Rating: 
Summary: "I will release more of our brothers in bondage..."
Review: "...And then we will be irresistable!" The TARDIS materialises inside a sandminer, and the Doctor and Leela are tailor made suspects in a murder mystery. How did Chris Boucher do it? One classic after the other! "The Robots of Death" is probably one of the most claustrophobic murder mysteries in the entire series. Leela's second story only fleshes out her character even more. The futuristic setting is ideal for her development: "The other mechanical man told us to wait here..." Tom Baker is also in fine form. And the supporting cast is stellar! Chris Boucher's script is filled with one memorable line after the other. And the robots, well, they might be one of the most unique robots ever on the program. Kudos to D-84. How can one season have so many classics? And thanks to the Doctor Who Restoration Team for a another stellar product. I've never seen Who so clean & crisp, showing a high standard in the art of transferring old programs onto DVD. The Howard Da Silva extra is a nice touch, as so with all the other bonuses. Only makes a classic serial even better!
Rating: 
Summary: "You have to be a very good actor to act in a hat like that"
Review: "The Robots of Death" is a well-remembered 1977 "Doctor Who" adventure heavy on the gothic horror favored by the show at that time. Within another year or two, the program would return to funny monsters in ill-fitting costumes, but you won't see that here. "Robots" is a logical, if unsexy choice, to be the first Tom Baker/Fourth Doctor story released on DVD.Because the story is 24 years old, some of the special features are a stretch. Most compelling to US audiences is the featurette on Howard DaSilva, who provided cheezy and sarcastic voiceovers for the show when it was first aired State-side. Oddly, no photo of Howard is provided, but his lines are so amusing you'll play them often enough to wear out that sector of the disc. The long, mute, test model shots of the story's "Sandminer" vessel, try the patience. Many blockbuster movies like to load their DVDs with technical features, demonstrating the magic of filmmaking. While the Sandminer shots remain impressive for a small-budget show, perhaps the DVD space may have been better reserved for more informative feature, such as one about Louise Jameson (Leela), who appeared in so few DW stories. The key feature is the commentary track by producer Philip Hinchcliffe (often credited with the show's 1970s success), and episode writer Chris Boucher. Hinchcliffe relays a few anecdotes about working with Tom Baker, but by and large the two spend the first half of the story (which neither had seen since 1977) ignoring what happens on screen, and the second half so caught up in events that the commentary nearly stops! Hinchcliffe also keeps comparing this 1977 adventure favorably to today's big-budget Hollywood films. Well, yes.. the DVDs cost the same. However, the title of this review (spoken by Hinchcliffe, about guest-actor Russell Hunter) is more than worth the price. The copy-editing on the actor biographies is poor. Louise Jameson's TV credits are the same as Tom Baker's, and oddly omitted is the credit guest-star David Collings' biggest role, Bob Cratchit in the 1970 "Christmas Carol". Most important to the DVD is of course "The Robots of Death" themselves, and happily this story is worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: Love that Tom Baker
Review: Classic Tom Baker.Loved the pea shoter(using it to breath) gag in the storage bin.Leela looked hot and acted like the savage she was.Robots were great walking dead men.Helium bit still has me laughing.
Rating: 
Summary: Robo-phobic.
Review: Doctor Who episodes -- at least during Tom Baker's run -- tended to fall into certain basic plot categories. Two common themes were: The doctor must liberate people in servitude ("Face of Evil", "Underworld"; "The Sunmakers"); The doctor must uncover and foil a clever alien scheme to destroy/conquer earth ("The Android Invasion"; "Terror of the Zygons"). A lesser-used device was the "ten little Indians/haunted house" approach, which we saw in the superb "Horror of Fang Rock" episode and here, in one of the few Tom Baker Dr. Who DVD's available, "The Robots of Death."
