"Robot Revolution,
The” (15th Dr, 2025)
(Series 15/2A episode 1,
Dr 15 with Belinda, 12/4/2025, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writer: Russell T
Davies, executive producers: Julie Gardner, Jane Tranter, Joel Collins, Phil
Collinson and Vicki Delow, director: Peter Hoar
Ranking: #N/A (but
around #260ish) reviewed 13/4/2025
‘Welcome to the real Planet Alan. I don’t want control, I don’t want to
rule by a feudal robot system, I’m a
last lone dinosaur refusing to use a.i. in any capacity and I’m
certainly not going to destroy you if you don’t like me. I will, however, make
you sit through some excruciating puns while listening to obscure 1960s concept
albums and watching the complete run of ‘classic’ Dr Who. Some of you might
prefer your chances with the robots. Oh and look out for Clandusprods…’
Viva, as Vicki would say,
le Revolution! A new series of Dr Who in which the Doctor does exactly what all
true do-gooders want the Doctor to do: battle the greatest enemies of our age
(incel control freaks and ai generators) and win, restoring the timelines back
to how they should be. The great message at the heart of this story: it takes
more than just ‘labelling’ someone to keep them safe or make them feel loved:
even the fabulous gift of a star being named after you doesn’t mean it’s true
love if actions don’t back up the literal words (and especially if those words
are generated by the ai monster), whilst even the Doctor gets ticked off for
sticking up for new companion Belinda and assuming she needs protection when ‘I
can look after myself’. It’s a modern revolutionary story for our times in days
other lesser programmes are towing the line, flying under the radar and making
demagog dictators happy and I for one am glad that Dr Who hasn’t given in to
the pandering that Dr Who should ‘just’ be about telling stories. We need
series like this one as the only timelord adult in the room, that comes out and
tackles the bigger subjects that we’re not meant to think about, that’s
inclusive and welcoming and wise and has a lot to say that I’m all here for
(and anyone still saying that Dr Who has only become ‘woke’ now must have been
asleep for a good two-thirds of the past sixty-two years’ worth of stories).
The more the TV industries and fandom lean heavily on Russell T Davies not to
tell these sorts of stories the more he tells them. The twists and turns in
‘The Robot Revolution’ earn my respect.
I loved the central idea
of the companion stranded on a planet named after her, following the gift of a
certificate. Being the starry-eyed romantic that I am I may have given a few of
these away myself to friends, family and relatives and it’s a nice daydream to
have that maybe the stars would house planets where all your/their dreams come
true. Only Russell has the clever idea of going a stage further and seeing it
as a sign of ‘control’. After all, these certificates are jokes really, a way of
selling money based on the sheer vastness of space (because there are,
staggeringly, somewhere around a septillion known stars out there – which means
every single one of the current 8.2 billion inhabitants of Earth could have
nearly 122,000 stars each named after them. That’s a lot of birthday presses
even if everyone you know got you the same gift). You don’t have any legal
claim on them at all and while your
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandchildren might get to visit the
nearest ones one day, you’ve got no chance.
It is though, when you think about it, quite rude. It smacks of
‘appropriation’, because – in the Dr Whoniverse at least – a lot of those stars
are populated already by races that have already given themselves names (and I
pity the poor person who got gifted the solar system with Skaro in it and got
taken there by robots…shudder). It’s all a method of control, of setting a
narrative, of taking a very Earth-centriclike idea of the universe, which is
something – well – alien to every good Dr Who story. It’s an idea that was
crying out to be made by someone at sometime and in retrospect one of those
ideas, like all good simple Dr Who plots, that I’m kicking myself for not
thinking up first. The way that Russell ties this into a.i. generators, that
put labels on things without necessarily understanding what they are, then ties
this into a plot about a cruel boyfriend who did his best to control and label
poor Belinda without ever trying to understand her (best line of the episode:
‘I thought you’d gone to Margate?’ ‘No…Stargate!’) is clever indeed. I did hope, though, that we
were going to get a different storyline: one where an alien has been given
Earth as a star certificate and has come to claim it (maybe next series?!)
