Revisitations 3 - The Money For Old Rope Box Set

[SiHart]

In some ways Robots is the opposite to Tomb. Throughout the extras, the cast and crew seem to be quite down on the scripts, thinking the influences were too obvious and it was just another Doctor Who space adventure....

But this pushed them to make it something different and lead to the design decisions made throughout. What comes across throughout is how much effort went into making this different and it was well worth it. They investigated and researched the work the Sandminer would have been doing, made design choices based on that for the outside, and then considered the aesthetics that a crew on a long voyage would actually want, to make their life comfortable. This is what makes the story work.

Can you imagine its reputation if the story had been made using sets like the space ship set in Planet of Evil with robots that looked like cut-price Cybermen? It could so easily have happened.

[Si Hunt]

It's absolutely true Si. What I love about the story is that it's do detailed and well thought-through, and has no many iconic touches like the robot design and the thumping heartbeat music.

Although my favourite aspect is the characters. I always point to that first scene, which is so brilliantly drawn; looking back, every line is a clue! For example Dask's subtle smugness that the robot beats Uvanov at chess. I compare every Base Under Seige story to Robots with the simple question - can you name all the characters? Because we can all name Toos, Zilda, Uvanov, Poul, Chubb and co because they are so individual, recognisable and likeable.

Si.

[SiHart]

Apparently- new fact- that scene was written by Robert Holmes when the story was found to be under running!

[Si Hunt]

Oh really! How very telling! That's always been one of my favourite scenes!

Si.

[Jason Thompson]

The doors crash down like the wooden props they are, footsteps ring out from the studio floor and the Cyber Controller's cardboard revitaliser is all the more obvious for the sounds of paper shamefully coming from it when he punches his way out. There's a painful ten seconds where the Cybermen hammer on the inside of the Tomb and 100% of the viewers attention is on the inappropriate "banging" of hand on flimsy wood.

And yet they put a very hollow 'knocked over a dustbin' sound on the Cybermen crashing down the ladder of the hatch after Jamie shoots them....

[Jason Thompson]

Oh, and apparently no-one told Roy Stewart that there was supposed to be a ladder in the hatch, not a set of steps as was actually there. Watch as everyone turns around to back down the 'ladder', but he just walks straight into the hatch as though there is a stairway there...

[Jason Thompson]

I always point to that first scene, which is so brilliantly drawn; looking back, every line is a clue!

Yes, the story is well crafted. There are quite a few clues throughout. Poul's telling SV-7 to get out and bemoaning the fact that there are more rules about robots than humans is another one (which I am afraid to say I did not spot until fairly recently), as his his panicked insistence that the Doctor's idea that the robots were being reprogrammed to kill is impossible.

Poor old Borg got a bit short-changed, I always feel though. Brian Croucher turns in a great performance, and his character gets what must be the most dramatic death at the hands of a robot, and it happens entirely off screen! We don't even see his body, or even get to see him menacingly approached by a robot. The telltale smears of blood and even what appear to be small chunks of flesh on the damaged robot's hand suggest it might not have been family tea-time viewing, however....

[Si Hunt]

It's nothing new to point out Toberman as an outdated black stereotype, but it's a little more than that I think, which rarely gets mentioned. He's basically her slave isn't he? She treats him like a bodyguard and maybe he is, but the implication is clearly slavery. The biggest evidence of their awful use of the stereotype is wear Toberman is turned into a blank and faceless slave of the Cybermen, and nobody actually notices.

If only all characters had been named after stories they were in too. We could have had Maxtible's strong man, Evdal, or Tanya's male servant Wheesp.

Si.

[Si Hunt]

The telltale smears of blood and even what appear to be small chunks of flesh on the damaged robot's hand suggest it might not have been family tea-time viewing, however....

It's quite gruesome isn't it? And I love the way Dudley's score dives into a squelchy thunder as Poul sees the hand and clutches his head. No-one ever cites that as a moment when DW went too far, but the bloody hand, and the implication of what's happened, is really horrible.

Si.

[Jason Thompson]

I love that scene. It's a terrible moment for a man terrified of robots, who has been constantly reassuring himself that they could not possibly harm humans, and is suddenly confronted with irrefutable proof that they do.

On reflection I am going to revise my earlier comment about Borg being short-changed in the 'death by robot' stakes, because actually it is narratively a master stroke. We last saw Borg alive and well, as did Poul. We didn't see him die. Nor did Poul. We know only as much as Poul does about what happened and, like him, it is left to our imaginations to fill in the blanks and figure out how that blood and flesh got on the robot's hand. And if we were to allow ourselves to believe it was really happening and not just something on a TV show, it would be utterly terrifying, perhaps even more so than had we witnessed it ourselves.

[SiHart]

Sometimes the imagined violence is much nastier than actually seeing it...

