The Robots of Death - Episode 2

The cliffhanger deserves a mention as its quite a good one with the Doctor and some unnamed extra being buried by what are suppose to be bits or ore. The Doctor survives because he somehow has a snorkel with him and uses that is a bit more comedy that is starting to creep in. The Doctor and Leela spend this episode being accused of committing murder which considering they spent most of the previous episode not to speaking to anyone, its quite the turnaround for them.

Uvanov runs the risk sometimes of stealing the show because Russell Hunter does a great job of seeming to be totally bonkers. He is the rather clichéd boss who cares more about his bank balanace than he does about his crew which is fine but there is something about Hunter’s performance which makes him stand out. Unlike David Ballie’s performance which knowing what most people who have seen this story before, is very underrated and is deliberately so. This means that we don’t suspect him an when the big reveal comes it will be a great moment.

The finger of suspicion gets pointed at a lot of people and its done to clearly prolong the time before the culprit is revealed. Two more people meet a sticky end and Zilda is one of those which is actually one of the positives that I take from this episode. As annoying characters go, she is one of the most annoying and I was glad when she seemed to have been killed. When you have Pamela Salem and Louise Jameson on the show, you don’t really need any other female performers on the screen. Tom Baker has been somewhat……I don’t want to say ordinary because there is nothing ordinary about Tom Baker but it has been like he currently on autopilot. It’s not surprising really as this is his 64^th episode as the Doctor and Robots of Death is his 16^th story and he is very confident in the role and whilst sometimes the comedy is unnecessary, its hard to deny that he commands your attention.

The cliffhanger is ok with the miner about to meet an unfortunate end. This episode has worked rather well because it’s done a lot of distracting to keep the story going until Chris Boucher is ready to reveal who is actually behind all this and with two more episodes to go I think that this could be the second best story of the season which might not sound like a compliment but considering the number one story is ‘The Deadly Assassin’ then that’s not a bad thing.