Day 227 — August 15th 2021
The Robots of Death Parts Three and Four
The Robots of Death — Part Three
The Deadly Assassin got a lot of flak for being too violent for children, with Mary Whitehouse specifically citing the cliffhanger of Doctor Who’s head being held under the water as being far too scary. I’m fairly sure the version that exists today is edited from the original broadcast but all the same I didn’t find anything especially frightening in that story. This one, on the other hand, is scaring me a bit now, so I can only imagine how terrified I’d have been as a child!
The bit which really kicks it off for me is Poul discovering the Robot’s hand covered in blood — it was such a striking moment that it really made me sit up and take notice, and was the first really scary thing I think we’ve had in the series for a while. After that everything else seemed much more frightening. It helps that the robots are presented as pretty much unstoppable, and the last half of this episode makes it feel increasingly like there’s no hope for the humans. We get an extended fight sequence where Leela even goes to far as to throw her knife at a robot… only for the creature to pull the blade out of its stomach and continue its attack.
Of all these instances of the robots being presented as powerful and relentless, though, the best for me is the moment when a robot gets its hand stuck in a door, so simply disconnects at the wrist and steps away. It look me so much by surprise, and somehow managed to be far scarier than if it had simply pulled too hard and had the entire arm torn off… which is what I was expecting to happen. I love it when a story can sideswipe me, even with something as simple as this.
There’s plenty of shots in this episode of the robots walking towards people with their arms outstretched ready to kill, and there’s something about the way these moments are framed — in pretty tight close up — which really up the fright factor. In the closing moments when a robot advances on Doctor Who and his hands close in around his neck I almost had my Mary Whitehouse head on, wondering how scared kids would be with that image in ‘their mind’s eye’ for the next seven days.
I think the direction in this one is really strong across the board, and I’m thrilled to see Michael Briant bowing out of the series with such a strong outing. As I mentioned yesterday, his work has been a bit hit-and-miss for me, but this is some of his best work ever. The entire sequence where a robot looms over the sleeping Toos is shot beautifully, and there’s a couple of close ups where everything comes together to create a perfect shot — the lighting, the framing, the beautiful design of the robot costume… it’s fantastic.
I’m also really impressed by the various video effects on display in this one. As with the last story it feels like they’re really pushing the boat out to do something which looks fresh and different, and they’re throwing everything they’ve got at it. I love the sparkling red effect used on the robots’ eyes to indicate that they’ve gone ‘bad’ (although I’ll accept that it looks strange in this one when a robot is being reprogrammed and you can clearly see they’ve had to attach something to the mask ready to make the effect work), and the effect applied to the image to indicate a Robot’s point of view is fab, too.
This episode feels like it’s leaning into the Agatha Christie vibes pretty strongly, and it’s feeling ever more like a futuristic take on And Then There Were None. I love name revealing the secret that Uvanov has tried so hard to hide for ten years, and I hope we get some more instances of secrets coming out as the story goes on. As much as I’m enjoying the robots and science fiction trappings, I think my favourite parts of this story are when it’s just doing a murder mystery in space. I’m amazed the series hasn’t tried to do this more often, because it’s clear how well it can work when done properly.
We even get a robot detective thrown into the mix here, with D84 teaming up with Doctor Who to investigate what’s really happening aboard the Sand Miner. I’m loving the partnership, and I’m almost sad that they won’t be together after this story — I’d pay good money to see a run of adventures where Doctor Who and D84 travel through time and space solving mysteries together. I heard a cry. That was me!
It’s another 9/10 for this one, which is shaping up to be the strongest story we’ve had in a long time.
The Robots of Death — Part Four
I’m sort of sad that I knew the answer to the mystery of who was really Taren Capel in this one, because I can’t remember if it surprised me on first viewing or not. There’s lots of clues scattered throughout the story, and I’d be interested to see if I’d have picked up on them. From the point of view of knowing where things were going I think it seemed fairly obvious, if only because they’ve made an effort to keep Dask pretty much out of the way for most of the narrative. We’ve spent far more time — or at least it’s felt like that — with the other humans, which has the effect of making him guilty by default.
It’s also a shame that the reveal of Dask painted up to look like a robot comes a bit out of a the blue. I suspect the intention is for it to be a shocking moment — which it is, helped along by a fantastic bit of acting from David Bailie — but it was also a bit of an ‘oh, right, is that it?’ for me, because I’d been expecting a bit more of a reveal.
We do at least get a few more revelations and secrets here which is appreciated. It transpires that the narrative we heard in Part Three concerning Uvanov’s previous wrongdoings was little more than a distorted rumour, and that actually he’s someone we should have been feeling sorry for. It’s not often we get this kind of character work in Doctor Who, where a character is presented so unsympathetically and then redeemed, so it’s a welcome addition in a story which has already done so much for the guest cast. It reminds me a lot of the way they treated Scorby in the final episode of The Seeds of Doom, and that’s fairly high praise in my mind.
I’m glad that Uvanov gets to live at the end of the story — and Toos and Poul too — but I’m a little sad that we don’t get to see a bit more of a goodbye between them and our regulars. I’ve always been a fan of Doctor Who slipping away quickly and quietly when the adventure is over (Troughton’s incarnation was a master at it) but when the characters and the setting have been as rich as they are here, I feel a bit cheated of a proper departure.
It’s not only the human characters who get served well in this one, either. The moment when D84 is attacked comes as a surprisingly sad one, and then when he manages to cling on just long enough to help save the day I think I may have actually cheered. It’s especially impressive that Chris Boucher has managed to make the character so likeable and appealing when all the other robots have been — intentionally — a bit uniform and forgettable. It’s worked so well in places that at the end of Part One I mentioned to a friend how unusual it was that Doctor Who and Leela didn’t interact with any other actors in those first 25 minutes, only to be reminded that there were people inside the robot costumes. It’s safe to say that they’d all done a good job!
I’ve not spent much time today talking about how lovely the dialogue in this story is — which is probably something of a relief to you all because I’ve been banging on about that topic all week in relation to Boucher’s scripts — but I do want to quickly touch on a brief line from Leela which stood out as especially strong;
Toos: ‘I don’t understand what’s happening. Robots can’t harm humans. It’s
the first principle.’
Leela: ‘The second principle is that humans can’t harm robots. I know, I’ve
tried, and they don’t bleed.’
I’m going with an 8/10 on this one, which puts this as tied for my second-highest rated story of the marathon so far. I can’t remember what I thought of it last time around, but I’m fairly certain that I didn’t love it quite as much as I have on this occasion. I don’t know if it’s just that my tastes have changed, or if re-listening to one of the inspirations recently with And Then There Were None has given me a new appreciation, but I’ve really enjoyed these four episodes. And crucially, it’s felt nice to be dishing out such high scores for a few days, after the rock-bottom placements of The Hand of Fear and The Deadly Assassin!
