1 week Ago By Emily Baker
This review contains spoilers for “The Robot Revolution”Take the TARDIS back 20 years in time and you will find a world in which Russell T Davies had just written the first episode of a new series of Doctor Who. One that introduced a brand-new companion and featured a playful story about deadly robots. Not much has changed of course, apart from everything.
Not least the rumoured threat of cancellation.“The Robot Revolution” is not a patch on 2005 classic “Rose”, but it is everything you would expect - both good and not so good - from a big, broad, crowd-pleasing premiere.if(window.
adverts) { window.adverts.addToArray({"pos": "inread-hb-ros-inews"}); }At its heart is a brilliantly pulpy sci-fi premise.
On her 16th birthday, the Doctor’s new companion Belinda Chandra, played by Andor’s Varada Sethu, has a star named after her by her childhood boyfriend Alan (Jonny Green). Seventeen years later she is abducted and taken to the star’s orbiting planet of Missbelindachandra One. She is to become the queen of its oppressed citizens, the Missbelindachandrakind, and their evil robots, the Missbelindachandrabots.
So far, so Doctor Who.It’s a big, broad, crowd-pleasing premiere (Photo: Alistair Heap/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf)Sethu’s overworked NHS nurse Belinda is a different kind of companion to predecessor Ruby Sunday. Whereas Ruby was a teenager full of wide-eyed wonder, Belinda is a 33-year-old adult stuck in a house share.
If you have met a nurse before, you will know the type: stern and clinical, tough and unflappable. After all, what are alien robots compared to a Saturday night shift in A&E?This harsh edge proves jarring at first but it doesn’t take long for Sethu to grow into the role. Indeed, by the episode’s end Belinda reveals herself to be something refreshingly bold - a companion who doesn’t want to be a companion at all.
“I am not one of your adventures,” she says, markedly unimpressed with the Doctor’s reliably charismatic madcap shtick. All Belinda wants is to go home, a request which the TARDIS mysteriously denies. These compelling final scenes between Belinda and the Doctor crackle with tension and conflict.
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addToArray({"pos": "mpu_tablet_l1"}); }Varada Sethu as Belinda Chandra and Ncuti Gatwa as The Doctor (Photo: James Pardon/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf)The story itself is a slight yet colourful romp. In true Russell T Davies fashion, the clunkier aspects of the script tend to be offset by strokes of genius. Take the clever idea that the robots suffer from a glitch which means that they cannot hear every ninth word, leading to a delightful sequence in which the Doctor sneaks a message to Belinda through nimble wordplay.
Still, such moments of ingenuity cannot completely salvage the episode’s rushed pace and garbled plotting.It is revealed towards the end of the episode that the dire state of Missbelindachandra One is because of a temporal anomaly that has led to the robots inadvertently bringing Belinda’s awful ex-boyfriend Alan to the planet before her (despite them kidnapping him after she arrived). This is why the robots have turned into relentless Belinda obsessives: the besotted Alan had got there first and declared himself into AI, their cyborg ruler.
A convoluted “timey wimey” explanation translates to a lot of frenzied dead air exposition.There is a bitter sting of satire (Photo: Lara Cornell/BBC Studios/Bad Wolf)#color-context-related-article-3632341 {--inews-color-primary: #b9244c;--inews-color-secondary: #f0f0f0;--inews-color-tertiary: #b9244c;} Read Next square BLACK MIRROR Black Mirror has run out of ideasRead MoreA redeeming strength of Russell T Davies’ writing, however, is that even amongst the sweetest, most rompish of scripts, there is a bitter sting of satire. Hence this episode’s grand theme of coercive control, with the toxic Alan treating Missbelindachandra One much as he had treated a teenage Belinda – demanding total obedience.
“Planet of the incels,” she quips.The allegory is hardly subtle. But it does speak to Doctor Who’s unique and enduring quality of containing multitudes: the serious and the silly, the sublime and the ridiculous.
At a time when the show’s future is rumoured to be in doubt, it is necessary to be reminded of what would be lost.‘Doctor Who’ continues next Saturday at 6.50pm on BBC One.
It will stream on BBC iPlayer from 8am.
