An Hour of Who a Day: July 12: Robot Parts Three & Four

July 12: Robot Parts Three & Four

By these two episodes the Doctor seems to have settled down, the script focusing more on the threat of the robot than on this new Doctor's behavior. Of course what this means is that now we've really turned this story into a typical UNIT runaround.

Part three has some fun messing around with the Scientific Reform Society -- it seems Professor Kettlewell is a member, and he decides to help Sarah infiltrate the place to learn more about their plans. The Doctor's already worked that out though; recently the US, Russia, and China entrusted their nuclear launch codes to a neutral country as a way to ensure peace. "Well, naturally enough, the only country that could be trusted with such a role was Great Britain," the Brigadier states. "Well, naturally. I mean, the rest were all foreigners," the Doctor responds drily. But now Think Tank/the SRS (apparently it's basically the same organization) have the nuclear launch codes, and thus they intend to blackmail the world into, um, letting Think Tank rule things? Their demands are a bit vague. There's also something about not polluting the planet, à la Invasion of the Dinosaurs, but that's pretty far down in the mix.

And it turns out Kettlewell's been in on the plan for the whole time (which doesn't quite match up with what we saw in part two, but never mind), which means Sarah is captured and taken away to a bunker (despite the Doctor's efforts to save her), and when UNIT arrive, the K1 robot is sent out to stop them -- and not even the world's least convincing tank (an attempt at forced perspective with a toy/model tank that's considerably underwhelming, to put it charitably) can stop it...

There's some guff with a countdown to nuclear doomsday (which has to be stopped three times), but the main spectacle in part four is the huge size increase of the K1 robot, as the Brigadier turns the disintegrator gun on it and causes it to balloon in size -- presumably because of the "living metal" the K1 is made of. And since Sarah's been showing it kindness, it's time for Doctor Who to do King Kong, as the K1 carries Sarah off in his claw. This, by the way, is why all the exterior scenes are shot on video: to make the CSOed-in robot look more convincing. It doesn't quite work, what with the shiny robot reflecting part of the background and thus causing parts of it to disappear (though it should be noted that the DVD goes a long way in fixing this problem), but the intent is definitely there. But it doesn't last long -- just long enough, really, for the Doctor to drive up with a foaming bucket of Kettlewell's living-metal-eating virus and chuck it on the giant robot. Crisis averted. Thus, with no more reason to stay, the Doctor offers to take Sarah somewhere in the TARDIS -- and he cons Harry into coming along with them...

It's an entertaining story, and it's competently made for the most part, but in many ways Robot feels like an exercise in marking time. This is Barry Letts and Terrance Dicks' final story, and so other than ensuring that the new boy gets a chance to show his stuff there's little for them to do; they can't plant a flag and say, "this is who the fourth Doctor will be", because that'll be up to their successors. So all they can do is make sure that Tom Baker's debut keeps the audience entertained without indicating a new direction for the show. It's a fun tale made in safe hands, but a bold new beginning for the fourth Doctor it isn't. But it's not supposed to be. Robot deftly delivers on what it sets out to do, and it's content with that.