Robot [TV/1974.12.28 ~ 1975.1.18]

★★★☆☆

  Robot's the kind of serial that looks relatively calm and "normal (if such a term can ever be applied to something like Doctor Who)" until you take a step back and ponder on what exactly happens. It's a four-part nuclear scare extravaganza with a giant robot that's one part Frankenstein's monster and one part King Kong, a fascist fringe organisation with a stark raving mad ringleader to boot, and a new Doctor whose initial personality can only be explained as "completely dotty". Its successes and failures as a slice of Doctor Who are still debated to this day, and I'm not here to say that they're any of the two extremes; however, if there's one thing I can say about Robot, it's that entertainment seems to be what they're going for and they certainly succeed.

  Although we don't get to see much of the Doctor and Sarah (or the Doctor and Harry for that matter, though somehow it feels like those two men have a far more prominent shared screen presence), it's clear that the arrival of Tom Baker was a jolt of new, boundless and sometimes unpredictable energy — just what the show needed to bring in a new era. The story is pretty firmly a Jon Pertwee adventure, sure (as if Barry Letts' production credit isn't proof enough), but it's a good chance to show the audience just how wildly different this new incarnation of the Doctor is from the firm and fatherly figure, UNIT's scientific advisor.

*:･ﾟ✧*:･ﾟ  

  As post-regeneration stories go, there have been better and there have been worse. I'd say Robot fits snugly somewhere in the middle, content to be its own thing and reveling in both the new leading man and the premise's wackiness. I mean, imagine the new series trying out what this serial did and incorporating a fictionalised version of QAnon into an episode or two — could be wonderfully done, or could be disastrous.