The Robots of Death

4 Episodes
Aired between 29th January 1977 and 19th February 1977

Written by Chris Boucher
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Michael Briant

Synopsis

The Doctor has wrestled control of the TARDIS back from Leela.  The ship takes them to a sand miner, a huge machine that captures precious ore from the storms on a desolate planet.  After nearly getting buried by all the sand,

they discover that some of the crew are dead, with the rest being picked off one by one by a mysterious murderer.

The crew think that the Doctor and Leela did it, but the Doctor thinks it's the robots, mechanical servants of the humans.  That however is impossible, seeing as how all robots from Dums (manual labour bots that can't talk) Vocs (ones that can talk) and the super voc (that coordinates robot task work) are all hardwired with a programme that inhibits them from harming any human.

As the death toll rises, so do the stakes.  Whilst Leela discovers  a secret agent "Dum" robot that can actually talk,

the Doctor finds out that Taren Capel, a mad scientist who grew up with robots is onboard and is bent on starting a robot revolution onboard, masquerading as a late replacement crew member.

Thanks to the Doctor's quick thinking, he comes up with a plan to secretly pour helium into Taren Capel's lair, so that his voice changes and he won't be able to command the robots anymore.  The robots, looking for humans to kill, ultimately find Capel and strangle him to death.

D84 (the secret agent Dum) sacrifices himself to send a virus code to every robot and destroy them.

With the crisis finally averted, and the Doctor's hatred of filling in all the messy paperwork afterwards, he and Leela head back to the TARDIS and set off on another adventure.

Trivia

• After a story scheduled for this slot fell through, Bob Holmes suggested using Chris Boucher as he did such a good job on the previous story.  Phillip Hinchcliffe agreed and asked that the story incorporate something about robots as he'd wanted a story like that for a bit.

• The problem was, Bob Holmes hated those kind of stories, as he felt there wasn't much you could do with them, just like historical stories.  Regardless, he gave the job to Chris

• Funny enough, Tom Baker didn't like the script for this story and took every opportunity to complain about it.  Rather mischievously, Michael Briant invited Tom to go on one of his rants, just as the new producer came to visit the set!

• As noted in The Deadly Assassin, Phillip Hinchcliffe's card had been marked and so, he was to be sent off at the end of the series to work on a show called Target, a programme that had been created and developed by a Producer called Graham Williams.  It just so happened that Williams was coming to replace Hinchcliffe on Doctor Who.  Williams did come and visit the set on this story to get a handle on things and meet with Hinchcliffe.

• Chris incorporated a lot of things into the story from elsewhere.  For example, the robot stuff was very similar to Isaac Asimov's stories, the murder mystery was similar to Agatha Christie's "And then there were none", but it reached further than that.  Uvanov is meant to be a similar name to Asimov, Poul's name was based on sci-fi author Poul Anderson, and Taren Capel was a call to Karel Capek, the guy who came up with the word Robot.

• This is the last story that uses the wooden panelled control room.  The reason for this was that the wood warped whilst it was in storage.  

• Grimwade's syndrome was a reference to Peter Grimwade, Production Assistant who often moaned about robots in the scripts.

• There's an audio series called Kaldor City that develops the world shown in this story (http://kaldorcity.blogspot.co.uk/) as well as a further book written by Chris Boucher called "Corpse Marker".

The Review

You might have noticed something different on this post.  Simple terms, I'm finding less and less time to produce these blogs, and the pilgrimage of watching every Dcotor who episode sequentially is becoming more and more laborious because of the recap I'm doing.  So, I thought I'd switch it up a bit, and in the process enable myself to do a bit more of a free form review and, well...just see what happens.  Let me know what you think of it.

Ok, on with the review.

A Second Gem?
Given that such a good story preceded this, and given that it was the same author that did it, can we really expect lightning to strike in the same place twice?

It turns out that yes, we blummin well can!

Chris Boucher is great at world building.  I mean, no other story in this show has really reached this pinnacle.  The Robots of Death, although borrowed heavily from other literature, does the impossible. In the first twenty five minutes, it gives us a pretty excellent explanation of transdimensional engineering, it shows a multi-cultural society and even helps to point out sub-cultures of the servants of that society and how something is very wrong.