[Rob McCow]

I've always found the scenes in the robot storage bay faintly baffling. We see the robot with the blood on its hand, but it also has an exploded head - how did that happen? I'm not altogether sure and I've seen the story a dozen times or more. Did it explode because it killed a man, or was Dask trying to fix it? It's also slightly strange that this scene makes it totally obvious that Dask is responsible for the robot rampage, because he doesn't notice the blood, despite having worked on the robot.

Also, after Leela escapes from the Voc she goes and hides in the robot storage bay. Yet it still seems to me that there's a scene missing, she seems to suddenly appear there rather than actually head off in that direction. And how does she get the panel she is hiding behind to turn round? Dask is shown to use a remote control and there are no switches that Leela seems able to use. Probably just a mistake, but a strange one.

[Si Hunt]

The robot's head isn't exploded, it's in for repair (hence the "corpse" marker on it). So it's one that Dask is mid-way through working on - he's opened up the head, then patched it together temporarily with gaffer tape until he can affect a more permenant repair.

Later on he encounters the same robot and murmers "Irrepairable". So we can conclude that this robot had got damaged beyond repair.

Alternatively, the robots are there to carry out jobs too dangerous for the human crew - and it's a sandminer which has thousands of tons of rocks and ore flowing through it's scoops. So it's possible that the robot got trapped in a scoop when some ore was let in, and the rocks smashed its head in.

Si.

[Jason Thompson]

I've always found the scenes in the robot storage bay faintly baffling. We see the robot with the blood on its hand, but it also has an exploded head - how did that happen? I'm not altogether sure and I've seen the story a dozen times or more.

If you listen carefully to what SV7 is telling Poul and Toos during the scene near the beginning of episode 3 as he reports the damage to the sandminer, he refers to a couple of Vocs that were "rendered inoperative by the impact. They have been placed in security storage". That suggests that the Voc that Dask describes as 'irreparable' got its head smashed due to a bad fall when the sandminer lurched near the end of episode 2.

It's also slightly strange that this scene makes it totally obvious that Dask is responsible for the robot rampage, because he doesn't notice the blood, despite having worked on the robot.

To me that scene seems to be intended to give the impression that this is the first time Dask has seen the robot. His position as 'chief fixer' would require him to check the robots that were damaged and see if they could be repaired, so we're presumably meant to think that's what he is doing (as he tells Poul, it's his job).

[Rob McCow]

So how long was that robot wandering about with blood on its hands?

[Jason Thompson]

Probably not very long. I always imagined that the sabotage and Borg's struggle with the Voc happened at around the same time, and that the smashed Voc was probably the one who sabotaged the controls in the first place (Toos's conversation with Poul implies that Dask was on the command deck, and only went down when Borg failed to answer the communicator, so it wasn't him). The struggle with Borg probably happened when he caught the robot tinkering where it shouldn't have been.

[SiHart]

Or else Dask sent the robot to kill him. He could well have been marked for death, as never see the struggle and only hear Dask has found the body.

[Rob McCow]

It's all conjecture really. We could have done with a shot of the Voc robot getting damaged in some way - a wobbly camera shot with a few bits of grit and one of the robots falling over would have been enough!

The robot's head isn't exploded, it's in for repair (hence the "corpse" marker on it). So it's one that Dask is mid-way through working on - he's opened up the head

If he'd got round to opening the head up, surely he would have noticed the blood soaked hand?

"rendered inoperative by the impact. They have been placed in security storage".

Ah! So it's buried away in some of the most boring dialogue of the story

There's some good theories here, but we never actually get told how the robot got damaged. For all we know it could have been trying to pick its nose with a Laserson probe.

[SiHart]

Dask may well have noticed the bloody hand, but since he was behind the robot led murders he probably wouldn't have cared. The bloodstained robot after all was hidden from sight after dask places the corpse marker on him, and it is Poul who opens it up again after he leaves.

[Rob McCow]

OK cool. That probably explains why Dask didn't clean the hand of the robot that he sent to kill Borg either.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

I think I need to watch Robots again. It's another one I've not seen for 10 years.

[Andrew Curnow]

For all we know it could have been trying to pick its nose with a Laserson probe.

[Jonno]

Regarding the damaged robot, according to the Target book :

"One side of the silvery head had been almost flattened by a massive blow. The abrupt jamming of the Sandminer's drive units had slammed the robot head first into a metal bulkhead. Robot bodies and limbs could usually be repaired, but, just as with humans, damage to the delicate brain was often fatal."

[Rob McCow]

So that makes it all clear! Hurrah for the Targets.

[Jason Thompson]

Of course that raises the question that gets raised by almost all fictional robots with a humanoid appearance: why put the brain in an extremity like the head in the first place? Our brain ended up there after billions of years of evolution. When designing a robot from scratch, why not put the brain in an armoured case in the middle of the torso, where it is surely better protected?