The Robot Revolution - Review

Spoilers ahead, so don't read until after you've seen the episode...

The second series of the second RTD era gets underway with an episode that is far from original.

Like previous RTD openers, The Robot Revolution is a fairly lightweight story, designed to introduce a new companion as well as provide a run-around adventure with a bit of action. Unlike previous openers, this one does have a bigger death count, as we see a few humanoid rebels getting disintegrated.

There's also a cat that gets zapped. which might upset the kiddies.

Long term fans of the series (and its spin-offs) will have spotted quite a few elements from previous episodes.

Like Martha Jones, Belinda Chandra is a nurse, and we get the montage of her her at work just as we saw with Martha. Also similar to Martha is the fact that Belinda is related to someone whom the Doctor has met before, and is a blood relative.

The Doctor is intrigued by this connection and wants to investigate what this connection is - just as he had with Clara and Donna.

The titular robots look very similar to ones we've seen in the series before - in Dinosaurs on a Spaceship, The Husbands of River Song and the SJA story The Empty Planet - big bulky things with no heads. They do have faces - but these are just like the screens we saw on the Emojibots in Smile.

That SJA story also comes to mind when we consider that this involved robots arriving on Earth to seize the ruler of their planet.

The villain of the piece looks like the Metalkind from another SJA story - Sky.

It looks like this story is going to be yet another one of those well-meaning AI's gets confused over some seemingly trivial thing and causes harm - in this case the fact that Belinda's ex-boyfriend bought her a Star Certificate, naming a star after her.

Luckily it does go beyond this by giving the robots a specific reason for their actions. That is the ex-boyfriend, who we initially think is just a throwaway character from Belinda's past. 

What happens is that there's a time fracture and she has blamed him on her predicament and suggested the robots abduct him instead, because he bought her the star cert. They actually do this, but he ends up on the planet orbiting the star at a much earlier date and so sets up the whole Robotaucracy in the first place.

Turns out Belinda jilted him as he's a control freak and a prime example of misogynistic toxic masculinity - because, let's face it, all Doctor Who writers these days have to shoehorn some sort of message into their episodes. This week it's Incels, but Adolescence this isn't.

The problem with messaging in this sort of adventure series is that it comes across as trivialised or marginalised within the context of the story. If you want to dramatise a serious subject then dedicate a proper piece of writing to it - look at the media buzz generated by the aforementioned Adolescence, or dramas like Mr Bates v the Post Office, which has influenced government.

Of the cast, the rebels are only barely sketched-in characters and there appears to be less than ten of them.

Varada Sethu gives a great performance, and promises to be quite a strong companion. She's a far better actor than Gatwa who, to date, only plays characters based on his own personality. I know a few fans who bemoaned the number of times the Doctor burst into tears in the last series, and he barely gets half way through the opener when he's at it again. Problem is, we've only had about three lines of dialogue from the person responsible for triggering these waterworks, so we have had zero opportunity to invest in her emotionally. 

As far as any season-long story arc goes, we're back in Terra Cognita, as we've seen a lot of it before. There's a significant date when the world / universe is going to end - which just happens to be the date of the scheduled final episode of the season and, as mentioned, the Doctor knows of some, as yet unexplained, connection with the new companion. Someone has told him to seek her out, but we don't know who this is, other than it's a he. The TARDIS "bouncing off" a particular destination was first introduced in the Moffat era, as do fractures (cracks) in time, which I'm sure will prove to be significant.

Mrs Flood is living next door to a companion - again - and is breaking the fourth wall - again.

Overall, it's a good episode for Sethu, so-so for Gatwa and - if this isn't damning with faint praise - a whole lot better than some of the offerings we got last year. Visually impressive, though the planet does look a bit Star Wars Prequel-ish. (There's a little Star Warsy robot as well). In the accompanying Unleashed instalment, RTD mentions wanting a 1950's vibe in the design, as can be seen in the robot gun and some set designs and especially the rocket, which resembles an old tinplate toy. There's a cartoonish look to the scenes in the robot palace.

Question 1: Why doesn't the Doctor try going back to 23rd May then hanging around a day? He stuck about a hotel for a year the last time.

Question 2: How did Belinda know that the Police Box is called a TARDIS?

Next time we are in the actual 1950's, as Lux sees the Doctor visit Miami where a cartoon character comes to life...