It’s also about time Dr
Who looked at the growing and confusing murky world of incels. Controlling
behaviour, expecting women to conform to their likes rather than see them as
human beings, then getting angry when they’re rejected, then hiding away in
their basement spreading hatred is very much something the Davroses of the
world do in the Whoniverse (it’s surprisingly easy to imagine the Dalek creator
starting out life that way and while Daleks are generally considered asexual it’s
pretty much a given that they’re closer to toxic masculinity than toxic femininity
by this point). It speaks volumes that, rather than admit defeat and wish his
ex well, the baddy is so wrapped up in his ex’s life that he creates a whole
world in her name and spends seventeen years getting it right before kidnapping
her (honestly, if a lot of the people I read about in papers and indeed used to
know had the power of space travel they would be doing that too). The fact that
it’s easier for some people to create and enslave their own worlds rather than
treat a girl nicely on this one is, sadly, all too plausible and the idea of a
new world with ‘control’ is a feature of many an incel community forum (no
wonder the losers can’t get any girls in real life). My namesake might seem nicer
than Davros on the surface, all manners and presents (though a star certificate
still seems too…nice to be something he would think of himself), but he’s
clearly one of the ‘terrible monsters who must be fought’ that the 2nd
Doctor talked about in ‘The Moonbase’ and seeing him get his comeuppance is nicely
satisfying. It’s great, too, that Dr Who still defeats the bully at a time in life
when the rest of the universe seems to be kowtowing to predators (and electing
them into high office). Once again Dr Who finds something wrong in the world,
uses a mirror to distort it into a scifi monster and helps destroy it. This can
only be a good thing. Even if it takes a famously gay writer, of all people, to
make the point (then again Russell’s always been good at strong female
characters; you only need to look at ‘It’s A Sin’, a series about the AIDS
crisis where lesser writers wouldn’t have had female characters at all).
It’s the middle that
falls apart, with too much talking and not much action, as if one Russell had
the idea he wasn’t entirely sure what to do with it or how to make a full
episode out of it. There’s just something a little…robotic about this episode
that stops it being top notch though. I noticed it last year but Russell’s newer
scripts have a tendency to fall into formulas in a way they never did before
and this one is particularly privvy to it: confusing opening that won’t be
explained for ooh ages yet, big dramatic showpiece that uses all the budget,
then looooong scenes of talking and reflection and not much happening, before
all-too sudden resolution and off into the next adventure with a sort-of
cliffhanger. It doesn’t feel like a proper organic story that grows out of all
its elemental plot parts so much as a model fitted together. Once again it also doesn’t feel much like a
Russell T script, as if the showrunner is having too much fun playing with all
the toys his successors left on the Dr Who toyshelf to do what he does best
(write three-dimensional characters in a few poignant lines of dialogue who
really do change across the course of a story). Russell is having too much fun
playing around with Moffaty ideas (the Doctor has been saving Belinda’s life
for six months without her knowing it, while the Doctor wrapping his timelines
round Belinda for ‘protection’ is basically a more emotional Russell version of
what Clara does for the dying 11th Doctor in ‘The Name Of The Doctor’; It’s hard not to
imagine Russell coming up with this idea punching the air when he works out a
way to explain why actress Varada Sethu was in ‘Boom!’ already (as a different
character- who turns out to be a great-grand-daughter), then realising it had
been done before; then ringing his friend to complain and stick in a sneaky‘timey
wimey’ reference too, the first time any Doctor has since 12), some Chibnall ones too (the Alan baddy is
straight out of the Kornovista and Tim Shaw handbook of cartoon villain, while
the way the Doctor stands around watching the baddy rant without actually doing
anything – while in turn the supposedly all-powerful baddy watches the Doctor
do something clever without lifting a finger to stop it is straight out of the
Dr 13 era. Belinda, too, is pure Graham so far – an older unruffled character
more bemused at the stuff happening in front of her than anything else) and
even a few Saward ideas from the 1980s (the plot is solved with a ‘blinovitch
limitation effect’ in all but name, of two versions of the same object crossing
timestreams). I have to say, too, there’s more than a little of the utterly
brilliant and under-rated Australian 1990s series ‘Halfway Across The galaxy
And Turn Left’ in this story, not least the red/green eyes of the baddy and the
way that, to most children, most adults act like aliens, without sense, logic or fairness. Had Russell added some more
of his own softer edges and the things he’s good at (such as tidying up the
sort of plot messes the other two showrunners leave when they get bored) and
stopped writing in such crude straight lines, this story might have soared. The
ultimate irony of all this? Dr Who has never felt more as if it was written by
an a.i. generator.
