Mark Harrison | On 14, Apr 2025

This review contains no spoilers for this week’s episode of Doctor Who. Already seen it? Read our Doctor’s notes at the end for additional spoilery observations. For more on Doctor Who, see our Whoniverse channel.

“Why is it all so mad? Why is everything on this planet so stupid?

Since 2005, every season of Doctor Who by original and current showrunner Russell T Davies has opened with some kind of cast turnover. Whether it’s introducing a new Doctor or a new companion, his Episode 1s usually re-assert the “newness” of a new series. With Ncuti Gatwa settled in as the Fifteenth Doctor, Season 15’s (or Season 2’s) The Robot Revolution turns to returning guest star from last season, Varada Sethu, as a brand new character.

We meet Belinda Chandra in 2008, getting a present from her teenage boyfriend Alan (Jonny Green) – a certificate designating some far-off star as “Miss Belinda Chandra”. She’s not too impressed. 17 years later, she’s just finished a night shift as an NHS nurse when she’s abducted by big red robots from the “Missbelindachandra” system, where she’s expected to wed the despotic Great Al Generator to secure interplanetary peace. All this before she even meets the Doctor.

The star certificate is a left-field way to introduce a new companion, and perhaps it’s a side-effect of a shorter eight-episode season that we effectively meet Belinda on the Planet of the Wacky Political Satire that usually comes with a second or third TARDIS trip. “Left-field” is the watchword for this season opener, a trippingly absurd mashup of classic sci-fi visuals, contemporary digital satire and some frankly barbaric slapstick.

Not so long ago, Davies marked 20 years since the revival of the show he’s been running again since 2022, so you can imagine him aiming to switch things up a bit. Even if Davies doesn’t have a robot or A.I. add-on in his script software that says “it looks like you’re trying to write Smith And Jones again”, something like that must pop in his brain before an episode like this hares off the way it does. (And maybe that little cleaning robot that says “polish, polish” is a glimpse into his rewriting process?)

Happily, Belinda sets the episode apart all by herself. Counter to Millie Gibson’s chirpy Gen-Z foundling Ruby Sunday, she’s written as a mature millennial with more cynicism about life, the universe and everything. A reluctant companion at best, she’s more Arthur Dent than Martha Jones – yes, she’s got the right stuff to travel with the Doctor, but who’s to say she wants that?

Sethu returns after impressing the Doctor Who team in last season’s Boom and she’s on top form. Whether she’s boggling at the madness of the lolloping Missbelindachandrabots or calling the Doctor out on his nonsense, she makes a cracking first impression. Classic series fans will have seen what happens when reluctant companions go wrong, but Sethu and Gatwa have a prickly yet watchable chemistry that bodes well for the rest of the season.

Meanwhile, director Peter Hoar ably wrangles all the moving bits of Davies’ mad script, which draws on everything from The Wizard of Oz and Flash Gordon to several previous Who episodes. Aside from his recent acclaimed work on It’s a Sin and The Last of Us, Hoar previously made 2011’s A Good Man Goes to War, and here, he lets the noisy retro-futurist adventure beats pop while also giving the rarer quiet moments room to breathe.

What’s more, he’s a good fit for RTD’s live-action comic book splash-page sensibility. Doctor Who is a show that could stand to have some more directorial flourishes these days, and at several points in this opener, Hoar lands the sort of striking moments that were largely absent in last season’s global streaming-ready shimmer (“polish, polish” again) or the Chris Chibnall era’s expensively lensed murk. As ever, Davies’ scripts trend more towards telling than showing, but Hoar brings the visuals to punctuate the verbiage.

On that note, the showrunner’s sledgehammer-grade subtlety is in full effect as he bounds between satirical jabs and silly jokes. There’s a fun running gag about a nonsensical processing fault in the robots, but also a couple of well-intentioned dialogue clangers that will “annoy all the right people” but also leave most of the rest of us groaning. The episode rightly resists any attempt to take it too seriously, but some of those satirical targets deserve a little more than a cheeky honk on the nose.

Colourful, noisy and funny, The Robot Revolution is a jam-packed hour of family entertainment that hits more often than it misses (but not nearly as often as it Missbelindachandras). Wacky though it is, it’s also reassuringly back-to-basics after recent high-stakes tone pieces like 73 Yards and Joy to the World, or the howling convolution of Davies’ two-part finale. On all fronts, Varada Sethu is the clear standout, single-handedly upholding the “newness” for yet another season opener.
 

 

Doctor’s notes – contains spoilers

– On the timey-wimey side of things, the time fracture in the Missbelindachandra system sets up a tight, neat bootstrap paradox. Belinda arrives hours after she left Earth, but the TARDIS in pursuit turns up six months early, giving the Doctor time to join the rebellion. Belinda’s ex Alan and the star certificate itself are also displaced at random earlier points that set the story in motion.

– RTD often cops flak for being overly sentimental, but he constantly reminds us how brutal and cynical he is too. From the summary extermination of number 8’s cat (sorry not sorry, pet lovers) to the inevitable demise of companion-in-waiting Sasha-55 (Evelyn Miller), death is as much a part of his take on Doctor Who as the family drama or cringe comedy.

– Beyond the story’s similarities to Smith And Jones, the Missbelindachandrabots recall various Doctor Who robots from episodes such as 2012’s Dinosaurs On A Spaceship, 2015’s The Husbands Of River Song, and 2017’s Smile. And the finale is a bit like Davies’ own Voyage Of The Damned, because because because becauuuuuuse…

– “The Wizard And A.I.” anyone? Davies cements the Ozian vibes by revealing the Great Al Generator (that’s AL, not AI, groan) is an elaborate frontage for a cyborg Alan. As Belinda muses “planet of the incels”, we were more tickled by this busting the myth of “generative” A.I. as a technological front for the entitled, angry young men.

– Another note on Alan – while a younger audience can easily grasp that Alan was a bad boyfriend for telling Belinda what to do, those flashbacks could have used the old “polish polish”. Davies is somewhat stuck between doing coercive control and keeping it light and comical, but it’s one of those cases where the dialogue isn’t right, but just right-on. That outrageous Margate and Stargate gag sails by.

– The Doctor says he got Belinda’s name from someone he trusts – guessing that will come back – but also uses the TARDIS to confirm she’s an ancestor of Anglican marine Mundy Flynn, Sethu’s character from Boom. The final scenes suggest this coincidence may tie into why the TARDIS can’t get Belinda back to her home time directly, and why iconic Earth debris drifts through space on 24th May 2025 – also the airdate for part one of this year’s two-part finale…

– “You ain’t seen me.” Ruby’s neighbour Mrs Flood (Anita Dobson) turns up for a brief pre-titles cameo, only now she’s Belinda’s neighbour Mrs Flood. We’re sure this will come back in Season 2, but then what about the hospital receptionist, played by another ex-EastEnder, Belinda “Squiggle” Owusu. She’s already played Woman With Pram in 2023’s The Church On Ruby Road. Never mind Susan Triad or Belinda Chandra, who is this Woman Sometimes With Pram, Sometimes Without??? Time will probably not tell…

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