Doctor Who Nigerian’s delighted spectacle is “finally” in Lagos

“Everything I did-maybe clean or do my homework-when I heard the ‘oooh-oooooh-oooooh’ ‘,” said Adesoji Kukoyi, imitating the emblematic theme of the doctor who, “I dropped everything and I ran directly on television.”

As a child who grew up in the 1980s, Nigeria, Mr. Kukoyi was in love with the feeling of science fiction Doctor Who. British shows like Allo Allo and Fawlty Towers regularly broadcast like a cultural wood of the colonial era, but none captured Mr. Kukoyi’s imagination as the time travel in time.

“He always talked to me,” said Kukoyi, 44, who currently has a theme of Doctor Who Vintage as a ringtone on his phone, told the BBC.

“As there was someone waiting for us … Yes, we make mistakes, but we make our best, especially if we have a teacher who will take us on the right track.”

Mr. Kukoyi has watched Doctor Who for decades, so when he heard that on Saturday, an episode will take place, for the very first time, in Nigeria, he was delighted.

“I watched the episode of last week with my wife and the overview (for the following week) said:” Welcome to Lagos, Nigeria “. I shouted like a little girl!” Said Mr. Kukoyi.

The framework is essential not only for Mr. Kukoyi – from the largest and most alive city in Nigeria Lagos – but also for the show. Saturday’s adventure will be the first mainly located in Africa.

It is normal that producers have chosen Nigeria for this important step – in 2013, fans around the world were delighted when nine episodes of Doctor Who were lost in the 1960s were discovered in a Nigerian television establishment.

Ariyon Bakare, who in the next episode plays the mysterious hairdresser, says that fans can expect “an ancestral cultural collision that folds” and “hair, a lot of hair”.

The preview also teases a dynamic hair salon, an overflowing lagos market and an imposing and monstrous spider.

Fans speculate that this creature is Anansi, a legendary character in the popular tales of the West and the Caribbean, but the scriptwriter Inua Ellams keeps details under the Wraps.

As for the reasons why the spectacle has experienced such popularity in Nigeria, he said: “There is something of Nigerian in the doctor. The Nigerians are somehow noisy and gregarious people … The doctor is mysterious, noisy, somehow too confident but manages to save the day in a way.”

Ellams, who moved from Nigeria to the United Kingdom when he was a child, also explains why, in 62 years, a character known to cross the universe has barely spent time in Africa.

It may be that no writer is confident enough to produce an authentic African history, he says, or this could be due to the doctor’s need to “blend into his environment and be discreet”.

“Ncuti Gatwa (who plays the doctor) being an actor of African origin means that we can tell new stories with the doctor and negotiate in different spaces because of his appearance.

“And this is the shine of the show – each doctor creates new opportunities to tell new stories in different ways,” Ellams told the BBC.

But these new stories from Doctor Who have a smaller range than the old ones, because the show is no longer broadcast on Nigerian public television. If you are in the country and want to catch up with the doctor’s exploits, you will have to subscribe to the Disney Plus streaming service.

Anyway, Mr. Kukoyi insists that a dedicated troop of Doctor Who Nigerian who will sit in their sofas on Saturday evening, testifying to the Tardis materializing in Lagos.

“I wait with a bait breath,” he said. “Finally, he comes!”

Mr. Kukoyi – whose first doctor’s first experience was played by a Tom Baker, wearing scarves, says that his young girls are not so taken with his beloved show.

He “tries to put them on board,” he said.

Perhaps the doctor wearing traditional Nigerian clothes, make your way through a market par excellence from Lagos and get caught in local folklore will help them fall in love with the show as their father once did.