Doctor Who has returned to our TV screens for its latest season, Fifteenth Doctor in tow. Happily “The Robot Revolution” is much better than the previous series opener, but given that was “Space Babies” that’s not saying much, instead I will say that as a companion introduction story it’s perfect, as a story overall? Not so much. Some ropey designs and some on-the-nose political and social commentary that I would’ve preferred to have been more subtle (though I get this is aimed at all ages…) knocks it down a peg or two. Still fun though, so let’s take a deeper look!
The story focuses on Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) a nurse who when she was younger received a gift from her dominating boyfriend Alan Budd (Jonny Green) of having a star named after her (literally, it’s named “Miss Belinda Chandra”, imaginative!). This seemingly inconsequential incident weirdly comes back to haunt her as one night a bunch of massive robots land in a spacecraft and claim to come from the planet “Missbelindachandra I”, taking their “Queen” back home. As she’s taken we see both Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) from the previous series still making mysterious cameos and The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) arrive just not-in-time to rescue her. He follows the ship in his TARDIS but both ships hit some sort of time anomaly on the way to the planet and The Doctor arrives on the planet six months before Belinda. Turns out the planet is under the control of the robots and their master, the evil A.I. Generator (yep, it’s that straight forward about the admittedly annoying issue of AI generated content flooding the creative markets…) so The Doctor joins up with the local rebel cell, including musclehead Manny (Max Parker) and Sasha 55 (Evelyn Miller), who he is clearly eying up as his next companion, and makes his way up the societal chain until he is the court’s historian and present when Belinda is brought to the throne room.
Just one of those days…
It doesn’t take long for The Doctor to not only introduce himself but activate the rebel cell to start attacking the robots so he can save Belinda, but several rebels get killed in the skirmish, including Sasha, giving The Doctor time to have a bit of a cry again. They escape to a bunker and lick their wounds but after a while Belinda feels the guilt of this all being because of her (not helped by Manny straight out saying that) so she sends for the robots to collect her, which they do, bringing her and The Doctor before the A.I. Generator, but it turns out the name may not be as straightforward as it seems…
Like I said in the opening paragraph, it’s a story that works in introducing me to Belinda, I do like that unlike the departed Sasha she isn’t excited about being taken from her home and travelling the stars and instead just wants The Doctor to take her home and is in fact upset at the thought of another dominating man in her life telling her what to do because he thinks it’s exciting. It’s an odd dynamic that the show in its long, long history hasn’t actually explored and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. The robots and especially the giant A.I. Generator … face thing were way too colourful and cartoony, I would’ve preferred something a little less emersion breaking, but after “Space Babies” I’ll take colourful robots with emoji faces as a more upbeat opener than… whatever the hell that was last year…
The Continuity:
The Doctor plays with one of those static-creating balls you get in school science classes. Classic!
Not much, beyond Mrs. Flood having appeared in all prior Fifteenth Doctor episodes, and the fact that Belinda is played by the same woman who played Mundy Flynn in “Boom” is brought up in the story as a key plot point for the future.
I also have to say the Fifteenth Doctor’s second companion being a non-white female nurse who get abducted by aliens and is played by the same actress as someone who appeared in the previous series after the previous companion being a white blonde-haired woman from a hard-done-by council estate is a little concerning when it comes to his ability to think outside of his own box…
Oh and the giant robots felt like a mashup of the giant robots from the Twelfth Doctor story “The Husbands of River Song” and the Emojibots from the same Doctor’s era story “Smile”.
Overall Thoughts:
Another look at the Emojibots bigger brothers (because I’m reliant on promo images!)
“The Robot Revolution” was a good opener, it gave us a fully fleshed out new companion and teased lots of things to come for the rest of the Series to keep us going. The story beyond introducing Belinda wasn’t all that exciting though, and some of the robot designs were just that little bit too comical for my liking, but it didn’t damage my enjoyment too much.
As Belinda approaches the Generator it opens, revealing a cyborg man inside and that it didn’t say “A.I. Generator”, it said AL … um, generator? Not sure why it still definitely said generator, but ignoring that, it’s actually Alan Budd, who thanks to the time eddy they hit while piloting the rocket including Belinda saying that it wasn’t even her idea it was Alan’s, “so why don’t you get Alan?” but the message was sent back 15 years into the past, meaning the robots of that time kidnapped him fifteen years before now and that was enough time for the egotistical and dominating Alan to take control of the robots, get turned into a cyborg and dominate the whole planet with his robot army. That’s one hell of an unpleasant ex… He has with him a copy of the star registration certificate, the very same one Belinda still has with her after it was taken along with herself. The Doctor explains that the certificate was caught in a similar time eddy but instead sent five thousand years into the planet’s past and ended up causing the basis for their whole society’s origin myth. How the people of the planet were able to read the English or know that it meant they had a Queen many thousands of years into the future isn’t explained, but hey-ho.
A (slightly blurry) picture of Cyborg Alan, which is a name that sounds so stupid it’s also perfect, so I will now use that whenever I need to refer back to him… which will probably be never, but whatever…
Belinda touches her version of the certificate to Cyborg Alan’s copy, causing the old “two copies of the same thing existing at the same point in space and time paradox explosion”, but while Alan gets reverted all the way to being a sperm on floor that’s swiftly polished by a passing robot (which makes The Doctor do a fun happy dance, which I know Alan was a dick but that seemed a bit much from this normally emotional Doctor!) The Doctor reveals he has seen the whole span of Belinda’s life and that she’s in for a fun ride. After saying goodbye to the rebels, who now have completely passive and friendly robots to help rebuild their society, The Doctor and Belinda head into the TARDIS where The Doctor does his whole “no need to rush, it’s a time machine we can take a long way round!” speech but Belinda isn’t having any of it and wants to go home, but when The Doctor tries to head to May 2025 the TARDIS is bounced back, and we the viewers see that Earth is no more than a few floating landmarks and a calendar page with the airing date of the first half of the series finale circled on it…
Hogan Reviews 