The start of any season of Doctor Who<\/em> is important, doubly so when there\u2019s a new co-star to introduce. \u201cThe Robot Revolution\u201d has to get us to fall in love with Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu), ensnare new fans and keep existing ones hooked. Especially since it\u2019s the second of two series that Disney paid for, meaning it\u2019s got to do well enough to keep the money flowing.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n We open \u201c17 years ago\u201d with Belinda Chandra staring at the stars next to her boyfriend, Alan Budd (Jonny Green). It\u2019s an awkward teenage date, with Alan clearly trying to win the heart of his beau by buying her one of those star adoption certificates. In 2025, Belinda is now a nurse at a busy London hospital where, in the background, the Doctor is searching for her.<\/p>\n Belinda goes home to bed, and we see that she\u2019s got the star ownership certificate framed on her wall. But she\u2019s rudely awoken by a squad of retro-futuristic \u201850s robots in a Tintin rocket<\/a> who have come to abduct both her and<\/em> the certificate. The Doctor reaches her home just in time to see the rocket take off, and cue the opening credits.<\/p>\n The certificate wasn\u2019t a gag present, and she is actually queen of the planet BelindaChandra, populated by BelindaChandrians (I\u2019m calling them humans from now on). The Doctor gives chase in the TARDIS but both the rocket and TARDIS get caught in a vaguely-defined time fissure. When Belinda arrives, she\u2019s greeted by the human Sasha55, who tells her the robots are in charge, having overthrown and subjugated the people in a bloody uprising a decade prior.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, this is a bit like Jupiter Ascending<\/em>,\u201d I wrote in my notes.<\/p>\n Belinda is taken to a throne room where she\u2019s told that she must merge with the planet\u2019s evil ruling supercomputer, the AI Generator. AI Generator, all skull shapes and Tesla coils, intends to bond<\/em> with Belinda<\/em>. She is shown an animated demonstration of her fate, as she is wrapped in machine parts and made into an unthinking cyborg.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, that's like the scary bit from Superman III<\/em>,\u201d I wrote in my notes.<\/p>\n Who\u2019s been lurking in the background of the scene all along? The Doctor, who has adopted the title of Planetary Historian. (Thanks to the time fissure, he arrived here six months ahead of the rocket, the Robots seized the TARDIS and he\u2019s been working with the rebellion. He\u2019s even got a new companion, Sasha55, who he\u2019s promised to take to the stars when this is all over.) He tells Belinda the robots can\u2019t, for some reason, hear every ninth word spoken, and gives her a coded message telling her he, and the rebellion, are here to rescue her. In the ensuing fight, Sasha55 is vaporized, much to the Doctor\u2019s admittedly brief horror and grief.<\/p>\n The surviving rebels, along with a little Roomba bot assigned to clean Queen Belinda\u2019s pathway\u2026<\/p>\n \u201cOh, like the floor-cleaning robot M-O from Wall-E,<\/em>\u201d I wrote in my notes.<\/p>\n \u2026 escape to a teleporter, after which the Doctor disables the Roomba to ensure the robots can\u2019t track them down, then kisses the \u2018bot by way of apology. Then comes time for the episode to stop while we see the Doctor and Belinda interact properly for the first time. The Doctor was told about Belinda\u2019s plight by someone from their future, and he can\u2019t say more lest he muddle the timelines.<\/p>\n The time fracture both vessels passed through has caused plenty of time-bending issues, like the fact the robots have their own copy of Belinda\u2019s star certificate. But it\u2019s not a copy, it\u2019s the same object from another point in time, and nobody knows how or why they have it. Belinda, like Ruby Sunday before her, is trope-aware enough to know that two of the same object from different points in time cannot occupy the same space, lest it cause an explosion.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, like in Timecop!<\/em>,\u201d I wrote in my notes.<\/p>\n There are wounded at the base, and Belinda instantly kicks into nurse mode, grabbing IVs and treating patients. She\u2019s quick to take charge and has no patience for nonsense, quick to defend herself from any hint of condescension when the Doctor suggests something \u201ctimey-wimey<\/a>\u201d is going on. She refuses to allow anyone to fight her battles for her and is determined to grab the narrative and shape it her way, no matter the cost. So, she sneaks off, reactivates the Roomba and offers herself to the robots in exchange for them sparing the lives of the rebels.<\/p>\n Belinda and the Doctor are taken to meet the AI Generator which turns out to be\u2026 the AL Generator. When Belinda was kidnapped by the robots, she mentioned her ex Alan had bought the certificate, and so they went to kidnap him as well. But the time fracture meant Alan arrived a decade earlier, fused with the machine (becoming a creepy cyborg) and started the robot uprising.<\/p>\n Even so, Belinda\u2019s happy to sacrifice herself to him until she spots Alan holding his copy of the star certificate. She opts to Timecop<\/em> the two pieces of paper together, causing a big timey-wimey explosion that only the Doctor can pull her out of. Belinda is safe, but the Doctor mentions that he\u2019s now intertwined with Belinda\u2019s timestream. Alan, meanwhile, has been regressed to a sperm on the floor that the Roomba bot quickly mops away.