THE ROBOTS OF DEATH

commentary by Judy Harris

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16:  THE ROBOTS OF DEATH (4 Parts)
ORIGINALLY AIRED:  1/29/77 to 2/19/77
WRITTEN BY:  Chris Boucher	
DIRECTED BY:  Michael Briant
PRODUCER:  Philip Hinchcliffe	
SCRIPT EDITOR:  Robert Holmes

This story had some of the "hardest" science fiction of any DOCTOR WHO story. While most WHO stories take pains to give plausible explanations for some of the casual background technology, THE ROBOTS OF DEATH, with its indirect references to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, and its machine-oriented setting, seems more overtly science fiction than most of the other WHO plots.

At the same time, there is an element of the classic detective fiction murder mystery, with the effete human characters locked in, knowing one of them is a murderer, but not who.

On a rocky, inhospitable planet, swept by sand storms, a large vehicle with huge corkscrew-like digging implements moves over the surface. It is a sandminer. As with the previous Chris Boucher story, THE FACE OF EVIL, the planet is never named. The sandminer is a model; exterior shots are not well combined with the live action inserts; but scenes of the interior, showing the actors dwarfed by the vehicle, are fairly believable, although--as with PLANET OF EVIL--the vehicle seems to be too roomy for its purpose. However, this is more in keeping with this society of humans who, unlike the grimy workers of ALIEN, for instance, wear elaborate facial makeup and fancy dress, because all the real work is left to the robots. There appears to be fewer than 10 humans on board; the robots far outnumber them.

The robots are rigid-faced man-sized machines, who wear ID badges on the chests of their quilted uniforms. They come in three classes:

Vocs
which can speak
Supervocs
only one on board--SV7, the coordinator; the robot command circuit is routed only through him; and
Dums
single function labor robots, which can't speak

The Voc class robot has over a million multilevel constraints in its circuitry to prevent its ever malfunctioning in a manner that would allow it to harm humans. However, they occasionally go wrong when there's an error in their programming.

The humans on the sandminer seem to get along much better with the robots than they do with each other. They bicker among themselves, as people will who are shut up together for a long time--in this case, 8 months of a 2-year tour.

In the auxiliary control room (never seen again after this story) of the TARDIS, Leela--studiously playing with a yoyo--asks the Doctor if she can stop. She thinks it's a part of the magic which makes the TARDIS work. The Doctor tells her there's no such thing as magic: "To the rational mind, nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained."

Leela challenges the Doctor to explain how the TARDIS is larger on the inside than without. The Doctor demonstrates with two boxes: "It's because insides and outsides are not in the same dimension," he tells her. A large box looks smaller than a second box when the smaller one is nearer to Leela. "If you could keep that exactly that distance away and have it here, the large one would fit inside the small one," the Doctor explains, "That's transdimensional engineering, a key Time Lord discovery."

The TARDIS lands in the forward scoop deck of the sandminer. The Doctor isn't sure where they are, but bridles at Leela's suggestion he can't control the TARDIS: "Of course I can control it--9 times out of 10--well, 7 times out of 10--5 times..."

Leela wants to take the disrupter gun, but the Doctor tells her he never carries weapons: "If people see you mean them no harm, they never hurt you--9 times out of 10." They exit the TARDIS.

On the sandminer, Chub has gone to the forward storage locker to get an instrument package, but it's too heavy to lift, so he calls for a robot. Its eyes have a red glowing appearance; the robot's point-of-view is strangely colored with scan lines, like bad TV reception. The robot strangles Chub. Chief Mover Poul hears a scream and discovers the body; he notifies Commander Ulanov.

Other robots report an obstruction in the forward scoop deck; it's the TARDIS, which they move with a sort of crane. The model of the TARDIS always looks unconvincing.

The Doctor and Leela have reached the outer shutters. Leela finds the desert beautiful, but the Doctor tells her the sandstorm in the distance could be traveling at a thousand miles an hour; the sand will cut them to pieces unless they get back to the TARDIS. However, it has been moved by the Robots. The Doctor searches for the shutter manual controls, but before he can find them, the robots are ordered to stop the mining operation because of the discovery of Chub's body, so the shutters are closed automatically.

Ulanov and Poul examine Chub's body; on his hand is a round red plastic disk, similar to a bicycle reflector; neither knows what it is. All the humans gather in a communal crew room. They bicker among themselves on what to do. Chief Fixer Dask identifies the disk on Chub as a robot deactivator indicator, also known as a corpse marker.

The robots find the Doctor and Leela and lock them in another crew lounge. The Doctor explains to Leela how the sandminer works: the heavier elements sink beneath the sand; a standstorm stirs things up, bringing the ores to the surface where they are forced into the scoops of the sandminer under pressure. "Sometimes you talk like a Tesh," an uncomprehending Leela tells him. "Thank you," the Doctor replies. "It was not well meant," Leela informs him.

