Robot

As the Brigadier and Sarah watch, the Doctor regenerates on the floor of what has been his lab at the UNIT headquarters for the last several years. The Brigadier does his best to take the regeneration in stride, as he is not exactly unfamiliar with it after his experience with the Doctor's first two selves, and Sarah doe sher best to come to terms with what has happened. While the Doctor recuperates, a series of robberies of high tech equipment are committed; unlike regular thefts, these are committed by something big, and metallic. The Doctor shakes off his regeneration trauma and helps the Brigadier with his investigations, but Sarah stumbles across the culprit during a visit to an organization called ThinkTank: a giant robot is being used to steal the plans for a disintegrator gun and the firing codes for the nuclear weapons of the entire world. ThinkTank plan to blackmail the world into obeying their orders, with armageddon as their ultimate threat and the armed robot as their guardian. The robot, however, has become unstable and Sarah's show of compassion for it creates even more confusion in its brain until it decides that all of mankind deserves to be destroyed...

Robot is unlike any previous post-regeneration story; the Doctor does not require a long period of recuperation and his identity is not questioned by those around him, despite him being wildly different from his previous self. While the third Doctor was a man of refinement and elegance, the new Doctor is younger in appearance and dresses in clothes that one might find on one of today's urban hipsters, although the immensely long scarf that would become this Doctor's trademark is something all his own. The new Doctor's approach to any situation is to disarm with humour and play the fool, the sarcasm and seriousness of his previous self left behind. Also missing is his rapport with the Brigadier; it is obvious in the pained expressions of the Brig that he is having trouble relating to this new version of his scientific advisor, and I found myself wondering how things would have happened differently if the Doctor had not regenerated and the third Doctor was in this situation. The Doctor does, of course, win. He always wins. In one fashion or another. And as soon as he has won, he's off in the TARDIS, with Sarah Jane Smith at his side and UNIT attache lieutenant Harry Sullivan along for the ride.

Robot was not only the first story for Tom Baker's Doctor but it was also the first adventure completely recorded on video as opposed to video in studio and low grade film on location. The result is a uniform clarity across the entire adventure, although when the Brigadier's attempt to destroy the robot result in it growing to giant size, the effects still leave a lot to be desired. The new version of King Kong just opened this week, and there are obvious parallels between the giant ape's ascnet of the Empire State Building and the robot's battle with the UNIT soldiers, but I'll save you the suspense; one is clearly better than the other. Then there's the bit with the forced perspective model tank at the climax of episode three. Oh boy. Ambitious, but really... they shouldn't have.

Our cast has some truly memorable characters in it; top of the list being the baffled professor Kettlewell, the robot's creator, with his insane mad scientist hairdo and his squinty little eyes. Next is the isane science bitch Hilda Winters, the head of ThinkTank. Oh how I loathed her. Her smug assurance that the Brigadier could never shoot her as he holds her at gunpoint doesn't waver enough when Sarah picks up a gun and sticks it in her face, though; if times were different I'm sure Sarah would have slapped her one or there'd have been a catfight or she would have shot Winters in the leg to show her she meant business. But alas, Benton just arrests her. And the Doctor makes fun of her.

So the Doctor is back. Unlike his previous self he is eager to go out into the universe; there will be no more sitting around waiting for UNIT's next crisis to loom. In fact, UNIT as an entity will soon be phased out as the Doctor resumes his travels in space and time, starting with a trip into the far future...

NEXT EPISODE : THE ARK IN SPACE