3: Robot of Sherwood

 

Writer: Mark Gatiss

Director: Paul Murphy

Originally Broadcast: 6 September 2014

 

Cast

 

The Doctor: Peter Capaldi

Clara: Jenna Coleman

Robin Hood: Tom Riley

Quayle: Roger Ashton-Griffiths

Quayle’s Ward: Sabrina Bartlett

The Sheriff of Nottingham: Ben Miller

Alan-a-Dale: Ian Hallard

Friar Tuck: Trevor Cooper

Little John: Rusty Goffe

Will Scarlett: Joseph Kennedy

Walter: Adam Jones

Herald: David Benson

Guard: David Langham

Knight: Tim Baggaley

Voice of the Knights: Richard Elfyn

 

For the third time since Doctor Who returned in 2005, Mark Gatiss gets the opportunity to provide a new Doctor’s third adventure, and his first historical story. In The Unquiet Dead the Doctor accidentally encountered Charles Dickens, while in 2010’s Victory of the Daleks the Doctor was invited to pay a visit to Winston Churchill. Here, at the urging of Clara, he takes a trip back to 12th-century Nottingham, the time and place of someone she’s always wanted to meet. The result is a light-hearted episode that allows Peter Capaldi to introduce both verbal and physical comedy into the hitherto rather sombre portrayal of the Twelfth Doctor, but also incorporates some deeper moments that continue the work of exploring the new Doctor’s character.

Clara’s sudden admission of having a passion for the tale of Robin Hood since childhood is obviously just a convenience to get things started (although, given that we were told two episodes ago that as a teenager she had a pin-up of Marcus Aurelius, I suppose it’s not totally out of character either). The Doctor tries to talk her out of it, telling her she’ll be disappointed to learn that Robin Hood is just a story – he doesn’t believe in “old-fashioned heroes,” and rejects Clara’s implication that he himself belongs in that category. Naturally, as soon as he steps out of the TARDIS the bemused Doctor comes face to face with the legendary brigand, large as life – a handsome archer in the classic Lincoln green outfit, right down to the hat with a feather in it, who shoots an arrow at the police box and follows up with a sly wink to the camera. While Clara is beside herself with fangirl-ish glee, the Doctor finds himself quickly swept up into a swashbuckling fight against Robin, who cheerfully intends to relieve this “bony rascal” of his magic box.

First and foremost, this episode is a “romp” – and a very broadly written and played one, at that. Reaction to comedy is always subjective, of course, but I found a lot to enjoy here. The Doctor seems to have fallen straight into the classic Robin Hood tale, and several tropes from that tale are subverted for comic purposes. The fight at the river crossing becomes the Doctor facing off against Robin armed only with a spoon, which results in both of them getting a dunking in the river. The next day, the archery tournament for the golden arrow devolves into a hilarious game of one-upmanship, with the Doctor and Robin repeatedly splitting arrows in turn until finally the Doctor loses patience and blows up the target with his sonic screwdriver. Not all of the gags work: in particular, the Austin Powers-style innuendo about Errol Flynn (“He had a big… ego”) lands with a thud. (However, the later eyebrow-raising “I’m going to need a sample” as the Doctor marches purposefully towards Robin carrying a goblet did induce a chuckle, especially after Robin’s wary reply, “Of what?”) But it’s only the introduction of the Merry Men that falls completely flat. As with all the other elements of the Robin Hood legend, Will Scarlet, Friar Tuck, and the rest are all present and correct, but the script has no interest in doing anything with them at all. They come across as so one-dimensional as to inadvertently give credibility to the Doctor’s idea that he has accidentally landed in some kind of “theme park from the future.” It’s a great pity that a very capable actor like Trevor Cooper, who can been seen in a much more substantial role in 1985’s Revelation of the Daleks, is saddled with just a handful of bland, functional lines and no chance to make any kind of impression.

