Doctor Who: The Robots of Death

Doctor Who episodes -- at least during Tom Baker's run -- tended to fall into certain basic plot categories. Two common themes were: The doctor must liberate people in servitude ("Face of Evil", "Underworld"; "The Sunmakers"); The doctor must uncover and foil a clever alien scheme to destroy/conquer earth ("The Android Invasion"; "Terror of the Zygons"). A lesser-used device was the "ten little Indians/haunted house" approach, which we saw in the superb "Horror of Fang Rock" episode and here, in one of the few Tom Baker Dr. Who DVD's available, "The Robots of Death."

This episode is regarded by many fans as a true classic, one of the best of the whole long-running Dr. Who television show, and not merely the Baker years. I disagree. I think the story was told better in "Fang Rock", one of my personal favorites which also features Leela as the companion. I am very curious as to exactly how the BBC decides which Who episodes get committed to DVD, especially considering that not all of them are even out of VHS yet (what's the holdup, fellas? It's been 30 years!). But even I have to admit that few, if any, Baker-Who episodes are as dark and creepy or as well thought-out as this one, and probably none have better overall production. The robots are unusually well-designed for such a low-budget show, and when they turn evil their pleasant voices, frozen faces, and penchant for manual strangulation are downright frightening. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Storywise, "Robots" is sound. The Doc and Leela land inside a giant spice-miner run by a handfull of greedy, effete, not terribly nice fortune-hunters who wear ridiculous costumes and seem to spend most of their time loafing about while a large staff of robots does most of the work. You have to take only one look at the robots to figure out that the tail is wagging the dog here, and before you know it, one of the crewmen is murdered and the Doctor and Leela, being stowaways, are of course blamed.

This starts the "ten little Indians" part. The spiceminer is wandering a gigantic, hostile desert of killer sandstorms and towering rock: there is no way off the ship. The humans, basically French aristocrats circa 1789 with their powdered faces and silly costumes, have no weapons and are so morally vacuous and wimpy they practically invite the robots to kill them. The robots oblige, having been tampered with by a member of the crew with a serious identity crisis, a robot fetish and a healthy dose of homicidal mania. One by one the humans get strangled, each trying to figure out who the killer is, and everyone suspecting -- of course -- our hero and his knife-wielding gal pal.

It is a nice plot device, and since it was not used very often I can let the writers off the hook for copying the fine work they did in "Fang Rock." My problem is mainly that the human characters on the miner are all pretty much loathsome and deserving of a good strangulation. It is hardly uncommon in Who episodes for the Doctor to be abused by the very people he is trying to save, but in this case the people just don't seem to be worth saving at all. In fact, the nicest character we meet on the ship is D84, the supposedly mute "dumb" robot who turns out to be a company agent. 84 should probably have read "Message to the Oppressed" a few more times before he chose which side he was on.

Don't get me wrong here. "Robots" is a good, entertaining episode with a very high creep factor. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are very good and the writing is on par with their acting -- this is one of those episodes where Leela gets to do more than just say, "What is it, Doctor?" in different tones of voice, which was not always the case during her time as a companion. It is much darker than your average Tom Baker outing, and I do think the plot would have been better served by more sympathetic crew-members. DVD-wise, the extras are nothing special overall, but the audio commentary is very interesting. But overall I must admit....these are the criticisms of a nerd. Go ahead and buy the damn thing. I did.

It is little surprise that Dr. Isaac Asimov named this as his favorite Dr. Who episode (though it actually comes as considerable surprise to learn that he even watched the series at all). Certainly the plotline and backstory development borrow liberally from the future society Asimov established in the Lije Bailey/R. Daneel Olivaw novels; it even works in references to the Three Laws of Robotics. The influence of an earlier book, RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots), also surfaces in exploring man's reaction to robots and their total absence of human body language (robophobia). Even the author's name, Karel Capek, is mirrored in that of the villain Taren Capel.

