Warning: Spoilers ahead for Doctor Who season 15, episode 5, "The Story and the Engine."Jo Martin's surprise comeback, the episode is dense enough to leave the Fugitive Doctor discussion to happen elsewhere.

"The Story and the Engine" continues Doctor Who season 15's trend of mimicking season 14's structure. Just as season 14, episode 5, "Dot and Bubble" showed how the skin color of Ncuti Gatwa's Fifteenth Doctor affects his interactions with people, "The Story and the Engine" does something similar. The installment's writer, Inua Ellams, has even labeled his Doctor Who debut script as a "companion piece" to "Dot and Bubble," and has discussed the connection with Radio Times. However, the 2025 effort is about far more than Fifteen's sense of belonging.

Doctor Who Season 15, Episode 5's Villain Explained

The Barber was once a human but has become something more

The Barber enters the story as someone with God-like powers. In the context of Doctor Who's current storyline, this isn't that much of a surprise. The show's Disney era has been littered with deities, so the Barber initially seems like the latest in a long line. Unlike Doctor Who's other characters whose abilities seem similar to the Barber's, Bakare's character reveals in "The Story and the Engine" that he was once an ordinary human. In his mortal form, the Barber served the Gods by gathering stories for their consumption and binding them in books.

The injustice done to him is what has been driving him for a very long time before the Doctor meets him in "The Story and the Engine."

So, while the Barber isn't a God himself, he is the reason why the Gods he mentions are still in existence. They needed the power of humanity's stories as sustenance, and the Barber traveled the world gathering them. After asking for recognition for his centuries of hard work, the Barber was told by the Gods that he should know his place. The injustice done to him is what has been driving him for a very long time before the Doctor meets him in "The Story and the Engine," and he is very close to getting the revenge he so desires.

What The Story Engine & The Nexus Are

The Barber develops some highly impressive pieces of technology

The Barber created the Story Engine and the Nexus while in service to the Gods. They were built in tandem to help the Gods reach further into the various cultures and societies that existed across the Earth. The Nexus itself resembles a spider's web, which explains the design choice of the vehicle on which the Barber's shop travels. The shimmering web of interconnected ideas began as a drop of blood from the Gods themselves, and it eventually grew infinitely larger to the point where it's shown in "The Story and the Engine."

Unfortunately for the Barber, he had done such a good job on the Nexus that the Gods didn't need him anymore to operate it and cast him out when he asked for recognition for what he had achieved and built for them. The Story Engine was also a creation of the Barber during his tenure as the Gods' servant. It allows him to traverse the Nexus, with the engine itself being powered by the stories the Barber continues to gather.

The Barber reveals the locations he has set up throughout the centuries, with the goal of harvesting stories to power his engine and reach the Gods for vengeance.

The Barber reveals the locations he has set up throughout the centuries, with the goal of harvesting stories to power his engine and reach the Gods for vengeance. As well as mentioning and showing some ambiguous locations, such as pubs and Catholic confession boxes, the Barber also mentions an "electric cinema," while projecting an image of the location of "Lux" onto the wall. It's not confirmed whether the Barber was lurking in the shadows during the Doctor's encounter with Mr. Ring-a-Ding, but it's certainly a possibility given the Nexus' reach.

Is Doctor Who Season 15, Episode 5's Villain Connected To The Pantheon?

The Barber's Gods could easily have the same origin story as the Toymaker & the others

Even though the Barber isn't a God, the beings he mentions in "The Story and the Engine" sound very similar to Sutekh (Gabriel Woolf), and the other confirmed Pantheon Gods. If so, the Barber could serve as a very strong connection between some of the most powerful characters in Doctor Who canon.

Even if the Gods mentioned in "The Story and the Engine" aren't currently d with the Pantheon, it could be that all deities within the show's lore all have the same point of origin.

Even if the Gods mentioned in "The Story and the Engine" aren't currently d with the Pantheon, it could be that all deities within the show's lore all have the same point of origin. So, the Barber's former overlords aren't necessarily entirely separate from the Pantheon, even if they're separate right now. Plus, with showrunner Russell T. Davies paying so much attention to the Pantheon since the beginning of Doctor Who's Disney era, it wouldn't make much sense to introduce an entirely new group of Gods so close to what is set up to be a huge and cohesive finale.

Why Doctor Who's Storyteller Villain Changes His Mind

Fifteen uses a creative solution to stop the Barber

The Barber puts everyone in the episode at risk due to his obsession with killing the Gods for everything they took from him. He is blind to the fact that killing the Gods will damage all of humanity because of how interwined the Earth's population has become with its various faiths and religions. So, the Doctor has to take extreme measures by interacting directly with the Story Engine and feeding the countless tales from his many lives into the machine. His actions ultimately cause the Story Engine to go into overdrive because of the power of the Doctor's endless tales.

The Barber initially sees the Doctor's actions as an advantage, but Gatwa's character then recontextualizes what will happen. The Story Engine will explode before the Barber ever reaches the Gods, and everyone in the shop will die. The Doctor frames this inevitability in a way that the Barber will accept by saying everyone's stories will end badly, and it'll all be because he wouldn't free them. With stories being so pivotal to the Barber's existence, this appraisal of the situation hits home.

"Listen to me. What would your six-word story be? What would the essence of your life be? I want you to live long enough to write it. Don't let this be how your story ends."

- The Fifteenth Doctor to the Barber in "The Story and the Engine."

Ultimately, the Barber frees everyone and saves himself from destruction at the hands of the overworked Story Engine. However, his connection to storytelling isn't severed. He inherits the barber shop for real, with the location always serving as a perfect setting for people to impart their stories to one another. So, the Barber gets to still hear the stories he so cherishes without the need to endanger any more lives or poison his soul with vengeance as Doctor Who continues.