Doctor Who (2023) 2-01: The Robot Revolution

Episode:

885

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Serial:

313

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Writer:

Russell T Davies

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Director:

Peter Hoar

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Air Date:

12-Apr-2025

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures, I'm writing about Doctor Who again. This time it's the first episode of the latest season: The Robot Revolution.

Hasn't classic Doctor Who used that title already? Hang on, no I must be thinking of The Robots of Death. Or maybe just Robot. I guess robots rebelled a lot back in the day. Speaking of ancient episodes, they brought the director of series 6's A Good Man Goes to War back for this one. Doctor Who directors typically direct a block of two episodes and sometimes another block next season, and then they're done. It's rare for a director to return years later like this. I think Graham Harper might hold the record with 21 years between 6th Doctor story Revelation of the Daleks and 10th Doctor story Rise of the Cybermen, but Peter Hoar is now in second place with 14 years. That's about the same amount of time that showrunner Russell T Davies disappeared for!

I wish I could say that the second coming of RTD has been my kind of thing, but so far it's been hit and miss, and stories like The Church on Ruby Road and Joy to the World have me feeling like it's not a series for me anymore. Starting season 1 with Space Babies should've been a clue that they were showing me the door and inviting the next group of fans in.

Just please let this be better than Space Babies, please let this be better than Space Babies...

There will be SPOILERS below and probably some earlier episodes as well if my thoughts go in that direction.

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The episode begins 17 years ago, with Belinda Chandra sitting with her boyfriend Alan.

I already knew beforehand that she was going to be the new companion, as it's one of the few spoilers that slipped through to me. I also knew that she was a nurse, that she'd be kidnapped by robots, and that the Doctor couldn't get her home at the end. But aside from that, I came into this completely clueless. Oh plus I also knew about Mrs. Flood turning up again.

Anyway, the last episode ended with a character literally becoming a literal star and this starts with a character finding that a star's been named after her. Well she's been given a certificate claiming that anyway. With the vibes this guy is giving off I was worried he was gifting her a photo of himself at first.

He mentions that girls aren't good at maths, which made me think 'hey they're really making this feel like the '80s', but then I did my own maths and realised it's actually 2008. She doesn't seem that bothered though, though the star being 'Miss Belinda Chandra' clearly isn't ideal for her. Incidentally RTD apparently had a bit of trouble making up a name that a star hadn't been named after already.

17 years later, we get to see the companion working in a hospital, like RTD's first second companion, Martha Jones, at the start of season 3. Though not for long.

The Doctor's already searching for her for some reason, though the receptionist isn't just going to give him her address! This is the first case of him invading her privacy this episode, something she eventually calls him out on, but to be fair the dude generally has his reasons.

Though hacking in with his screwdriver and accidentally shutting off power to the whole hospital is kind of hard to defend! Sure the emergency generators and batteries probably came on right away so people on life support are okay, but what about the people in surgery when the lights went off!

My issue is that it's treated like it's a light-hearted joke. Whoops, the Doctor did it again! But why would I smile about someone shutting down a hospital? Unless it's like the Joker and it takes him a few tries to get the detonator working or something.

Anyway, the episode's in a hurry so it cuts to Belinda's house, where we almost meet her flatmates. It's nice to get a bit of present day reality before everything goes full sci-fi. We never meet her mother this time though, which is downright weird for an RTD companion. We even met Adam's mother and he was only in two stories!

I wish I could make out the writing on the notes in the fridge. I bet there are all kinds of jokes in there I could be writing about. I'm also wondering if Belinda's house is the same set they used for Donna's house. Maybe I'm just thinking that because of all the holes in the walls.

Suddenly alien robots burst in, looking like they came out of a 2020s remake of a '50s B-movie. A good one too; that's a pretty nice design. I can't even tell if it's all practical, all CGI or a mixture of both, which means whichever department made it was doing something very right. Well, the emoji face spinning around has to be CGI surely... hang on, didn't they do emoji bots already in the Capaldi episode Smile?