This episode is regarded by many fans as a true classic, one of the best of the whole long-running Dr. Who television show, and not merely the Baker years. I disagree. I think the story was told better in "Fang Rock", one of my personal favorites which also features Leela as the companion. I am very curious as to exactly how the BBC decides which Who episodes get committed to DVD, especially considering that not all of them are even out of VHS yet (what's the holdup, fellas? It's been 30 years!). But even I have to admit that few, if any, Baker-Who episodes are as dark and creepy or as well thought-out as this one, and probably none have better overall production. The robots are unusually well-designed for such a low-budget show, and when they turn evil their pleasant voices, frozen faces, and penchant for manual strangulation are downright frightening. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Storywise, "Robots" is sound. The Doc and Leela land inside a giant spice-miner run by a handfull of greedy, effete, not terribly nice fortune-hunters who wear ridiculous costumes and seem to spend most of their time loafing about while a large staff of robots does most of the work. You have to take only one look at the robots to figure out that the tail is wagging the dog here, and before you know it, one of the crewmen is murdered and the Doctor and Leela, being stowaways, are of course blamed. This starts the "ten little Indians" part. The spiceminer is wandering a gigantic, hostile desert of killer sandstorms and towering rock: there is no way off the ship. The humans, basically French aristocrats circa 1789 with their powdered faces and silly costumes, have no weapons and are so morally vacuous and wimpy they practically invite the robots to kill them. The robots oblige, having been tampered with by a member of the crew with a serious identity crisis, a robot fetish and a healthy dose of homicidal mania. One by one the humans get strangled, each trying to figure out who the killer is, and everyone suspecting -- of course -- our hero and his knife-wielding gal pal. It is a nice plot device, and since it was not used very often I can let the writers off the hook for copying the fine work they did in "Fang Rock." My problem is mainly that the human characters on the miner are all pretty much loathsome and deserving of a good strangulation. It is hardly uncommon in Who episodes for the Doctor to be abused by the very people he is trying to save, but in this case the people just don't seem to be worth saving at all. In fact, the nicest character we meet on the ship is D84, the supposedly mute "dumb" robot who turns out to be a company agent. 84 should probably have read "Message to the Oppressed" a few more times before he chose which side he was on. Don't get me wrong here. "Robots" is a good, entertaining episode with a very high creep factor. Tom Baker and Louise Jameson are very good and the writing is on par with their acting -- this is one of those episodes where Leela gets to do more than just say, "What is it, Doctor?" in different tones of voice, which was not always the case during her time as a companion. It is much darker than your average Tom Baker outing, and I do think the plot would have been better served by more sympathetic crew-members. DVD-wise, the extras are nothing special overall, but the audio commentary is very interesting. But overall I must admit....these are the criticisms of a nerd. Go ahead and buy the damn thing. I did.
Rating:
Summary: Top Rate Doctor Who
Review: Great reworking of Agatha Christie's 10 Little Indians. The story is great visually and the robots are well designed and are believable. Fans of the series can appreciate that. First rate acting by Miles Fothergill's (SV7) and Gregory DePolnay (D84). A story I had to get on video as the robots are extremely memorable.
Rating:
Summary: Thanks to WB for providing the best quality DVD transfer!
Review: I was originally concerned when FOX gave up distribution rights of Dr Who (and other BBC programmes) to WB. However, my fears were unjustified. Not only are these new DVD transfers crisp and clear, there is no sign whatsoevever of the PAL-to-NTSC translation that you videophiles could readily see in the older VHS releases. Watching "Dr Who" is now effectively a new experience as you've NEVER seen it before quite as crisp and clear as this! "The Robots of Death" is one of the 4th Doctor's more acclaimed stories - with great plot, acting, and brilliant set design - let alone the wealth of extras, this disc is worth the price. A great choice for initial release in the US, let's hope several more will follow.
Rating:
Summary: Like being surrounded by walking, talking dead men...
Review: It is little surprise that Dr. Isaac Asimov named this as his favorite Dr. Who episode (though it actually comes as considerable surprise to learn that he even watched the series at all). Certainly the plotline and backstory development borrow liberally from the future society Asimov established in the Lije Bailey/R. Daneel Olivaw novels; it even works in references to the Three Laws of Robotics. The influence of an earlier book, RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots), also surfaces in exploring man's reaction to robots and their total absence of human body language (robophobia). Even the author's name, Karel Capek, is mirrored in that of the villain Taren Capel. Newcomer director Chris Boucher (The Face of Evil) took the suggestion of longtime Dr. Who editor Robert Holmes and created an isolated, murder-mystery adventure as a vehicle to solidify the role of Leela, a companion he had introduced in the previous serial. Boucher drew from one of his favorite novels, Frank Herbert's Dune, to envisage the Storm-Mine setting. Effects director Peter Grimwade is immortalized in the episode thanks to a bit of ad-libbing by Tom Baker. Amongst the cast was David Collings as Poul, David Baile as Dask (Taren Capel), and Pamela Salem as Toos; Salem had actually been an unsuccessful applicant for the role of Leela. Though not a milestone episode, I would name this is one of my favorite Tom Baker-era stories, largely because of its attention to detail -throwaway lines by characters reveal a rich tapestry of politics, history, and sociopolitical orders not always seen in a Doctor Who serial. We get a sense of the social "pecking order" on this nameless future planet from Uvanov's obvious disgust with Zilda's and Chub's family