The Robots of Death Part Four

The one where the Doctor uses a squeaky voice to defeat his enemy...

Don't get me wrong, I love Pamela Salem and everything she does: she's sexy, a fantastically capable and strong actor, and she's one of many wonderful things in Remembrance of the Daleks. But my goodness, isn't Toos a wet blanket? A strong woman like Salem should not be playing wimpy, tied-to-the-railway-lines damsels in distress like Toos, she's meant for tougher, more impressive roles. When V6 tries to strangle Toos, all she does is whimper and whine, pleading for mercy. "No, please, no! Please!" she cries, uselessly. She doesn't even try to run away. Quite maddening really.

The robots really step it up in this final episode, stalking the corridors of the Sandminer looking for humans to kill. The face-off between the Doctor and Uvanov, and three robots coming at them from all directions, is great, and the fact one of the robots is a defective crazy repeating its aim to "kill, kill, kill" is really spooky. It's amusing that the Doctor escapes by disguising a robot with his own hat and scarf, because it does seem that robots have quite limited vision, at least when they've been modified.

SV7 calls V6 away from what he's doing (which is strangling Toos to death) at just the right moment, leaving wimpy Toos unconscious rather than dead. The wonderful D84 gets to Toos just that bit too late, and when Leela finds him standing over her, she assumes he's a bad robot, and uses the closest weapon she can find to chuck at him - V6's lost hand! "Please do not throw hands at me!" cries D84, giving birth to one of the strangest lines ever spoken in Doctor Who!

Toos tells Leela that the Doctor wants them all to gather on the command deck, but why is she not puzzled as to why D84 can talk? Surely she would ask that, rather than just silently accept it. You know, I always used to love the character of Toos, but actually I think I let my admiration for Pamela Salem cloud the fact that Toos is actually a bit rubbish (she really milks that sprained wrist too, doesn't she?).

On their way to the command deck, Leela and Toos unwisely hide from two robots in a sand scoop, where Toos receives a communication from SV7 asking after her welfare. Toos tells SV7 that some of the robots have gone haywire, to which SV7 rather wonderfully (and presciently) replies: "Counter-measures are being taken." Thirty-five years later, Pamela Salem would reprise her role as Remembrance of the Daleks' Rachel Jensen in a series of audio plays called... Counter-Measures!

As everybody gathers on the command deck, it strikes me that Uvanov has changed. He seems mellower, less antagonistic and pompous, more reasonable. Maybe Poul's chop to the shoulder knocked some sense into him, but it does seem a little odd to suddenly have the previously pugnacious Uvanov hugging Toos, or gently stroking Poul's hair. There's a lovely softness to the way Russell Hunter tells the group about his previous encounter with robophobia, in which he claims he didn't leave Zilda's brother outside the sandminer to die at all, but that he had actually lost his mind to robophobia. Zilda's father, head of one of the Twenty families, hushed up the fact their son ran out so as not to paint him as a coward, and Uvanov got the blame instead. The truth is out at last (or rather, Uvanov's version of it).

I do feel sorry for David Collings though. Such a fantastic actor, reduced to virtually nothing for most of the last two episodes. He plays vulnerable and broken very well of course, but he has little to do in this episode except lie on a couch and cower (later, Uvanov and Toos completely abandon him when they leave the command deck).

The concept of robophobia fascinates me, because I genuinely despair at the way our current science is heading with Artificial Technology. People have AI gadgets in their homes now which meet their every command ("Alexa, play The Best of Dudley Simpson"), but that's fine at the moment because these gadgets look like plastic and metal vases. In the not too distant future, we'll have robots in our homes (not unlike the Channel 4 series Humans) which look and sound like us, act like us to make us feel more comfortable around them. But they'll never be fully human, they will miss the instinct of humans, and as the Doctor explains here, robots don't have the body language or facial expressions we do. Gradually, that can undermine a person's sense of self, and fuel paranoia and, well... robophobia aka Grimwade's Syndrome.

Grimwade's Syndrome (named after this serial's production assistant Peter Grimwade) has appeared in further Doctor Who fiction. Grant Markham, a short-lived companion to the Sixth Doctor in a handful of BBC novels, suffered from robophobia after having witnessed his mother being killed by Cybermen as a child, and of course there's the excellent 2011 audio drama Robophobia by Big Finish. Robophobia is also mentioned in passing by the Doctor in Kerblam!