The World and Setting
The world feels new, it feels odd, and that's partially because Boucher went to the effort of thinking about it, even if the results of his thoughts were to simply mash up Dune, Agathatha Christie and I Robot.  But it's not only Boucher that can take the credit.  Michael Briant compounded the strangeness of the story by having it created in an art deco style, with lots of curves and sparkly material.  It should be horrible, it should be about as realistic as anything seen in Patrick Troughton's era, and don't get me wrong some of it is, I mean, you just have to look at Toos' head dress to see that..

but the most important parts, the bits that really matter do work. I'm talking about the odd custom of face paint on each of the crew, like it's futuristic cosmetics, and of course, I mean the robots themselves.

The robots look fantastic.  They are aesthetically pleasing as far as machinery goes, but their lifeless eyes and droning voice give out all the creepiness you'd ever want in a villain.  I'd even go as far as to say that they work better than the Cybermen, because they just have that slight edge of humanity to them, that's cruelly ignored when it's time for them to kill someone.

Acting
The crew themselves aren't amazing acting wise, with the exception of Russell Hunter as Uvanov, but he more than makes up for it, as does Tom Baker.

There's nothing particularly wrong with the characters you understand, but take Zilda for example, when she's arguing with Uvanov, the dialogue feels so scripted it's painful.  And robot or not, the guy who delivered D84's lines made his scenes hard to stand.

Louise Jameson doesn't shine here, but that's alright because the script sadly doesn't allow her to.  There's the bits about her noticing body language but for the most part, she's totally reactive, and never really recovers beyond a "what's that doctor?" situation.  All I can guess is that they were still sorting out in their heads how she would be developed as a character.

The Murder Mystery
I liked the fact that the Robots of Death made a murder mystery in an unusual location.  It adds tension, and because it's on a remote location, it ramps up the drama, just like the base under siege stories of the Second Doctor's era.

The thing is though, in this particular murder mystery, there's not much of character justification in it.  What I mean by that is there's not much reason for the characters to do what they do.  I understand that the story needs the characters to start questioning each others motives, so that we as viewers are drawn in and start to engage in the investigation itself, but...as soon as the Doctor is taken to the crew, the coincidence of him being on board as bodies start appearing seems too good to just brush off on the Doctor's insistence.  Plus, they escape and low and behold, are captured again right at the scene of another murder, yet, Poul suspects Uvanov?!

And that's not all.  Zilda clearly hates Uvanov too, yes, but when the murders start to happen, she never once mentions the fact that her brother was killed on her captain's first tour of duty.  Don't you think that information might just be relevant rather than making pouty faces and coming across like you're the one with the problem?

Then there's Uvanov himself, who doesn't seem to be happy with Zilda suspecting him for no reason, so he starts to give her a reason by explaining that he's incredibly likely to be the killer (before the Doctor comes on the scene) because with every crew death, he gets a bigger cut of the profits.  This bit would have worked far better if someone else, even Zilda, had pointed it out to him rather than him bringing it up himself.

The Real Killer
Then there's the real killer.  The alibi's for Dask seem pretty good at the start as he's always the voice of reason and kept out of the limelight.  Conventional TV detective wisdom now tells us that he should be an obvious suspect because of this, but as this is 1977, I'll give the benefit of the doubt.

If it continued like that, or maybe even faked his death, then that would have been great, but for everything that Michael Briant got right in this story, he failed on two major accounts in regards to keeping the villains identity.  First, he shows the killer meeting with a robot via only his feet.  Nothing wrong with that, except that we see his striped trousers  in full view, and this is directly following on from the scene before, when he was pottering about on the command deck in a striped outfit.

In the very next episode, we see him commanding SV7 via a video link.  Even though it's a top of the pops style effect that masks him, you don't have to look too hard.  It wouldn't be as bad if the remaining crew looked something alike, or even better, just have him relay the instructions by audio instead.

Then there's the killers motives.  If you're going to start a robot revolution, why there?  It's like saying you're going to overthrow the government and then starting by attacking the workers at the local coal mine, and that's without even looking at the age old argument of destroying his fellow humans and then what?  How will he eat etc?

The End Result
So, for me, the Robots of Death is a lot like The Sea Devils.  On the surface of the story, it is great. The mystery, the creepiness the witty one liners.  It has it all.  When you start to look a little harder at it, there's tons of plot holes and inconsistencies that niggle at you, but ultimately, do they really matter?

Fans for decades have scored this story high.  It's consistently in top tens when the stories are ranked.  I agree with the masses.  This story has downsides, yes, but none of them matter because at the end of the day, there's not many TV shows that are like this.  Take ANY era of TV.  There's not many shows that go into so much detail to build a world and a story as the Robots of Death.   This story is immersive.  Not even the Daleks had multiple layers of society at their inaugural outing.  It's different, it's interesting and the killer's identity takes a back seat to this wonderful world Chris Boucher created.  We're more concerned with Poul and the implications of Robophobia.

