Doctor Who Reviews: "The Robot Revolution"

Russell T. Davies has certain trademarks as a writer on Doctor Who. I was probably too young to really recognize them during his earlier tenure on the show (and it has been a while since I’ve gone back and watched it), but they are very apparent this time around. And I mean that in as neutral a way as I can. I don’t think his patterns are necessarily a bad thing, and they have produced great moments and great Doctor Who drama -especially when paired with a certain degree of innovative storytelling, which I think is apparent in “The Robot Revolution”.

But they are there regardless, and from even just an opening that introduces a new companion via flashback to their past, which will almost certainly have some consequence for a series-long arc centring on that companion, I had a good idea of what to expect of the episode overall. It is perhaps a little tough for Davies to stray from his formulas, in part because they have worked out so well for him for so long, but also because I think his idea of what Doctor Who is is fairly strongly baked in. It’s not that he doesn’t want to develop the show differently, but that he struggles to figure out how to do that in ways that are more than just its surface adjusting to a new era. And I feel like a couple of the ideas that he poses at the end here are going to be a showcase of that. Maybe.

Still, the engine works, and I quite liked the premise this new series was being sold on -principally, that it was going to follow the Doctor and his new companion, Belinda Chandra -played by the already remarkable Varada Sethu (best-known as Cinta Kaz on Andor), on a journey back to Earth 2025 from the far-reaches of the galaxy where she’s been flung. I have long wanted a little more temporal and spacial diversity in the companions (one does not have to be from modern-day Earth to be relatable), and this sounded like a little bit of a compromise on that; and recalls specifically the arc of the show’s first two seasons back in the 1960s, where the goal was to get stowaway teachers Ian and Barbara back to their time -the Doctor unable to control exactly where the TARDIS went. It sets an end-goal and suggests even a different mindset for the companion, perhaps less-attuned to the Doctor’s adventurous nature, embarking on his escapades out of necessity more than wonder.

We first meet Belinda as a teenager back in 2008, where her then boyfriend Alan Budd (Jonny Green) gives her a Star Certificate for her birthday, a goofy diploma that grants her ownership of a star. She’s a bit mixed on it but it is a cute idea anyways, and she keeps it for seventeen years, long past that relationship, when giant robots invade her flat and abduct her under the pretense of her being their Queen, using the certificate as proof. The Doctor of course is already on her tail, having been told to find her and that she is important by someone yet undisclosed, but doesn’t catch her in time before she is taken away. Someone who does catch her in time and does nothing to help is her neighbour, the still enigmatic Mrs. Flood (suggesting then that Belinda is also a near-neighbour to Ruby Sunday) -who only breaks the fourth wall again to say we won’t be seeing her, before the opening credits hit.

Passing through a time fracture, Miss Belinda Chandra is taken to the Planet Miss Belinda Chandra where she is greeted by its native Miss Belinda Chandra-kind, currently enslaved to the robots who have brought her back as a figurehead monarch. As we eventually learn, the certificate Belinda got from Alan somehow made its way to this planet in the far-off past and formed the basis of its civilization. That a phony (and likely scam) certificate could have real gravitational meaning in this roundabout way is a very amusing thought by Davies and has twinges even of some of the humour found in the classic era (especially of the Douglas Adams variety). But rather than play it up, he invests a lot in the social fabric of this world that was overtaken in the advancement of A.I. and a robot revolution a decade prior that has subjugated the planet’s native inhabitants. Blending in with them is the Doctor himself, conspicuously there among the throne room guard when Belinda arrives and is informed that in addition to becoming Queen she is expected to marry the A.I. generator of the robots as a show of unity, and be augmented as one of them herself.

“The A.I. generator knows no pity, no kindness, no mercy.” Lack of subtlety is still one of Davies’ tendencies, but it is nice to see such a remark uttered bluntly here. It’s not dwelt on for long, as luckily the Doctor, while recounting history to Belinda, communicates a code on every ninth word that the faulty robots can’t pick up, and in a moment all the native guards turn on the robots in a firefight that ends with a retreat to a rebel bunker with Belinda, but at the cost of Sasha 55 (Evelyn Miller), a prominent Miss Belinda Chandra-kind who had become close to the Doctor in the six months he has been on the planet and entrenched in the rebel movement -he’d even promised to take her to space.

