Revisiting Old Doctor Who: Robot

[Broomstick]

Robot
(I still don't understand why shooting the damn thing with a disintegration gun made it grow bigger, but - LOOK! MONSTER! RUN!)

Ah, the debut of Tom Baker in the role of the Doctor. By this time, the Brigadier has seen regeneration before and takes it in stride, and it seems the rest of UNIT follows his example so we miss out on all the "who is this guy and where is the Doctor?" bit we get other times. Which is OK. Having now re-watched several of the OldWho regeneration scenes I find that I actually do prefer the glowing-shooting-energy new-style regenerations of NewWho. Much more dramatic and Big Deal about the whole thing. Once more we have the Doctor acting whacky with a new face and body, not to mention a costume change. Baker really does seem to settle into the role rapidly, managing that crazy scarf with grace and elan. I do sort of wish they had kept Bessie the Whomobile.

And, oh yes, someone is stealing the parts to make a disintegration ray and there's a robot running around doing the robberies. The husband noted a certain similarity to the Old Battlestar Galactica commander Cylons, and we had to remind ourselves that in fact this episode pre-dated OBSG by a number of years. Although, in keeping with 1970's Who the Robot costume was probably cheap cardboard and foil manipulated by an actor inside it with a limited means of portraying the character: no facial expression and limited body language. Again, I think this is a challenge that is not really appreciated by most of today's audiences who are accustomed to better effects. I thought the Doctor's attempts to defeat the Robot through a combination of reasoning, agility, dodging, and improvising on the fly was pretty darn good, possibly the best part of the entire episode.

And there was a definitely a shout out to King Kong when the giant sized K1 Robot picks up Sarah Jane.

A few twists and turns in the plot and characters later, possible largely because of the multi-part format resulting in about 90 minutes of story time altogether, in contrast to the current 45 minute format (though we do get two-parters once or twice a series), and the Evil Scientist is dead, the Doctor averts global nuclear warfare (with just a second or two to spare), and the Giant Robot is shrunk down and dissolved.

It's shows that Tom Baker hit the ground running with the Doctor and from the start seemed to nail the character. By the end of his run I think he was getting burned out on the role, but in this episode he's fresh and new.

[Eternal_Freedom]

It was one of my favourite stories gorwing up, mainly because it had giant robots and my parents got me the video for my 5th birthday. What 5 year old proto-geek doesn't like giant robots and disintergrator rays?

And a note on the Robot itself: Yes, it was made out of cardboard and metal and played by Michael Kilgariff (sp?) who played a number of monsters, including the Cyber Controller. He really is that big (6 foot 6 IIRC).

[mr friendly guy]

The Robot absorbed the energy of the disintegrator gun and used that to grow. Duh. Now we just have to explain why it doesn't grow that much when absorbing solar. Maybe it could only absorb enough solar energy to maintain its functions.

On another note, one could theoretically calculate how much energy the disintegrator gun could produce by noting the increase in size (and presumably a proportional increase in mass) of the robot. The doctor gave an estimate of the Robot's mass as a few tons by noticing the crushed flowers where it walked.