A triumph that still hums with energy! Looking back at one of classic Doctor Who’s best ever stories.
Earlier this year I saw
the World of Wonder exhibition and amongst the many exhibits from the series’
past and present were some robot masks from this 1977 classic. Even now, mounted on stands devoid of the
rest of the costume, they look impressive. So it is for the story they come
from. Its one of those tales that they could remake today without the need for
much alteration, Sure the Sandminer -which in real life was quite a modest
sized model – could look better, you could have more robots, a larger crew. Yet
the essence of the story works just as well forty-five years later.
There is something stately and unhurried about ‘The
Robots of Death' that makes it a joy to watch every time. On paper the story is
hardly original, purloining much of its content from the likes of either Murder on the Orient Express or Isaac
Asimov's Robot stories, while the use of mostly brightly lit sets and a robotic
enemy realised by people in costumes and masks could have been a disaster. Yet the
story towers over these potential problems with ease to create a timeless 90
minutes that is amongst the very finest Doctor Who ever made.
