lagos, where the mysterious Barber reigns supreme.
Here, the Doctor discovers a world where stories have power, but can he stop the Spider and its deadly web of revenge?
Debuting on Saturday on BBC One in the UK and Disney+ worldwide, it marked the first episode written by playwright Inua Ellams. The cast also features Ariyon Bakare, Sule Rimi, Michelle Asante, Stefan Adegbola and Jordan Adene, while Makalla McPherson directs.
Here, Ellams, who is represented by Casarotto Ramsay, reveals his long fascination with Doctor Who, how his episode was inspired by one of his plays and the key to the story’s puzzling ending.
Ellams: I don’t quite recall how I began watching Doctor Who, but the love affair started when I was a kid in Nigeria, about nine or 10 years old, between 1993 and 1996. Whoever programmed and broadcast the show across Nigeria must have been a Tom Baker fan, because his episodes as the Doctor are the only ones I can remember, his long scarf flapping as he ran.
Instead of a typical 90s television, my father had a projector the size of check-in luggage. The lamps would constantly overheat, the internal fans would kick in to cool them down, and even with the air-conditioning unit turned on, the lamps would work hard. To be able to hear the show, we’d have to turn the volume up, and with the soundtrack and sound effects thundering in my ears, and the projector splashed onto a large screen, I’d forget about Nigeria’s reality and slip into the Doctor’s fantasy, into the TARDIS, into impossible battles and terrifying aliens. It was there I began to dream, not of what the world was but what it might become.
I had a very different initial idea for my episode, something I may return to in future, but when I sat in Russell T Davies’ office and explained it, he appreciated it but softly countered with a question. He asked if I’d consider writing something set in one location, in a barber shop, and I smiled because this was something I knew I could do very well.
Years before, I’d written a play called Barber Shop Chronicles and told a story that unfolded in six different African barber shops but set on one single day. Russell had seen the play at the National Theatre and wondered what a similar setting and world might mean for the Doctor. The play is currently on the GCSE syllabus, meaning lots of young adults have been studying a world I had already created.
In many ways, to bring the Doctor into a similar world, a parallel one, to take him back to Africa, was beyond my wildest dreams; this was a story I’d never imagined would be possible to tell.
Dot & Bubble, the most emotive episode (in my opinion) of Ncuti’s first season, was set in the world of Finetime: a seemingly happy and harmonious planet of people who are terrorised by giant, space-travelling slugs. Ruby Sunday (played by Millie Gibson) and the Doctor do their best to guide as many people as possible to safety, leading them through a maze and puzzle of dangers to an underground port. Having done so, at the very end, the people refuse to let the Doctor actually take them to safety. They refuse to be physically near him.
Though it isn’t explicit, it is made very clear that this is because of the Doctor’s skin. Seeing the Doctor cry out of anger and frustration hurt. It left a wound in me that, in many ways, my episode healed, because Black barber shops heal these exact societal wounds. I think of Dot & Bubble as the companion piece to my episode, The Story & The Engine. They are definitely separate, stand-alone episodes, but to watch both would deepen an appreciation and understanding of the themes and issues alive within them.
Most of my episode is set inside the shop, and there, the Doctor argues and questions, supports and challenges, and begins to figure out the problem with the world he has just walked into. There are three other barber shop clients there with him, and the dynamic between all of them was not only a joy to write, but pure ecstasy to see come alive on set.
I spent as much time on set as I could throughout the filming process because I wanted to support the cast and creatives in any way they needed. Most of the drama takes place there, but the Doctor needed to change the stakes, to break out dramatically to a new playing field.
In a sequence towards the end of the episode (one of many magical sequences), the Doctor and Belinda escape from the barber shop floor and find themselves in a subterranean maze. They are completely and utterly lost, but the Doctor knows the way. There’s a map braided into his hair! The camera bends upwards so we can see his hairstyle, then we zoom out and up to get an aerial, top-down shot of the Doctor and Belinda. Here, we get a sense of the challenge they face, before zooming back down and into the action.
It was a tricky but beautifully executed shot of several moving parts that required all teams working in unison: hair, makeup and wardrobe, the art department and set design, and the incredible special effects team who took a simple stage direction of mine and transformed it into something breathtaking.
The episode is rooted in, and full of, aspects of Nigerian, Ghanaian, British, French and American history. It also pays homage to people in my life: my barber, my partner, my uncle, my Nigerian school relay team, and several theatre-maker friends of mine. It also has references to old poems and plays I have written. But all that is backdrop to the drama on screen, to the Doctor and his companion on an incredible adventure, trying to protect the universe from itself.
Like that? Watch this! Suggested by AI, selected by DQ
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tagged in: BBC, Disney, Doctor Who, Inua Ellams