Robot

There's no point of being grown up if you can't be childish sometimes

Robot is the first story of the Fourth Doctor. However, the story format and telling is very much belonging to that of the Third Doctor era but with a bit more comedy thrown in.

Plot Summary

After regenerating, the Doctor recuperates in the UNIT medical center. He is primed to leave except that the Brigadier brings word that secret plans for a laser weapon have been stolen and a man killed. After some initial investigating, the Doctor is intrigued enough to stick around and work with UNIT one more time.

Sarah also contributes by using her reporters credentials to investigate a think tank that has had ties to the weapon plans. There she discovers a the robot that has been stealing the plans and killing (although she doesn't know this yet). She shows kindness to the robot while everyone else dismisses it as a mindless machine. She then meets the robot's creator, Professor Kettlewell, who had been dismissed from the think tank.

The robot is used to steal the last of the plans and to murder a cabinet minister who had nuclear launch codes in his possession. Those codes are taken to the think tank director, Hilda Winters, who is organizing a rise of the intellectual class who will rebuild society after the lesser elements are destroyed. Sarah, the Doctor, and Professor Kettlewell go to a meeting of the society's members, although the Doctor is unaware that Sarah has snuck in. She learns that Professor Kettlewell is actually the mastermind behind the society, although Miss Winters has taken it to extremes. UNIT moves to arrest the society but Winters, her assistant and Kettlewell escape using Sarah as a hostage.

They flee to a bunker where Winters sets the codes to launch the world's nuclear arsenal. The Robot is dispatched to guard the entrance and successfully repels UNITs attempts to get by. Sarah and Harry, who had also been taken captive, attempt to escape. Winters orders the robot to kill them but it hesitates as it remembers Sarah being kind to it. It eventually fires but kills Kettlewell instead, further destabilizing it's mind. The Doctor sneaks in and disables the launch computer and Winters and all the others in the bunker are arrested.

After Winters is taken away, the robot reactivates and moves against UNIT in an attempt to protect Sarah. UNIT attempts to destroy the robot with the disintegration gun but it causes a reaction which causes the robot to grow to a giant size. It grabs Sarah and places her on a building to keep her out of harm's reach and then begins to attack UNIT. The Doctor runs back to Professor Kettlewell's lab and brews a solution that will dissolve the robot's structure. He throws it on the robot and it causes the robot to shrink back to it's normal size and then be eaten away.

Analysis

If you watched Doctor Who in broadcast order, you might not think of this one as much different than the stories that preceded it. But if you have seen Fourth Doctor stories that aired later, this would have seemed very out of left field. It is not bad, but it just feels off because it is clearly more suited for the Third Doctor.

For the most part, the story is pretty good. It is well acted and it is also nice to see a strong female villain, even if it is another tired retread of taking over the world. Professor Kettlewell is also a nice character as it is not the typical angry scientist retread and instead a man with somewhat extreme ideas uses by people with even worse extremes. The Doctor also finds his feet very quickly and is recognizable almost instantly, a bit of a divergence from the usual needing a couple of stories to get over the effects of regeneration.

There are two prominent shortcomings that I can find with this story. First is nature of the Fourth Doctor and how it offsets UNIT. The Third Doctor worked well with UNIT and the two seemed to mesh, even when they were at odds. The Forth Doctor seems wrong in being tied down with the Brigadier and even his driving of Bessie around just doesn't seem to fit. It gives a constant underplay of something just being not right with this one.

The second shortcoming are the effects. There is a lot of CSO and it looks pretty bad. In 1970's stories there is a bit of leeway given but the effects here just stand out as blatantly below par. It isn't even that bad up through the first three episodes as I thought they did a pretty good job with the Robot. But in Episode Four, when it becomes King Kong, things just go to pot. The story also loses a lot in it's dynamic in Episode Four. Professor Kettlewell and Miss Winters provided different aspects to the villain's side and also helped flesh out the robot with it's own psychosis. However, in Episode Four, the robot has gone completely into reactionary Oedipus Complex and is reduced to the rampaging monster, again like King Kong. In many ways, if the story had ended in Episode Three, it might have been slightly better received. Or maybe that's just me.

Overall, this wasn't a bad way to end the producership of Barry Letts or to introduce the Fourth Doctor. But it also wasn't a particularly great beginning either. I'd have considered a 3.5 or a 4 for the first three episodes but I've got to knock it down for the shortfalls of Episode Four, action-packed as it may have been.

Overall personal score: 3 out 5