The Doctor: Ncuti Gatwa
Companions: Varada Sethu – Belinda Chandra
Others
Ariyon Bakare – The Barber
Sule Rimi – Omo Esosa
Michelle Asante – Abena
Stefan Adegbola – Rashid Abubakar
Jordan Adene – Tunde Adebayo
Michael Balogun – Obioma Okoli
Simon Bailey – Paramedic
Adrian Pang – Consultant
Tessa Bell-Briggs – Patient
Anita Dobson – Mrs Flood
Inua Ellams – Market Seller
Funmi James – Security Guard
Jo Martin – The Doctor
Production
Directed by Makalla McPherson
Written by Inua Ellams
Script editor: David Cheung
Produced by Vicki Delow
Executive producer(s): Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil Collinson
Music by Murray Gold
Series 15
Running time 47 minutes
First broadcast 10 May 2025
The Fifteenth Doctor and Belinda Chandra arrive in Lagos, Nigeria in 2019. The Doctor wishes to visit a friend of his, Omo, who runs a barbershop, and leaves while Belinda stays in the TARDIS. The Doctor discovers Omo and several others have gone missing, and upon entering the shop, the Doctor is trapped inside. Omo reveals that a mysterious figure dubbed "The Barber" took control of the shop, and is having Omo and the other missing men tell stories to power an engine. The Barber is working alongside a woman named Abby, who the Doctor recognises but cannot place the identity of.
Omo told the Barber of the Doctor, making the Doctor unhappy with Omo. The Doctor attempts to escape by opening the door of the barber shop but nearly falls out as it's revealed the shop is on the back of a colossal spider walking along a massive web. The Barber states that the shop exists both in Lagos and on the spider, and that only he and Abby are able to leave. Belinda arrives, and she too is sealed inside. The Doctor goads the Barber into revealing his identity, and though the Barber lies at first, saying he is the true identity of many different gods, he reveals that he is a storyteller who assisted many gods by spreading and preserving their stories using the web, also called the Nexus. The Nexus functioned too well, and soon the gods cut him off of it. The Doctor realises that Abby is the daughter of Anansi, Abena, who he abandoned while in his Fugitive incarnation, and that Abena allied with the Barber to seek revenge.
The Barber reveals that he intends to reach the centre of the Nexus in order to cut off all the gods from the web, killing them, which would come with the side effect of destabilising human culture. Abena, having a change of heart, braids the Doctor's hair, with the braids acting as a map to the centre of the engine's power source. The Doctor and Belinda are able to reconfigure the heart of the engine to allow the Doctor to power it with his own "never-ending story", but the energy is too much, and the engine begins to destroy itself. The Doctor is able to convince the Barber to let the trapped people go, and then subsequently convinces him to escape with them. The engine is destroyed, and the shop returns to normal.
The missing men all return to their loved ones, and Omo apologises and makes up with the Doctor. Omo retires and puts the Barber in charge of running the shop, while Abena goes off to live her life. The Doctor and Belinda depart as the Doctor tells her the story of how he met Omo.
The Story and the Engine