The scene has me wondering how I'd react in this situation, because Belinda's very calm about it all. Even when they call her 'You Majesty' and tell her to come with them.

In fact the robot decides to zap a cat to demonstrate that their retro ray guns are a real threat, which isn't something you generally see on Doctor Who! You don't really see it here either as by the time it cuts over to the cat it's already a glowing skeleton, but that still enough to run the risk of aggravating the audience. Even if the robot assures us that the cat is irrelevant.

They tear out the star certificate, which she's had framed on her wall all this time for whatever reason. I guess because she likes it? It turns out that they're actually from her star and they came 4 quadrillion miles (700,000,000,000 light years) to pick up its namesake: her. It's like The Girl in the Fireplace when the robots from the SS Madame De Pompadour wanted the real person, except they're a different kind of retro.

Incidentally, they found her house before the Doctor did, which is actually pretty impressive. Especially considering that they would've had to find her planet first. It doesn't actually mention anything about Earth on the certificate.

4-01 - Partners in Crime

It does say that Miss Belinda Chandra was registered on 5th April 2008, which just happened to be the air date of Partners in Crime, the first episode of the final series of RTD's original run. Hopefully this doesn't turn out to be the final season of his second run.

Hey it's Mrs Flood, every companion's next door neighbour, and she's still breaking the fourth wall, saying "You ain't seen me". Man, now I'm worried that she's going to turn out to be an entity who can travel between fictional TV series, and Doctor Who is going to get extremely meta. I blame WandaVision.

She has about as much to add to this story as 'Bad Wolf' added to series 1 stories, though she's still got some charm as a character. Plus I did like how Belinda yells to her to tell Lucy at number 7 that her cat was sent to live on a farm. It's a really weird conversation for someone to have while they're being taken by robots to their spaceship in the back garden.

This a great shot of the rocket blasting off, though you wouldn't know from this still image. I can't tell if it's all CGI or a drone shot, though the way the house has a hole in the wall makes me think it's probably digital. It might seem a bit weird that nothing is damaged by the rocket exhaust, but I think that's pretty normal for Doctor Who ships. Well, the ones that don't destroy London to power up their engines at least.

Oh you can't see him, but the Doctor's down there yelling after arriving just a little too late. After seeing him in action against the robots later I'm not sure he would've been any use anyway.

There's only one big change in the opening titles for season 2 and that's Varada Sethu's name replacing Millie Gibson. Each time they get a new co-star they have to change what letters move out of the way to let the TARDIS though. For some reason it's both the A and the S that move this time, even though it only flies underneath the A. I reckon if the letters hadn't just stayed put it could've made it through the triangular hole.

I checked to see if the logo had changed, but it doesn't seem like it.

'Episode Titles Revealed' teaser

I was wondering if they were going to tint it red this season, like the logo on the title reveal trailer, but they did not. It's fine, it's a good logo as it is. One of my favourites, in fact.

We've seen Varada Sethu in Doctor Who before, in the episode Boom, so it's nice to see that the series is carrying on the tradition of reusing actors they like in more prominent roles. This was a thing even back in the classic show, as companions like Steven, Romana and even the Brig were played by returning actors. And the Sixth Doctor!

Belinda tries to point out that she isn't even the person who registered the star, which is a pretty normal thing for a character to point out in situations like this. I didn't even think twice about it... until she mentioned his name. Then his full name. Then she tells the robots to go and kidnap him. Then she tells them where she thinks he lives.

That's not quite Lindy Pepper-Bean dooming Ricky September to death so she can get away, but it's not that far off either! I know she's in a bizarre situation and panicking, and it turns out later that Alan's a bit of a douche, but I thought the episode would be trying to make me like this new companion.

She spots the TARDIS out of the window and then time starts skipping.

The Doctor's always shown an awareness and a bit of resistance to time weirdness, so he feels the skipping and starts messing with the controls.

Hang on, isn't that the coffee machine? The one that led to the whole TARDIS being set on fire back in The Star Beast?

