TDP 1361: #DOCTORWHO review #DisneyWho The Robot Revolution

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"The Robot Revolution" is the first episode of the fifteenth series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The episode was written by Russell T Davies, the Doctor Who showrunner, and directed by Peter Hoar.

In the episode, the Fifteenth Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa), rescues Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu), after she is kidnapped from Earth and inadvertently gets involved in a war on another planet. Chandra becomes the Doctor's new companion.

Production for the episode took place in Cardiff, Wales in late-2023. It was released on BBC iPlayer, BBC One, and Disney+ on 12 April 2025. Reception was mostly postive, with Sethu's characterization particularly praised. A novelisation written by Una McCormack is set to be released in July 2025.

Plot

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Belinda Chandra's boyfriend, Alan Budd, gives her a certificate naming a star after her for her birthday. He proposes but she rebuffs him. Seventeen years later, on 24 May 2025, Belinda is captured by robots and taken, as their queen, to Missbelindachandra One, a planet orbiting her star. The "Missbelindachandrakind" are composed of humanoids and robots, who coexisted peacefully until the latter took control and some humans began to rebel.

The robots are controlled by the Great AI Generator, who plans to merge with Belinda. On their spaceship, Belinda blames Alan for registering the star, as it flies through a time fracture. The Doctor, who had been in pursuit, is sent backward six months, and by the time Belinda arrives, he has become the historian. Exploiting a fault that prevents the robots from hearing every ninth word, the Doctor and the rebels rescue Belinda.

The Doctor realises that the robots possess a certificate identical to Belinda's, and have had it for over 5000 years. He concludes that this is related to the time fracture. Belinda allows herself to be captured, asking the robots to spare the rebels. Belinda and the Doctor are taken to the Great AI Generator. They discover that it is not "AI" but "AL", short for Alan. After Belinda had blamed Alan, the robots used the time fracture to capture him ten years earlier in 2015. Seeing life on Missbelindachandra as a game, Alan merged himself with the machines and started the war.

Using every ninth word, Alan communicates to them that he is in pain. Belinda touches her copy of the certificate to Alan's, causing them to experience all of time simultaneously. The Doctor rescues Belinda, while Alan reverts to a sperm and egg, which is cleaned up by a robot. Now free, the humanoids and robots rebuild their society, while the Doctor takes Belinda to his TARDIS. He describes meeting her distant descendant Mundy Flynn^[a] and wants to know how the robots acquired the certificate, but Belinda, disturbed at his insistence that their encounter is "destiny" and refusing to be one of his adventures, demands to be taken home.

The TARDIS is unable to return to 24 May 2025, instead bouncing off that date. The Doctor tells Belinda that they will need to take the long way around. As the TARDIS dematerialises, debris from several Earth landmarks and the certificate float in space.

Production

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Development

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"The Robot Revolution" was written by Russell T Davies.^[1] He initially conceptualized the idea as a one-off story and later reworked it into a series premiere to serve as a companion introduction.^[2] Davies said that it was a "difficult" episode to write, because he struggled with turning a joke about star naming into a full script. He also viewed it as a wider narrative about the concerns surrounding artificial intelligence in a real-world context. A working title for the episode included "Belinda and the Robots".^[3]

Filming

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Screenshot from the film Forbidden Planet

Promotional poster for This Island Earth

The set design team used Forbidden Planet and This Island Earth as references.

Set design began at Wolf Studios Wales in October 2023. Production Designer Phil Sims said he and Davies took inspiration from Forbidden Planet and This Island Earth when conceiving the sets. They were created with a retrofuturistic appearance influenced by the 1950s. Millennium FX designed the robot costumes over the course of eight weeks. They were first created digitally and split into 34 different pieces to be printed in 3D. Afterwards, the pieces were assembled with glue and finished with silicon and fiberglass.^[2][3]

The polish robot that appears in the episode was designed with a similar 1950s aesthetic, primarily being based on cars of the time period. The robot had unique wheels that allowed it to move laterally as well as straight ahead, as the designers wanted the robot to have a unique range of motion compared to other robots of similar size.^[4] The AI Generator was similarly designed to appear large and imposing, with the set and art design teams collaborating to determine where the presence of Alan would be inside of the machine. The set for the throne room, where Belinda is initially brought in the episode, is re-used for the AI Generator's room. The design team placed the "head" of the Generator's design just below the room's centerpiece in order to create the illusion that the room acted like a crown for the Generator and that the room is an extension of him.^[4]

