Robot

People were a bit surprised when they first saw Tom Baker as the Doctor. They had grown used to the velvet jacketed flamboyance of Jon Pertwee so this new fellow took a bit of getting used to as the Brigadier might put it. Unlike `Spearhead from Space` or `Castrovalva`, Tom’s debut is no real indication of what’s to come either. Caught in the crossover of production teams it seems a modest introduction to a new era. Yet it does –appropriately for the 2018 re-release as part of a blu ray boxset- contain a female antagonist. Plus if the Giant Robot that gave the Target novelisation its name is a bit of a disappointment the normal sized version is impressive enough.. Best of all over the course of four episodes Tom Baker eases gently up through the gears so that by the end he has become the Doctor. 

It’s a curious story, often overlooked in the company of acknowledged classics `Ark in Space` and `Genesis of the Daleks`, the brief `Sontaran Experiment` and the Marmite `Revenge of the Cybermen. Often wrongly said to be Philip Hinchcliffe’s first story, its actually Barry Letts’ last and frequently called `dull apart from the new Doctor` it’s actually as busy as any Letts/ Dicks Earthbound tale. It concludes the series’ strong ties with a version of contemporary England, first established at the start of the third Doctor’s tenure under Derrick Sherwin. All the usual suspects are here- a research centre appears (briefly in the opening five minutes, there’s a plan that seems small then –rather like the robot enabling it – grows to epic proportions with dialogue. The threat that the entire world will be plunged into nuclear catastrophe is put across by just the actor’s reactions and a countdown clock. UNIT get to let off a torrent of bullets and grenades one more time.

Terrance Dicks knows how to construct a solid Doctor Who story and if some reviewers find it wanting, it works a treat for a 4 parter. At a time when there had been few female antagonists in the show, `Robot` has Hilda Winters though it takes a while for the production to feel confident to place her front and centre. That even Sarah assumes Jellicoe is in charge of Think Tank is a neat gag yet in the first two episodes he seems to have as much dialogue as Hilda. It’s only later on that the less composed Miss Winters hits her stride. I do think she’s a lightly sketched character though; while the SRS’ aims are discussed a personal angle as to how she came to this place as a relatively young age might have lifted her into a more memorable category along the later lines of Harrison Chase, Magnus Greel etc. It is Sarah who is the really strong female character in this story going off on her own investigative tangents and showcasing the intuitive performances Lis Sladen always gave.

The SRS offer a less extreme version of what the previous season’s Operation Golden Age were after- an opportunity to effectively start again. In this story with the world’s nuclear codes in their hands they intend to blackmail the world into changing to a more `rational` way of living. I’m not sure the example presented- where Sarah is taken to task for what she wears - is the best illustration of their aims and we never properly discover the wider aims of this rational` world they envisage. It is difficult to imagine scientists would come to this conclusion but often in 70s Doctor Who they were utilised as or by antagonists because only they could come up with things like the K1 robot, transporting dinosaurs through time and so on. 

Visually for an audience used to monsters, `Robot` was probably a bit underwhelming at the time though decades later benefits from the fresh video camera filming and a realistic look to much of the proceedings. Some well -staged point of view scenes in part 1 stretch out the mystery of the perpetrator’s appearance and you have to say that it is fairly successfully rendered. In fact when the show later got an actual robot in the shape of Kamelion it was less convincing! The dialogue scenes zip along; there's one especially good one when the Doctor is trying to persuade Kettlewell to talk about the robot- watch the expressions of the Brigadier and Sarah behind them. The Doctor's introduction is proabably the neatest one ever done with about 10 minutes of silliness before business is got down to. It is more than enough time though for the new incarnation to totally establish himself. The story also includes the last decent sized troop of UNIT soldiers we’d see and plenty of bangs and flashes that are fun if mostly unnecessary as it’s established early on bullets don’t affect K1 at all.

The whole King Kong inspired thread is a typically thoughtful idea from a production team who came closest to approaching the more emotional content that these days is part of the programme’s signature. The non-judgmental outlook of the companion always works well- think for example of Rose in `Dalek` - and here it is utterly believable that Sarah would think this way. 

The story does get messier as it progresses. The key character of Professor Kettlewell seems to be the most anomalous element. Portrayed as a very dotty scientist with wild hair and thick spectacles he is such a caricature as to not convince us he could ever have done the work he’s credited with. The reveal that he was working for the SRS all along is a stretch too far especially as we’ve seen K1 go to him with its conflicted issues. Plus anyone at the meeting in the hall would have noticed Sarah hiding in a clumsy scene from a mostly strongly directed story. There’s also a scene where the soldiers are shooting away at the robot but Jellicoe is able to walk right next to it and not be hit.  Harry’s undercover work is also given too little attention and I’m not sure even the Brig would be so cavalier as to pick up the destructor gun without due caution.

The giant sized robot is as good as you could reasonably expect – and better than the dinosaurs of the previous season- plus is on screen for a relatively small time though the story is often erroneously referred to as `The Giant Robot`

People often comment on how different the fifth Doctor was to the fourth yet the change from the third to the fourth seems even more radical. This new Doctor seems considerably younger than the more fatherly figure of Jon Pertwee’s final season. Baker is the eccentric uncle, in his introductory scenes with Harry he is a bundle of energy and gifted some amusing dialogue to deliver. I’d forgotten how playful his tone is in this story and wonder if Philip Hinchcliffe then advised him to tone it down a little. There is a marked difference between what the actor does here to the rest of the season suggesting he was working on the same instincts that eventually took him back to this place four or five years later.

`Robot` is only significant in the end because it was the fourth Doctor’s debut yet it is tightly produced, well paced and enjoyable. As the last real UNIT story it scores highly in representing the organisation fully one more time and perhaps this is it’s biggest asset.