The Star Beast

Yeah, that's the coffee machine! I guess no one ever said it couldn't do two things. In fact it probably only does one thing these days, as no one's bringing coffee anywhere near this console again.

Hang on, something's just occurred to me. The only thing that's changed about the console room since Fourteen had it is the jukebox... which means that Fifteen still hasn't put a chair in there! He came to this big realisation in Joy to the World that he doesn't have a chair and then did nothing about it.

Sorry for the state of this stitched together image, the camera is moving back while it tilts down so I had to cut and paste bits and do a bit of airbrushing. I really wanted to show off the '50s-looking space rocket though.  I'd say it looks straight out of Tintin, but it's a bit more elaborate than that. Though it's definitely more retro than the rocketship from The Star Beast, even if it shares the classic 'three spiky fins around a fuselage' design. It definitely fits the classic sci-fi aesthetic of Missbelindachandraville.

Generally science fiction really puts in the effort to convince the audience that what they're looking at is real, even if they're on an alien world completely made up by the art department. But Missbelindachandra One looks about as implausible as its name and it's got me waiting for the other shoe to drop. This isn't quite real, so what's going on?

Belinda is met by People's Representative Sasha 55, who welcomes their one true queen on behalf of Missbelindachandrakind. You can tell this is a Russell T Davies episode because the aliens have a really long name and no interest in abbreviating it.

It's a very Steven Moffat style premise though I reckon. "What if there are people who live at the star named after you and they consider you their leader?" comes from a similar place as "What if the mysterious door in hotel rooms leads to the Time Hotel?" And I think 'ordinary woman discovers that she's an alien queen' was the plot of that film by the Wachowskis I never saw.

Anyway Sasha 55 explains that can't call the Missbelindachandrabots off because they are their overlords. You can see them ending a riot over there in the North Zone using lasers and explosions. Then she breaks character and whispers "Please help us."

The path for Miss Belinda Chandra must be cleaned and polished, by the Polish Bot. This little caretaker repeats "Polish, polish" because he's a cute robot with a gimmick, like Gadget in Waters of Mars who kept saying "Gadget, Gadget" in pretty much exactly the same way. I think this guy might be saying it so people know not to step on him though, as he's basically a Roomba.

Belinda proceeds towards the throne of the queen, past the rows of extras (and the Doctor!) and gets a bit of exposition about what's expected of her in her new role.

She's going to get married, to the great AI Generator! And also turned into a cyborg, as these incredibly '80s looking diagrams demonstrate. It's going to take a lot of screws.

They definitely say "A.I. Generator" by the way, not Al. It's an episode about AI generation that's really going to get into into the subject and explore the themes... not really, it's not going to do any of that at all. It's a red herring.

The AI Generator itself shows off another copy of her star certificate and says:

"Attention, citizens of Missbelindachandra One. Be warned, no help is coming. You will surrender and genuflect to me.

The Binding Contract of the Stars may yet save the people. The Robots will bring her to me, so metal and skin may weld with Miss Belinda Chandra."

The lead actor steps forward to perform the role of Designated Historian and give Belinda the official explanation for why everything on this planet is so stupid. But every ninth word is actually part of a secret message that the robots can't hear! (It's because Al's brain interfaces with the machine in an 8-part loop... actually it doesn't matter).

I can't tell if threading a message into the exposition was genius or not. It gives the viewer a challenge as they get to try to piece the sentence together themselves, but I was so focused on remembering the words that I wasn't paying much attention to the backstory.

Once upon a time, the planet was united. Listen.
The Robots and people lived together in peace. To.
But then, ten years ago, it all changed. Me.
Because on that day, the Robot Revolution arose. Please.

Thank you for listening attentively to my story. Careful.

The AI Generator evolved and achieved perfection. Robots.
It told its soldiers to conquer all life. Faulty.
No one knows why. It remains a mystery. Cannot.
So the mighty Robots marched across the world. Hear.
People fought back, but they are weak flesh. Every.
They begged for kindness and hoped for peace. Ninth.
But then the AI Generator conquered them. Word.