Director Michael Briant finally gets round to "revealing" who Taren Capel really is. Oh, shock horror, it's Dask! But now Capel is dressing for the occasion, donning one of SV7's silvery off-cuts and caking his face with silver and green make-up. As the Doctor later says: "You look ridiculous in that outfit." David Bailie makes Taren Capel a nasty piece of work, and the moment where he hollers "Let me iiiiiiin!", his face contorted in anger and frustration, is quite arresting.

Briant creates a wonderfully sinister image when V5 tries to break into the command deck, its mannered hammering at the door in coloured silhouette. "You have to die," it says matter-of-factly. "All of you." And with Poul cowering at the silhouette's feet, Briant manages to briefly create a tableau from inside Poul's fractured mind, with humans kneeling at the mercy of their new robotic gods. Luckily, Uvanov has an explosive he can use to stop V5, but that only creates a big hole in the door, meaning their security is lost.

The big finale, the way in which the Doctor finally defeats Taren Capel, is to hide Leela in a cupboard in the conversion room and tell her to flood the air with helium when Capel comes in. This will alter the sound of his voice, allowing the killer robots to carry out their order to kill all the humans - including Taren Capel! It's a classic case of the Doctor turning his enemy's power against him, even if making that enemy into a squeaky-voiced equivalent of Pinky and Perky is a little underwhelming.

Taren Capel's ultimate aim was to programme his robot brothers with enough ambition for them to take over the world, a world he presumably wanted to live in. He obviously saw himself as a robot, not a human, and the psychiatric implications of that are fascinatingly complex. It does parallel Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes, in which Tarzan believes himself to be more ape than man, and ultimately prefers a life with them in the jungle to a more cultured existence among his fellow men. The psychological ramifications of someone believing they are a robot go much deeper than this serial allows - what did Capel think he was doing when he ate and slept, when he went to the toilet? - but again, it's a case of writer Chris Boucher adding texture where he can, and perhaps developing it further elsewhere. Taren Capel was named by Boucher after Czech science-fiction author Karel Capek, who wrote the 1920 play Rossum's Universal Robots (aka R.U.R) about a robot revolution.

The demise of poor D84 hits hard. He's ruthlessly spiked with a Laserson probe by Capel, but the robot detective doesn't give up, and manages to use the deactivator which blows up the killer robots, but also himself. It's the ultimate sacrifice, and the ultimate demonstration of being human. "Goodbye, my friend," says D84 to the Doctor before his head blows up. I'm not ashamed to say there was a tear in the corner of my eye.

With Uvanov and Toos left unconscious, and Poul presumably still crazed on the command deck, the Doctor and Leela return to the TARDIS without a single farewell, leaving the survivors to mop up the mess and explain to the authorities. In Chris Boucher's sequel book Corpse Marker, it's explained that the Sandminer is left to sink into the desert, and Kiy Uvanov retires from mining to become Topmaster of the company. The book also features Ander Poul and Lish Toos, meaning they too had lives after the events of Storm Mine 4 (although Poul apparently cannot recall anything about it).

The spin-off fiction that The Robots of Death has inspired is indicative of how rich a writer Boucher is. The fact he wrote Corpse Marker as both a sequel to the TV story, and a crossover with Blake's 7 (it features the character Carnell from Boucher's B7 episode Weapon) shows how intricately his fiction is woven. The culture and society created in Boucher's story was expanded upon even further in Magic Bullet Productions' Kaldor City audio series (2001-04), which featured Scott Fredericks as Carnell (he'd played the character in Weapon), as well as Russell Hunter, David Bailie, David Collings, Brian Croucher and Gregory de Polnay.

The Robots of Death is a damn fine, strong and confident production at a time when such things were pretty standard in Doctor Who. The story has style, depth and wit, and boasts some stunning guest performances from Russell Hunter, David Collings and the easy-to-forget Gregory de Polnay. I could watch an entire series set in Kaldor City. I might just seek out those Magic Bullet audios...

First broadcast: February 19th, 1977

Steve's Scoreboard
The Good: David Bailie's terrifying snarl to "LET ME IIIIIIIIIIN!"
The Bad: Toos is such a wimpy damsel in distress. She should have been so much stronger.
Overall score for episode: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (story average: 8.8 out of 10)

"Would you like a jelly baby?" tally: 07

NEXT TIME: The Talons of Weng-Chiang...

My reviews of this story's other episodes: Part One; Part Two; Part Three

Find out birth/death dates, career information, and facts and trivia about this story's cast and crew at the Doctor Who Cast & Crew site: https://doctorwhocastandcrew.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-robots-of-death.html

The Robots of Death is available on BBC DVD as part of the Revisitations 3 box set. Find it on Amazon - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Revisitations-Cybermen-Doctors-Robots/dp/B006H4RB6O/