<\/p>\n Reunited with the TARDIS, the Doctor scans Belinda and reveals he\u2019s already met her descendant \u2014 Mundy Flynn (also Varada Sethu) from last season\u2019s \u201cBoom<\/a>.\u201d Belinda may be curious as to how someone that far removed from her may be identical, but she\u2019s not embracing the mystery. She\u2019s angry with the Doctor for scanning her without consent and that he\u2019s treating her like a puzzle to be solved.<\/p>\n Having seen Sasha55 die, she knows trekking around with the Doctor is dangerous, and wants to get back to May 24, 2025. But the TARDIS won\u2019t land on present-day Earth, and even the Cloister Bell<\/a> begins ringing a warning. They open the TARDIS doors to see empty space before the Doctor decides to take her back home \u201cthe long way round.\u201d<\/p>\n Once the ship disappears, a series of objects start to float in front of the camera: A smashed up black cab<\/a>, the twisted wreckage of the Eiffel Tower, Belinda\u2019s star adoption certificate and a calendar with all the days in May but the 25th ticked off. Uh-oh.<\/p>\n Like a lot of Disney-era Who, \u201cThe Robot Revolution\u201d feels overstuffed to the point of bursting. On one hand, nothing overstays its welcome. On the other, it feels like the show is burning through a movie\u2019s worth of plot on fast-forward. It\u2019s hard to get a tangible sense of the stakes given how rushed everything is, and there\u2019s a lot of telling, rather than showing. We\u2019re told the planet is under the brutal thumb of an evil overlord but it plays out as little red ships firing at buildings in the digital matte paintings. We\u2019re told Alan is a creep but we never really get any sense of that until after<\/em> he\u2019s revealed as the villain. We\u2019re told the Doctor is operating on instructions from a figure from his own future, but it\u2019d be nice if some of this was depicted.<\/p>\n Davies was pivotal in reviving Doctor Who<\/em> and building the cultural juggernaut it became under his leadership. His role in the show\u2019s history is secure but, even so, his Disney-era series seem to be in thrall to the work of his own successor, Steven Moffat. \u201cThe Robot Revolution\u201d features a macguffin found inside a mundane trinket, a split narrative and time-bending shenanigans. It\u2019s not that Moffat owns these ideas but you can almost feel Davies trying to bend his less formal, more character-driven style into something else. A cynic might suggest Davies is reacting to the slight of not having a single credited episode in Doctor Who Magazine\u2019s<\/em><\/a> most recent poll of the series\u2019 greatest, while Moffat has five.<\/p>\n In fact, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if the slightly frantic, gappy nature of this script is a deliberate ploy to lay the framework for the rest of the season. But, even so, you can feel a degree of straining for a storytelling model that doesn\u2019t quite work.<\/p>\n If the script is the weakest part of the episode, then the production design has to take the crown for strongest. The retro-futuristic robots call to mind a bright red Ford Thunderbird or Chevy Bel Air while the cleaning robot is clearly styled on a VW Beetle. It\u2019s a rather humanistic design I wish the robovac makers of today would emulate.<\/p>\n Doctor Who<\/em> is a regular source of gossip, especially given the permanently tenuous nature of the star role. It\u2019s easy to say the lead is about to quit and for that to sound true, given they leave after three or four years in the role anyway. There are a number of recent reports suggesting Ncuti Gatwa has already quit the show, or is about to. Many of them also suggest the BBC and Disney are refusing to greenlight new episodes until they see how successful this season is. In addition, the BBC says funding cuts and inflation has seen its budget fall by \u00a31 billion (around $1.3 billion) in real terms since 2010<\/a>. It doesn't help that, when asked directly about the future of the series in an interview with (the BBC's youth-orientated news show) Newsround<\/em><\/a>, Russell T. Davies opted to equivocate in a way that suggests the show is about to back on ice.<\/p>\n I mention this because of the sequence where Belinda defeats Alan with the certificate, and the Doctor pulls her out. He says she needed a Time Lord to absorb the enormous amount of energy kicked out when she touched the paper together. The Doctor then clutched at his back as if he was in a lot of pain, but shrugged it off and was fine for the rest of the episode. Fans with long memories, however, know that absorbing a lot of energy from the time vortex is what killed Christopher Eccleston\u2019s Doctor back in 2005. Well, that and Eccleston\u2019s decision to leave.<\/p>\n It seems Mrs. Flood enjoys moving in next door to whoever is winding up as this year\u2019s companion. While being abducted, she calls to her neighbor to call the police and tell her parents she loves them. As the rocket lifts off, she tells the audience that we haven\u2019t seen her, and goes back indoors to avoid encountering the Doctor, who sprints out in pursuit.<\/p>\nIt's a lot to get through in such a short episode<\/h2>\n
Behind the scenes<\/h2>\n
Mrs. Flood Corner<\/h2>\n