Tripwire’s Man In Los Angeles Reviews Doctor Who Season Two: Episode One The Robot Revolution

When The Machines Take Over

Tripwire’s man in Los Angeles Robert Cave takes a look at Doctor Who Season Two’s debut episode The Robot Revolution…

Season 2 Episode 1
The Robot Revolution
Written by Russell T Davies
Directed by Peter Hoar

Twenty years on from the 2005 relaunch, Doctor Who kicks off its second season on Disney+. And, it’s probably fair to say, this season has the most riding on its success since Trial of a Time Lord in 1986. The whole BBC/Disney co-production deal may well be at stake. No pressure, then.

This season gives us a new co-star, Varada Sethu, who is brilliant as Belinda Chandra. It also give us a new global release time of Saturdays at 8am GMT. Personally, I will miss the midnight GMT drops of season one; they translated to a wonderfully convenient 4pm on a Friday afternoon in Los Angeles, but the midnight release Pacific coasters now face is at least better than the 3am release for East coasters. I guess Who fans in Hawaii are now in the best position among US-based fans, since they get a new episode at 9pm on a Friday night. It is probably also worth noting that this episode is also the first in Doctor Who’s 62-year history in which neither the Doctor nor the principle companion has been white. It’s not the focus of the story, but is significant nontheless.

What is stays the same is the glorious title sequence. I don’t think I’ll ever grow tired of it and, unlike every other streaming show I watch, I never feel the urge to “skip intro,” as prompted. And I really enjoyed everything before and after the titles. Sure, that’s not the highest bar for an incorrigible old Who fan like myself, but I did really enjoy it. Maybe the story felt a bit slight at first; girl has a star (sort of) named after her, then she grows up to find that robots from a planet orbiting her star have come for her, but there is more going on here than first meets the eyes. The simple plot is full of holes (particularly, but not limited to, how the robots got hold of the star certificate in the first place, before Belinda mentioned her ex-boyfriend?), but these questions are meant to be both noticable and eminently ignorable in the heat of the moment.

The more times I’ve watched it, (three times so far, and counting), the more I’ve seen to like. This is not a complete story as much as it’s a magic trick, one that is being honest enough to overtly declare its narrative sleight of hand, demonstrating numerous ways in which it is not yet complete. There is more to come and the attentive viewer, who likely picked up on the Doctor’s hidden every-ninth-word message way before it was eventually spelled out, will be rewarded.

There is definitely more to come on Belinda, too. We don’t know much about her yet outside of her job, but she did do more actual nursing in one episode than poor underwritten Rory Williams got in his entire tenure on the series. We also know that she will hold people accountable for their actions, even if that person is our favourite problematic Time Lord, as played by Ncuti Gatwa. Gatwa’s charisma is pretty undeniable at this point, and it works so well in service to his Doctor, which is why it is even more important that Belinda can and does call out his lethal negligence towards Sasha 55 (Evelyn Miller) and his non-consensual testing of Belinda’s DNA.

One of the many things I love about Doctor Who, particularly under RTD’s tenures, is its inclusivity. As such, The Doctor’s line “If you start deciding which body is best, you’re going down a very dangerous path,” really stood out as a sentiment that is both incredibly timely and also utterly timeless. In a show full of various aliens, how utterly preposterous it would be to expect everyone the Doctor encountered to be the same on the inside (and under their clothes) as they seemed on the outside? There is something perversely pleasing that the show’s production crew spent some of their Disney dollars to demonstrate that even those humanoid characters who look “normal” in a budget-friendly way might well look very different under the beautiful VFX shots of a non-nuclear X-ray blanket.

I also enjoyed the reuse of the victorian terrace house sets, complete with breakaway bannisters and smash-thru walls, for Belinda’s home. They were last seen as the Noble house in The Star Beast, and have now been remodeled into a flatshare, because what nurse can afford anything more than a room in London these days?

What a gorgeous episode it was! With big robots and campy space ships that looked like they came from a Flash Gordon newspaper strip. The planet Missbelindachandra One looked like it came from the 1980 Flash Gordon film. The AI Generator (or should that be Al Generator) evoked the videogame Fall Out 3 more, but it was still massively camp in a way that might have seemed beyond credulity had it not been for the recent revelation that current US Education Secretary, and former professional wrestling promoter, Linda McMahon has been caught referring to A1 where she apparently meant AI. Reality is out-camping Who at this point.

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There were also some surprisingly nasty moments, including the killing of a cat and a shockingly high bodycount among the (largely unnamed) rebels. Then there was the eventual polish polishing away the effluvium that was Alan Budd at the very point of his conception, nipping his toxic masculinity at the bud, so to speak. That might seem quite harsh from a show that has a strong tradition of giving its villains space to repent, learn, grow to avoid the full consequences of their initial ignorance, but I think it is absolutely necessary to reiterate the cost of the kind of toxicity that is subtly woven throughout Alan’s interactions with Belinda. We can all learn from Alan’s failures.

Besides, with the mystery of where the future certificate still unanswered, we may still see the uncreated Alan again. Could he have been the unnamed man who told the Doctor about Belinda “like [she] would be important”?

There was a lovely little cameo from Anita Dobson as Mrs Flood, now living nextdoor to Belinda, after spending season one as Ruby Sunday’s neighbour. She helped confirm that Belinda does at least have parents, and isn’t also an orphan like the Doctor and his previous companion. Looking forward to seeing some resolution to all the Mrs Flood questions in the coming weeks.

And speaking of questions, how did Belinda recognise the TARDIS when the Doctor never mentioned its name? I suspect this will eventually be explained, but it did underline something else that happened to me this week: I was editing some educational materials for the US schools market and there was a reference in them to the TARDIS. Doctor Who is now mainstream enough to feature in teaching materials. That’s got to be a good sign for the show’s future, whatever platform it appears on.

In the meantime I plan to continue enjoying the rest of the current season. See you next week!

Doctor Who is available on BBC iPlayer in the UK and on Disney Plus in the US