The episode is very linear, employing none of the Moffat-style tricks with narrative sequence that Gatiss experimented with in his last episode, The Crimson Horror in 2013. The initial comic scenes with the Doctor and Robin are intercut with dramatic moments showing our villain, the Sheriff of Nottingham, burning a peasant village after stealing their valuables – and, just to drive home his total lack of redeeming features, casually killing an old man named Quayle who offers a token resistance. With the basic premise set up, it’s back to comedy as the Doctor and Clara meet the Merry Men, and the Doctor tries and fails to prove they’re not real (for a moment he wonders if they have landed inside a Miniscope – a nice callback to a piece of futuristic technology featured in 1973’s Carnival of Monsters). This leads naturally to the archery contest, where the Doctor’s display gets the attention of the Sheriff and leads to the capture of him, Clara and Robin – but only after Robin has lopped an arm off one of the Sheriff’s knights, revealing them to be well-disguised robots able to fire laser bolts from their faces. In the Sheriff’s castle, Clara confronts the villain while the Doctor and Robin investigate and discover the damaged spaceship that brought the robots to Earth. The straightforward plot development is redolent of many classic series stories, particularly with elements like the workforce of conscripted peasants melting down the stolen gold and constructing some kind of circuit for the ship, and whom the Doctor has to rouse into rebelling against the robots. Among these peasants he encounters a young woman, coyly credited only as “Quayle’s ward,” who turns out to be Robin’s lost love, Marian.

Tom Riley’s portrayal of Robin dances dangerously close to pantomime at times, particularly in the first half, as he constantly irritates the Doctor by laughing at anything and everything. But he and Peter Capaldi put together some excellent comic sequences, my favourite being the scene in the dungeon cell when they are chained up and successfully employ the old “distract the guard, knock him out and steal his keys” trick – only for their squabbling to result in the keys disappearing through a grate in the floor (“Well, there is a bright side… Clara didn’t see that”). He also handles the swordfighting and other physical derring-do with appropriate panache, and as the episode progresses he gradually shows more depth in Robin’s character as he begins to fully understand the situation. The first hint of something more than the laughing rogue comes in an early scene with Clara when Robin lays out his background as an exiled nobleman and his life with Marian (helpful exposition for those in the audience not familiar with the Robin Hood folklore), where Riley allows some seriousness to come through, showing Robin’s pain at having to live as an outlaw. Even better is the scene back at his camp after he has rescued Clara from the castle; confused and angry after the Doctor’s accusation that he is just another robot, and not real at all, Robin shows some genuine menace as he demands that she tell him what she knows, determined not to be anyone’s tool.

The production of the episode, under new director Paul Murphy, lives up to the BBC’s usual standard of excellence with period pieces. The dissolve from the TARDIS interior to the materialisation in Sherwood Forest is a magical moment, the sunlit exteriors of the forest and the castle courtyard provide an excellent change from the dark palettes of the previous two episodes, and the robot knights are a very sleek and impressive design. When the Doctor finally discovers the camouflaged spaceship (with, amusingly, almost a sense of relief – “At last, something real… no more fairytales”), it’s a striking, minimalist set with flat grey walls and unfussy open spaces that contrast nicely with the castle interiors. It’s also at this point that the Doctor finally becomes aware of the season arc plot that’s been bubbling away without his knowledge – there’s no appearance of the mysterious “Missy” this week, but he does find a mention of “the Promised Land” (as in Deep Breath) as the ship’s destination. The databanks also apparently contain records of all the dramatizations of the Robin Hood legend over the centuries, reinforcing the Doctor’s belief that Robin cannot be real. A droll touch in the torrent of rapid-fire images is a still of Patrick Troughton as Robin from a TV adaptation made in 1953, more than a decade before his own stint in the role of the Doctor.

