DOCTOR WHO - THE ROBOTS OF DEATH

I have a confession to make that is going to cost me quite a few geek points here: I have never seen any of the original Doctor Who TV episodes before . . .

OK, for those with an even lower geek score than myself, here’s the rundown: Doctor Who is a British science fiction television show that ran for an impossibly long time on the BBC, from 1963 to 1989 – twenty-six seasons and 158 episodes in all! Despite running seemingly forever its cancellation was greeted with outrage by dedicated fans. (Don’t sci-fi fans always do when a beloved show is cancelled, no matter how bad that show has become by overstaying its welcome – X-Files or Star Trek Voyager anyone?)

Anyway, the good doctor (he never had a name really, he was just “the doctor”) was a mysterious so-called alien renegade “time lord” from the planet Gallifrey who traveled through space and time in a defective time machine called the TARDIS. The TARDIS is supposed to blend in with its surroundings by shape shifting, but it got stuck in one mode, namely that of a British police phone booth.

These police phone booths were quite ubiquitous in Britain from the 1930s until they were phased out during the 1960s. Resembling the type of phone booth usually used as a cloak room by Superman (except for a flashing blue light on top of it) they were used by policemen on the beat to contact headquarters as well as members of the public in emergencies. Sometimes they were used as temporary holding cells by policemen on the beat. With the advent of walkie talkies they slowly began to disappear from the British landscape.

If any of this seems familiar, it’s because Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure stole the concept outright – except for the bit about the TARDIS being much bigger on the inside than the outside making it the opposite of modern SUVs which are usually bigger on the outside than they are on the inside . . .

Like James Bond, the character was played by several actors throughout the years – eight in all (excluding the actors who played the doctor in the movie versions, some of which I did actually see).

The show was initially aimed at kiddies between the age of nine and fourteen. It was also supposed to be educational as the doctor travelled through time and met several historical figures. This was however soon chucked out the window as the series became more science fiction-y and the doctor’s travels ended up with him battling alien monsters on distant planets.

As a kid I fervently read Doctor Who novelisations of the various episodes by the stacks. However, I never got to see any actual episodes because of an Equity (a UK actors’ union basically) ban on British TV shows being shown in South Africa because of apartheid.

(To be honest I don’t think the Equity ban meant anything at the end of the day because at the end of the day White supporters of apartheid weren’t too bothered by not getting too see any British – whom they hated in any case - TV shows. If anything did get to them it was the various sports bans – especially when it came to rugby . . . Equity should however be blamed for me being bombarded by an excess of American TV shows instead – the Americans had qualms about selling cultural export goods to White racist regimes . . .)

So I don’t have any actual nostalgic attachment to the Doctor Who TV episodes, which I suspect is the issue with a lot of hardcore Doctor Who fans.

Nostalgia can be a terrible thing: if you’re a bit more mentally balanced, you can be embarrassed to death by the stuff you used to watch as a kid. If not, you can find yourself defending crud like Six-Million Dollar Man while acquaintances ponder your sanity. Let’s face up to it: children have poor taste, but we grant them that because, well, they’re children and not supposed to know any better. To defend childish tastes well into adulthood is well, a bit, unbalanced. And let’s face up to it: Doctor Who was largely a kiddies’ show . . .

THE DISC: The storyline represented on this disc is The Robots of Death. Despite the show’s dedicated cult following there aren’t that many Doctor Who episodes available on DVD as yet. Robots of Death featured Tom Baker as “the doctor”. He was the fourth actor to have played the role on the TV show, and also played the role the longest of all the actors involved.

In the popular imagination – myself included - Baker’s depiction of the role is the definitive one. When The Simpsons featured Doctor Who in two episodes, it was Baker’s “doctor” with his floppy hat and impossibly long multi-coloured scarf they featured. Many fans also regard him as the best of the various doctors (each actor gave the doctor a distinct personality).

The four episodes, altogether clocking in at 90 minutes plus, were originally broadcast in early 1977 (thus before the release of Star Wars), and regularly pops up on Who fandom’s list of Best Episodes Ever. Interestingly enough, it was also one of the novelisations (by Terrance Dicks) I read as a kid. The plot involves the doctor and his female companion (being the sexless world of BBC children’s television don’t go jumping to any conclusions here now, you hear?) accidentally becoming involved with mysterious murders on a huge isolated mining vessel on a desert planet similar to the one in Dune.

We early on know who the killer is: namely one of the many robots with art deco facial features. In true Agatha Christie style, the identity of whoever has reprogrammed the robot to commit the murder however remains a mystery for the doctor to unravel. Of course, a robot killing a human violates the three laws of robotics thought up by Isaac Asimov and has enormous implications for several civilizations throughout the known galaxy. Or so the story maintains.

Would humanity keep on using machines (robots in this case) that could be dangerous to it? Well, duh . . . (OK, to be fair they didn’t have SUVs back in the late 1970s.)

Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov and Agatha Christie. In the commentary track writer Chris Boucher (it was only his second script for the series) cheerfully admits to all these literary influences. To be honest there are some good sci-fi ideas in Robots of Death (I especially liked the robophobia idea, heh-heh) and I remembered quite a lot of stuff from the novelisation even though it must be more than twenty years since I read it.

Unfortunately things are hobnailed by that old Doctor Who bugbear: the budget. Or rather, the absence of one.

As you might imagine the sets and special effects for a BBC sci-fi series for children made in the mid-1970s doesn’t quite cut it when it comes to production values. The costumes are quite campy, and so is some of the acting. The special effects are pretty lousy too. Now don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of those kids of today who derisively laugh at bad special effects in old(er) movies. Heck – if the story and acting is good enough, anything goes. But the cheap sets and models in Robots of Death remain distracting, maybe because the story loses steam towards the end as it grinds towards a predictable plot resolution. Also, the colourful character of “the doctor” is a bit underutilized here to my mind.

Or to be honest, maybe it’s just a case of cash-strapped BBC technicians being unable to replicate whatever the febrile imagination of a twelve-year-old reading a book could dream up . . .

WORTH IT? The only notable extra feature on the DVD is the droll audio commentary by producer Philip Hinchcliffe and author Boucher which offers up some interesting info nuggets. The rest of the extras (model tests, the photo gallery and studio plans) are quite senseless.

The sound is its original mono, and the image its original full screen aspect ratio. The image quality is mostly surprisingly good and clear, except for some shots which look soft and pixilated. Considering its roots however, the image looks super.

One thing though: the Region 2 (US & Canada) disc features much more vibrant cover art work than the drab Region 2 (U.K.) disc – why is that? (I’ve included pictures of both on this page.)

RECOMMENDATION: If you’re a Who fan then you’ve probably already checked out this DVD. If you’re unfamiliar with the series and would like to check it out, then I’m not exactly sure which episodes you should start with (e-mail me your recommendations). If you’re the type who are accustomed to glitzier production values, then you might want to check out Doctor Who: The Movie. (This was an ill-fated attempt to jumpstart a new Doctor Who series – but with a bigger budget and better modern special effects – on US TV back in 1996. Who die-hards hated it, but I though it was okay.) You can also check it out those novelisations (new Doctor Who novels are coming out all the time, but I haven’t read any of them though) . . .