AICN’s longtime “Doctor Who” Reviewer “Kelvington” has another review of another final air version of another episode. A veteran newspaperman in his regular life, he gets to see a new episode every Thursday afternoon.
He says tonight's installment works “on every level”:
Doctor Who - Robot Of SherwoodThe last two episodes of "Doctor Who" I haven't enjoyed as much as I should have. But this episode I love. It's a romp, it's silly, and it has calculated moments of perfectly edited comedy. There are several moments that are unfortunately telegraphed, but still it's a lot of fun. And a lot of loyal fans will not like this one at all, because it's so silly.
The episode starts with Clara and the Doctor in the TARDIS, which is not in flight, and Clara has been given the choice of anywhere she wants to go. She wants to meet Robin Hood (or Robyn Hode if you like) the Doctor protests and tells her he's fictional, made up and only a legend. The Doctor for the almost the entire scene is holding a spoon, not that it will any way play a part in things to come... nope, no sir. It's just must be something he does in the TARDIS all the time... had he played two of them, I would have been super impressed.
The TARDIS arrives in the late twelfth century and despite the Doctor's protest, Robin Hood shows right up on cue. Now this plays into a concept here. Why is the Doctor dissuading Clara on this quest? He clearly knows exactly where to go to find Robin Hood, he even finds a friend of Robin's at the end. So why didn't the Doctor want to come here? Perhaps this will be part of a much larger arc this year... nah.
Once Robin shows up, he does his typical Robin Hood kind of things, bluster, guile, including trying to relieve the Doctor of his TARDIS, because it appears to Robin to be a very clever conjuring trick. So Robin pulls his sword decides to challenge the Doctor, who only has to use... wait for it... a spoon to best him! Now the whole fighting scene is hilarious and written very well, but unfortunately there's no way Peter Capaldi will be able to go through the rest of his life without fans asking him to sign their spoons. I think even Patrick Warburton will be jealous of this scene.
Now comes for me the best part of the episode, the introduction of the Master! We heard rumors that the Master would return to the series, but I never expected it to be like this. It seems rather on the nose that the Sheriff of Nottingham, who is the bad guy, would in fact be the Master. But it works really well here. OK, I'm joking, but when Ben Miller gets off his horse, he truly has been made up to resemble Anthony Ainley, maybe more Tremas, than the Master, but it's still kind of jaw dropping for old Who viewers. The Master does his normal Mastery kind of thing, kills an old guy, takes a girl. Then it's back to Sherwood forest for the introduction of the "merry men", they aren't called that of course, not until Clara names them so, which feels a little borrowed from "The Shakespeare Code" but still clever.
The Doctor continues to try and prove that Robin is fake and his men are not real. It's well calculated humour and it's you really get to see this Doctor is not quite the pleasant fellow that Tennant was, I would have loved to seen this episode done a few years ago with him, just to see his take on it. Capaldi is totally comfortable in the role now and is playing very much a young Hartnell here, had he stolen the TARDIS when he was say... fifty?
The story moves on in a very "historically accurate" way, talk of Maid Marian, the evil Sheriff, and even the archery contest. None of which the Doctor is either convinced by or concerned with, he simply wants to get to on with it. Smash cut to the archery contest. Now Robin isn't even wearing Clark Kent's glasses, and just walking around in the public. Thankfully the Sheriff recognizes him, and the contest comes down to the two of them, which gives us the split arrow cliché, which even "The Mythbusters" put to rest, but is trodden out here with a fun twist when the Doctor shows us, that not only can he handle a spoon, he's pretty clever with a bow and arrow as well. In the end, the sonic is used to move the scene along, by remotely setting off some pyrotechnics that were obviously placed in the single chosen target and then detonated sonically. That's what happened right? Because you would never try and convince me into thinking that the sonic screwdriver could somehow blow something up, that really wouldn't blow up in real life without a bunch of charges in it, would you? Of course you wouldn't...
During the next few moments while Robin and Clara try and save the day, something the Doctor doesn't need or want, we get a lovely moment of what appears to be the return of " Venusian Aikido", it's only for a moment, but it's very funny. We also find out the guards are robots! Finally, something the Doctor really cares about here is starting to happen. The design of the robots seem to be modeled a bit after robots in "The Robots Of Death" minus the flowing locks of course.
