Is the Tardis a ticking TV time bomb just one bad news cycle away from outright cancellation? Such are the rumours pinging around the cosmos – and the ongoing speculation that the BBC is considering pulling the plug on Doctor Who unless ratings improve has understandably cast a shadow over the show as it returns for its latest season. Still, there is no need for embattled Whovians to get their sonic screwdrivers in a twist quite yet. Any suspicion that the venerable franchise is on its last legs is immediately exorcised by this fun and freewheeling series opener.
“The Robot Revolution” is another impressive outing for the charming Ncuti Gatwa, his 15th Doctor having settled into his stride as a mash-up of David Tennant’s dashing eccentric and Jodie Whittaker’s more grounded Time Lord. He also brings his own touches by giving the Doctor a faint yet discernible anxiousness. Gatwa’s Doctor wants, above all, to be liked. When, for instance, new companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) objects to his good-natured bossiness (“I am not one of your adventures!”), the sting of rejection knocks him back. It’s great acting from Gatwa, whose Doctor is both charismatic and vulnerable.
A whiff of deja vu hangs over the action, which kicks off with yet another companion’s origin tale, as Sethu inherits the baton from Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday (who is confirmed as featuring in two of the year’s eight episodes). Belinda is a hard-working London nurse who finds her already busy week interrupted by alien robots stomping through her front door. The anxious androids are looking for a messiah – and she fits the bill. The invaders are from a star system named after Belinda, which, according to their logic, means she is destined to be their queen. Off she must go to save them from certain doom.
Precisely why a seemingly random nurse would be crowned Regent of the Robots is hinted at in the cold open, where we see Belinda’s old boyfriend give her one of those gimmicky certificates confirming a star has been named after her. It turns out the robots are right about one thing: Belinda is both a down-to-earth NHS employee and an interstellar object. Back in the present, she is whisked off to their home world, which has the beautiful retro vibes of a mid-20th-century science-fiction paperback cover. The Doctor is here, too, having disguised himself as a flunky of the machines – revealed to be dastardly droids eager to marry Belinda off to a villainous AI, who looks like a cross between Darth Vader and a Second World War gas mask.
It’s fun, pacy Whovian derring-do, even if showrunner Russell T Davies ruins the mood slightly by killing off a rebel with whom the Doctor has become close. We’ve only just met her, so we don’t feel the Doctor’s grief, and anyway, the instalment is such a hoot, do we really need the extra angst?
The story culminates in a twist involving the evil AI and an “incel” type from Belinda’s past. The bombshell is expertly delivered – though you wonder if Davies isn’t insulting half his audience by putting a negative slant on the cliche of the bedroom-bound geek obsessed with video games. They comprise a surely not-insignificant segment of the Doctor fanbase. Nerds everywhere could, moreover, be forgiven for feeling slightly fed up being told that, simply because they’re shy and spotty, it follows that they will be weird around women – a stereotype likewise given airtime in the latest series of Black Mirror.
Still, aside from doing wrong by nerds across the universe, “The Robot Revolution” is a blast. The plot is easy to understand – a novelty following the convolutions of Chris Chibnall’s years in charge of the show. Davies also lays the groundwork for an ongoing mystery around Belinda and her potentially extraplanar origins by confirming that she is the ancestor of the space trooper Mundy Flynn, whom we met in the 2024 instalment “Boom” (and also played by Sethu).
Questions remain over the show’s future and its relationship with Disney+ (it turns out time-hopping British quirkiness doesn’t necessarily travel well). But, for now, what a huge comfort to know the Doctor is back battling weird aliens and having frisky fun with the laws of time and space. Could a hardcore Whovian ask for anything else?
