The Barber

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The Barber is the main antagonist of the Doctor Who episode "The Story & the Engine".

He was portrayed by Ariyon Bakare, who also played Leandro in the episode The Woman Who Lived.

Biography[]

The Barber was a storyteller who assisted many gods by spreading and preserving their stories using the web (not the World Wide Web), also called the Nexus. The Nexus functioned too well, and soon the gods cut him off of it. To get back at them for centuries of uncredited servitude, he took over the barber shop of Omo, a friend of the Doctor who saved his village from a fire, in Lagos, Nigeria and kidnapped some men, forcing them to tell stories while he cut their hair to power the titular engine. His purpose was to travel to the centre of the Nexus in order to cut off all the gods from the web, killing them – and humanity with it, he just saw that as a side effect. Assisting him in this is Abena, daughter of Anansi, nicknamed Abby, who wanted revenge on the Doctor after they abandoned him in his Fugitive incarnation.

The Fifteenth Doctor arrived in Lagos in 2019 with Belinda Chandra hoping to visit Omo. He discovered Omo and the others had gone missing, and upon entering the shop, the Doctor is trapped inside, too. Omo explained the situation, and when the Doctor tried to leave, he found himself on giant mechanical spider walking along a massive web. The Barber stated that the shop existed both in Lagos and on the spider, and that only he and Abby were able to leave. When Belinda got trapped as well, the Doctor goaded the Barber to identify his identity, and though the Barber lies at first, saying he is the true identity of many different gods, he relented in his true backstory and intentions.

Abena, however, had a change of hear, so she braided the Doctor's hair into a map to the centre of the engine's power source. The Doctor and Belinda were able to reconfigure the heart of the engine to allow the Doctor to power it with his own "never-ending story" through his various incarnations. However, the energy is too much, and the engine began to destroy itself. The Doctor was able to convince the Barber to release his captives and escape with them. The engine was destroyed, and the shop returns to normal. The missing men all return to their loved ones, and Omo apologises and made up with the Doctor. Omo retires, forgave the Barber for his actions giving him the barbershop and a proper name of Adétòkunbo.

Trivia[]

The stories the Doctor told the engine the Barber had were all previous Doctor Who episodes, They were Tomb of the Cybermen, Spearhead from Space, The Doctor Dances, Voyage of the Damned, The Zygon Inversion, The Power of the Doctor (with audio from The Woman Who Fell to Earth), The Five Doctors, Vincent and the Doctor, Pyramids of Mars, The Night of the Doctor, The Daleks in Colour, The Ultimate Foe, Space Babies, The Giggle, Flashpoint, Heaven Sent, and Boom.

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