Doctor Who season 2 episode 1 ('The Robot Revolution') spoilers follow.
Doctor Who is back and, while the first episode introduces us to the fifteenth Doctor's (Ncuti Gatwa) likeable new companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu), 'The Robot Revolution' is a bit of a fumbling start to the latest season.
On the plus side, the episode starts off as quite a fun adventure. Nurse Belinda is woken up in the middle of the night as the walls of her London house share begin to shake, and a group of wall-smashing, heavy-footed red robots stomp through her house and whisk her off into space in a bright rocket ship.
The robots think she's the queen of their planet, simply because it's orbited by a star that Belinda's ex-boyfriend Alan had named after her, 17 years before. That would be quite cool, if the planet – named Missbelindachandra One – wasn't at war, with the robots fighting their human-looking fellow inhabitants for control of the world. And the robots also believe the solution for peace is for Belinda to marry the 'AI Generator' who leads them.
Luckily, the Doctor is on Missbelindachandra One to intervene, but without his trusty TARDIS and with some timey-wimey stuff going on (of course), things are more complicated than they first seem.
So far, so good, and on the surface this episode zips along pretty neatly for a time, with Ncuti Gatwa's gloriously energetic Doctor finding a perfect match in Varada Sethu's straight-talking, kind but firm Belinda, who is really not interested in his space adventures and just wants to get back home.
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However, while this episode boasts a cleverly written scene when the Doctor and Belinda first meet, and reintroduces Anita Dobson's deliciously cheeky Mrs Flood, it also mishandles an important theme so dreadfully that it will leave you wincing by the end credits.
To talk about it, we need to reveal some major plot spoilers for 'The Robot Revolution', so if you haven't seen the episode you may want to stop reading now and catch up first.
If you have watched, you know the episode begins with a flashback to 17 years before, when young Alan Budd gave Belinda her star certificate, setting all the episode's events in motion.
In that brief scene, we see that teenage Alan is a bit sexist, as he mansplains how far away Belinda's star is ("I know girls aren't good at maths") and gets huffy when she questions why he has named her as Miss Belinda Chandra on the certificate ("Are you married?" is his reply).
The big reveal later in the episode is that the warmongering AI Generator is actually part-Alan, part-cyborg, and it is he who started the robot revolution, feeding his need for power.
Then comes a jarring flashback that truly lands with a ginormous thud as it seeks to explain both Alan's motivations and the entire episode all in one scene. We go back to Alan and Belinda's relationship, 17 years ago, and see that he wasn't just sexist, he was controlling too.
In one quick sentence, he demands that Belinda shouldn't wear tight clothes or text anyone after 8pm while she's in a relationship with him. It's an unsubtle scene that could only be more thunderingly obvious if Alan had "I'm not a nice guy" tattooed on his forehead.
Back on Missbelindachandra One, Belinda realises Alan wants control of her and of the planet named after her. In a clumsily-written line, she tells him he is guilty of coercive control, jerking viewers out of the episode's narrative by saying those exact two words out loud, as if the writers didn't have enough faith in us viewers to work it out by ourselves.
It's such a shame the topic has been mishandled here, as science fiction – and Doctor Who in particular – has often deftly handled important issues on screen, while still being entertaining. The series has frequently tackled serious themes before, be it racism, fascism, climate change, or even the death penalty – and it is usually very successful at it.
And at a time when themes like misogyny and toxic behaviour are being discussed on our screens, in everything from hard-hitting dramas like Adolescence to 'fluffy' reality shows, it was the perfect opportunity for Doctor Who to deliver its own take on the subject.
Sadly, with 'The Robot Revolution', it was an opportunity that was well and truly missed.
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Freelance film & TV writer, Digital Spy
Critic and writer Jo Berry has been writing about TV and movies since she began her career at Time Out aged 18. A regular on BBC Radio, Jo has written for titles including Empire, Maxim, Radio Times, OK!, The Guardian and Grazia, is the author of books including Chick Flicks and The Parents’ Guide to Kids’ Movies.
She is also the editor of website Movies4Kids. In her career, Jo has interviewed well-known names including Beyonce, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Kiefer Sutherland, Tom Cruise and all the Avengers, spent many an hour crushed in the press areas of award show red carpets. Jo is also a self-proclaimed expert on Outlander and Brassic, and completely agrees that Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
