We're in the back half of Doctor Who season 15, and I don't feel like we know Belinda all that much. This latest episode put the focus back on the gods, but not the Chaos Pantheon that we've come to know. At least, not quite.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS for Doctor Who season 15, episode 5.
The episode starts with Fifteen and Belinda landing in Lagos in 2019, and he decides he's going to head over to a barber shop. This barber shop is a place that he's come to geel accepted now that he is in this form, noting that people look at him and treat him differently because he's Black.
Belinda understands this, as she always went to India with her grandmother when little, and noted the same thing. There are times that you need to be surrounded by people who look and speak like you. It's the reason for the push for more diveristy on our screens, because everyone deserves to be able to see themselves, and not just as a bad stereotype.
Fifteen finds himself trapped in Doctor Who season 15, episode 5
As he gets to the barber shop, he notices a bunch of missing posters, and when he walks into the barber shop he says that all the people in there are on the posters outside. Sure enough, they are all trapped inside this barber shop, with just two people allowed to enter and leave whenever they want.
One of those is a woman, who Fifteen notes looks at him in disgust. What has he done to her? That soon comes out, and while it was The Doctor, it wasn't Fifteen. It was the Fugitive Doctor who was guilty, and The Doctor is sorry for everything that happened.
The woman, who is called Abby to the people around her, is actually Abena, the daughter of Anansi, who is known as the spider trickster of the African gods. The Doctor had once lost a bet to Anansi, and that linked to having to marry one of his daughters — Abby. Abena blames Fifteen for leaving her behind with her father.
The storymaker just wants credit for his work in Doctor Who
We do get a villain that I can actually empathize with. The villain initially says that he is a god with many names, with Anansi being one of them. This links to the spider that the barber shop is actually on, traveling around space on a "world wide web." However, Fifteen is quick to point out that he isn't Anansi, Loki, or any of the other gods that he mentions.
It turns out that he is the storyteller of the gods. He was once human, and he created the stories that people know today. However, he's never had credit for his work, and the gods are wrathful and awful beings. So, all he wants is to destroy all memory of the gods. He will destroy them all, and destroy the work that he has done.
This changes everything, and Fifteen points out what this means for Abena. The storyteller lied to her, but she still wants to get her revenge for the pain she has endured over the centuries.
That's where Belinda comes in. After realizing that The Doctor wasn't coming back, she went out to search for him, ending up trapped in the barbershop as well. This is when she gets a chance to connect with Abena, sharing that "hurt people hurt people," and it's such a true saying. It doesn't mean hurt people have to hurt others, though, and Belinda gets it through to Abena that she has a choice about all this.
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Abena realizes that she needs to help and not hurt
In the end, Abena gets Fifteen to sit in her chair and works on his hair while telling a story. It's a story of slavery, and how the women would put maps into their hair via the braids since they couldn't have paper. That is a clue to Fifteen that she is putting a map into his hair, which takes him and Belinda to the main engineering room where all the stories are. It's a brain that surrounds a heart, and now Fifteen and Belinda need to figure out a way to stop it so that the plan of the storyteller can't work.
Fifteen decides to fill the computer with all of his stories. It's an endless loop, that leads to the entire thing being overloaded. Everyone is able to get out alive just before the entire thing explodes, but it's certainly a close call.
In the end, the storyteller has to figure out what to do next. The owner of the barber shop shares that he's decided he will retire, and the storyteller can take over the job.
Meanwhile, Abena disappears, thanking Belinda although commenting on the irony of a human teaching a god a lesson.
It's the end of the episode that brings up the little girl that Belinda saw in the streets before she went into the barber shop. Fifteen never saw a girl, but Belinda definitely did. Who could it have been? It's sure to be something linked to the end of the Earth that's coming, along with the fact that Mrs. Flood was spotted in one of the stories about Belinda in the hospital.
Doctor Who airs on Saturdays on Disney+.
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