Which is a case in point:
why is this world controlled by an a.i. generator? It looked as if it was going
to be an all-important plot point but is just dropped, despite being ever such
a clever and timely idea to base a story around (there’s another weak pun that actually it’s an ‘al’
generator but half the letter has been covered). Dr Who has done a few stories
now about the importance of creativity and expression and as early as ‘The City
Of Death’ the 4th Doctor and Romana were moaning about art made by
computers as being soul-less. The fact that you can conjure up people who
aren’t quite right, who look like real people but don’t have any thoughts of
their own, is a scary one that deserved more screen time. And of course there
are robots running the place: big chunky ones, incredibly like the ones in ‘Dinosaurs On A Spaceship’ (that settles it,
Russell’s spent the past ten years staring at the telly going ‘oh I so wish I’d
done that!’) that look impressive but again don’t actually do much (except
exterminate a cat). Far better, surely, to have had the a.i. generator turned
on itself by the Doctor managing to have original ideas that the a.i. generator
could never have dreamed of. Or have the world torn down by a bunch of artists
languishing in a cell somewhere for daring to have thoughts that were different
to the ‘King’? Or could it be that Russell took one look at the BBC’s
advertising campaign for series one (which, let us not forget was created by
a.i., something that got a lot of backlash at the time but has rather been
forgotten now flipping everyone is doing it) and decided to soften the blow?
Either way it feels like a wasted opportunity: absolutely the right villain but
completely the wrong use for it.
I’m also not sure I buy
the idea that machinery doesn’t understand ‘every 9th word in a
sentence’. If anything my technology doesn’t understand anything the first
eight times I ask and it’s only the 9th time I get anything to work.
The idea of hiding codes inside language is at least the most Russell T part of
the story: we’re back to a story like ‘Midnight’
where a monster that can control words can control the narrative, only it’s the
Doctor doing it under the monster’s nose and no one else can see it. Is this
another comment on a.i. and how unsubtle it is, missing the sort of messages
that Humans like sneaking in under the surface (and which certain ‘un-woke’
people don’t notice? You’d be amazed the amount of unsubtle subtexts that pass
by some rightwing Whovians sometimes). The hint of the episode: as long as the
rest of us can still talk about what’s ‘really’ going on behind the censorship,
we’ll be fine because the censors are too dumb to see it anyway. The shock of
the Doctor (after six months undercover) worming his way into a position of
trust so that he can be that person giving Belinda the back story is a clever
unexpected twist in the narrative too. But that’s all the language is: a trick.
There’s no reason it has to be a ninth word and as fun as it is to see the
characters counting down the words on their fingers, the people around them
have to be pretty darn stupid not to see something is going on (is it a sort of
‘mirror’ of the way A.I. seems to have most trouble replicating fingers? So
many uses, from film posters to the Duchess of Cambridge’s photos accidentally
give too many). Like a lot of modern Who you think this is all going to be
important later on because they’re making such a fuss about it and then it,
umm, isn’t.
Another issue is the way
the story progresses makes little to no sense. There are millions if not
billions of these star certificates around. Why does this one result in a world
full of robots? I can understand robot
Alan (and yes thankyou for using my name Russell; I like to think he got it
from the Toby Hadoke stage show ‘Moths Ate My Doctor Scarf’ where Alan is the
least scariest name in the universe, or maybe he got it from the only non-mysoginist
male character in the ‘Barbie’ film?) feeling like he had unfinished business.
But how did he build a rocket that went schwup? Surely, surely, if this world
had the technology to do such things before he turned up then surely they know
better than to hand over all their power to him, however accidentally it might
be and however scared they are of him? There are whacking great robots for
crying out loud. There has to be an in-built protocol for when the ruler goes
mad and tries to kill people. Any civilisation advanced enough to do what this
world does is advanced enough to prevent interference from the outside.
But then nothing in this
story feels quite ‘real’ and is more like a cartoon throughout, starting with
the new companion. Belinda does not behave the way normal people do, ever. Her
reaction to finding two gigantic robots in her bedroom is not to scream (as per
Mel or Susan) fight back (as per Ace or Leela) or roll her eyes and be
sarcastic (as per Donna or Tegan). She’s not in shock either (as per anyone in
such a situation for real): she just stands there, accepting. The biggest no-no
is when the robots kill her cat. Even if she hates that ct and/or it’s next
doors or even if it’s a cat she’s never seen before she ought to
feel…something. The only time Belinda comes close to acting ‘normally’ is on
telling her next door neighbour (who unluckily for her turns out to be Mrs
Flood again…What are the odds that she has two crazy neighbours? More, you
suspect to come on that one…) Belinda comes in to her own later to an extent,
matching The Doctor and thinking for herself in a way a.i. characters would
never do. You even cheer her on as she refuses his help, telling him ‘I am not
your adventure!’ and tries to solve the story by sacrificing herself for her
‘people’ she never even knew existed (odd how often that happens to the 15th
Doctor in a way it never has to any other regeneration…) Even then, however,
she doesn’t feel quite right. Compare her to her close cousin Martha (also a
nurse): it feels as if Martha knew what she was talking about, that she’d taken
all her lessons and worked hard. If I was a patient in a hospital and had
Martha walk up to take my temperature I’d feel in safe hands. Not so Belinda. She
looks as if she’s never seen a stethoscope before. There’s also no chemistry
between Varada Sethu whatsoever – I’ve seen Doctors and Nurses in hospital with
better rapport than this. Normally I’d give her the benefit of the doubt and
say she’s still in shock – except that never once the whole episode has she
done anything any ‘normal’ person suffering from shock would feel. Full marks
for the ‘x-ray blankets’ though, a very clever and creditable invention for the
future, as well as a clever means of reminding the audience that The Doctor is
indeed alien (just not this sort of alien).