There is some fun detail in how the unit and relationship of these rebels is characterized, and certainly I appreciate Varada Sethu being placed once again within that kind of a movement. And in the interpersonal issues we see around resentments towards Belinda and what she represents, uncertainty about her role in their cause, there are definitely some parallels to Andor (as well as The Matrix), and the Doctor’s attachment to Sasha endeavours to show the weight of his own albeit limited investment -though it also halts the pacing to some degree. The direction is fairly good -the episode marking the return to Doctor Who of Peter Hoar, who directed “A Good Man Goes to War” back in 2011 (an episode I have mixed feelings about), and has had a more successful TV directing career since then, most notably on the iconic “Long Long Time” episode of The Last of Us. That particular credit gives him a major pedigree here, which he shows off well in some very moody framing and sharp use of light through the last act.

He’s clearly a good director of intimacy, subtly drawing us into some moments of the Doctor interacting with or observing his new companion, whose connection to Mundy Flynn from “Boom” he is thankfully quick to pick up on. For her part, Belinda is immediately curious of the Doctor and his attention towards her, and is especially drawn to his alien physiology. Something that recalls another companion from the medical field.

If you are a long-time Doctor Who fan, it’s not hard to see that what Ruby was to Rose Tyler, Belinda is to Martha Jones. The working class woman of colour nurse, as fascinated by the Doctor’s two hearts as she is by the dimensions of the TARDIS. And while it does feel in a broad way that Davies is repeating himself with his archetypes, Belinda in no way comes across as just an archetype. Sethu is a very good actress, and I think it is her performance more than the writing that endears Belinda pretty quickly to the audience. She’s a decade older than Millie Gibson, and that maturity is felt  in the way she carries herself and reacts to her situations. Her identity as a nurse especially translates, in the weariness of hospital work early on, but also and more concretely through this section of the episode where she demonstrates an immediate readiness to help when there are injured. The script requires her to be fairly selfless, to even turn herself in to the robots in an effort to save everyone else. It’s a heavy ask to make believable for a character we’ve just met, but Sethu relates handily the conviction in it. And what’s great is we don’t need an extensive backstory about her life or her family for it to work. She is also quite discerning as will be noted later, a result I think of being on more even footing with the Doctor in terms of her own ideals (and her age again quite frankly).

In surrendering to the robots she is brought face to face with the A.I. Generator she is due to marry and learns in a Wizard of Oz-style peek behind the curtain that the Generator is in fact Alan (A.I. is really AL). Turns out an offhand comment to the robots while passing through that time fracture led to them finding him on Earth and kidnapping him too, but bringing him to Miss Belinda Chandra ten years in the past where he sparked the initial Robot Revolution. He has already been made into a cyborg himself -and it is one of the best make-up jobs from Doctor Who in a while. The reasoning for all this essentially boils down to him being a gamer and an incel.

And I have to say, in Davies’ pursuit of social commentary issues to prick at, this is one of his clumsier efforts. Firstly is the suggestion that Alan’s being a gamer translates to having no empathy for living people -he literally compares his situation when arriving on the planet to a video game, his cavalier attitude to killing people being attributed to this. And I can’t be the only person thinking that is a very unfair brush to paint with. As for the incel qualifier, it feels haphazardly applied. There’s definitely something interesting to Belinda’s extrapolation on Alan’s apparent controlling behaviour towards her during their relationship growing into a toxic desire to control more broadly, but it feels like a point for its own sake. Alan is so thinly defined a character, he’s not even allowed to be that intense a villain, either in human or cyborg form, and it definitely comes across that he is being slotted into this role for the sake of making fun of incels more than any natural storytelling point. It’s a topic that I’m not against Doctor Who addressing in a more concerted way -especially in a productive sense for the sake of the show’s young male audience. But in this form it’s kind of a cheap target and nothing else. This is especially palpable in how Belinda escapes accountability for having inadvertently brought Alan to that world, in how his true self’s plea for being saved is ignored, and, in a moment that shockingly goes against the Doctor’s philosophy and character, how the Doctor actually laughs at the notion of Alan’s death, after he is defeated, reduced to microscopic size, and is promptly killed by a little polisher bot. An unusual and inappropriately mean-spirited beat for the universally empathetic Doctor.