Oh, I suppose there wasn't much there and I pretty much picked up all of it the first time.

I like how Belinda has to count on her fingers to figure out her responses and they're all still terrible "This is a fact, and then another fact..." It's big change from how Ruby was inventing lyrics to her goblin song on the fly. Granted they weren't amazing lyrics, but still, it stretches credibility for someone to do stuff like this without any practice.

Anyway, the scene does a good job of teaching the audience the rules, giving them a demonstration, and then letting them do the last sentence on their own... as the humans in the room start secretly pulling out their guns.

"Rebels. Fight. Back. Very. Soon."

But this long scene was basically just the Doctor's way to tell her to watch out, because the shooting's about to start.

That's a pretty nice set actually.

There's a big firefight with rebels roping down from the ceiling and robots getting harpooned through the face, all with the Fifteenth Doctor's theme playing. The Doctor himself doesn't have a gun, but it's a still a little weird to me hearing the Doctor's theme when the heroes are shooting stuff.

Rebels are getting vaporised all over the place, freezing in place as their flesh disintegrates, but it seems to be mostly going to plan. At least until the Doctor's friend Sasha 55 gets shot. Aww he lost Space Anita! He was stuck here with her for six months, so that's like half a season.

Sasha 55 was barely in the episode and it didn't do much to make us care about her, but I can kind of appreciate that. It's not supposed to be devastating to us, we're more in the companion's shoes in this story, and this way it doesn't feel forced. And I already liked her way more than Orphan 55.

You could call this textbook fridging, but I suppose that depends on what textbook you're using. Personally I don't see this as killing off a female character solely to motivate the more important male lead, as it doesn't motivate him. Sasha's death functions more of a cautionary tale for Belinda, the very important female lead who isn't going to die any time soon.

They teleport out, accidentally taking the adorable cleaning droid with them. The droid will lead the robots right to their secret base, but the Doctor solves that problem switching him off. He's very nice about it though, even gives it a kiss. There is no hate towards Roombas here.

This is about the point in the episode where the Doctor cries just a little after losing Sasha 55. We've seen his reaction to losing companions many times before and he is actually holding it together a lot better than usual... but it's still the Fifteenth Doctor crying again.

Personally I haven't really been too aware of his crying in previous episodes, but I was definitely aware of Michael Burnham doing it in Discovery so I can understand why people might have an issue with it. When a character has a big emotional reaction to something every episode, it eventually stops being a dramatic moment and becomes a meme. Only Donna Noble is powerful enough to cry in every story and make you feel it, every other character needs to ration those tears.

Belinda sees the wounded lying around the rebel base and asks all the questions she needs to about alien medicine in order to do start doing her job! Awesome, I like it. RTD must have been reading all my reviews of Chibnall episodes where I complained that he never did anything with Yaz being a police officer. Right away Belinda is showing her compassion and competence.

It's not a brand new concept to have a healer on the TARDIS, we've already had Martha Jones and Rory Williams, but it's always worked in the past.

I like this bit where the Belinda is surprised by the (radiation-free) x-ray blanket and the Doctor uses it to show how Missbelindachandrakind and Time Lord biology differs from humans, despite their outwardly human appearance. And the line about how making choices about what body is best can send you down a dangerous path is a good one.

Though he's been here six months and the blanket still doesn't know his name? It's the Doctor!

He didn't mean to land six months before Belinda, it was due to a time fracture that's made travel between Earth and Missbelindachandra One weird.

The Missbelindachandrabots took his TARDIS the moment he landed and he's spent all this time with the rebels, working to become a Historian so that he'd be ready to... stand in the throne room and yell 'now' I guess. The Doctor usually saves the day within a day or two, but I guess he's gotten a taste for hanging around in one place doing nothing after hanging out with Anita for a year in Joy to the World. I suppose his main goal was to find Belinda, as he was told about her by... someone he cannot say.

