The Robots of Death | Sophisticated Idiots

Dammit.

The Robots of Death is forcing us to reconsider a few things.

And no, we don’t mean we’re mulling whether our existence would be improved by outsourcing much of our lives to enslaved mechanical men.

This outstanding story calls into question some of our previous statements. Three, in fact:

1. Leela

There’s a slim chance we’ve been a trifle disparaging of Leela in the past.

We may have suggested she’s an underwhelming character who’s drawn as thinly as her loincloth.

But here, in the best outing for the savage we’ve yet seen, Louise Jameson brings us numerous moments of wonder, including:

• Her throwaway “now you’re showing off” quip after lobbing a knife into the robot’s chest plate.
• And the slapstick outcome of the scene when she escapes by draping a curtain over it.
• A questionable bedside manner when she discovers Poal having a freakout.
• The yo-yo antics – which lead us to wonder for how many hours the Doctor’s left her playing with the toy.
• The helium-voice gimmick is beautiful. And sparks countless copycat kids at birthday parties for decades to come.
• “If you’re bleeding, look for a man with scars,” may not make any logical sense but it’s too late: we’ve already ordered a t-shirt bearing this slogan.

Remember, this is only Leela’s second appearance so it’s refreshing to see the Doctor have total faith in her already, trusting her with actual missions. She’s not just following him about being doe-eyed and pleading for exposition.

We dislike getting too serious here at Sophisticated Idiots Towers but we have to sit up straight and applaud Leela's superb reaction when she’s slapped in the face – an unpleasant moment which is, hopefully, a Doctor Who one-off.

The producers would undoubtedly justify this needless violence because Leela’s character can give as good as she gets.

Admittedly, it would sound hollow if most other companions threatened, “You try that again and I’ll cripple you.” We can't imagine such words coming out the mouths of Jo, Susan or Vicki, for instance.

My word, we believe Leela 100%.

2. The Amazing Cliffhangers Award

Okay, we may have also been a tad hasty in anointing Remembrance as Numero Uno for its collection of cliffhangers.

The Robots of Death runs that 1988 mega-story mighty close for the Cliffhanger Crown.

Part One concludes with the Doctor being buried alive in a silo. It's proper stuff-of-nightmares fare and is the pick of the lot, but this barnstormer is followed by the multi-jeopardy of the mine about to explode and then sinking, before Part Three’s iconic “kill the Doctor” throttle-fest.

We’re talking Drama with a capital D.

3. The Length of the Purple Patch

You will recall, oh dedicated reader, that our Ark in Space review asserted the Classic Who purple patch culminated with The Deadly Assassin.

We now concede there’s a decent argument the brilliance stretches deeper into Season 14 than we’d credited.

This is shaping up to be another great season (our lack of certainty is cos we haven’t seen Talons yet – we’re holding it back to sweeten the taste of the remaining Pertwees we face – but its reputation somewhat precedes it).

We categorically draw the purple line there, though. There’s no way an extended run par excellence goes as far as Fang Rock.

Anyway…

Leaving the self-flagellation aside, The Robots of Death is a stonking good watch.

Those notes of surprise you’re detecting arise because we weren’t expecting a great deal from this one: we’re still in mourning after Sarah Jane’s departure and the prospect of a Michael Sheen lookalike cavorting with robots didn’t exactly get our circuitry fizzing.

It doesn’t start especially wondrously, either, when we’re hit with the immediate realisation that this is another Classic Who story based around minerals and drilling. Everyone’s favourite double-act (sorry, Ant and Dec).

That said, the ominous opening conversation about a robot who ripped a guy’s arm off is an enjoyably unsubtle setup for the Asimov knees-up to follow.

And kudos to the writers for not trying to present the robots going doolally as a surprise twist, which would have been yawn-inducingly patronising, given the story's title and the well-trodden sci-fi cliché of Robots = Bad.

Almost as clichéd by now is the proclamation that Tom Baker is on top form.

We’ve become so used to Tom in his pomp, it hardly seems worthy of comment anymore. It’s like wasting your breath saying Erling Haaland's not bad at tucking the ball away. Or Trump can be divisive.

Doctor Who viewers of the mid-70s didn’t know how lucky they were (spoken like true children of the 80s failing to suppress our envy...).

Tommy deadpans his way through a stellar script, yet the writers don't only give Doc Four some razor-sharp lines to work with. There’s real substance too.

A wonderful early scene sees him admit he’s no better than the First Doctor at piloting the TARDIS (he gives his own accuracy a 5/10 score).

He then has us all nodding gratefully when he explains the bigger-on-the-inside guff to Leela with the help of two boxes and Father Ted’s cows analogy with Dougal.

Of course, at its heart this is a murder-mystery tale. And having watched this one so soon after Terror of the Vervoids, Colin Baker should be relieved we’ve already put the review of his effort to bed. For Vervoids wilts in comparison to the lustre of The Robots of Death.

This is a far stronger whodunnit, complete with a gathering when everyone blames each other for the murders, which is sooo Traitors the scene may as well feature Claudia Winkleman.

The Robots of Death hits so much harder than Vervoids – and most other Classic Who entries, in fact – because there are stakes the audience care about.

This is largely thanks to masses of well-crafted drama and fully-rounded characters.

Each of the main supporting cast members has been curated as thoughtfully as their sensational eye makeup, which must have been applied with the help of a set square.

As a result, we're blessed with:

The professor from Remembrance who loves to recline in her giant clam.
Zilda with the fascinating family backstory who endures her boss getting uncomfortably close to her face.
Poul and his delightfully OTT robophobia.
And the main guy himself, the Michael Sheen cosplayer, is a complex character whose motivations are endlessly fascinating.

But most impressively, the production team achieve the not insubstantial feat of making us feel something for a robot.

It’s never easy to generate emotion from an inanimate face. See Robot. Or The Krotons. (Are you proud of us for swerving the obvious Adric jape?)

But the robots themselves are an excellent design, and we’re totes smitten with D84 (despite him being named after divorce papers. Seriously). His sacrifice in the final reel is the most tear-jerking robot screen farewell until Arnie’s flaming thumbs-up in the steelworks.

And for all Tom’s wunderbar wordplay, D84 is blessed with the best zinger of the entire story (“Please do not throw hands at me”).

We’re struggling to find anything to criticise in this story in the interests of balance.

If pushed, we guess the main baddie is a bit 2D, though the actor only has a few minutes to make an impact in his full green face-pack after being revealed as Keyser Söze.

Overall, there’s no escaping the fact this story is first-class. Nor that the sheer quality of The Robots of Death makes us seem a little hasty in some of our earlier proclamations.

As Doc Four and his lightning-wit would put it, maybe we’re a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain.