Doctor Who/Recap/S14/E05 The Robots of Death: Difference between revisions

'''Doctor:''' Exactly. But while these robots are humanoid, presumably for aesthetic reasons, they give no signals. [[Uncanny Valley|It's rather like being surrounded by walking, talking dead men]]. }}

 

 

Enter the Fourth Doctor and Leela, who materialize in one of the sandminer's scoops. They're brought out by two robots and locked in a room, as the workers feel that the two killed Chub. It doesn't help that after they escape, the two are separately caught in the same rooms as dead bodies #2 and #3. So, the blame game enters Round Two; the crew cannot decide whether the Doctor and Leela did it or one of them. At any rate, they're locked up in iron shackles in the robot storage room. When a man named Poul frees the two out of belief in their innocence, the Doctor points out that they all completely overlooked a possible suspect: the robots. Poul laughs; the robots couldn't possibly kill a human!

 

 

Suddenly, yay, plot! A robot named D84 reveals that it and Poul are undercover agents for the mining company, who were placed on board the miner due to threats of a robot revolution by [[Mad Scientist]] Taren Capel. The Doctor and D84 search the miner for proof that Taren Capel is on board, and find a secret workshop where the robots' programming has been changed to enable them to kill humans. He tells Toos over the communications system to get the others and head for the command deck. But as soon as she can get to the door, she's blocked by a strangle-happy robot and just barely gets away by making the door slam onto its hand. Leela manages to find Poul, but he's too busy lying on the ground in the fetal position while he screams about how the robots have always controlled him to help. Meanwhile, it dawns on the Doctor and D84 that "Dask" is really Taren Capel, and he wants to liberate robots by giving them the ambition to take over civilization. Taren Capel (now wearing the robots' clothes and wearing facepaint to mimic them) gives his order to the robots: Destroy all remaining humans on board. The Doctor realizes that this is the end of this civilization, as the robots they so depend on will become a source of overwhelming fear.

* [[Helium Speech]]

* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]: D84.

* [[Hollywood Science]]: the Doctor's explanation to Poul that bumblebees fly even though that's "impossible" is an urban legend which has been traced back [[wikipedia:Bumblebee#Flight|to at least 1934]] if not earlier and is based on applying equations to bumblebee flight that were known to be the wrong ones even back then.

* [[Informed Ability]]: Leela's knife 'throwing skills' only work when she doesn't try throwing a knife on screen (as it's actually a useless prop, it just clunks to the ground in front of her target).

* [[Jerkass]]: Uvanov. At first, he seems to care about little more than getting as much sand (read: money) as possible. Of course, this is before he realizes how truly screwed he is.

* [[Just Between You and Me]]: Subverted:

{{quote| '''The Doctor''': I see. You’re one of those boring maniacs who’s going to gloat. Are you going to tell me your plan for running the universe?<br />

* [[Perspective Magic]]: the Doctor tells Leela that that this is the principle that enables the TARDIS to be much bigger on the inside than on the outside.

* [[Red Eyes, Take Warning]]: An effect of the manner in which the robots are reprogrammed.

* [[Robot Buddy]]: D84.

* [[Shout-Out]]: Robophobia is officially known as "Grimwade's Syndrome", a shout out to production assistant (later in the 1980s to be a Who director and writer) Peter Grimwade, who had complained that all the stories he worked on seemed to involve evil robots...