Oh, it turns out that the star certificate that Belinda's still carrying with her is actually the same one that the AI Generator has, because it ended up 5000 years in the past and became part of this culture's mythology. Belinda wonders if putting two of the same object will explode like in the movies, which makes me wonder what time travel movies she's been watching. It has to be her that comes up with the idea though really, or else it makes no sense when Alan comes up with it independently and expects her to know what to do in the ending.

Anyway, Belinda betrays the rebels to the robots and gets them all captured, because she's a hero. She saw them suffering and decided to sacrifice herself to save them, and I guess turning the 'Polish, polish' bot back on and waiting for it to be tracked was less effort than trying to find the exit.

Sasha 55 did ask her to help them, but we already know that the rebels would prefer to rebel, so she's going against all of their wishes here. Also, potentially getting them all imprisoned or killed! We already know that the queen has no actual power.

On the plus side, this shows that Belinda isn't just going to be a passenger in this story. She's making choices and everyone's coming along for the ride!

Someone had some fun designing the sets in this episode. I feel like I've seen something like that in an old video game (or game magazine) but nothing's jumping to mind.

The guy's got a little word dial built in to count how many words the AI Generator has said! That's a kind of bizarre feature, but it does help remind the audience to listen to every 9th word. Unfortunately it pops up after he's said a couple of sentences, but that's fine, it's a rewatch bonus.

Queen of our great planet, your heart may beg
and weep, but I will bring elevation to you.
Conversion will be a world without sadness or pity.
You will achieve serenity, peace and joy. With me.

I've definitely seen text like that on something and I am going to be tortured forever trying to recall exactly what it reminds me of. Tell me what this looks like in the comments.

Oh, the twist is that there's a little shelf there above 'Generator' so no one could see the bottom of the letters. Everyone just assumed it said 'AI', even the robots who built the thing, but it actually says 'AL'.

Belinda realises that the machine is talking to her like her old boyfriend Alan, saying that she is 'Miss' until she's married, and the door opens up to show Dorothy the man behind the curtain...

He's gone full Max Capricorn! You know, the cyborg villain from Voyage of the Damned. Also when I said Dorothy earlier, that was a Wizard of Oz reference. And this guy is a Borg reference.

Though this is a really nice makeup job, we've come a long way since the 4th Doctor story The Pirate Planet. Sure it's got a bit of Borg in there, plus a bit of HR Giger, but it's really well realised. And less retro than the rest of the city. It's like things are more '50s style on the surface, but they get more modern the closer you get to the core. There was the '80s looking animation on the screen in the throne room, he's lurking inside the '90s looking skull, and now this is... early 2000s I guess.

You can tell it's calling back to an earlier era, because he's a disfigured villain with a single cybernetic eye who's missing his legs and has an obvious robot arm... unlike modern Davros, who can't be disabled or disfigured anymore.

I just thought, you know who should've gotten makeup like this back in the day? Mercy Hartigan from The Next Doctor. This is kind of look that makes you realise 'Oh crap, I probably didn't want to be turned into this'.

Belinda thought Alan moved to Margate, but he tells her it was actually a Stargate! Not really though, it was a rocketship that picked him up, just like her. I guess RTD thought the line was too funny not to use.

Alan reveals that the robots came for him too and Belinda realises that it's her fault. She told them about him and told them to get him. I doubt she's going to lose any sleep over it later, but at she does acknowledge that her choices led to this instead of blaming everyone else. Definitely not a Lindy Pepper-Bean.

This scene also explains Missbelindachandra One's retro '50s style as if you look at the background you can see Alan's got classic sci-fi movie posters on the walls. It's what he's into. That and video games, which explains the other side of the planet's aesthetic.

Actually, hang on, the buildings were all there long before he arrived 10 years ago. Uh, never mind.

Alan was hyped about being the cyborg king because he could "make up his own rules and win!" Which is kind of a weird thing to say. He plays online shooters, not Monopoly, what rules would he have wanted to change?

