Robot of Sherwood

This is getting silly.

Usually whenever there is a new Doctor, there is one story early in their first series that doesn't quite seem to jive with the stories around it, usually because it feels like it should have been written for the previous Doctor. Robot of Sherwood is generally regarded as that story. It also happens to be an out and out comedy, bordering on farce, which seemed to sit at odds with everyone's expectations of the new Doctor's personality. I think my opinion of this one on the first run was higher than that of most fans, but I do recall it having a very different feel than the others. It also is written by Mark Gatiss and that puts a lot of folks on edge right from the beginning.

Plot Summary

Giving Clara carte blanche on their next trip, Clara opts to visit Robin Hood. The Doctor reluctantly sets the TARDIS to this location, fully believing that Robin Hood is a myth. Upon landing, he goes to show off nothing being around when the TARDIS is hit with an arrow, shot by Robin Hood. Robin vows to steal the TARDIS but the Doctor fends him off by dueling him with a spoon over a stream span. The Doctor knocks him off but is pulled in by Robin afterward as Clara watches.

In the village, the Sheriff ransacks the houses, taking peasants to toil in the castle and also stealing gold while leaving other treasures behind. One villager tries to resist the Sheriff's abduction of his daughter and the Sheriff kills him for his insolence.

At Robin's hideout, Clara is introduced to his fellow outlaws while the Doctor tries to figure out what everyone is, refusing to believe that they are the real merry men. Robin reveals to Clara that Marion was taken from him when he was declared outlaw and he keeps trying to prove himself not a coward by fighting the Sheriff. Robin also reveals that he intends to enter an archery tournament to prove himself the greatest archer in the land. Clara meanwhile encourages the Doctor to try and keep an open mind about things. The Doctor is still not convinced and notes that the weather is unseasonably warm for Autumn.

At the tournament, the contest is narrowed to the Sheriff and Robin in disguise after several rounds. The Sheriff hits the bulls-eye but Robin splits his arrow, winning the tournament. Before he can claim the prize, a golden arrow, the Doctor splits Robin's arrow, superseding him. The Doctor tosses the golden arrow aside and goes to interrogate the Sheriff when Robin splits the Doctor's arrow. The two fire additional shots, trying to one-up the other. The Doctor finally gets irritated and causes the target to explode with his sonic screwdriver.

Stunned by this, the Sheriff orders their arrest. Robin reveals himself and Clara jumps in with a quarterstaff. Robin hacks the arm off one of the knights but it is shown to be mechanical. The faceplate parts and a robot face is revealed, which grabs the Doctor's immediate attention. The robots begin to attack the crowed with lasers but the Doctor orders immediate surrender. Robin orders his men off as the three are taken to the castle and the robots pulled back.

In the castle, the robots drive the enslaved peasants to haul gold into a smelter where it is melted and poured into circuit board patterns. One peasant collapses, exhausted. The young woman taken earlier begs for him to be allowed to rest but the robots vaporize him instead. She is then put back to work.

Elsewhere in the dungeon, Robin and the Doctor get into a pissing contest while chained to posts. Clara orders them to both shut up and a guard enters a moment later. The guard takes Clara to see the Sheriff. The Sheriff wines and dines her while asking whether she is from space. Clara defers the question, noting the Sheriff is the one with a robot army.

Robin pretends to be sick, attracting the attention of the guard. The Doctor convinces him that Robin has a secret message for which the guard can get a reward. As he leans in, Robin knocks the guard out. Both men fumble for the guard's keys and accidentally knock them into the sewer. However, with the door open, they are able to lift the block they are chained to and carry it out to a blacksmith's iron and break their chains.

The Sheriff, under Clara's urging, tells the story of how the robots crashed in their ship and he had a castle built around it. They helped him and he aided them by scouring the countryside with gold, for which they need to repair their ship. As an additional carrot, the robots promised the Sheriff that they would help him become king of England itself and then the world. When the Sheriff presses Clara for her story, she demurs and rejects his romantic advances.

The Doctor and Robin find the bridge of the robot spaceship where the Doctor discovers the robot's need for gold. He also determines that the damage to the engine is too great. It is leaking radiation into the atmosphere (hence the warm climate) and will explode if they take off. He also believes that the robots have created both the Sheriff and Robin as a means of blending in. The Doctor shows Robin the databank which includes archived retellings of the legend of Robin Hood. Robin is both stunned at this and incensed at the accusation that he is in league with the Sheriff.

The Sheriff interrupts their banter with Clara in tow. The robots move to kill Robin but he ducks the laser blast, which blows a hole in the side of the castle. Clara rushes to Robin's side to check on him. He grabs her and they leap out the hole into the moat. The Sheriff has the Doctor knocked out and clapped in irons while Robin and Clara swim to shore and head back into the forest.

In the morning, Robin wakes Clara and demands she tell him about the legend of Robin Hood and of the Doctor. Also in the morning, the Doctor wakes and works with the young woman taken from the village to free his chains and to create a plan of attack against the robots. When a robot comes over to put the Doctor to work, he reveals his free hands. The robot fires a laser at the Doctor, but the Doctor reflects it with a polished gold plate. The other prisoners produce polished plates and reflect the lasers back at the robots. The robots destroy themselves and the Doctor urges the prisoners to flee the castle.

