The Robots of Life

"It's company policy to take dead memories and mementos."

Writer: Roland Moore

Format: Audio

Released: December 2019

Series: The Robots 1.01

Featuring: Liv, Tula

Synopsis

Settling into life back on Kalor, Liv investigates a medical centre where the patients are dying.

Verdict

The Robots of Life was an excellent start to the first series of The Robots! I have heard so many good things about this boxset without much at all in terms of spoilers and I am very grateful for that because if this is an indication of how things will go, then I'm very excited! This catches us up on the year Liv spent away from the TARDIS during the events of Escape from Kaldor amidst the Ravenous series of Eighth Doctor Adventures, and it's just a wonderful idea for a spinoff. Liv is more than able to hold her own as a lead and she's slowly growing into one of my very favourite companions, but having the setting of Kaldor just adds an entirely new dimension. It's a planet rife for its own series and the fact there are six of the boxsets to explore makes me very excited. I was a little surprised that we even jumped a week ahead of Liv leaving the Doctor behind and whilst it was good to mention him leaving her, I liked her confidence in believing that he would come back. She really had no doubt and that was nice to hear. I think the episode title is just tremendous and it's ironic then that it actually focuses on quite a few unexplained deaths. At least to the public eye that is. Liv's history with Varren was good to explore and I like that he was her mentor, but the mentee seems to have surpassed him now. She could diagnose that he was suffering from tremors and despite his hesitation she thought they could be life threatening if they were left untreated. The way the episode slowly built into revealing there was much more going on was brilliant and I liked learning that Varren was hiding his own mistakes. But even in that hiding there was something deeper going on. Liv doing her research into Varren and his partnership with the S57 Robot was tremendous and she soon discovered that he was using the robot as an excuse for his own surgical errors. Five people had died because of it and he thought it was somewhat harmless for S57 to just have its memories wiped. If he was the one punished then he would lose his job! So much for the sanctity of life. Liv challenging her old mentor on his actions was great and despite only being back a week, she was getting her name known again on Kaldor. I thought the relationship with Tula was fascinating and she was hardly grateful for her sister orchestrating her getting a job back at the hospital despite the necessary qualifications having expired. I like the mystery of what's happening at the company as even when Liv presented what Varren had been doing, Skellen as the boss hardly seemed surprised. Instead of disciplinary action he was gifted a nice retirement package! There's clearly more than meets the eye going on here and I like how that ties in with S57 having some semblance of sentience. The use of the wise man and the hat colour riddle to show that S57 was more than just a mere robot was excellent and I must admit I didn't have a clue what the answer was! Tula being the one to get punished because of her using Skellen's authorisation codes after Liv encouraged her to look into the grave marker business was really well done and I'm enjoying the mystery of just what is happening. The very concept of harnessing memories of the dead is wonderfully disturbing and definitely something I would love to explore further. It seems that will be the case judging by the way things ended with a semi-cliffhanger and a link back to The Robots of Death with the mention of Toos as the first person to retrieve dead memories. Just what is the company aim? I look forward to finding out, especially with the Robots abound because it's so difficult to know if they truly are what they seem. And that's part of their charm. Overall, an excellent start to the series and it's lovely to hear Liv in her home environment. I can't wait for more.

Rating: 9/10