The Robots of Death

Chapter the 252nd, is a late Christmas present - shiny and decorative on the outside, but underneath is something even more wonderful.

Plot: 

The Doctor and Leela materialise in a mobile mining craft, the Sandminer Storm Mine 4, which roams the surface on a desert planet (or possibly a vast desert on a planet, it's not 100% clear) to extract precious minerals for company profit. It is crewed mainly by robots. There's also a small human crew, getting smaller every moment as they are being strangled, one by one. Suspicion falls on the Doctor and Leela, and the craft's commander Uvanov has them locked up. One of crew, Poul, doesn't believe they did it and releases them for the Doctor to share his theories; Poul also doesn't believe what the Doctor suggests, which is that the robots have been programmed to kill everyone. Poul and D84 - a supposedly mute robot that secretly can talk and reason - are undercover agents investigating threats made in letters sent to the company about a robot revolution. These came from Taren Capel, a robotics scientist, who's lived mostly with robots for his whole life, so nobody knows what he looks like. Poul breaks down, suffering from robophobia, on finding grisly evidence that the Doctor was right after all. Taren Capel turns out to have taken the place of Dask, one of the Sandminer's engineering crew. He and his controlled robots go on the offensive against the TARDIS team and remaining crew. The Doctor confronts Capel, with Leela hiding in the room with a cylinder of helium, slowly releasing the gas into the air. This changes Capel's voice such that the robots no longer recognise him, and kill him.

Context:

This was a random choice but within certain constraints. As it was Christmas, I decided to watch a story I really liked. I chose my favourite one of the stories that remain yet to be blogged for each Doctor, and then used a random number generator to select which one of the dozen or so I would watch. The fates dictated it would be The Robots of Death, a nicely fitting pick for three reasons. First, it was a companion piece to the last story blogged, Voyage of the Damned, which took some inspiration from the titular robots many years later; second, Robots was shown as a festive repeat almost exactly 45 years before this watch (as two fifty minute combined episodes on the 31st December 1977 and January 1st 1978, forming the final edited Christmas repeat of a long run in the 1970s); third, and most importantly, it acted as my personal tribute watch for its writer Chris Boucher, who sadly passed away earlier in December 2022. I watched on Blu-ray, from the disc in the Collection Season 14 box set, on a day during late December, accompanied by the younger two of my children (boy of 13, girl of 10) and the Better Half (it's one of her all time favourite stories).

First Time Round:

I first watched the story when it came out on VHS in the very early days of releases. It was 1988, and the original, classic Doctor Who was still a going concern on TV, but there was a sudden, giddy, wonderful chance to own episodes from long ago of which one may have heard. and one may have even read in novelisation form, but now they could be watched and re-watched, time and time again. Before this, in the late 1980s, only five titles had been made available and I'd collected them all. The gaps between releases seemed like ages, but were only a few months each time. Sometime around mid-February of 1988, I went into the upstairs of W.H. Smiths in Worthing and found two new tapes, The Robots of Death and The Day of the Daleks, on the shelves. I bought them both as soon as I could, took them home and watched them a lot. Both stories were particularly good examples of 1970s Doctor Who, though Robots was the stronger of the two for me (just marginally). With seven titles now owned, it felt much more like a collection than before. Even the box was a prized artefact, the cover images impressing despite showing the robots with blue-screen inserts in their eye sockets, used in the show to create their evil red-eye when under the influence. The version of the story on the 1988 tape was edited to remove the beginning and end credits of the middle episodes. I finally experienced the story in full as broadcast when an unedited version came out seven years later in mid-February 1995.

Reaction: 

The story behind The Robots of Death's superlative art-deco look and feel is that the director Michael E. Briant thought the script wasn't all that good, and therefore felt that he needed to lift it with the visuals. This confuses me, and I suspect has done the same to other Who commentators over the years, as it is clearly an excellent script: a simple idea executed well with great dialogue, merging ideas from big science fiction (Isaac Asimov and Frank Herbert) with the murder mysteries of Agatha Christie. What was Briant reading that he found the material underwhelming? My theory is that the idea itself didn't appeal to the director (Boucher was sticking to the 'Whodunnit in space' brief given to him by the production team, but that's not necessarily everyone's cup of tea), and that blinded him a bit to the merits of Boucher's work. The upshot was, though, that an already excellent story gets an equally excellent realisation. Briant challenges every department to push the boat out in terms of opulence, and this creates something very special indeed. However good Boucher's blueprint initially was, the series produced based on it could have been unimaginative. Picture, for example, the robots and the sets being basic and utilitarian instead of the works of art they ended up being. It could also have been incoherent - each person on the crew pulling in a different direction - but the deceptively simple art-deco concept helps to integrate all the different contributions. The treadmill method of making classic Doctor Who didn't allow time for the 'tone meetings' the new series stories benefit from, but Briant essentially has one anyway.

