Who Review: The Robots of Death

New companion Leela’s first trip in the TARDIS winds up on a sandminer that’s exploring the minerals of a distant planet. The crew hope to pull enough valuable content from the planet into the vessel to make both themselves, and the company they work for, very rich. Many of the menial tasks on the sandminer are performed by humanoid robots. They do everything from piloting the craft, to heavy lifting, to giving massages to the weary crew, obeying their prime directive not to do harm to humans. The Doctor and Leela show up just as the bodies of two crew members turn up dead–strangled to death. Naturally, the newcomers are the first to be accused. However, it soon becomes apparent that the Doctor and Leela are innocent. But if they didn’t do it, and none of the humans on board did it, that only leaves one logical, and horrifying alternative. Indeed, that alternative would surely spell the end of that civilization, which is why no-one wants to listen to the Doctor, continuing to insist that the murderer is human. As the body count increases, the Doctor must find out who is overriding the robots’ programming, before it’s too late…

SPOILER ALERT!! My comments may (and likely will) contain spoilers for those that haven’t seen this serial. If you want to stay spoiler-free, please watch the story before you continue reading!

“The Robots of Death” is without doubt one of my all-time favorite Classic Who serials. Part of my affection for it is sentimental, since I remember watching it the first time around. It made a huge impression on me as a seven-year-old Whovian–perhaps the closest I’ve come to literally hiding behind the sofa. The images I saw back then never left me; it’s one of the few Doctor Who stories from the Seventies of which I have vivid memories. When I introduced Doctor Who to my kids back in 2004, before there was a New Series, I chose “The Robots of Death” as their introductory story. It hooked them for life.

Why do I love this story? First, the story itself. Yes, it’s a classic locked-room murder mystery, with a nod perhaps to Agatha Christie, but it’s so well conceived and thought through. There’s no padding, with each scene either developing character or moving the story along. The script has lots of excellent Doctor and Leela interchange, humor, as well as tension and drama. Writer Chris Boucher also manages to weave world-building into the story, showing different classes of society, as well as orders of robot.

The acting is first-rate, too. Tom Baker lived the role so much, it’s hard for him not to nail every performance of the Doctor. Louise Jameson, playing Leela for only her second serial, seems to have found her voice. The supporting cast do a marvelous job, too, getting into character and selling the story, despite the strange costumes and make-up. I find the robots particularly convincing, the way they move and react.

Speaking of the robots… eeek! They creeped me out when I was seven, and they STILL creep me out. Those angular faces, and the eyes that turn red when they are switched to “kill” mode. What makes them so effective, though, is the combination of costume, movement, and voice. I’ve rarely seen all three done as well as they are here.

Some interesting continuity notes. At the beginning, Leela still has one of the guns from the previous story, “The Face of Evil.” She also complains that the Doctor talks like a “Tesh”–another “Face of Evil” nod, referring to the tribe on Leela’s home planet that descended from technicians. The Doctor’s explanation of “dimensionally transcendental,” when talking about how the TARDIS can be bigger on the inside, is quite entertaining.

I would like to nominate D-84 as the best robot companion (sort-of), even besting K9 and Kamelion. Seriously, though, for a robot, he has charm and personality without coming across too human. A great feat of scripting and voice acting.

My only complaint is that the ending is a bit abrupt. There’s no goodbye, simply off in the TARDIS and that’s it. A few minutes wishing Uvanov and Toos well would have been a nice come-down after the high tension of the last ten minutes. But that’s a very small quibble.

This is MUST-SEE Who. If you’ve never watched Classic Who, this is the one to start with. Indeed, if I could only own one Classic Who story, it would be “Robots of Death,” no question about it. I highly recommend it to Whovian and non-Whovian alike. If you don’t like this, don’t bother with Classic Who, because Classic Who doesn’t get much better.