The Robots of Death

"Robots cannot kill."

Writer: Chris Boucher

Format: TV

Broadcast: 29th January - 19th February 1976

Season: 14.05

Featuring: Fourth Doctor, Leela

Synopsis 

On a distant, barren planet, Storm Mine 4 trawls across bleak deserts and through fierce duststorms in search of rare and valuable metals. Onboard the Sandminer is a small skeleton crew, who alternate between indulgent relaxation and skilled mining work. The mundane, day-to-day duties of the mine are attended to by a much larger complement of servile robots.

This is a society that is dependent on robots for all areas of life, the people comforted by the knowledge that the strictest safeguards are built into each and every robot's programming. So when one of the Sandminer crew is murdered, suspicion falls on two new arrivals...

The Doctor and Leela arrive on board, and are immediately accused of being the suspects. But the Doctor deduces that the killer is possibly not human. More deaths occur - can he persuade the remaining crew members that the killer may be a robot?

Verdict 

The Robots of Death was an excellent story! There's no denying that this story is an instant classic and its consistently high performances in ranking polls will confirm just that. This was only my second time watching the story and my first on DVD and with it being nearly four years since my original outing, it's fair to say that things were fairly new to me. I don't own the Target novelisation so I haven't since clued up on the story's events but I definitely think that was beneficial because doing a story that feels brand new means that you're surprised by the twists and surprises that occur and that was exactly the case with this story here. The confined setting of the Sandminer worked really well and although the set was rather dull, it actually worked for the story that was being told. That obviously wasn't the case with the Warriors of the Deep set but there were no such problems here. I really do love the pairing of the Fourth Doctor and Leela and it really does seem a while since my last performed story to feature the TARDIS pairing. I was quite surprised by how little comedy there was between them which almost seemed a little strange. It was still present but there didn't seem to be much other than the yoyo scene in the TARDIS. Watching stories sporadically really made me aware of how poor the wood-panelled TARDIS console room is. I'm not sure why it was adopted for a season or so but it just seems compact and well, lacklustre for what the TARDIS should be. The Doctor explaining the workings of the TARDIS being dimensionally transcendental was wonderful and it showed all of the early signs in the relationship between the Fourth Doctor and Leela. Of course, she'd only just arrived in The Face of Evil but it seems like the humour would just increase as the stories go on, and I think perhaps even more so in the audio adventures starring the pair. The Sandminer Robots have gone on to become an instantly recognisable enemy from the Classic era of Doctor Who and I think that's testament to how good this story is. There's no doubting its popularity and I was surprised to read that Tom Baker was actually quite critical of the script! I don't think there are any problems with the script to be honest and it's just some of the costumes and direction that are the reasons this serial just misses out on full marks. It's pretty obvious, at least to an observant viewer like myself, who the man behind the murders is from part two. Dask is clearly the culprit but even though that was presented to me from the start, it was still excellent to see the story unfold and build towards that revelation. The fact that he was Taren Capel was something a little less expected though and I loved how the Doctor knew that the mad scientist was on board. The costume designs of the Sandminer Robots are simply sensational and I'm actually very proud to own an action figure of all three classes of robot. The distinction between the Dums, VOCs and Super VOCs is fantastic and I loved how at least one robot from each class had a significant role in the latter stages when the Robots were carrying out orders to kill all humans. I thought the D84 Robot was terrific and it was good hoe it seemed to be the only robot that anybody could trust. The Doctor certainly had a good relationship with him but the same can't be said for the SV7 Robot. He appeared to be the commander behind the numerous murders that were occurring on the Sandminer for a time but then so did Commander Uvanov. I thought he was a rather strange character but I liked his striving towards making a profit. He didn't seem to be at all interested in the murders if it meant that they were losing valuable time and money for the expedition. Toos and Zilda were favourite characters of mine with Borg and Poul also standing out in a pretty impressive guest cast. Leela's perception of body language being proven right was fantastic as was the rather action packed ending! Many robots died and although this story is full of murder mysteries, death doesn't seem to be why this story is remembered. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson were terrific and the Sandminer Robots would go down in history. Overall, a terrific serial!

Rating: 9/10