TL;DR – An odd opening episode that is equally interesting, odd, and also a bit frustrating.

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Doctor Who Review –

Well, we’re back, and the series that keeps on truckin’ is back with the second season of its third era. Doctor Who has always been a bit of an odd duck because there are times when it soars in the sky and other times when it flounders around with its but hanging in the air. Last season was a bit of both, where interesting characters and scenarios got lost at times due to a lack of focus. Will this second season work on some of those issues? Well, since it was filmed before the first episodes came out, I am not holding my breath, but I am always happy to be proven wrong.   

So, to set the scene, Miss Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) is a nurse working in a local hospital and lives a generally unremarkable life bar the time one day that an old flame bought one of those silly ‘name a star’ certificates. But the one people who did not think the certificate was ridiculous was the new robot overlords of Miss Belinda Chandra I. Who capture her and take her back to the planet, now named after her, to marry their AI overlord, who is the new royal queen of the planet. The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) is there to help, but it looks like time is in flux. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

Right from the start, I do want to champion the work all the artists do in this show. The design of the robots was fantastic. They felt like they took the physicality of King Hydroflax from The Husbands of River Song with the Emojibots of Smile. Murray Gold is back with some fantastic musical notes; he got to flex some of the weird in places, and also, that Gold bombast serves him so well. On that experimental side, we get to dip into that 2001: A Space Odyssey feel towards the end, which is always a delight. Oh, and x-ray blankets, what a fantastic idea.   

Narratively speaking, this was an interesting setup because the early setup is so easy to comprehend. We all know about those silly certificates when you claim the name of a star, and we know they are as meaningless as the paper they are printed on. But what if they weren’t? But then, by the end, it has twisted and turned so much that even a contortionist would step in and go, ‘That’s too much’. Yes, you can use ‘Timey-wimey’ to hand wave away a lot of things, but even that has its limits. I get that they are using it to set up their big season-long story arc, and I might look at it better on the flip side, but I am not entirely sold right now.

On that front, we need to talk about a couple of things. One of my significant criticisms from last season was that it felt like they wanted to talk about important issues, but the writing was, at best, surface-level and, at worst, out of touch. Here we get it again. Coercive control and incels are two profoundly essential issues to explore. But here, they felt more like an afterthought or a best a punch line for the episode. What is the point of engaging with those topics if you refuse to do any honest exploration? I think the only time this actually landed was one small moment when Belinda rightly chastised The Doctor for scanning her DNA without her permission. Also, while I am here, you have Ncuti Gatwa, one of the most expressive actors of this new generation, and the only emotion the writers can seem to give him is crying.

In the end, do we recommend Doctor Who: The Robot Revolution? I did have some frustrations with the episode, though. It was still a very watchable outing, and it is also just a realisation that we might be getting another season with all the same issues as the last. Have you watched Doctor Who yet? Let us know what you thought in the comments below.

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

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Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Doctor Who
Directed by – Peter Hoar
Written by – Russell T Davies
Production/Distribution Companies – BBC Studios, Badwolf & Disney+
Starring – Ncuti Gatwa & Varada Sethu with Anita Dobson, Evelyn Miller, Jonny Green, Max Parker & Nicholas Briggs and Thalía Dudek, Jeffin Kunjumon, Tom Storey, Stephen Love, Robert Strange, Charles Sandford, Lucas Edwards, Caleb Hughes & Nadine Higgin