"Doctor Who" The Robots of Death: Part 1 (1977)

User Rating:

8.1/10   

Director:

Michael E. Briant

Writer:

Chris Boucher (writer)

TV Series:

"Doctor Who" (1963)

Original Air Date:

29 January 1977 (Season 14, Episode 17)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | Sci-Fi

Plot:

The TARDIS arrives on a Sandminer, a mining ship on a desert planet. Where the Doctor and Leela find...

Plot Keywords:

Robot | Horizon | Boulder | Lost | Female Warrior

Cast

Tom Baker	...	Doctor Who
Louise Jameson	...	Leela
Russell Hunter	...	Uvanov
Pamela Salem	...	Toos
David Bailie	...	Dask
David Collings	...	Poul
Brian Croucher	...	Borg
Tania Rogers	...	Zilda
Tariq Yunus	...	Cass
Rob Edwards	...	Chub
Gregory de Polnay	...	D.84
Miles Fothergill	...	S.V.7
Mark Blackwell Baker	...	Robot
John Bleasdale	...	Robot
Mark Cooper	...	Robot

Country:

UK

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Sound Mix:

Mono

Company:

British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)

Trivia:

In 2000 this became the first "Doctor Who" (1963) serial from the Tom Baker era to be released by the BBC on DVD.

Quotes:

Chub: 'There was a Voc therapist in Kaldor City once. Specially programmed, equipped with vibro-digits, subcutaneous stimulators, the lot. You know what happened, Borg? Its first client wanted treatment for a stiff elbow. The Voc therapist felt carefully all round the joint, and then suddenly just twisted his arm off at the shoulder. Shoompf. All over in two seconds.

Soundtrack:

Préludes, Book 1 no 8: La fille aux cheveux de lin (The Girl With the Flaxen Hair)

Very handsome robots indeed -- a fine entry.

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I am reviewing all four parts here as that is the way that it comes on DVD.

This is one of the better Tom Baker entries. It ran in 1977 (January 29th - February 19th), and is 95 minutes in length (broken down into 4 episodes). It's full-screen and in color. The story was written by Chris Boucher (story No. 090) and this copy is nice and clear with no film scratch lines or other distortions. There are a few special features (photo gallery, commentary, and some really weird unused footage).

The story here is that The Doctor and Leela (she's very hot-looking as usual) land the Tardis on a desolate mining planet where a few humans (men and women) oversee lots of busy robots who do all the work, including running the huge Juggernaut of a machine that does the mining. In fact, almost all the sequences are filmed "inside" the big mining-ship.

Right after the two show up, one of the miners is coincidentally murdered and The Doctor and Leela get blamed because the robots are programmed never to harm humans. There seems to be no motive for one human miner to have killed another. But it soon becomes apparent that the robots' programming may have been altered by some subversive.... (well, THAT would be a SPOILER!) In any event, it ends up being pretty much the robots versus the humans before it's all over... with a couple of exceptions. And, I should reiterate, the robots look pretty spiffy, with metallic humanoid faces.

Tom Baker is at his best in this one and it doesn't drag anywhere. The story is interesting and the sets are pretty darn good. Overall, this is a top Doctor Who entry and I would recommend it to all sci-fi fans.