By Mark Gatiss
Series 8
“Shut
it, Hoody!”
Being
a fan of Robin Hood I was somewhat lukewarm to the prospect of Doctor Who doing
an episode centered on him and Sherwood Forest and the overall Robin Hood legend.
That and the writer for this episode was Mark Gatiss who has been really hit or
miss with his stories. In Series 7 he
wrote the good “Cold War” and the very bad “The Crimson Horror.” So he now
delivers to us his next story “Robot of Sherwood” and from looking at the
trailers it could be one that could very well be uneventful and not all that
good.
Well
I have to say that I surprisingly actually liked and enjoyed “Robot of
Sherwood.” Robot of Sherwood was an
episode that did not take itself seriously and that is why it worked as a
Doctor Who story. Sometimes Doctor Who
has to be funny and light hearted especially when you are going in the
direction of being darker. Robot of Sherwood
fit that bill very well and it also wasn’t overly silly. Well maybe it was a
tad silly. At times it felt like a Black
Adder episode. I could see Rowan
Atkinson doing the scenes in the dungeon where Robin Hood and The Doctor were
chained to each other. Those scenes
were pretty good and were performed really well by Peter Capaldi and Tom
Riley. In fact this story was pretty
funny and found myself laughing through it a lot which doesn’t normally happen
when you watch Doctor Who and for it once it was ok to have a story this
different and funny and I am glad they tried something different again this
week.
If
you are a fan, as I am, of the Errol Flynn “The Adventures of Robin Hood” which
came out in 1938 you’ll be happy to see a lot from that movie made it into this
episode. Like the fight on the river and
the archery contest it was all there. If you’re going to do a Robin Hood
episode you do need to have some of his familiar exploits. Even the fight at the end of with the Sheriff
of Nottingham was sort of in the same vein as the one from the Errol Flynn
movie. I did like the sword fight at the
beginning. The Doctor using the spoon
and bragging on how he was trained by the best was pretty funny and you knew
how it would end up. It was funny seeing
The Doctor getting pushed into the water after beating Robin Hood with the spoon. What shouldn’t go unnoticed is that there is
also a cameo by Patrick Troughton as Robin Hood from when he played him in the
1953 TV series which in itself was pretty cool thing to see.
I
could see “Robot of Sherwood” fitting in the Tom Baker era. In fact it kind of
reminded me of that era when I was watching it. It had that type of feel to it with the
comedy and then seriousness. Especially
when The Doctor is confronting the Sheriff and trying to deduce his plans and
saying a bunch of silly nonsense that does not make sense and then figuring it
out that is was nonsense. That was
purely a 4th Doctor moment.
Plus just the way The Doctor presented himself made it feel like a 4th
Doctor story especially with him bragging about Robin Hood not existing and
then seeing the arrow go into the TARDIS.
It sure looked like Peter Capaldi was channeling his inner Tom Baker.
The
story on a whole was pretty simple.
Robots have crashed landed on Earth and using the habitants as slaves to
help repair the ship. This time using them to collect gold and melting it down
so it can be used into making new circuits for the ship so it can continue to
the promise land. Not a very original
idea and one that has been done before in Doctor Who and in fact better than
“Robot of Sherwood”. But it was till
enjoyable and did not really detract from the fun of seeing Robin Hood and The
Doctor interacting and bickering with one another. Have to say the robot knights looked pretty
good and I thought they were pretty neat especially when they revealed their
faces.
Jenna
Coleman was again in top form and was really good in this story. Clara as a character has grown a lot from
being the impossible girl to what she is today.
She is actually using some brains in figuring out the plan by tricking
the Sheriff and she also has no problems of being really sarcastic to The
Doctor. I like her being sarcastic to
The Doctor as it works really well and works well with Peter Capaldi as there
is really good chemistry there.
Robot
of Sherwood is a story that I had low expectations going into and ending up
enjoying it. It was a story that did not
take it self all too seriously and in the end it ended up being very
entertaining and funny which comes as a nice change of pace for Doctor Who.
Grade
B +