That's it really. I could just end this now saying "It's an all time classic" and leave it at that. Maybe it would be just as quick to list the parts that don't quite work. The feet of the robots are not that great. Heads, bodies, voices, rhythm of speech, their choreographed movement, are all perfect, but you can't have everything. The robots' feet are plimsolls covered in silver sticky tape. It's just a shame that Briant uses a number of shots that focus on their footsteps advancing on their prey. Some scenes before the reveal of the murderer give the game away (his face isn't sufficiently disguised). A couple of the performances are not as good as the others. The make-up is a bit over the top. The corpse markers (robot deactivation discs stuck on each victim) are clearly rear reflectors for bicycles. That's all that comes to mind, really. But, having said that, it's nice that the mystery is solvable for the children in the audience (the ending's use of helium's voice-changing qualities is nicely appealing to children too). The cast is one of the most diverse presented in Doctor Who of this period, with good roles for women and people of colour; if that means some slightly less experienced performers were used, it's a fair exchange. Kids with a spare bike reflector get the chance to play robots of death with screen accurate props. And, it occurred to me on this watch (apologies if I'm being slow), that the heavy lines of make up around the Sandminer crew's eyes and noses make them look more like the robots, a hint at how important the "creepy metal men" are in this world, and a subtle highlight of the humans' love/hate relationship with their servants in this society. The Robots of Death's flaws aren't that bad, and may even be strengths.

The Robots of Death's definite strengths are, well, everything else: Dudley Simpson's score, the fantastic model work, the deft world building (brief mentions, such as to "Kaldor City", were enough that they could be developed into story after story, and indeed later were in books and audios). The key members of the cast, Russell Hunter, David Bailie, Pamela Salem, Gregory de Polnay, Miles Fothergill, and - oh gosh! - the wonderful, wonderful David Collings, are all brilliant. They are more than matched by a brace of regulars at the top of their game. Tom Baker is at the height of his powers and new companion actor Louise Jameson is more than good enough to match him. They make everything memorable, even a nice little bit of nonsense like their opening scene where the Doctor explains dimensional transcendentalism to Leela with a couple of boxes similarly to how Father Ted explains perspective to Father Dougal with some toy cows. I mentioned the excellent dialogue earlier, but it's worth repeating. There are too many good lines to quote them all; just one to call out as a personal favourite is Tom Baker's wonderful delivery of the beautifully clever line "Nine times out of ten" as he leaves the TARDIS (you'd have to see it in context, but I'm guessing if you're reading this that you have). The story even achieves some depth amongst the fun and the thrills and chills, for example in the exploration of "robophobia". This is a dread fear of what has subsequently been called the 'uncanny valley', our brains' difficulty in reacting to a creation that's almost like a human, but not quite.

Added up, it's an all-time classic, no other way to say it. Between them, Briant and Boucher, the former thankfully going strong, the latter now sadly no longer with us, created something truly excellent.

Connectivity: 

The robots of The Robots of Death were clearly the inspiration for the Host in Voyage of the Damned, but also both stories involve a group of people trapped aboard a craft being picked off one by one, these events orchestrated by a lone male figure who is more robot than man (figuratively in the 1970s, literally in the 2000s) working from a secret workshop on the craft.

Deeper Thoughts:

Next Time Trailer. Making predictions at New Year's is almost as silly as making resolutions, but call me silly - I'm going to make some anyway. I did the same last year in the final 2021 blog post for Flux. It's probably an even more silly thing to do to check back on how well or badly I predicted 2022's events last year, but I'm a sucker for punishment and will do that too. I was mostly on the money regarding Jodie Whittaker's finale; I guessed that both Sacha Dhawan as the Master and Jo Martin as the Division Doctor would return, and that the story would leave a lot of the questions about the Timeless Child and the Doctor's past unanswered (I failed to anticipate exactly how extreme Chris Chibnall would be in avoiding the subject altogether). Happily, I did not predict all the surprises of The Power of the Doctor (I mean, who saw most of that coming?) just as I didn't predict the return of the Sea Devils in a pirate-themed episode at Easter. That was revealed early on in 2022, in a trailer immediately after the January 1st special Eve of the Daleks. There won't be such a special in 2023, but instead we got a 60th anniversary teaser trailer released on Christmas Day. That may well be all we get now before full trailers are shown, likely only a couple of weeks before the specials air in November next year. I didn't really predict the lack of a festive special in the 2022/2023 Yuletide period so much as know it already as it had been heavily implied by statements made earlier in 2022. I did wonder last time whether there would be any Christmas special in 2023, at either end of the year, stating "The schedulers and Davies could move the special back to the 25th December and there'd be one before [2023] is out". That could still come to pass. Statements have repeatedly said that Ncuti Gatwa's first story will air "over the festive period" in 2023. To my mind that means they haven't decided / been given a date yet, so it could be shown anywhere from December 23rd 2023 to January 5th 2024. I very much hope it's on the 25th as it would be nice to want to watch things on the big day (only the Ghosts episode held any interest for me this year on all the four main UK channels).

What do I predict for the content of the David Tennant specials? Much as I tried to remain un-spoilered, I'd seen some bits of the location shoots posted online before the teaser trailer, so already had something of an unfair advantage re: predictions. It's been heavily hinted that a US TV star who's engaged to appear (I'm dancing around the specifics just in case anyone reading this has somehow missed the publicity and wants this all to be a surprise) is going to be playing a returning character from the early days of the classic series. Also, some creatures featured may well be slightly obscure characters from the extended Who universe (they certainly look like them). Nothing's absolutely confirmed though. Beyond that, I would expect more surprising returns from the past befitting an anniversary year. I expect, though, that they may only be old faces from the 21st century series now (beyond Donna and her family, who have been confirmed) or perhaps more extended universe characters. The Power of the Doctor thoroughly covered the classic series, and there isn't anyone or anything to bring back from 20th century TV Who that they haven't already. The only significant monster that hasn't been redesigned and reintroduced is the Yeti, but Steven Moffat did the Great Intelligence (without its cuddly hench-beasts) a decade ago. No, I think it's more likely that we'll see an appearance by, say, the Slitheen than the return of, say, the Terileptils. Mind you, Russell T Davies brought back the Macra for one night only, so anything is possible. Beyond the new broadcast episodes, there will also be new product coming out in 2023. The big continuing range is the Blu-ray box-sets of classic seasons that form The Collection series. Last year, I took a punt on which three seasons would be released in 2022, and came up with 13 (Tom Baker's second year), 22 (Colin Baker's first full run), and 2 (William Hartnell's second season). In the words of Meat Loaf, two out of three ain't bad. I didn't anticipate that only two sets would come out in 2022, so season 13 is still awaited. I'll roll over that prediction to 2023.

I'm going to guess (hope) for three Blu-ray sets next year, so in addition to 13, I'll predict season 20 (Peter Davison's second year released in time for its 40th anniversary) and another black-and-white 1960s season.  As they've done a Hartnell one this year, I'll go for a Troughton, season 6 (Troughton's third and final run). There are only a few gaps to fill because episodes don't exist in the archives. Five missing episodes of The Space Pirates can be presented as an audio and picture reconstruction, and the two episodes of The Invasion have already been animated. Whether those two episodes can be presented in high-definition will be a big question: they were the first missing episodes to be animated back in 2006, and the company that made them no longer exists. Britbox offer the story with the animated missing episodes one and four, and it looks good on my old TV. Talking of animations, I predicted last year that as well as The Abominable Snowmen, another animation would be released, and I guessed at The Wheel in Space. I wasn't to know that a funding partner for the animations, BBC America, would cease to be a broadcaster of Doctor Who outside the UK, and would therefore no longer be putting the money in. Will Disney+ now be taking up that baton? Nobody knows at the moment. I suspect that it will happen, but maybe not in time for any releases next year. If a story is released, my money would still be on The Wheel in Space to be the one, completing the visuals of Troughton's second year, season 5, and making that a possibility for box set release in the near future too. Many online fan commentators have expressed worries about Disney+ involvement in Doctor Who, and how much influence they will have. As we approach a new year, I'm minded to be optimistic. It's not so long since Disney+ shows were being touted as competitors of Doctor Who (see the Deeper Thoughts section of The Husbands of River Song post last Summer for more details), and now we're all on the same side. Anything can happen in the next 12 months. Happy New Year!

In Summary:

I'll just say it's an all-time classic, and leave it at that.