The Missbelindachandrakind had no issues with letting his robots install his lair. Though their leader did wonder how his technology was 10 years ahead of theirs, so Alan ordered the robots to murder him. That's not going mad with power, that's being a psychopath! Anyway, this is how the robot revolution began! It's all because Alan sent robots to pick up Belinda for their wedding.

There's another flashback, to Alan's terrible attempt at a proposal. "Would you marry me and also I don't think you should wear tight clothes anymore," is pretty bad, especially if you tag on "also no texting after 8pm". He messed that up so badly that she dumped him!

They way they still have the same clothes and hair as the other flashback makes it look like he gave her a star certificate as a gift and proposed, then she broke his heart and put the certificate on her wall as a reminder!

The Doctor explains to everyone that it's his 9th words that are telling the truth. He's been interrupted too much for viewers to really keep track at this point, but the Doctor kept track. "Help me. Save me. Pain."

His next sentences are easier to make out. Though the secret message "Belinda. Mine. Forever." isn't exactly the subverting his lines about the two of them getting married. Belinda has a message for him: "Planet of the incels". A bit of a harsh thing to say about Missbelindachandrakind!

Alan has one last message for them: "Diploma. Freedom".

The Doctor drops Belinda's star certificate and the Polish Polish robot comes over to clean it up. It then drives over and parks in front of its friend Belinda as if it trying to help.

So now I'm wondering... why? What is the robot doing? It doesn't know that this is a past version of the certificate Alan has or that touching them will make an explosion. It doesn't know that the Doctor wants to pass it to Belinda, though the Doctor certainly thought that dropping it would get it over to her. The robot stops in the middle of a circle on the floor, is that its parking spot? Is Alan giving it commands? Does the Doctor have his sonic?

By the way, the design of this thing is so good. It's like an amalgamation of different cars and home appliances from the '50s and it looks really well made.

Belinda and Alan touch certificates and this happens! It's gone all '70s for a bit, with superimposed images of the two of them at different ages. I did not expect to see a trippy dream sequence in this episode. Even the robots have shocked emoji faces about it. Incidentally, the episode did barely anything with the emojis.

The Doctor absorbed the worst of the blast, so Belinda is going to be alright. Though there's flash of the Doctor holding Bel as a baby, and he was apparently there for her entire life... in some way. Whatever happened, he's hyped.

Oh and it turned out that Alan did a Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen (from Boom Town) and got de-aged into an egg. Unfortunately this works out worse for humans than it does for... whatever someone from Raxacoricofallapatorius is called, as Alan does not get a fresh start in life. Alan gets swept up by a Roomba.

The Doctor and Belinda apparently find this hilarious, with the Doctor kicking the air and going "Yas Queen!" Okay they're mostly laughing at the absurdity of it all, but... someone just died. The Doctor usually cares about that.

Anyway, the robots are free, so they're going to make reparations and live in harmony. Happy ending. Also they've changed the name of the citadel to Sasha 55. Speaking of names, Belinda pulls a Mrs Flood and calls the Doctor's blue police box a TARDIS, even though she was never told its name. The Doctor doesn't seem to care though. He's more interested in the mystery of how the robots got the star certificate he's holding.

Belinda makes her feelings clear: "You solve your mystery after you've taken me home." She's gotten better at the 9th word thing.

And then she gets her 'bigger on the inside' moment, which is always nice. I like that we get a few scenes where everyone is taking it seriously and she's bringing some awe and reality to the moment.

She wants to go back to 24th May, 2025, but the Doctor tells her there's no rush as this is a time machine! Hang on, if she didn't know it was a time machine, why did she specify a time down to the year?

Oh the time fracture got fixed by the way. Somehow. Off screen. Don't worry about it.

Hang on! Was the time fracture a result of the two certificates touching, and did the Doctor absorbing the blast fix it? Man this situation is a tangled knot of causal loops. If Belinda had never been kidnapped by robots then Alan would've never been taken, the robot revolution wouldn't have happened, the planet wouldn't have been named Missbelindachandra One, and robots wouldn't have kidnapped Belinda.

