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Doctor Who S02E01 Thoughts: "The Robot Revolution" Highs & Lows

Here's our deep dive into the highs and lows of Doctor Who S02E01: "The Robot Revolution," which kicks things off on a solid, familiar note.

Now that you've watched the first episode of Doctor Who, let's go into the ups and downs of "The Robot Revolution" since it has highs and lows and questions. Russell T. Davies likes to introduce the companions via their personal lives, including when they're kids to connect the audience to them. Alan's remark about girls not being good at math? Red flag. Alan (Jonny Green) not caring what Belinda wants for her birthday and buying her a planet? Another red flag that becomes the whole plot later. Remember those old "buy a planet" or "buy a plot in ancestral Scotland" certificates? They were scams. Of course, a twerp like Alan would fall for it. MAJOR SPOILERS ahead…

Doctor Who Callbacks or Repeats? – You Decide

We're properly introduced to adult Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) in a whirlwind of montage – she's a busy nurse in a busy hospital who's good at her job. All very ordinary, as Russell T. Davies likes to remind us, the companions are normal people before they meet the Doctor. Knowing Davies, it's a deliberate callback to series three of the 2005 revival, where we were introduced to Martha (Freema Agyeman), and that episode took place in a hospital. That's probably intentional. Bit of the companion's slice-of-life before she's whisked off across Space and Time. And of course, the Doctor is looking for her, but we never find out why he was looking for her specifically. Is this a timey-wimey thing where he's from the future and comes back knowing what's happening the rest of the season? Who's the someone from the future who told him she would be important? This is Screenwriting 101, setting up the season arc's payoff.

Um, the Doctor shorted out all the power in a hospital. How many life support machines suddenly got shut off? Did you really think that was funny, Rusty? And why would the sonic screwdriver short out all the electronics in a building when it's just supposed to get someone's contact information from the computer? Somedays, broad comedy can get careless and callous… and just not funny, bruv.

Kidnapped in Pajamas by Robots

Belinda looks like she's in the middle of her own BBC twentysomething drama about young professional flatmates. Yes, that's a whole subgenre in British TV that used to be bigger than it is now. Now, it's increasingly boring grimdark cop shows involving serial killers. Anyway, Belinda has annoying flatmates who don't do the washing up and eat each other's food. We're almost certainly not going to see them again until the final episodes this season, and for now, their only defining trait is "annoying". We can forget them because it goes all Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when some goofy but menacing robots from outer space show up and kidnap Belinda while she's still in her jammies. Oh, and they disintegrated a cat. Is this a reference to the crass screenwriting and simplistic manual Save the Cat? Odd how cat murder is often treated as comedy on British TV shows. If they killed a dog, the whole nation would be up in arms, and the switchboard would be lit up with complaints.

If you think those robots look familiar, that's because their goofy-looking design is very similar to the one worn by comedian and guest villain Greg Davies in the 2015 Christmas Special "The Husbands of River Song."

Yeah, Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) is the Susan Twist of season two. Davies said she would show up in every episode, and she's a baddie. That's why she keeps breaking the fourth wall and talking to the camera. Expect her to do that every episode when she shows up for a few seconds. And she lived next door to Belinda? Is this the same street Ruby and her mother and grandmother live on? Are they all neighbours, or is Mrs. Flood just wandering around squatting in one house after another?

Being Queen of Planet MissBelindaChandra One Sucks!

How does buying a certificate to own a planet make her the queen of a whole planet? Is there an office that registers that information? Is there more than one Planet MissBelindaChandra? Belinda doesn't even have any real power. She's supposed to merge with the real power ruling the planet, the AI Generator.

Of course, AI Generators are evil! Belinda is supposed to marry and merge with Al Generator and get assimilated into its machinery, which would kill her. It doesn't make any sense, but there's an explanation later. And there's a full-blown resistance movement fighting the robots who have taken over and killed anyone who doesn't follow orders. And who should be helping out with the rebellion but the Doctor? He's been here for six months waiting for Belinda to show up because timey-wimey. It's a common trope of Doctor Who to have the Doctor help out a rebellion against dictatorships, and also with timey-wimey, though this is the first time it's been on in the series for a while. Some of the rebels resent Belinda for being the symbol that landed the whole planet in a murderous robot dictatorship, which isn't exactly fair. Shooting and redshirt deaths ensue as usual, and feels kinda same-y; hence the same-y feel about this premiere episode. This is the shakiest aspect of this episode; the tone shifts uneasily between jokey conceptual silliness and deadly serious deaths.