standing; at the same time we learn that the all-pervasive Company is not above covering up an employee's potentially embarrassing (or potentially expensive) past. Poul is a great study in contrasts: nobody on the Storm-Mine is the least suspicious of him until Leela turns up and likens him to a hunter. The insertion of D.84 is even more clever, and it illustrates just how inured this society has become to anything out of the ordinary. Uvanov dismisses Leela's assertion that D.84 can speak simply because "everyone knows" that particular class of robots can't speak. In the same way, the crew dismisses the Doctor's theories about the murderer because "everyone knows" robots are incapable of such a thing. Robot behavior and robot Urban Legends are clearly at the forefront of even casual conversation, as evidenced in the opening scenes when we meet the entire crew idling away in the lounge. I also like the fact that the cast is a little more varied, racially speaking, from the usual spate of pale English actors. Helps to paint a more realistic vision of the future. D.84 (Gregory de Polnay), the "undercover" agent, provides some wonderful back-and-forth dialogue with the Doctor and goes a long way toward widening the scope of the story. The robot's recount of the life of Taren Capel has made the murderer into a tragic figure before we've even figured out who he is, and it even gets to explore its own feelings of inadequacy; next thing we know it has even cracked a joke at the Doctor's expense. I always thought D.84 would make an ideal traveling companion -a sentiment I was surprised to learn was shared by many other fans. Its plaintive request to "please do not throw hands at me" is priceless. Definite homage to Daneel and Giskard there... Though we, the audience, know the killer at the outset of this "whodunit," it is the question of who is the puppet master that takes up the scope of the story. This is also an uncharacteristically graphic episode; there are several strangulation scenes, a disturbing shot of a dead body being buried in a downpour of gravel, and blood all over the hand of the initial killer robot. There are also some chilling pyrotechnics; for my money one of the scariest scenes depicts another of the killer robots trying to break into the command deck, calmly announcing in its polite bureaucratic monotone that everyone has to die. Another great moment comes when Leela throws her knife squarely into the chest of an attacking robot -which then casually knocks it aside and keeps on coming. It is the first time we've seen anything even approaching fear on Leela's face. The society that has been postulated is full of cause-and-effect: the Doctor's casual line about it being "the end of this civilization" is clearly no exaggeration. The characters, for all their feigned ease and opulence, are clearly not wholly comfortable with this robot-dependent society they have created for themselves, and as a result there is an omnipresent creeping paranoia that lurks just under the surface for most of the storyline. The parallels to the distrustful, robot-dependent society in Asimov's Caves Of Steel are obvious: mankind has gone and made another technological breakthrough which has become an indispensable part of daily life before everyone's really had time to adjust. Likewise, the Storm-Mine's carefully-ordered life is exposed to be a powderkeg; one little deviation from "everyone knows," and suddenly everybody's world is turned upside-down. This is especially apparent with Uvanov (Russell Hunter)'s newly-found "blow 'em all up" attitude, Poul's total mental breakdown, and Toos's hysterical sobbing (the latter also provides a great springboard for the audience to learn Leela's surprisingly tender and compassionate side).
Rating:
Summary: An outstanding restoration of a Doctor Who classic
Review: Others have written about the plot, design and acting on display in this episode, so I won't repeat what they've said. I'll only add that what makes "Robots of Death" unique is the fact all of those crucial elements are present simultaneously, making this adventure one of perhaps a dozen Doctor Who serials produced over the program's long history that's "firing on all cylinders" as it were. Although the quality of the source material is quite dated - it was shot on video in 1978 - the audio mix is much better than I would have expected and the video looks great. There are a couple of dropouts here and there which obviously couldn't be corrected on a reasonable budget, and the BBC couldn't do anything about the flaring coming off the many bright, shiny objects aboard the sandminer's sets (a limitation of the tube-based cameras of the day), but the colors are wonderfully saturated and the contrast is extremely good. The biggest surprise is how sharp the picture is, while remaining for the most part noise-free. This edition of "Robots of Death" must look at least as good as it did when first broadcast over 20 years ago, and it's guaranteed to transport you back to the hopefully more carefree days of your youth, at least for 90 minutes or so. Highly recommended for fans of the program.
Rating:
Summary: I will kill commander Toos
Review: Robots of Death was always one of my favourites. It is in some ways very odd and cheesy, but at the same time believeable and futuristic.
The robots themselves both in design, voices and movement are incredible. They really are creepy mechanical men. There lack of emotions really does set them apart and the concept of walking dead and robophobia do seem very real.
Leela is very cool and sexy. The crew interesting and fill thier roles very well. Tom Baker is perfect as the Dr. The way he delivers his lines is always a joy to watch.
If you are a fan of Dr Who then you should pick this one up.
Rating:
Summary: I will kill commander Toos
Review: Robots of Death was always one of my favourites. It is in some ways very odd and cheesy, but at the same time believeable and futuristic.
The robots themselves both in design, voices and movement are incredible. They really are creepy mechanical men. There lack of emotions really does set them apart and the concept of walking dead and robophobia do seem very real.
Leela is very cool and sexy. The crew interesting and fill thier roles very well. Tom Baker is perfect as the Dr. The way he delivers his lines is always a joy to watch.
If you are a fan of Dr Who then you should pick this one up.
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