Doctor Who (2025): The Robot Revolution – A Rambunctious Start With A Unique Spin (SPOILERS)

It’s been strange seeing the Doctor Who fandom, a fandom that was so divided and downhearted during the Chris Chibnall era and therefore ecstatic when Russell T Davies and Disney+ got involved, go back to the exact same mood after last year’s series finale. A rewatch of Empire of Death has only solidified my feelings on it even more: I’ve pretty much given up on story arc resolutions making any narrative sense so I was perfectly fine going with the more metaphysical and emotional elements of the whole thing, which RTD can still do effortlessly. It’s not a brilliant finale but it’s not worth throwing a hissy about it like most people did, and especially not viewing the show as a spent force. 

Those who don’t think of the show as a spent force (like me) are probably a little bit worried by the small possibility that Series 15 could well be the last series of the show, if both Disney+ and the BBC are unable to get their act together. If all else fails though, The Robot Revolution has united fans in at least one thing: it’s better than last year’s opener.

Space Babies was by no means a disaster in my book but in a long line of weird and silly series openers, that one did push it just a bit. This feels more in Russell’s usual wheelhouse of zany ideas: a young woman is whisked off by robots to a planet named after her, where there’s a war going on led by an evil AI machine controlled by her ex. She’s not having a good night.

Anyone who’s going to call this too wacky is obviously forgetting the days of little fat monsters and farting aliens hiding as politicians – hell, Russell brought the show back with an episode that featured a burping wheelie bin, and yet Rose is viewed as one of the show’s most important episodes so everyone tends to forget that glaringly stupid moment. Sydney Newman would’ve probably had an aneurysm over this – he wanted the show to have ‘no tin robots or bug-eyed monsters,’ a rule spat back in his face in less than a year – but the premise of robots capturing a human believing she’s their queen is a really fun one. Plus, it allows Verada Sethu to show off her comedic chops as the new companion Belinda, and damn good she is too. 

It’s easy to compare her to past companions. If Ruby reminded some people of Rose, then Belinda being a stressed-out nurse who gets whisked away by some aliens should remind them of Martha, her similarity to a pre-existing character is reminiscent of Clara, and her more snappy subversive comments give me Donna and Bill vibes. However, Belinda stands out in the modern series and she’s going to be a companion who simply doesn’t want to be there. Not since Tegan Jovanka’s first appearance in Logopolis has there been a companion enjoying themselves less than Belinda is here, and any moment where there’s direct confrontation between her and the Doctor are superb.

The funniest part of the episode for me is also the most revealing about their dynamic. When discussing the time fracture that Belinda experienced on her passage to the planet Missbelindachandra, the Doctor uses the phrase ‘timey-whimey.’ At first I was happy because I haven’t heard that word in a while, but Belinda is not at all amused and says ‘Am I six?’ It’s a hilarious moment but Sethu manages to communicate so much in her face here – the Doctor wasn’t using this word intentionally to impress or be funny but they always find excitement in intriguing and dangerous situations, and Belinda doesn’t. Not only is this her first alien planet, but it’s a planet entirely dedicated to her locked in a war in her name. She does not find it in the slightest bit funny, and she just wants to go home.

For all the fact that the episode’s overall design is quite kid-friendly and colourful (it reminds me of the brief sketches that exist of the Doctor Who animated show that was going to happen in the 1990s), The Robot Revolution certainly has darkness within. The death toll is quite high for one thing, as a group of rebels are massacred before we’ve even reached the twenty-minute mark, and the third-act reveal shows us that Belinda’s ex-boyfriend has been subsumed into a machine in a quite disturbing visual. 

Yet the thing that hits closest is Belinda’s first impressions of the Doctor. While she’s impressed by some things she’s seeing, the most obvious one being the TARDIS, the Doctor has also made quite an eerie first impression. You imagine what your reaction would be if an alien stranger has been tracking your movements, following you throughout your life, and hid undercover on an alien planet for six months just to meet you, all because you look similar to someone he’s met from a far-off world that you have no connection to. You’d probably be really scared and uncomfortable, right? Well, that’s why Belinda’s reaction is so perfect. 

This also acts as a comparison point to the Doctor’s previous actions, most notably his similar investigation into the repeated appearances of Clara Oswald throughout his history. Russell’s move to challenge the Doctor’s actions in a situation like this is almost certainly a retroactive one but it shows that, for all that may be familiar about Belinda as a character, she is going to be a different beast altogether as a companion.

Tone-wise the episode is a little off in places but Russell’s writing for Doctor Who has always struck a strange balance between the light and the dark. The re-appearance of her ex-boyfriend Alan, who has been behind the robot uprising the whole time as an attempt to get Belinda to finally marry him, is an interesting climax but it does feel like it comes out of nowhere. Yes, he had the lines and the little micro-actions in the first scene, which gave the impression that he wasn’t a nice guy, but his sexist comments and controlling demeanour is mostly played for laughs – the jump to him taking an entire planet hostage and using it as part of his coercive revenge fantasy is a big pill to swallow. 

The ‘planet of the incels’ line is incredibly on-the-nose, and if Belinda is so over this guy, why does she still have a random star certificate he gave her framed on her wall seventeen years later? Because the only thing I can think of is it being there for plot convenience.

But of course the big question: why does Belinda know to call it the TARDIS when the Doctor has only referred to it as his spaceship throughout the course of the episode? The amount of people that have picked this up, including Radio Times who have a headline running with it, suggests that this may be something more mysterious which is answered later on. If it isn’t, then this is a major, major blunder on Russell’s part which suggests immense laziness in the editing department and makes the extensive coverage of it within 24 hours of the episode’s release even more embarrassing. 

I’m a glass half-full person when it comes to Doctor Who though, so I have to end on some positives. I loved the scene with the Doctor explaining the history of the planet to Belinda while using every ninth word (which the faulty robots can’t hear) to explain the real truth. The polishing robot was funny and reminded me of Gadget from The Waters of Mars. Anita Dobson’s appearance as the still-elusive Ms Flood was a nice surprise, and I really liked how proactive Belinda was during the scenes where she was helping tend to the rebels’ injuries. It’s just a pity these moments were needlessly undercut by some antagonistic behaviour towards her by the rebels, that only serve to sour the tone and stall time. 

There’s still a couple of teething issues that bugged me with The Robot Revolution. The tone is a little off towards the third act, and I still wish the episodes had an extra five to ten minutes to fully flesh out (especially when these episodes are predominantly going out worldwide on Disney+, where there’s no runtime limits because of a schedule). However, it still felt more involving, substantial and interesting than the somewhat muted Space Babies, thanks to the introduction of a kick-ass new companion, a high-scale yet character-focused story and a greater dive into timey-whimey shenanigans. 

It’s definitely familiar and rambunctious, but it’s the little elements suggesting a different and darker path for the Doctor and his new companion that really stick out. An episode this exuberant ending on a moment of genuine fear, as something mysterious is blocking the TARDIS from reaching modern-day Earth and the planet’s most famous landmarks are left drifting and decaying in deep space, do have me hooked to see where this story goes. It has all the potential to go very right and catastrophically wrong, but we’ve had twenty years of new Who by this point: if this is the last series we get, let’s not moan about it too much, OK?

Alex’s Archive – The Robot Revolution (Doctor Who, 2025)