New Year's Hot Guy

The byline says Film stuff and hot guys but my relentless obsession with Doctor Who was bound to start blog-clogging. Anyway, here's a hot guy - Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984). Ford was at his physical peak around this period, and it didn't hurt that he was lovingly photographed by master cinematographers such as Douglas Slocombe (the Indiana Jones films), Jordan Cronenweth (Blade Runner) and Peter Suschitzky (The Empire Strikes Back).

Classic Who - 'The Robots of Death'

...from 1963 to K9, Doctor Who was important and from 1977 to 1989 it wasn't.

Kim Newman, in his book Doctor Who: A Critical Reading of the Series

Kim Newman blames Mary Whitehouse, K9 and Douglas Adams for what he refers to as the show's 'decline into cult nichedom', and I'd have to agree that if you wanted to find the moment where the original Doctor Who jumped the shark, it would have to be sometime during season 15. This coincided with the release of Star Wars raising the bar for audience expectations in science fiction film and television, but the elements for the decline of Doctor Who - such as incoming producer Graham Williams often finding himself second in authority to an increasingly garrulous Tom Baker, and script editor Douglas Adams emphasising humour to the detriment of the drama - were already in place. In the three years prior to this decline, however, the show was at its most popular - 'The Robots of Death' was watched by an average of 12 million viewers.

This four part story finds Tom Baker's Doctor and his new companion Leela (Louise Jameson) arriving on a sandminer cruising above the surface of a wind blasted desert planet and immediately becoming suspects in the recent murder of one of crew. The script by Chris Boucher (who had created the character of Leela for the previous story 'The Face of Evil' and would go on to write one more Doctor Who story - 'The Image of the Fendahl', another favourite) blends elements of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians and Isaac Asimov's Laws of Robotics with a splash of Dune. The clip here is from the opening of episode four:

Tom Baker was at his most comfortable in the role around this period, and 'The Robots of Death' finds him in peak form. Look at the confidence and humour he brings to his first line in the clip - rising from behind a bench in response to Uvanov's demand "what are you doing here?" with a smooth "why - does it upset you?" And Leela was the type of companion we'd not seen before, and would not see again - when Commander Uvanov slaps her early in the story, her response is "try that again, and I'll kill you where you stand!"

Louise Jameson as Leela.

This savage girl from a primitive tribe was prone to solving problems at knife-point, not exactly the most family audience-friendly character trait. The potential Pygmalion type development of her character was explored to an extent in a couple of subsequent stories - the following serial 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang' being the best example - but was pretty much forgotten in her second year - extended development of ongoing characters was not a strong suit of the original Doctor Who. This is only Leela's second story, so the character was still fresh and Boucher makes the most of her interactions with the Doctor and the world of the sandminer.

And it's this meticulously created world which really sets 'The Robots of Death' apart. It's crucial to keep in mind the resources the production team had access to when evaluating classic Who production values. With the sort of budgets and shooting schedules that would only just suffice for a production such as Home and Away or Neighbours, the Doctor Who production team had to create completely new settings each month - the story prior to 'Robots of Death' was set on a jungle planet, and the following story finds the Doctor and Leela in the fogbound streets of Victorian London. It's little wonder that cardboard tubing and aluminium foil were staples for construction of alien worlds and space stations.

Typically, the cast would rehearse an episode for four days before shooting, using brooms as weapons and creating control decks from upended furniture in the rehearsal room. Perhaps the inevitable sense of schoolyard play this engendered contributed to the unique tone of a lot of period Who. Then, on the Friday afternoon and evening, they would get into their costumes and enact the episode on the sets with the cameras rolling, with most scenes recorded as live straight to tape. Miniatures and other visual effects elements were often set up simultaneously in another section of the studio, and mixed in as live during the recording of scenes. When considering the constraints of this type of production, the ambition of the Doctor Who production team back in the day was truly remarkable. 

Here, the designs of the sets, costumes and even make-up are thoroughly thought out from the basis of this world being a society where humans genuinely take robots for granted, where everything a person could need done can be done by a robot. Thus the elaborate gowns, head-dress and facial makeup (echoing the design of the robot faces), far from being just typical overblown sci-fi silliness, are a logical extension of the type of leisure based society future speculation often depicted until the mid eighties. Around then it became apparent that we were going to use all of our technology to help us run around like chooks with our heads cut off, eventually leading to the frenetic dystopias of films such as Minority Report. One only needs to compare the design ethos of the 1977-1983 Star Wars films to the later prequel trilogy to see the sort of general effect this has had on futuristic design. It's doubtful that, had he depicted Coruscant in the original films, Lucas would have had Vegas style gambling strips and neon holographic advertising everywhere, for instance.

The design scheme for 'The Robots of Death' is followed through in the sets. Luxurious cushions and bed like sofas abound in the areas occupied by the humans, colour schemes are all soft earth tones, and abstract art adorns the corridors of the sandminer. This is a world based around humans relaxing - imagine art hanging in the walls of a mining machine! This vision of humanity gone soft goes some way to explaining the pathetic failure of Toos (Pamela Salem) to even attempt any sort of self defense in the clip - these are people for whom the disconnect from any form of true survival instinct has gone to an extreme.

A Voc class robot from 'The Robots of Death'.

And of course, we have the robots themselves - the jewel in the design crown. With their sculpted faces, silky smooth voices, and quilted vests, the robots are a triumph of art deco futurism. The design would be homaged - but not surpassed - in the 2007 Christmas special, 'Voyage of the Damned'.

Robot angel from 'Voyage of the Damned'.

The story of 'The Robots of Death' is perfectly paced out over the four episodes, and the characters have a bunch of interesting interpersonal conflicts and alliances which keep suspicion high, although the audience is privy all along to what's really going on. It's just about the perfect example of a Doctor Who story from the period - and it was immediately followed by 'The Talons of Weng-Chiang', another masterpiece and arguably one of the greatest achievements of the 26-year run of the show.