Seeing this, the Sheriff comes down to kill the Doctor. The Doctor confronts the Sheriff about Robin being part of the scheme but the Sheriff convinces the Doctor that both he and Robin are real and existed prior to the arrival of the robots. Robin then enters to save the Doctor. He and the Sheriff cross swords as the Sheriff insists on taking Robin alone. Robin climbs to a beam above the gold smelting pot. The Sheriff follows and disarms Robin. However, when he moves to kill Robin, he dodges the blow and knocks the Sheriff into the molten gold with the trick the Doctor used on him.

The three flee the castle as the robots launch their spacecraft. Knowing they didn't have enough gold to get into orbit, the Doctor grabs the golden arrow and explaining that if they fire it into the ship, it might give enough of an energy burst to get the ship into orbit. The Doctor, Clara and Robin work together and fire the arrow into the engine duct, sending the ship into space. In orbit, the engine goes critical and explodes, destroying the ship.

Clara and the Doctor prepare to depart, the Doctor giving Robin some begrudging respect. Clara notes that the Doctor likes Robin and the Doctor tells her that he is leaving him a present. As the TARDIS departs, Marion is revealed to be behind the TARDIS. She and Robin reunite and Robin calls out thanks to the Doctor.

Analysis

I don't dislike Robot of Sherwood but the whole tone of it doesn't match well with the nature of the Twelfth Doctor in Series 8. I think this was written with the Eleventh Doctor in mind and that his light-hearted disbelief would have played much more comedic-ly. The brusque Twelfth Doctor instead just seems to get angry and scenes that should be funny become more uncomfortable than anything else. He also seems uncharacteristically thick given that he keep looks for an excuse to make Robin not real.

All that being said, I enjoy the performance of the Doctor in this story. He's angry and thick at points, but he is still witty and yet gets a comeuppance here and there. Robin knocking him into the stream is a direct rip off of the Little John story while the point where the Sheriff points out the flaw in the logic of having Robin be a robot is also rather amusing. He is pompous but in a way that you can't help but enjoy, though it gets to be a bit much after a while.

Clara is pretty good in this, being forced to play mom in-between two sniping children while also trying to be a fan girl. She functions rather well as an audience stand in given that when she gets frustrated is about the same time that the audience is getting fed up with the squabbling and also revels in meeting the real men behind the legends. But you also see the beginnings of some of the characteristics that drive me away from Clara. The scene with the Sheriff is a bit clichéd and I'm not sure she would be as bold about her answers than a normal person would be. Yet there is still a tinge of fear and trepidation in her voice so that brings it closer to a normal reaction.

I like the idea of Robin more than his execution. He's a bit more brash than I enjoy. I know he is putting on a front to keep up the bravado, but it comes across as trying a bit too hard. I wouldn't go so far as to call it over-the-top, but the portrayal is more like playing the legend that is Robin Hood, than playing the man Robin. Playing it up with the Doctor makes sense, but I think his moments with Clara and his own men should have been quieter. There is only the briefest of these moments when he demands answers from Clara. I would have liked more of those to temper his clear dick-waving contest with the Doctor.

The Sheriff himself wasn't bad as a villain, but he was distinctly one-note. I also got a bit disappointed when his plan devolved into the just the stereotypical taking over the world. Using the robots to become king of England, I can understand. But how an eleventh century mind would even fathom taking over the world seems a bit much. There was also a rather famous bit of cut footage which demonstrated how the Sheriff had been "repaired" by the robots. The Sheriff makes a passing mention of this but the scene was cut due to the episode's airing in proximity to a beheading incident by ISIS. In the scene, Robin would have cut the Sheriff's head off, revealing him to be a cyborg who puts his severed head back on. This would have added a touch of depth to his character but probably not enough to properly flesh him out.

As for the overall plot, it's very silly and one's enjoyment of it is going to entirely depend on whether you're in the mood for a farcical comedy. I think it's greatest hindrance is that it was written with the Eleventh Doctor in mind and while adapted for the Twelfth Doctor, it looses that silliness that would have been easy with the Eleventh. The jokes ultimately revolve solely around the Doctor not believing that what he is seeing is real. If the Doctor is questioning constantly in a light-hearted fashion while also trying to one-up Robin in a playful fashion, that works. But someone getting angry in his confusion over things and belittling when he is trying to make himself better doesn't come across as funny. The most genuine moment for the Doctor is when he stops the archery contest by proclaiming that it is getting silly. That felt like the Twelfth Doctor's natural reaction, not the contest itself.

Then you have the very contrived ending. In the prior forty minutes, the robots are shown collecting gold, smelting it and pouring it into circuit breaker molds to repair their engines. However, they don't have enough and they try to take off with insufficient power. So how does dropping a random piece of gold into the exhaust give them the power boost to get into orbit? In terms of hand-wavium, I think this rates up with killing Cybermen by slingshoting gold coins into their chest. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It gives the overall story a feel as though the writer just ran out of time and opted for the "wizard made everything better" ending.

To can't call this a good story, even if there were parts of it I did enjoy. But the overall tone became grating after a while, the villain was flat, it wasn't as funny as I wanted and the ending was just dumb. It's not as bad as In the Forest of the Night, but I wouldn't have a problem putting this story as the second worst of the series. Again, maybe not as bad as some fans proclaim it, but definitely not a story I'd run back to for repeat viewings.

Overall personal score: 1.5 out of 5