Belinda’s story ‘arc’ is
a confusing one too, in that we already know the answers. It’s not like the
Moffat days that left us on the edge of our seat trying to work out what happens
next – it looks as if the future episodes of this run will be looking at the
repercussions of all this (and presumably what happened to make the spaceship
Belinda was travelling on go ‘schwup’. Which is odd as the Doctor wasn’t
onboard and he seems to be in her timeline but hey ho, that’s timey wimey
spacey wacey stuff for you). It’s an interesting dynamic having a ‘reluctant’
companion who doesn’t want to be there and just wants to get home, with a
Doctor who thinks he can but can’t. We’re right back in the show’s early days
with Ian and Barbara in fact. Only…I cared for Ian and Barbara and half the
reason for watching Dr Who in its first two years was to see if they got home
safely. I couldn’t care less about Belinda, who seems to have lost a lot of her
teenage interest for the stars (maybe because her boyfriend stole her hope and
sense of wonder from her? It would be nice if the Doctor can bring that back!) We
don’t know Belinda properly yet – even compared to Ruby she’s sketchy, without
anything to set her apart from previous companions (the ability to befriend
anyone like Rose, the responsibility of Martha or the bolshieness hiding
tenderness of Donna).Well, I got to like Ruby more as last year’s series went on
so hopefully that is one issue that can be saved. But if even I’m not bursting
at the seams to see what happens next and got a bit bored before the finale
then Dr Who does have a bit of a problem. Mrs Flood, too, is becoming a bit
irritating in her 10th (?) cameo, without any new hints as to who or
what she is. No Susan Twist this time though: have we finally finished with
that arc now? (Seriously, was she really only there as a weak pun on ‘Sue Tech’?
I mean, if Russell wants some new puns he only needs to have a read of my ‘Kindred
Spirits’ books out now, with lots more awe at the stars, coldblooded reptile controlling
ex-boyfriends and wonky robots).
For the most part ‘The
Robot Revolution’ is a 50:50 story that could go either way, but it’s the
finale that tips it over into the disappointment pile. For every fan that says
the conclusion of ‘The Legend Of Ruby Sunday’
was a letdown I raise you this one: Belinda takes her star certificate and
thrusts it into the baddy’s hands. That’s it: that’s the entire denouement. The
Doctor has set up his escape route for six months and that consists of…sending
his new companion a certificate in a vacuum cleaner and expecting her to know
what to do. That’s an awful lot of trust for someone who has only had two
conversations with him so far (and one of them only using every ninth word).
What’s more it’s incredibly trusting that the Alan-villain is gormless enough
to just sit there letting it happen. He doesn’t even react by going
‘noooooooooooooooooooooooooo’ the way all good villains are supposed to, which
is just rude. And why does it happen anyway? So it’s established that two
things can’t be in the same proximity at different dates in their lifetime.
Except I could point to a hundred examples in Who where this doesn’t happen
(half of them 11th Doctor stories). Why, if it’s such a risk, does
the baddy keep his star certificate in such easy reach anyway? And it really is
a colossal coincidence that the Doctor is able to shield Belinda from harm by
simply throwing herself at him (he can usually only do that sort of thing when
he’s just regenerated). I’m all for companions taking charge and taking their
life into their own hands (not least when it’s against a controlling ex-lover)
but the scene would be more powerfully charged if it was entirely Belinda’s
idea, if she went into the situation expecting to die (rather than being
clueless) and if she’d kept that certificate as a reminder to never give up her
life and freedom to anyone ever again. Honestly the younger Russell T would
have ‘known’ instinctively to do that too. The younger Russell was also better
at making us care for characters we barely knew: while I’m quite happy to see
the 15th Doctor cry every few minutes (it’s so much better than
having him dark and brooding the whole time) we don’t know Sasha 55 at all so
we feel distant from him at that point. Unless we get to have a Big
Finish/novel spin-off of their adventures during their six months together it’s
another waste and so easy to solve (have her say more than one sentence so we
get to know her properly).
