The Doctor Pretender and Belinda the Bitch are still unable to get Belinda back to her own timeframe, but never mind the Doctor decides to hit Lagos, Nigeria 2019. He feels he is welcome in a small barber shop in the City, because you know colour of skin. And welcome to Lagos folks, where everyone is black, thought this franchise was breaking down that sort of non-inclusive society. Anyways the Doctor makes the shop, ignoring warning signs to stay away and a bunch of missing people posters on nearby walls. He discovers that like the Hotel California, once you arrive you can never leave and the requirement for trapped patrons is to tell stories. What is going on here, you really don’t want to know kids, this is some bollocks. Anyways Belinda naturally heads into the wild and enters the barber shop, immediately making the trapped patrons problems infinitely worse. Can the Doctor fix the situation or as usual will he mince about crying and having to rely on someone else to fix the situation.

Just some housekeeping before ripping this episode a new one, yeap it’s another complete disaster for the franchise. Confirmation kids, the rumour that Ncuti Gatwa is abandoning the show quicker than a rat leaving a sinking shop, has been confirmed. The actor, term used in the widest possible sense, is off to the glittering morass of modern Hollywood to frack up productions there. Moreover, rumour, with some justification, has it Russell T. Davis is abandoning play to make a show about alphabet people, that promises to be another disaster in the making, for another channel. Overnight figures once again were in cancellation territory with a 1.59 million result. There have been apologists claiming the seven day figures prove the show is still winning with audiences, but this episode had a 2.7 million seven day result which once again would underline how badly series fifteen is doing. Let’s be honest here kids, the audience has evaporated with only shills and YouTube hate channels tunning in, to pretty much present differing styles of propaganda. Oh and yes trying to represent Downunder fans who are going into the wilderness once again.

As we have come to expect during the Gatwa era there are whole lines of dialogue and plot developments that will have the viewer face palming like it might be going out of fashion. Actually at stages I was double face palming, some of the dialogue – which I guess is meant to be highbrow puts Prime’s Rings of Power to shame. “Saying you’re not human is the most human thing ever”, is Belinda the Bitch mentally challenged? The line makes about as much sense as a Donald Trump now you see it now you don’t tariff policy. 

Naturally the show runners can’t resist making some social commentary, and then demonstrate they are living with rose coloured glasses firmly in place. This shite is about at the level of the Hippy Nirvana from the 1960s. We find the markets of Lagos are completely safe and everyone is living happy fulfilled lives, is scribe Inua Ellams mentally challenged? Hey we have a recurrent theme for this episode. If you believe this rubbish, then you are living in a drug induced stupor. Naturally a mincing queen isn’t going to run into trouble with Lagos street gangs, and of course the Doctor needs to explain his skin colour is a problem but he feels safe in the crime laden, open sewage, cesspit that is Lagos. Ellams does know mincing gay characters are going to last about five seconds in Lagos 2019 right? A bit more realistic is the shanty towns that are in the background, I was expecting to be in downtown Wakanda, because you know Black man utopia or some other delusional fantasy land rubbish the sheltered BBC workshop believes in. 

Guess I can’t continue without talking about the inherent fallacy this episode delivers, take a seat you might be laughing your arse off by the time this paragraph finishes. The barbershop is on the back of a giant mechanical spider that is powered by storytelling! Let that insanity sink in for a couple of minutes, let’s forget the physics, the whole concept smacks of stealing ideas off Terry Pratchett and going for visuals rather than telling a story based off what can realistically be accepted by the viewer. I was watching this one with my Son, who as soon as the spider mech showed up turned to me and simply said, Wild Wild West, a Will Smith vehicle that also portrays a giant mechanical spider. So nothing new in the episode, but some real dumb ideas stolen from other properties.

Oh god and Belinda the Bitch has to insert herself in the episode, because what remains of the audience need to be strafed in their lifeboats as the franchise gets torpedoed and sunk. We get Belinda as a nurse telling a Doctor what the diagnosis is, because you know the white Doctor got it wrong thing. She can now apparently operate the TARDIS. And of course she tells a God some home truths that brings enlightenment to an eternal being. Sorry I’m renaming Belinda Mary Sue the Girl Boss, another chick character being praised for doing absolutely nothing besides being obnoxious to the extreme.

We do get a cameo from Jo Martin, as some reiteration of the Doctor who has never really been explained in the timeline. The problem with Jo appearing in this episode is that it helps point out how absolutely appallingly bad Ncuti Gatwa is in the role. I vaguely remembering pointing out Martin has the gravitas to play the Doctor in a much better fashion than Jodie Whittaker in the past, and by hell she wipes the toilet floor with Gatwa, who is no doubt crying and mincing over the development.

Which kind of segways into the stories being told by the barber shop patrons. About all of them are much better plotted, presented, and interesting than the episode narrative itself. Once again don’t show something in an episode that simply points out how bad the actual episode is, the term “shooting yourself in the foot” comes immediately to mind. What might help is jettisoning the whole God thing we seem to have been trod on, like dog poo, for the past couple of episodes.

Another episode down, and to be honest this final series – anyone think this is going to be renewed – is dragging its arse through poorly thought out idea after poorly thought out idea. I’m at the stage of watching a new episode simply to see how bad it’s going to be, and hey at least I’m not disappointed with that.