The Robots of Death is a top class Doctor Who story, worthy of being set amidst some of Tom Baker's best work.

Rating

10 out of 10 

Characterisations: poor, story: ok, setting: beautiful

Rewatchability Factor

8 out of 10

Watch this if you liked...

• The Daleks

• The Sensorites

• The Power of the Daleks

• The Moonbase

• Fury from the Deep

• Frontier in Space

• The Impossible Planet (Doctor Who Series 2)

• The Voyage of the Damned (2008 Christmas Special)

The Face of Evil

4 Episodes
Aired between 1st January 1977 and 22nd January 1977

Written by Chris Boucher
Produced by Phillip Hinchcliffe
Directed by Pennant Roberts


Synopsis

Leela, a female warrior from a tribe known as the Sevateem is exiled from them for blasphemy against their god, Xoanon.

She is sent into the wilds of the alien jungle they call home, and it's not long before she is followed by tribe members on the orders of the tribe shaman, Neeva.

The tribesmen are not the only ones out there however.  Her friend, Tomas follows and kills one of the enemies.  The other pursues Leela.  She manages to defeat him and eventually comes across the Doctor whom she believes has the exact same appearance as the evil one, a fabled enemy of her people.

Enemy tribes people are not the only dangers in this jungle however.  It becomes apparent to the Doctor and Leela that an invisible force is stalking them.  With the aid of an alarm clock, the Doctor works out that the force is a creature that's attracted to sound and vibration.

Using the clock as a distraction, they work their way back to Leela's village, where they soon find an anachronistic sonic disruptor field set up along the perimeter of the village that supposedly keeps the invisible creatures at bay.

His curiosity piqued by the strange finding, the Doctor questions Leela about her folklore some more.  Leela tells him that their great god, Xoanon is trapped by the Evil One behind a great black wall.  Her tribe, the Sevateem are planning to once again assault the wall and the Evil One's minions - the Tesh, in the hopes of freeing their god.  This attack although some think foolish, is being pushed for by a tribesman called Andor.  He wants to unite the tribe under him and decry their Shaman, Neeva, whom he believes is a false prophet.

The Doctor gets spotted and captured by two warriors as they near the village, Leela manages to hide.

The warriors also believe the Doctor is the Evil One and make protective religious gestures, which the Doctor seems to think is strikingly similar to the way one would check seals on a spacesuit.  After unsuccessfully threatening them with a "deadly" Jelly Baby, they take him to the Tribe Elder whom has him imprisoned.

Leela breaks him out, and as they flee, she kills one of her own tribesmen with a Janis Thorn, (a thorn from a native plant that paralyses and kills as there's no known antidote).

The Doctor is horrified at this and commands her never to use another Janis Thorn to kill.

Fleeing from the village, the Doctor and Leela go back through the jungle, where she leads the Doctor to the face of evil, a giant statue in the face of a cliff, that bears his own face, despite his insistence that he doesn't know the Sevateem or the Tesh.

He tells her that they must go back to the village, even though it's dangerous as that's the only way of finding out why his face is in the rock and to work out if he's indeed been on this planet before and just forgotten.

They successfully sneak back into the village and Leela takes him to Neeva's tent, so he can inspect their religious relics.  It turns out that the relics are in fact the gutted electronics from a crashed survey space ship.  The commands of the god Xoanon are beamed to Neeva via a transceiver in a space helmet that is now like a head dress.  As they are there, Xoanon broadcasts commands.  The voice sounds incredibly similar to the Doctor's current voice.

The Doctor tries to communicate with Xoanon whom seems surprisingly happy about it, decrying "at last we are here, at last I shall be free of us".

From all of this, the Doctor is certain that he must have indeed been here before, and the Sevateem are descendants of a crashed survey ship  - Sevateem being a marred name of Survey Team that's been passed down from generation to generation.  He also believes that Xoanon and the Tesh must also be somehow connected.

As they are making these deductions, the Sevateem are preparing to Assault the Wall and are lead by Andor and Neeva.

Leela takes the Doctor to the black wall.  The Doctor recognises it as a time barrier that puts anyone passing through it out of phase with the regular time stream, meaning the enemy can predict their moves. Sure enough they see that the primitive warriors are cut down by laser fire in the assault, losing over half of their warriors before they retreat again.  The Doctor realises that because Xoanon called Neeva to convince Andor to mount the assault, that must mean that Xoanon planned to kill the tribes people.