SV7 enters, asks some questions and leaves, telling the Doctor and Leela to stay put. The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to open the door; he wants to locate the TARDIS and scout around.

SV7 informs Ulanov of the intruders. The Commander assumes they're the murderers, although the rest of the crew aren't so sure. When Ulanov tells SV7 to bring the prisoners to him, SV7 tells him they have escaped.

Leela finds Chub's body; the Doctor locates the TARDIS. "Hello, my dear old thing," he says, patting it on the side. He opens the door to one of the hoppers and starts to explain what's happening, when he notices Leela is not with him.

He investigates another hopper and finds the body of Kerril. The door locks behind him and ore starts pouring in, covering him over his head. He breathes through a tube he fishes out of his pocket until SV7 rescues him. The Doctor tells him of the dead man.

Leela returns to the lounge where SV7 had previously put her and the Doctor; she finds the body of Cass. D84 catches her with the body. He questions her and asks that she tell no one about him. Ulanov enters and D84 quickly restrains Leela. Ulanov accuses Leela of the murders. When D84 doesn't speak up for her, Ulanov tells Leela D84 is a D-class robot who can't speak.

In the communal crew room, the Doctor offers a jelly baby to his captors, who refuse. They bicker again and accuse each other. The Doctor tells Borg, "You know, you're a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain."

Shortly thereafter, elsewhere on the sandminer, an unknown human gives a corpse marker to a robot, commanding it to kill Zilda.

In the robot mortuary, the Doctor and Leela are restrained in metal clamps whose molecular structure has been locked. The Doctor concentrates: "Whatever's locked can always be unlocked; just a matter of thinking out the right combination," which--he tells Leela--will take "no more than 2 or 3 weeks; there are several million combinations to think through."

Poul enters. Leela warns the Doctor to be careful, because Poul is not what he seems; he moves like a hunter and watches all the time.

Poul releases the Doctor, who suggests the murders were done by one of the robots. The Doctor theorizes someone has found a way to bypass the robot's prime directive. When Poul says it's impossible, the Doctor replies: "Bumble bees. Terran insects. Aerodynamically impossible for them to fly but they do it. I'm rather fond of bumble bees." (He must be; they crop up as a metaphor in THE ARMAGEDDON FACTOR as well).

The Doctor leads Poul and Leela to the site of the first murder and demonstrates the probability of a robot being the murderer. Poul keeps an open mind.

Zilda sneaks into Ulanov's art-deco cabin, on her break, and starts to search it. She finds something and, over the radio, accuses him of being a murderer. While on the radio, she is killed by a robot.

In the communal crew room, the Doctor tells Leela, who has been calling the robots creepy mechanical men, "People never really lose that feeling of unease with robots. The more of them there are the greater the unease and, of course, the greater the dependence. It's a vicious circle. People can neither live with them nor exist without them." The Doctor feels if the strangler is a robot, "It's the end of this civilization."

Poul goes to Ulanov's cabin and finds the Commander leaning over Zilda's body. Poul confines Ulanov to his quarters and relieves him of command.

In the communal room, Leela feels something's wrong, but the Doctor can't feel it and quotes MACBETH, ignoring her warning. Suddenly the sandminer goes out of control, tossing everyone to the ground. "Please don't say I told you so," the Doctor requests through gritted teeth.

Something's jammed the motives; they're on overload. Borg is dead. The drive links have been sabotaged. Pilot Toos is now in command. The Doctor tells her to cut all power to avoid exploding. However, the motive units have been sabotaged as well and won't stop. The Doctor convinces Dask to cut the power lines and the sandminer stops, but begins to sink beneath the sand at a rate of 2 meters a second. "Now our troubles really begin," the Doctor declares. Pressure on the hull is increasing; the refrigeration and filtering systems are broken, so the air is turning bad.

Leela takes Toos to her quarters to bandage her arm. Pool tells Toos what Zilda found in Ulanov's cabin; 10 years ago Ulanov murdered a member of his crew--left him to die; the dead man was Zilda's brother.

Dask repairs the motive units and gets the sandminer moving again.

The Doctor tells Leela to keep an eye on Poul. Leela notes the water has no taste. Poul explains water on a sandminer never tastes. Every drop on board has been through a filtration pump 8 times. He gives Leela a pill to flavor the water. Then he leaves, locking Leela in the communal room.

In the robot mortuary, Dask inspects a deactivated robot and puts a corpse marker on it. Poul sees the robot has blood on its hand; his mind begins to disintegrate.

SV7 contacts his human controller, who overrides the robot's prime directive. SV7's eyes start to glow red. "Go brother, you are one of us now," the unknown human says. In a hidden workshop, a hooded human disconnects the command circuit of another robot. He performs a sort of robotic lobotomy, with a Laserson probe.