The episode was directed by Peter Hoar.^[5] It was recorded in the second filming block of series 15 along with the fourth episode, "Lucky Day".^[6][7] Location filming occurred in November 2023 in Roath, Cardiff while soundstage filming also took place at Wolf Studios.^[2]

Casting

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The episode stars Ncuti Gatwa as the fifteenth incarnation of The Doctor and introduces Varada Sethu as his companion, Belinda Chandra.^[8] Sethu previously played a separate but related character in the fourteenth series episode "Boom" (2024).^[9] Anita Dobson reprised her role as Mrs Flood, an enigmatic character who was first introduced in The Church on Ruby Road (2023) and recurred in the previous series.^[10] Alan Budd (the episode's antagonist) was portrayed by Jonny Green, who formerly voiced characters in various Doctor Who and Torchwood audio dramas. Other members of the guest cast included Max Parker, Jeff Kunjumon, Evelyn Miller, and Caleb Hughes.^[11] Two of the robots were operated by Stephen Love and Robert Strange; the two worked as Wrarth Warriors in "The Star Beast" (2023), while Strange also handled the Bogeyman costume in "Space Babies" (2024).^[2]

Broadcast and reception

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Professional ratings

Aggregate scores
Source	Rating
Rotten Tomatoes (Tomatometer)	100%[12]
Rotten Tomatoes (Average Score)	7.10/10[12]
Review scores
Source	Rating
The A.V. Club	B-[13]
The Daily Telegraph	[14]
Empire	[15]
GamesRadar+	[16]
The Guardian	[17]
IGN	6/10[18]
The Independent	[19]
Vulture	[20]

Release

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"The Robot Revolution" was simultaneously released on BBC iPlayer at 8 a.m. British Summer Time (BST) in the United Kingdom and on Disney+ in the United States at 12 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time on 12 April 2025.^[21] A BBC One broadcast followed later in the day at 6:50 p.m. BST.^[22] Disney also handled international distribution of the episode.^[23]

Ratings

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Overnight viewing figures estimate that the episode was watched by 2 million people on its BBC One broadcast, making it the second most-watched programme on BBC One behind the finale of Gladiators series 2, as well as the fourth-most watched programme of the day.^[24]

Critical reception

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On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 100% of 8 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.10/10.^[12] Will Salmon with GamesRadar+ highlighted the setting of the episode and its design, but criticized the episode for being "light", as well as due to confusing plot points toward the end of the episode.^[16] Writing for Den of Geek, Stefan Mohamed highlighted the Doctor's characterization and the episode's new visual and directorial techniques, but criticized Alan as a villain and the death of Sasha 55 as a weak narrative moment.^[25] Yahoo! Entertainment's Roxy Simmons found the episode enjoyable but found the episode to make very little impact on the audience, and found the commentary unsubtle.^[26] Belinda's characterization and Sethu's performance was near universally praised.^{[16][18][26][25][15][17][27][14]}

The Independent author Ed Power praised the Doctor's characterization and the fun nature of the episode, though felt that elements of Alan's characterization as a "nerdy" character would receive negative reception, and that Sasha 55's death was unnecessary for the episode's plot.^[19] IGN critic Robert Anderson criticized the episode as feeling "shallow", as well as the twist of the AI Generator being Alan.^[18] Reviewing the episode for The Guardian, Jack Seale highlighted the episode's re-introduction of the Doctor's character and the inclusion of topical issues, but criticized the twists involving the AI Generator as well as the execution of the episode's message.^[17] Mashable's Chris Taylor argued that Belinda's characterization was weak, and that she lacked a sense of purpose compared to other past companions. He also criticized the episode's social commentary, feeling that the episode moved to fast to properly critique any aspect of society.^[28] Michael Hogan, penning a review for The Daily Telegraph felt some of the episode's social commentary was not well-executed, and felt jarring given the episode's time slot.^[14]