Newcomer director Chris Boucher (The Face of Evil) took the suggestion of longtime Dr. Who editor Robert Holmes and created an isolated, murder-mystery adventure as a vehicle to solidify the role of Leela, a companion he had introduced in the previous serial. Boucher drew from one of his favorite novels, Frank Herbert's Dune, to envisage the Storm-Mine setting. Effects director Peter Grimwade is immortalized in the episode thanks to a bit of ad-libbing by Tom Baker. Amongst the cast was David Collings as Poul, David Baile as Dask (Taren Capel), and Pamela Salem as Toos; Salem had actually been an unsuccessful applicant for the role of Leela.

Though not a milestone episode, I would name this is one of my favorite Tom Baker-era stories, largely because of its attention to detail -throwaway lines by characters reveal a rich tapestry of politics, history, and sociopolitical orders not always seen in a Doctor Who serial. We get a sense of the social "pecking order" on this nameless future planet from Uvanov's obvious disgust with Zilda's and Chub's family standing; at the same time we learn that the all-pervasive Company is not above covering up an employee's potentially embarrassing (or potentially expensive) past. Poul is a great study in contrasts: nobody on the Storm-Mine is the least suspicious of him until Leela turns up and likens him to a hunter. The insertion of D.84 is even more clever, and it illustrates just how inured this society has become to anything out of the ordinary. Uvanov dismisses Leela's assertion that D.84 can speak simply because "everyone knows" that particular class of robots can't speak.

In the same way, the crew dismisses the Doctor's theories about the murderer because "everyone knows" robots are incapable of such a thing. Robot behavior and robot Urban Legends are clearly at the forefront of even casual conversation, as evidenced in the opening scenes when we meet the entire crew idling away in the lounge. I also like the fact that the cast is a little more varied, racially speaking, from the usual spate of pale English actors. Helps to paint a more realistic vision of the future.

D.84 (Gregory de Polnay), the "undercover" agent, provides some wonderful back-and-forth dialogue with the Doctor and goes a long way toward widening the scope of the story. The robot's recount of the life of Taren Capel has made the murderer into a tragic figure before we've even figured out who he is, and it even gets to explore its own feelings of inadequacy; next thing we know it has even cracked a joke at the Doctor's expense. I always thought D.84 would make an ideal traveling companion -a sentiment I was surprised to learn was shared by many other fans. Its plaintive request to "please do not throw hands at me" is priceless. Definite homage to Daneel and Giskard there...

Though we, the audience, know the killer at the outset of this "whodunit," it is the question of who is the puppet master that takes up the scope of the story. This is also an uncharacteristically graphic episode; there are several strangulation scenes, a disturbing shot of a dead body being buried in a downpour of gravel, and blood all over the hand of the initial killer robot. There are also some chilling pyrotechnics; for my money one of the scariest scenes depicts another of the killer robots trying to break into the command deck, calmly announcing in its polite bureaucratic monotone that everyone has to die. Another great moment comes when Leela throws her knife squarely into the chest of an attacking robot -which then casually knocks it aside and keeps on coming. It is the first time we've seen anything even approaching fear on Leela's face.

The society that has been postulated is full of cause-and-effect: the Doctor's casual line about it being "the end of this civilization" is clearly no exaggeration. The characters, for all their feigned ease and opulence, are clearly not wholly comfortable with this robot-dependent society they have created for themselves, and as a result there is an omnipresent creeping paranoia that lurks just under the surface for most of the storyline. The parallels to the distrustful, robot-dependent society in Asimov's Caves Of Steel are obvious: mankind has gone and made another technological breakthrough which has become an indispensable part of daily life before everyone's really had time to adjust. Likewise, the Storm-Mine's carefully-ordered life is exposed to be a powderkeg; one little deviation from "everyone knows," and suddenly everybody's world is turned upside-down. This is especially apparent with Uvanov (Russell Hunter)'s newly-found "blow 'em all up" attitude, Poul's total mental breakdown, and Toos's hysterical sobbing (the latter also provides a great springboard for the audience to learn Leela's surprisingly tender and compassionate side).

This 4 part adventure is really one of the best ever made!

Perfect introduction episode for people who don't know the series and a must for every fan!