Robot: my review
jph...@aol.com
4 episodes. Written by: Terrance Dicks. Directed by: Christopher
Barry.
THE PLOT
The Doctor has just regenerated into his fourth persona, his most
eccentric one yet. Gone is the brittle, yet dignified, dandy; in his
place is a large, curly-haired, grinning figure who seems to be not
quite entirely sane. It's a bad time for the Doctor to be unstable.
With the components of a top-secret disintegrator gun stolen by an
unknown force, the Brigadier and UNIT need the Doctor's help more than
ever. But can this new Doctor be trusted?
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: Tom Baker makes a strong debut as the Doctor. He's
energetic and more than a little zany, but takes care in his
performance to keep the Doctor at a certain remove. When UNIT is
placing the final component of the ray gun (I know, I know, but that's
more or less what it is) under guard, the Doctor just sits back and
comments on the action, appearing to already know that this effort is
a futile one. The Sherlock Holmes aspects of the character are
stronger than ever, in Baker's version, particularly in scenes in
which he appears to be distracted by irrelevancies while actually
collecting important observations (i. e., the crushed dandelion moment
in Episode One, or draping his scarf carefully around the Think Tank
floor to collect evidence in Episode Two).
I should probably acknowledge here that I'm not generally a fan of
Tom's Doctor. However, most of my problems with him come later. In his
debut season, he was a breath of fresh air, and he is terrific here.
In a story that may even have been specifically constructed to mirror
a typical Pertwee effort, it is Tom's presence that lifts the story
above being a by-the-numbers exercise. He's every bit as dominant a
screen personality as Pertwee, but dominates in a different way - one
which works every bit as well, and which keeps you on your toes a bit
wondering what he's going to do next.
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart: Skipping straight from Season Seven to
here, it is striking just how much the Brigadier's character has
deteriorated. In Season Seven, he was brisk, efficient, and
intelligent - a man born to lead. That he wasn't as smart as the
Doctor came from the characterization of the Doctor's brilliance.
Well... the Brig has become a lot dumber in the interim. Season Seven
Lethbridge-Stewart would have noted that two components of the same
weapon had been stolen, and placed the final component under guard,
without needing to be led by the nose to that conclusion by the
Doctor. Here, the Doctor actually needs to prompt the Brigadier to
recognize what the first two thefts have in common. At least this
story still presents him as a halfway plausible military man, unlike
certain other stories that presented him as Brigadier Halfwit.
Nevertheless, it seems a sad fall for an initially superb character.
Sarah Jane Smith: This is a very strong story for Sarah Jane. With
Letts and Dicks still in charge, her background as both a journalist
and an independent-minded woman is still a major driving force for the
story. Her interest in Think Tank is initially an interest in a
prospective article. This ends up propeling the plot.
For the first episode, and for much of the second, she is actually
more proactive than the Doctor and the Brigadier are. Winningly played
by Elisabeth Sladen - who is very beautiful, but in a naturalistic way
that doesn't intefere with accepting her as her character - it's easy
enough to see why she came to be seen as The Definitive Companion.
There are companions I like better (out of ones I've reviewed so far,
Barbara and Liz both rate higher on my personal scale). But Sladen's
presence plus the broad strokes of the character make her a self-
evidently strong figure for both audience identification and, yes, eye
candy.
Harry Sullivan: Ian Marter's debut as Harry, the naval physician who
starts out as the Doctor's doctor, under orders to keep watch over
him, and ends up as a companion. Marter brings a relaxed and likable
presence, and has an easy rapport with both Baker and Sladen. There
isn't really very much for him to do in this story, but I certainly
wasn't sorry to see him step into the TARDIS at the story's
conclusion.
THOUGHTS
The beginning of the end of the UNIT era, and it honestly was about
time for the show to move on. I noted how striking it was, skipping
from Season Seven to here, how far the Brigadier's character had
fallen. It's also rather striking how much more artificial the entire
show seems to be. It's still eminently watchable, but it suddenly
feels like a live-action comic book, complete with inept soldiers and
a league of mad scientists plotting to take over the world with a
giant robot and a top secret Ray Gun. I question how some can complain
about Doctor Who cartoons such as The Infinite Quest and Dreamland.
Decades before, stories like this were basically cartoons already!
I should back up here and say that I rather like Robot. Some of that
is down to nostalgia. It was not the first Who story I ever saw, but
it was the one that made me a regular viewer, back in the mid-1980's.
>From here, I watched every story during PBS' mid-1980's omnibus reruns
of the series, going all the way through to Trial of a Time Lord
(which, for a long time, I had thought to be the series' finale).
Even pushing nostalgia aside, there is much to like. Robot may be a
standard runaround, but it's a perfectly amiable one. Terrance Dicks
isn't the writer you go to for brilliance, but he certainly
understands the importance of story construction and pace. Robot moves
at a brisk pace, effectively introducing the situation and the guest
characters, establishing the various threats, and finally bringing
them all together for the final episode. While the plot may be a touch
thin and cartoonish, there are enough strands to give the Doctor and
the Brigadier elements to investigate, and Sarah Jane other elements
to investigate, keeping all of the regulars occupied and giving the
viewer bits of new information at a steady pace, until the full
picture emerges. There is even some rather nicely-done misdirection,
involving the character of Kettelwell.
Taken on its own silly and cartoonish terms, the story works a treat
for about 3-and-a-half episodes. Unfortunately, it all falls badly
apart at the climax, starting when the Robot is shot with the
disintegrator gun and grows to a massive height. I guess Dicks wanted
to really hammer home the King Kong riffs in his script.
Whatever the case, the small measure of internal credibility the story
had held up to that point disappears, and the next several minutes of
the robot rampaging around toy cars, paper houses, and plastic
soldiers (some of it while carrying an Elisabeth Sladen rag doll) is
both ludicrously realized and, frankly, dull. After five years of
spearheading Who, Letts and Dicks had to know the giant robot bits
could not be well-realized. Worse, the script doesn't do anything
interesting with the giant robot (actually, this marks the point at
which the script stops doing interesting things)... So why was this
badly-botched climax there? Was it just a misguided attempt to provide
some spectacle?
A thoroughly enjoyable tag scene manages to end the story on a fun
note, fortunately. In the end, while Robot was the weakest "new
Doctor" story up to this point, it was a quite respectable worst.
Unlike one or two botched debuts that would come along a bit later...
Rating: 6/10.
The Doctor
jph...@aol.com <jph...@aol.com> wrote:
>ROBOT
>
>Rating: 6/10.
>
I would say 5.6/10 . The ARK is a step better.
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