The Doctor finds D84 inspecting Zilda's body, and threatens to tell SV7 the D-class robot can talk, so D84 agrees to speak. The Doctor discovers D84 is a robot detective; the mining company has received threatening letters of a robot revolution, signed by Taren Capel, a robotics scientist. No records exist of his description; from childhood he lived with robots only.

When the Doctor points out to D84 Taren Capel is probably on board, masquerading as one of the crew, D84 is downcast because he failed to consider this possibility, until the Doctor tells him, "Congratulations. Failure is one of the basic freedoms."

SV7 hands out corpse markers, telling the altered robots their coordinator has ordered the death of the remaining humans. V5 opens the door to the room Leela's locked in, but she gets away from him.

The Doctor discovers Taren Capel's workshop, and uses the ship's radio to warn Toos. He tells her to get all the humans to the command deck, get the robots out and secure the doors. A robot comes to kill Toos, but she shuts the door on its arm and it walks away, leaving its hand behind.

In the robot mortuary Leela finds Poul; he's incoherent with fright.

Ulanov discovers the Doctor in Taren Capel's lab and accuses him of the murders again. V4 enters and tries to strangle the Doctor, but Ulanov, seeing his error, stabs it in the head, damaging its sensors. There's a power failure; the sandminer stops again. Ulanov's hurt, so the Doctor carries him to a corridor where they meet 3 more robots. Ulanov tells the Doctor robots can outrun humans; they never tire.

The Doctor puts his hat and scarf over a robot's head and tricks the damaged V4 into attacking it.

D84 and the humans meet on the control deck. The Doctor explains D84 and Poul are undercover agents for the mining company. Poul is suffering from robophobia, an unreasoning dread of robots, causing identity crisis, paranoia and personality disintegration. It's also known as Grimwade's syndrome. Zilda's brother had it and it led to his death; Ulanov didn't kill him.

The Doctor tells Ulanov to pass a positive charge through the metal plate of the 29 electron blasting powder packs on the deck, magnetizing them into antirobot bombs.

Dask knocks to be let into the command deck, but Toos and Ulanov don't let him in. He's Taren Capel and is now dressed and made up facially to resemble his robotic brothers.

The Doctor, D84 and Leela go to the robot mortuary. The Doctor removes the head from a deactivated robot to patch communications into Dask's private command circuit. The Doctor spotted Dask as Taren Capel because of his verbal and physical precision. He modifies the robot head into a deactivator to destroy the robots' brains, warning D84 not to come, but D84 insists.

Ulanov kills V5 with his bomb; he and Toos leave the command deck to help the Doctor.

The Doctor, D84 and Leela go to Taren Capel's workshop. The Doctor opens a panel in the wall and hides Leela in there with a cylinder of gas, telling her to turn the valve when Dask comes in. Leela asks what the gas will do. "Change his voice. When it mixes with air and helium is breathed, it alters the resonance in the larynx. Didn't they teach you that in the jungle?," the Doctor teases. The robots won't recognize Dask's voice and so won't obey him.

Taren Capel enters and stabs D84 in the head with a Laserson probe. D84 drops the robot deactivator. Taren Capel straps the Doctor to an operating room bench and aims the Laserson probe at his head, planning to burn out his brain. "You're one of those boring maniacs who's going to gloat. You going to tell me your plan for running the universe?" the Doctor baits Capel.

D84 crawls along the floor toward the robot deactivator. He pushes the button and he and all the nearby robots blow up.

SV7 enters and attacks Dask, strangling him. Toos and Ulanov arrive. The Doctor removes his straps and stabs SV7 in the head with a Laserson probe. Behind the wall, Leela asks to be let out; her voice is cartoony--high pitched and squeaky. "A mouse in the wainscotting; well squeaked, mouse," the Doctor says, letting her out.

A rescue ship is on its way; the Doctor and Leela return to the TARDIS. The Doctor tells Leela the helium didn't affect his voice "because I'm a Time Lord. I've been around, you know. Two hearts. Respiratory bypass system. I haven't lived 750 years without learning something." The TARDIS dematerializes.

NOTES ON THE CAST

David Collings, who plays Poul, played Vorus in the Tom Baker story REVENGE OF THE CYBERMEN and plays Mawdryn in the Davison story MAWDRYN UNDEAD. He had a semiregular role as Silver in SAPPHIRE AND STEEL.

Pamela Salem, who plays Toos, provided a voice for Xoanon in the previous Tom Baker story THE FACE OF EVIL; and plays Rachel in the McCoy story REMEMBRANCE OF THE DALEKS.

Rob Edwards, who plays Chub, provided another voice of Xoanon in the previous Tom Baker story THE FACE OF EVIL.

Brian Croucher, who plays Borg, replaced Stephen Greif as Travis on BLAKE'S 7.