Robophobia is the sequel to the 1977 Tom Baker adventure The Robots of Death where the Doctor and Leela arrive on a ship that is under attack from a bunch of Robots that are rising up against their masters. This story supposedly takes place several months afterwards and there is a nice little mention to that story. Written by the Executive Producer of the Doctor Who range for Big Finish, Nicholas Briggs, this story is clearly something that Briggs has wanted to do for quite some time and in recent years it’s been Big Finish’s intention to bring back monsters from the classic era that only got a single story. The story starts off in a bizarre manner in that we hear the Doctor being strangled by a robot and then the music plays and moments later we hear the Doctor acting like nothing happened. Now I thought at first that I had missed something or picked the option to play random track on my iPod but no everything was normal in that respect.
The thing about Nicholas Briggs is that he is someone who knows how to write good characters. All his stories have very interesting and never dull individuals. Usually very intelligent and very well cast. This story is no different. Nicola Walker is the best thing in this story and that’s partly down to Walker’s performance but its also partly down to the character which serves the function of being the Doctor’s companion as there is no Ace or Hex in this story. The character of Liv Chenka is someone that I found to be entertaining from the very beginning. In the interviews at the end, Nicholas Briggs seemed to be suggesting that there was an implication the Chenka was a baddie. I never got that sense and found her to be a trustworthy character. I am a big fan of Nicola Walker because I like the BBC drama Spooks which she is superb in so I think that twinned with her performance she could easily win the Toms Tardis Award for Best Guest Star. Another good performance comes from Toby Hadoke as Farel, being a fan of his stage show ‘Moths ate my Doctor Who Scarf’ (if you haven’t heard this on audio or seen it on stage then you need to listen to it NOW. The character is again a good character that is 50% good writing from Briggs and the other 50% from Hadoke. He is a actor who I think should be in more adventures. Another actor under the banner ‘also appeared in TV Doctor Who’ is Dan Starkey who played a Sontaran in the Sontaran Stratagem in 2008 opposite David Tennant’s Doctor. In this he plays Cravnet which is another good character and then there is Nicholas Pegg who isnt playing a Dalek but instead plays Selerat and is another good performer. Sylvester McCoy gives his best performance since Enemy of the Daleks back in 2009. McCoy always puts in a great performance in every story he’s in but unfortunately the stories (especially in 2010) didn’t really allow him to show us why he’s so brilliant. In this he gets to be his manipulative best and watch from afar as people struggle against finding out whats going on.
Ultimately the stories main fault is that the robots are doing the same thing that they did in the first Robots and they deal with the same issue and that is humans who are scared of Robots. Once you’ve done the whole robots rising up against their human slaves idea then there isn’t much that can be done so its credit to Nicholas Briggs that he manages to add enough to make it seem different. Robophobia isn’t the best story to come from the mind of Nicholas Briggs but its not a terrible story. I think that there is enough to make me want to listen to it again but the thing that I was never really keen on the Robots and think that the only reason that this story exists is to bring back another classic monster that only got one outing.
One thing that is still a mystery. Why is the TARDIS black? Only time will tell.
The thing about Nicholas Briggs is that he is someone who knows how to write good characters. All his stories have very interesting and never dull individuals. Usually very intelligent and very well cast. This story is no different. Nicola Walker is the best thing in this story and that’s partly down to Walker’s performance but its also partly down to the character which serves the function of being the Doctor’s companion as there is no Ace or Hex in this story. The character of Liv Chenka is someone that I found to be entertaining from the very beginning. In the interviews at the end, Nicholas Briggs seemed to be suggesting that there was an implication the Chenka was a baddie. I never got that sense and found her to be a trustworthy character. I am a big fan of Nicola Walker because I like the BBC drama Spooks which she is superb in so I think that twinned with her performance she could easily win the Toms Tardis Award for Best Guest Star. Another good performance comes from Toby Hadoke as Farel, being a fan of his stage show ‘Moths ate my Doctor Who Scarf’ (if you haven’t heard this on audio or seen it on stage then you need to listen to it NOW. The character is again a good character that is 50% good writing from Briggs and the other 50% from Hadoke. He is a actor who I think should be in more adventures. Another actor under the banner ‘also appeared in TV Doctor Who’ is Dan Starkey who played a Sontaran in the Sontaran Stratagem in 2008 opposite David Tennant’s Doctor. In this he plays Cravnet which is another good character and then there is Nicholas Pegg who isnt playing a Dalek but instead plays Selerat and is another good performer. Sylvester McCoy gives his best performance since Enemy of the Daleks back in 2009. McCoy always puts in a great performance in every story he’s in but unfortunately the stories (especially in 2010) didn’t really allow him to show us why he’s so brilliant. In this he gets to be his manipulative best and watch from afar as people struggle against finding out whats going on.
Ultimately the stories main fault is that the robots are doing the same thing that they did in the first Robots and they deal with the same issue and that is humans who are scared of Robots. Once you’ve done the whole robots rising up against their human slaves idea then there isn’t much that can be done so its credit to Nicholas Briggs that he manages to add enough to make it seem different. Robophobia isn’t the best story to come from the mind of Nicholas Briggs but its not a terrible story. I think that there is enough to make me want to listen to it again but the thing that I was never really keen on the Robots and think that the only reason that this story exists is to bring back another classic monster that only got one outing.
One thing that is still a mystery. Why is the TARDIS black? Only time will tell.
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