As the force return to the village, the Doctor and Leela are discovered by one of the tribe elders, Calib.

He is skeptical enough to know full well that the Doctor is not the Evil One, but he intends to use him to dispel the myth of these religious practices and break the power that Neeva has on the tribe, therefore allowing himself to become a powerful Tribe Leader.  Leela forces a fight and Calib stabs her with a Janis Thron.

Tomas turns up to see what's happened and is about to kill Calib but the Doctor convinces him to stand guard over Calib whilst he tries to cure Leela. Using Neeva's relics, the Doctor manages to analyse the poison from the Janis Thorn and artificially construct an antidote. Leela is saved and soon comes around.

The Doctor, Leela and Tomas are brought before the tribe to account for their lives.

Leela tries to convince the tribe that Xoanon ordered the attack, knowing they would be slaughtered, but this doesn't go down well.  Calb plays his hand by stating that the Doctor is not the Evil One like Neeva is suggesting.  He wants to prove this by making the Doctor take the test of Horda.  If he dies in it, then he is clearly a mortal.  Neeva agrees.

The Doctor is taken to the pit of the Horda, a hole in the ground covered by moving stone slabs held together by a counterweight.  Beneath the slabs lies hundreds of piranha like insects that react to movement.  The Doctor is given a crossbow and told to shoot a rope that is tied to a boulder.  When the boulder is lowered, the slabs will move and drop the Doctor into the pit if he's not fast enough.

Thanks to some pointers from William Tell, the Doctor succeeds in shooting the rope and much to Calibs chagrin, he, Leela and Tomas are released.

Knowing that the Tesh will attack, the Doctor looks once again at the relics, finds, and repairs an old disruptor gun.  He gives the gun to Tomas and tells him it will be effective against the invisible creatures but only when used in short bursts.

As the tribe prepares for the oncoming attack, the Doctor and Leela go off again to the face of evil, climbing through its mouth where the Doctor suspects is a sort of back door to the Evil One's base.

Sure enough, Neeva is told by Xoanon that the tribe will be crushed and the invisible barrier suddenly fails, allowing the creatures into the village killing many, including Andor, the leader.  Tomas uses the disruptor to fight them back, and the creatures show up as huge heads of energy, bearing the Doctor's face.

Once in the tunnels within the rock face, the Doctor and Leela see a man in a space suit walk through a wall.  Leela believes this man to be a Tesh.  They go to where he disappeared and find a hole in the rock, looking out onto a spaceship some distance away.  The Doctor finally remembers that he had indeed been to this planet before.  He remembers that this was a crashed ship that was part of the Mordee Expedition, a survey team looking into Eugenics.  He'd helped the technicians (through time being shortened to Tesh) to put their faulty computer right.

The Doctor soon works out that the Tesh used some kind of transport hidden behind a false projection of the cave wall to travel to the ship, where Xoanon would be held. They both use this transport and arrive on the ship, where they are met by three Tesh, one of whom is their leader, Jabel.  The Tesh treat them with civility.

Unlike the Sevateem, the Tesh are technologically advanced to the point where they even have telepathy.  Through discussion with the Tesh, the Doctor realises that the computer he repaired is Xoanon and the Evil One combined.  It has a split personality due to him not wiping his own personality print from the data banks of the computer before he left.  Xoanon over time slowly became mad and began carrying out using Eugenics experiments on its own crew, turning them against each other in a battle of survival of the fittest.

The Tesh telepathically subdue Leela and the Doctor, imprisoning them.  The Doctor uses his wits to free them and they manage to find the device that Xoanon uses to speak to Neeva through his helmet headdress.  The Doctor uses the device to order Neeva to lead the tribe through the face of evil.

Neeva tells Calib, the new Tribe Leader who agrees and they go through the mouth of the evil face.

Using a captured disruptor gun, Leela holds the Tesh back, allowing the Doctor to enter the main room where he confronts Xoanon.  He tries to persuade it to shut down, but the computer refuses and launches a mental attack at the Doctor, yelling "who am I?"

Leela risks herself by entering the control room and pulling the Doctor free and out into the corridor.

Xoanon electrifies the walls, and mentally possesses one of the Tesh to try and shove the Doctor and Leela into them.  Luckily, the Sevateem enter the ship, distracting Xoanon from that purpose and forcing it to defend against their new enemies.  The Doctor shoves the Tesh into the electrified wall.