It’s a great episode for Jenna Coleman, and not only because she gets to show again how well period costume suits her. With the Doctor distracted by his bickering with Robin, Clara takes charge of the situation, and it’s no surprise that in the prison cell, she gets picked out as the leader of the trio. Coleman also does very well with Clara’s scenes opposite the Sheriff, playing along with the man and extracting the story of his encounters with the robots and their ship. Ben Miller too gives a fine performance, playing it straight and presenting the Sheriff as an intelligent, powerful opponent, rather than an exaggerated, moustache-twirling villain. His ambitions may be comically small-scale compared to the normal run of Doctor Who adversaries (“For Nottingham is not enough… After this, Derby! … Then, Lincoln!”), but Miller judges very well when to let a sudden outburst of anger break through the smooth, urbane surface, reminding both Clara and the audience that this man is indeed dangerous. Regrettably, the broadcast of this episode was affected by recent murders in the Middle East and in London, which induced the production team to cut out a sizeable section from the climactic fight in which Robin would have chopped the Sheriff’s head off – only for the man to reveal that he has been turned into a cyborg himself by the robots, nonchalantly reattach his head and continue the fight. In the circumstances, the reluctance to show a comic beheading is understandable, but it’s unfortunate that the crux of the plot – that it’s the Sheriff, not Robin, who is the real “robot of Sherwood” – is obscured in the edited version. Nevertheless, the excision was deft enough that it’s difficult to tell there is anything missing; in fact, it could even be argued that the climax benefits from being tightened up in this way.

Gatiss uses the presence of Robin to continue the work of the previous two episodes in exploring facets of the new Doctor’s character. He no longer has any patience with the sort of banter that his previous self would have enjoyed, and finds himself most uncomfortable with the idea that someone like Robin could actually exist:

 

Clara: “When did you stop believing in anything?”

The Doctor: “When did you start believing in impossible heroes?”

Clara: “Don’t you know?”

 

In all three episodes so far, this Doctor has faced a character that reflects some aspect of himself, and here his first response is to reject the likeness that Clara sees between him and Robin. He automatically assumes that Robin and his men represent some kind of disruption in history that he must correct, and yet he can’t find anything to back up his instinctive reaction. I enjoyed the way the story keeps the Doctor off balance; it’s been quite a while since we’ve seen him so completely in the dark as he is here. The modern Who series, with its focus on telling most of its stories in 45 minutes, is simply not able to devote as much time as the classic series did to showing the Doctor in scientist or explorer mode – investigating a strange situation, forming theories and testing them. It’s all the more pleasing, then, when such an instance does come along, even though in this case he is not successful at solving the mystery of Robin. Because the big twist is that there is no twist: in spite of the pun in the episode’s title, Robin turns out to be exactly what he claims to be. The Doctor (like us) has no choice but to accept the fact that, just this once, reality is living up to the folktale – even as his baffled frustration (“He’s a legend!”) signals the perfectly timed arrival of the hero, with Clara at his side, for his final battle with the villain.

The climactic action is not the strongest part of the story. The Doctor leads the peasants to easily defeat the robots by reflecting their lasers back at them – a resolution that trivialises the previously powerful creatures and makes them look ridiculous. Then he and Clara have nothing to do but look on as Robin and the Sheriff duel, although the way in which Robin’s final defeat of the Sheriff refers back to his fight with the Doctor at the river crossing is clever. Once the foe is dispatched, the only remaining problem is the ship itself, which takes off but is too damaged to reach orbit, meaning its imminent explosion will cause devastation. The plotting descends to the same children’s TV level that marred the conclusion of the previous episode as, given that the ship is powered by the golden circuitry, somehow shooting the golden arrow into the side of the ship enables it to fly high enough to self-destruct safely. The cuteness of this ending, successfully weaving together all the elements of the story, is in inverse proportion to its believability, although Gatiss deserves some points for constructing a climax that requires the combined efforts of the Doctor, Clara and Robin – thanks to Robin’s arm being injured in his duel with the Sheriff, they have to help him draw back his bowstring to fire the arrow.