While Robin, Clara and the Doctor are held captive, the smartest of the bunch is taken to the sheriff to be wined and dined and interrogated. The Doctor and Robin escape... poorly! After a lot of banter, which the Doctor hates. (and some seems a lot like what could have been said by Malcolm Tucker, minus the swears) We finally get the full picture as to what is going on, it appears the robots, and the Sheriff are using gold to fix a space ship, now this isn't the robot owned spaceship, from the dawn of time that was in the season opener, had it been, that would have been very cool. This is a different rubbish robot spaceship in need of repair. Seems England is just chock full of them. Now you might ask yourself, where were these robots headed before crashing into earth? Well, it seems they were on their way to "The Promise Land", which appears in this case to be the planet behind the great barrier from "Star Trek V". It only appears briefly, but "The Promise Land" in this case is a planet.
Even though we know where the ship WAS headed, the Sheriff reveals the place it's really going, after repairs are complete it will fly to London and the sheriff will take over his rightful place ask King. At this point the Doctor gets to take a little kip, and Robin and Clara end up back at base camp to have a chat.
The Doctor does what he normally does, he creates a clever plan to defeat the robots with shiny things, that the people who have no comprehension of math or science, or how angles of deflection work, are able to bounce energy bolts the robots fire back at them and kill them on their first go. The Master (and that's all he can be called at this point, Miller is in full Ainley mode) who is very tired of the Doctor decides to rid himself of him once and for all. The ship itself is getting close to being able to take off when the Doctor and the Master debate the logic of making Robin Hood a robot to fight the system. Turns out it would be a terrible idea, and why would you do that anyway. It's rubbish, he's not real he's a legend... cue Robin Hood.
The Master and Robin fight it out, until they get on a very high blank over the vat of molten gold. Robin loses his weapon, and uses what he's learned from the Doctor to push the Master into the vat. The broken spaceship takes off and they figure out it doesn't have enough gold to make it into orbit, so it's going to blow up in the atmosphere and kill lots of people, so how do we fix this? If only we had say... oh I don't know... a golden arrow or something we could shoot it at the spaceship and then that might just be enough to get it into orbit and then explode we could save the day! WHAT THE FUCK? So, you're saying, I could just shoot a canister of liquid oxygen at a Saturn V and give it a little boost? This is one of the dumbest god damn concepts or plot devices that I can ever remember in Doctor Who. Dumber than the Candyman, dumber than putting the Doctor on trail for a whole series. Well frankly, dumber, than shrinking yourself down and getting injected into a Dalek.
But I don't care, it's really a great idea for a silly episode like this. Forget logic, forget the fact that a golden arrow (which always looked like wood painted gold, and never had any mass throughout the episode) would have much, much more mass than a wooden one, and even with three people pulling it's unlikely to be able to travel the half mile up to a spaceship. I don't care, this episode simply went into all out fun mode. Watching it, as an adult, reminded me why I watched it as a kid, it was just a lark. Every aspect of "Doctor Who" is ridiculous, so why not have a ridiculously silly ending to a silly episode. And it works, it works on every level. The bad guys are vanquished, the Master could return, cause you know... he's the Master, it's what he does, robot or not. Robin is reunited in the end with his lovely Maid Marian, and the Doctor accepts the fact that Robin Hood, not unlike the Doctor is more than just a legend.
EPILOGUE: The BBC and the production team at the last minute decided to remove the shot of the Master being beheaded (but not the shot of a robot knight losing it's head) Just out of sensitivity to the past week's events. (they don't however remove banter about getting one's head cut off and rolling around on the floor) Like it or lump it, it was the right thing to do. There are many precedents for doing this, episodes of TV have been changed or scrapped to be less of a reminder about something terrible that occurred close to an air date. Even "Buffy The Vampire Slayer", delayed and rewrote an episode in the wake of the Columbine school shooting. So this is nothing new, this isn't a terrible thing. It's just a micron of empathy from people who seem to actually care. I suspect the shots will be put back in by the time the DVD is released, as enough time might have passed that it won't be such a raw nerve. And if not that's fine too. I doubt "The Strain" will do the same.