Minimum Easter Eggs

The biggest Easter Egg in this episode is the Doctor's two hearts beating to the rhythm of the series' theme song.

Oh, and if you're keeping track, the Doctor's sonic screwdriver is now orange, so if you want to buy a current one, that's the new colour.

Redshirts and Fridging Alm0st-Companions

Dead Almost-Companion Trope: here's what always happens. A likable and smart (usually female) character helps the Doctor and is offered the chance to travel with him, but since the actress is not the announced companion, she's dead meat. Bye-bye, Sasha 55. She's not the first and won't be the last. When Russell T. Davies is the showrunner, this always happens at least once a season. This is what feels samey and repetitious to longtime viewers of the series. Let's hope Evelyn Miller gets better roles after this.

It was The Incel All Along!

This twist is what lifts the episode into pointed satire all along. Incels are the worst, and only incels would disagree. The reveal is very silly: it was "AL" all along, not "AI." Alan is a controlling misogynist, and that's why Belinda dumped him, and he never got over her. That set off the whole plot. Wonder what the £50 he owed her was for, did he make her pay for the planet certificate? There's kind of a plot abyss over the timey-wimey circuitous plot here: Belinda tells the robots that Alan is behind the whole thing, not her, so they go back and grab him, where he takes over the big machine that controls the robots. Who controlled the robots before? And where did he get the advanced technology they hooked him up to? He then sends them to get Belinda so he can marry her, but his idea is to meld with her, which is symbolic but doesn't make a lot of sense since it would just kill her; but hey, that's incel logic for ya. Alan's comeuppance leaves no ambiguity for what Davies thinks of incels whatsoever. Are Character Options going to release a toy of the cute robot Roomba that literally wipes Alan out of existence

Who Saves the Day? The Answer is Yes… Sort of?

Once again, there's a subtle shift where it's not the Doctor who saves the day but his companion. He enables Belinda to use her Science literacy to defeat Alan. She touches the past and present version of the certificate and causes a rupture in Space-Time. The Doctor, being a Time Lord, manages to pull her out, but Alan gets lost in the vortex and debirths to an embryo before the cute little cleaning robot becomes a deadly weapon and wipes him out of existence. Expect outrage and even some crazy people to scream that Alan got retroactively aborted.

The citizens of Planet MissBelindaChandra One are awfully easy to appease when peace breaks out. They might have gone on a rampage to destroy every robot on the planet for killing their friends and family under Alan. But hey, this is a kid's show. Everyone should get along in the end. It's the friends you make along the way.

"You're Dangerous!"

This has been a long time coming. The new companion not only doesn't really want to be here – she's the first one since Tegan (Janet Fielding) in the 1980s. Belinda calls out The Doctor for being reckless with people's lives. He analyzed her DNA without consent and constantly put people in danger. They die on his watch, like Sasha 55 and the other members of the resistance. Belinda is immediately aware he could get her killed. The Doctor may make people better and enable them to become their better angels, but he's also reckless and gets careless with people around him. He's turned kids who were his companions into soldiers and weapons, even inadvertently. It's refreshing to have a companion who doesn't dote on the Doctor's every word.

And yeah, Mundy Flynn from season one's story "BOOM!", also played by Sethu, is Belinda's distant descendent. That bit's over and done with. The Doctor said he saw her entire life when they were in that time distortion together, and he has become a part of her life, so again, we're into Steven Moffat-style timey-wimey where Davies worked out the season's payoff ahead of time when he plotted out the season.

Whoops Apocalypse!

The Doctor doesn't know he can't get Belinda back to Earth on May 24th, 2025, because there's no Earth left to go to! It's been blown up! It's just some debris, a London taxicab, and the Eiffel Tower floating in space now. There's the second half of the season arc and the big question: who blew up the Earth while they were away? Is it the gods? Is this part of Belinda's timeline or an interruption that the Doctor is going to have to correct? Again, set up for the season arc.

Overall, the season two premiere of Disney-era Doctor Who is off to a solid, if not sensational, start. "The Robot Revolution" is stronger than "Space Babies" last year, which might have lost viewers and newcomers for being too silly, and some people might feel less excited about this season because of the first season's flaws. That means after Davies gets all the introduction to the new companion and re-introduction of the show out of the way, the second episode, "Lux," might be stronger. The trick is to get more people to watch after the first one.

Doctor Who is now streaming on Disney+.

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