Fortunately, the reflective final scene is much more satisfying. Even though he might not want to admit it, a streak of Robin Hood-style uncynical heroism has always been an essential part of the Doctor’s character. The heart of the story is the Doctor’s journey from dismissing Robin as a “silly story” to finally accepting him, and thereby getting back in touch with a part of himself that seemed to have gone missing after his regeneration. Their final talk certainly wins no awards for subtlety, with Robin (having been told the truth about the Doctor by Clara) making the parallel between the nobleman and the Time Lord in an extremely on-the-nose fashion. Nevertheless, it ensures that they part on good terms, and the Doctor’s farewell gift of reuniting Robin with Marian (although it’s probably best not to wonder just how long she was standing there behind the TARDIS in silence, waiting for it to disappear) signals that he too is ready to be a hero again.

 

Classic Who DVD Recommendation: 1983’s The King’s Demons, starring Peter Davison, with Janet Fielding and Mark Strickson, is set just a few years later, in the time of King John, and also features a humanoid robot at the centre of the plot. What’s more, the Master as played by Anthony Ainley bears more than a passing resemblance to Ben Miller’s Sheriff here.

 

Reflections: This fun and frothy episode is clearly the most deliberately comedic of Peter Capaldi’s first season. It was well positioned between the severe Into the Dalek and the creepiness of Listen, providing some much needed lightening of tone. However, Capaldi’s Doctor remains rather strait-laced, entering into the humour only reluctantly and confining himself mainly to sarcastic ripostes to Clara and Robin. This snarkiness would continue throughout the season; rather like Jon Pertwee’s Doctor (which his appearance harks back to), it’s really only in his second year that his initially grumpy persona would loosen up and become amenable to more relaxed comic repartee.

As mentioned above, it’s a very traditional-feeling story, even down to a quasi-romantic bond between the companion and the principal guest character – a frequently occurring element in the classic series, which even had several cases of companions departing as a result of a whirlwind infatuation with a man they had only just met. The rise in the 1990’s, after the classic series had ended, of serialised storytelling in long-running science fiction shows (major examples being Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, and The X-Files) made it increasingly untenable for a modern series to expect its audience to believe in a deeply felt relationship that lasted only one episode and was forgotten the next week. This created a particular problem for Doctor Who when it returned in 2005, since the essence of the show is constantly varying its stories’ locales and secondary characters. It was inevitable, therefore, that modern Who would concentrate on making full use of its only continuing elements – exploring the relationship between the companion and the Doctor, and giving the companion a properly developed home life which changed as a result of their experiences. So an episode like this feels very much like a throwback, even though Clara’s regard for Robin (possibly transferring some of her feelings towards the previous Doctor), which might have turned into a full-on romance had this episode been made for the classic series, is restricted to the schoolgirl crush level. And, of course, it would not have worked at all had the episode been placed any later in the season, after Clara had become fully involved with Danny Pink.

The historical episodes of 21st-century Doctor Who have tended to construct their depictions of their subjects on the theory that an accurate and complete portrait is not the primary aim; the preference is to show a famous person from history in accordance with the pre-existing impression of them in the general popular consciousness (see, for example, the caricatured Churchill in Victory of the Daleks). That tendency is taken to an extreme here: it is quite certain that Robin Hood, even assuming he existed at all, would have had very little in common with this Hollywood version. The Doctor exasperatedly says, “Perfect eyes, perfect teeth… nobody has a jawline like that!” – and yet the episode confounds him by brazenly insisting that no, this is how it really was. Robin’s fourth-wall-breaking wink at the audience in the final scene (“And remember, Doctor, I’m just as real as you are”) shows how Gatiss is deliberately making use of the contradiction, daring the viewers not to suspend their disbelief by reminding them that everything they have seen is, after all, a constructed story. (In next season’s Sleep No More, he would go on to play more games with the audience, in an even more extreme fashion.) In this way, Robot of Sherwood could be considered the ultimate development of the modern Who “celebrity historical” – as Robin says, “History is a burden… Stories can make us fly.”