That's not the only time weirdness going on though. The Doctor decides to let her in on what the audience already knows: the same actress played Mundy Flynn last season. There's some kind of Impossible Girl situation going on here, with two people 3000 years apart having the same face. Very similar DNA as well, as his scan reveals.

Belinda works in health care so she knows a bit about how you're supposed to ask permission before running tests on people and he's suitably contrite, but she really does want off this ride now. She is not signing up to be his next companion, especially after what happened to Sasha.

Unfortunately she doesn't have much choice in the matter, as the TARDIS just keeps bouncing off her time.

Also the Doctor doesn't realise it, but there's a bunch of landmarks and stuff floating around where Earth should be. I guess Space Las Vegas blew up, as I can't think of any other reason you'd see so many iconic structures so close together. Also there's Belinda's certificate, back in a frame after being torn out, and a calendar showing that the apocalypse happened on May 24th. That's the date that the season finale two-parter airs!

I have to be honest, I was just rolling my eyes when this came on my screen. It's a perfectly composed as a Futurama joke and we already saw the world destroyed by Maestro last season. Also they can't permanently blow up the Earth until after that UNIT spin-off happens.


CONCLUSION

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Well at least it was better than Space Babies.

Though The Robot Revolution does have the same fundamental flaw as Space Babies, which is that it wasn't aimed anywhere near me. This is another episode for the kids, so it was kind of inevitable that from where I'm standing it's a miss. I mean, I'm not claiming that I ever grew up, I'm still watching my Batman cartoons and playing Nintendo games, but I'm old enough at heart to not grin when a hospital goes dark. Plus the big twists would only impress a child who's too young to have seen it all before.

I wasn't bothered by the Doctor being kind of passive in this one though, because this is definitely Belinda Chandra's story. It's all about her and her choices. Some good, some bad and some kind of questionable. Weirdly for a RTD companion we never hear about her family or what she wants. She's not trying to get back in time for her marriage or find out who her mother is, she's not in love with the Doctor, she just has to be back at work. She doesn't even want adventures, so I'm not sure what her arc is going to be this season. But that's fine, as Belinda is the part of the episode that I haven't seen before. Okay I have literally seen the actress last season and we've had Rory and Tegan in the past, but as a person she doesn't feel like a retread to me. And Varada Sethu seems like the right person for the job.

Her dark mirror was Alan, who had a very different reaction to being kidnapped by robots. I don't know if it's good timing or bad timing that right after Adolescence became a huge hit as a 'why done it' about what could drive frustrated men to do terrible things, Doctor Who jumped into the room and yelled "Incels suck!"... and that was basically it. Personally I think the series already did a much better job with Rattigan in series 4's The Sontaran Stratagem, who ticked a lot of the same boxes as Alan but got some actual development.

Though if there is one theme to the episode that keeps coming up, it's that to understand someone you have to listen to the subtext of what they're saying. The Doctor's history lesson is really telling Belinda about the rebel attack and Alan's super villain speech is a cry for help. The dude was a murderous misogynistic psychopath obsessed with controlling people, so not the ideal person to be in a position of authority, but he was secretly trying to solve the problem just like them.


RATING

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I didn't find The Robot Revolution unbearable to sit through at all, but it was on the lower end of 'watchable' for me. I could appreciate the great work by the production team on the robots and the sets, but taking Belinda out of her reality and putting her in a crazy '50s sci-fi world managed to take me out of the reality as well. Especially as it came right after Mrs. Flood broke the fourth wall again. This just isn't an episode I can take seriously.

I was going to give the episode 4/10, but I said to myself that I'd give it an extra point if I could think of something I liked, just one thing, and I've decided I can: the 'every 9th word' thing. It's different and gives viewers a chance to work something out for themselves, so it's earned the episode a score of:

5/10

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NEXT EPISODE

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's still the 20th anniversary of Doctor Who's 2005 season, so I'm jumping back 185 episodes to write about Aliens of London!

Please share your own opinions about The Robot Revolution in the comments if you've got them. And tell me what everything's reminding me of.