The A.I. theme more generally is muddied too in this aftermath, as the robots maintain some power on Belinda Chandra, with the promise of reparations for its people, suggesting that the A.I. itself wasn’t the problem, just what Alan did with it. It disputes that earlier sentiment a tad and takes any bite (though there really wasn’t much to begin with) out of that topical critique. I might be inclined to foot that at a mere hasty resolution that clearly Davies wasn’t so concerned with.

The episode’s actual ending is more curious, as Belinda sees to it the Doctor follows through on his promise to get her home. A new thread emerges in their relationship from the point that the Doctor intervened in the seismic time-space reaction to Belinda touching her certificate to the future one that Alan had. The effect of this was great, a kaleidoscope of trippy fragmented imagery that seemed to show visions of older and younger versions of both Belinda and Alan, bombastic and haunting, with the Doctor flitting in and out of it. What came of it though was apparently the Doctor seeing through Belinda’s entire life, including apparently the totality of his relationship with her -”they go way back” he says. He is able to determine that Mundy is in fact a descendant, and is exhilarated about travelling the stars with her. Belinda however is not so excited.

We are very emphatically in her eyes through the Doctor’s jubilation here and it hits notably different. When he concedes to the notion of destiny bringing them together and she responds “is that what you tell all the girls?”, we see a new veneer to the Doctor’s outward character. Every Doctor has a good flaw. Fifteen’s charismatic bombast and his flirtatious demeanour especially has a side to it that may mark it as his. From Belinda’s perspective, this is still a relative stranger opining on some grandiosity to their relationship that comes off as unsettling -as an attractive young woman it is probably not the first time she has encountered such a thing. She notes that in the course of this energized hyperbole, he scanned her whole DNA profile with his screwdriver without her consent, and recalling Sasha’s expression of devotion and where it led her, concludes the Doctor is dangerous. Moreover she asserts “I am not one of your adventures”.

The Doctor has had many companions he has connected with or sensed some great purpose in, but rarely has he had a companion renounce that outright or refuse to be the star-eyed admirer he perhaps expects her to be. Belinda isn’t so interested in exploring all of time and space; she just wants to go home. Unfortunately, she has no choice in the matter as the Doctor finds he is unable to land in London 2025, the TARDIS keeps bouncing off that coordinate. So he is going to have to improvise, and as he embarks on doing so, the TARDIS leaves the space between Miss Belinda Chandra and Earth without noticing the debris  of major Earth landmarks, including the certificate that started this mess.

I think these final notes bode well for the upcoming series, at least as far as the relationship between the Doctor and Belinda is concerned. Her being a reluctant companion, with some distance of trust in the Doctor and a shrewd willingness to challenge him perhaps promises a more complex relationship between Doctor and companion, while also setting herself apart as distinctly strong-willed and driven. Not that she won’t engage or be fun however -certainly there is the capacity for that if this episode is a good indicator. She’s quick-witted and a subtly funny character that I think will do the show good. And if Davies does resist building her into another mythic-scale character in spite of whatever the Doctor saw, she should reflect well on the Doctor too. As always, he ought to be questioned a little more.

The issues with its topics of critique in the climax and the Doctor’s severe lapse of empathy notwithstanding, “The Robot Revolution” was a pretty good episode overall. The silly yet interesting set-up of this world and Belinda’s place in it, and everything with the introduction of Belinda herself worked tremendously; and Hoar’s direction really gave it some colour. Where the series goes with how that certificate found its way to the ancient people of that planet  and how the Doctor was tipped to seek out Belinda in the first place, I don’t have a ton of investment in. But this series promises some real variety and I look forward to it. Just make sure Belinda is eventually returned home.

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