Oh well. It’s not as if
the script is hopeless. There are little gems scattered here and there. We were
told before we met him that Ncuti’s Doctor was going to be streetwise and
smart, ‘too cool for school’ and while he is all those things I’m really
enjoying how accident prone and ‘human’ he is, for lack of a better word. The
scenes of him swanning in, fully in command, only to mess up (accidentally
turning all the hospital lights out and missing Belinda by seconds) is so
hilariously opposite to what the 10th Doctor does in the similar
setup in ‘Smith and Jones that its hilarious (the 15th in reverse:
acts like a nerd but secretly cool underneath it all). Equally, before we learn
who Belinda is and what Alan is really like the opening scenes of Belinda
staring up at the skies and dreaming of other worlds is a lovely small bit of
writing, like the 9th Doctor’s introduction to Rose in
miniature. It’s about time someone in
the Whoniverse made the joke that’s been around in most hospitals for a century
too: ‘There’s always a Doctor standing back while the nurses do all the hard
work’. (Putting this in the single most feminist episode since Ace beat up a Dalek
with a baseball bat, it makes more sense here than most). I would also put up
with everything for my favourite – albeit brief – shot of the story, as a
totally confused Ncuti holds baby Belinda, not quite sure what’s happening.
Those are, though, sadly,
little nuggets of greatness in a story that doesn’t quite gel. There’s a lot
riding on ‘Robot Revolution’ too: ratings are in freefall, half the Whovians I
know seem to have given up watching and from what I hear Disney are waiting for
final audience figures to come through before making a final decision on the
show’s future. Which is a shame: despite all the calls for ‘fresh blood’ and a ‘new
look’ at the series there’s nothing here a bit longer in the creative oven
couldn’t put right. Dr Who isn’t short on ideas and it’s never been short of
the courage to say what needs saying. I for one really enjoyed last year’s series
– Capaldi's last series aside the best of any since the 50th
anniversary year twelve long years ago. It just needs an extra bag of tricks to
keep the episode unfolding all the way through, to break up a lot of the longer
talky scenes (which are easier to film but harder to watch) and to use some of
that Disney funding more fairly across the episode rather than in two robots,
one rocket launch and a minor explosion. None of these ideas are revolutionary, but they would make all the difference to the
show’s health and critical standing. As it is we’ve had another episode now
with some great ideas but which is an uneasy mix of the grown-up and childish,
that takes the big scary monsters that we should be putting on screen but
turning them into brightly coloured robots and an easily defeatible cartoon so
as not to scare the kiddies with all the mentions of misogyny. Talking of
cartoons, look what we get next week…
POSITIVES + The sets are
really good this week, believable both as an alien world and later (when we
learn what’s going on) as an artificially created alien world. Russell says
that he was inspired by the ‘blank slate’ of 1950s low budget B films like ‘Forbidden
Planet’ and ‘This Island Earth’, sets that looked both dated and hiply
contemporary at once.
NEGATIVES – Rather fittingly
perhaps, the robots were created with digital printers in 34 parts that were
then stapled together and painted. They look impressively sturdy given all that
though and chunky. The problem is they’re like so many robots we’ve had on Who
before – as if the designer was an a.i. generator in fact – with the base of the
colourful Daleks of ‘Victory Of The Daleks’,
the style of the robots from ‘Dinosaurs On A
Spaceship’ and the faces of the emojibots of ‘Smile’.
Given that all three are Steven Moffat creations it’s hard not to think that
Russell feels in competition with his old friend and wants to put his own stamp
on those ideas. Only the difference is these are not original in any way.
BEST QUOTE: Belinda ‘He has taken coercive
control – and made it complete control of the whole planet!’
PREQUELS/SEQUELS: There are a few similarities
with ‘Evening’s Empire’, a 7th Doctor comic strip from a Dr Who
Magazine Autumn special (1991). There, too, a world is created out of thin air
by a misogynist (named Alex, not Alan) who is fed up of not being able to run
his life the way he wants to. He has it in for all women rather than just one,
but does create it after being spurned by a Belinda-type (and there’s a
satisfying number of clashes between him and Ace, who isn’t about to be told
what to do by anybody, never mind a boy her age). The story is far kinder to
him too, seeing the villain as the inevitable result of a strict Christian
upbringing that made Alex unable to see any ‘truth’ beyond the Bible’s 2000
year old idea of gender issues. Like many Who things from the ‘wilderness years’
it’s somehow more relevant to now than anything Dr Who is making at the moment.
Previous ‘Joy To The World’ next ‘Lux’
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