The Doctor and Leela go to try and jury rig the controls to fully repair Xoanon.  The computer tries to kill the Doctor again, this time by mentally possessing Leela.  The Doctor uses counter hypnotism and forces her out of it.

In desperation, Xoanon sets a self destruct sequence into action.  The Tesh, knowing they will die, continue to protect the computer, setting up huge disruptor cannons to slaughter the Sevateem when they reach so far.

The Tesh's plans don't get carried out however as a wild Xoanon seizes control of their minds and the minds of the Sevateem to send them all against the Doctor to try and stop him make the repairs.  The only one to resist is the incensed Neeva, who is in a fury at his god's betrayal.  He grabs one of the huge cannons and races to find Xoanon.  He indeed comes face to face with the mad computer and they fire at each other,

Xoanon turns Neeva into dust with a heavy bout of electrical charge, and Neeva disrupts the computer long enough for the Doctor to complete the repairs, wiping his personality from the data banks.  The control panels explode, knocking the Doctor unconscious.

He awakens two days later, with Leela watching over him.  She tells him Xoanon has been quiet since he repaired it.  The Doctor takes her to the computer to check and is satisfied that it's restored to sanity.  Xoanon explains that all that outside with the tribes was it trying to recreate the world in its own image, a chaotic mess, fighting for survival.

They go to command deck to see Calib and Tomas arguing with Jabel and the Tesh over what happens next.  The Doctor explains that Xoanon is fine now and can help them decide and will support their new society.

Tomas calls for Leela to be the leader of the new society but she refuses and runs after the Doctor as he slinks off back to the TARDIS.  He meets her outside its doors and she asks to go with him.  He refuses.  She asks if he likes her and he says yes, but he likes lots of people so again, refuses.

Leela doesn't give him a chance to refuse a third time, as she runs into the TARDIS.  He follows her, telling her to come out and it sounds like she begins messing with the controls as the TARDIS takes off once again.

Trivia

• The original name was The Day God Went Mad.  Phillip Hinchcliffe protested about this but not on grounds of offending anyone.  It was because it didn't fit with the format of the other titles

• In hindsight, Tom Baker was apparently quite off with Louise Jameson for a good deal of her run.  They eventually cleared the air and are now great friends but for many of her stories, he wasn't particularly welcoming her with open arms

• Leela's character was based on Emma Peel from the Avengers, mixed with Eliza Doolittle, so the Doctor would have to teach her to be civilised.  And yes, part of the reason for her outfit was so that the Dad's could Oogle at her after Grandstand

What worked

• The story concept
• The Doctor's jokes
• The scene with Leela's use of a Janis Thorn
• The scary image of Tom Baker as an evil computer
• Leela's refreshing bravery

What didn't work

• The Tesh's uniforms
• The "pipe" trees
• The confusing bit about the tribes attack on the Tesh
• All the messing about in episode 3

Overall Feelings

The Face of Evil is as ambitious as it is intelligent.  We start off with a great mystery concept of how can the Doctor's face be engraved in the side of a mountain as the Evil One on a planet he reckons not to have seen before?  Even when we get answers, nothing is dumbed down.  We're shown aspect to Doctor Who.  For much of the show's run, the Doctor's been gallivanting across time and space, fixing problems and moving on.  I love that they tried to show what happens after his intervention isn't always perfect.

Sure, there's problems with the story if you look beyond the glaze, such as the situation he's left it in after Xoanon being less than ideal, or the fact that some of the story is weird like the chaotic plan of the computer.  Perhaps though, these flaws are part of the appeal.  They were trying to get away from the image of the Doctor as a goody too shoes and show some serious consequences to his actions, even if for only one story.  That then is the true flaw for me, The consequences are laid bare, but the Doctor doesn't seem to care very much beyond an oops!  He just goes and fixes stuff and tootles off again, where we could have had some grade A angst like we saw in Genesis of the Daleks.

A fine effort of a story and one that doesn't get praised perhaps as much as it should

Rating

9 1/2 out of 10 

Marked down not for all the points above, but because we spend ages messing about in episode 3 and 4 to fill up some time

Rewatchability Factor

5 out of 10

Great concept but drawn out in the presentation.  A must see, but it'll be a while before I watch again

Watch this if you liked...

• An Unearthly Child
• The Rescue
• The Mutants
• The Green Death
• The Planet of Evil
• Full Circle
• State of Decay

Consulting the Matrix

Would you like to see more episodes dealing with the consequences of the Doctor's earlier involvement?