Into The Time Vortex Podcast - Episode 68 - Doctor Who - Robot

Doctor Who Debuts: Robot by @ThePlanetHarris

Robot: 

Tom Baker’s Debut as The Doctor 

By Steven Harris

          On 28^th December 1974 my own personal relationship with Doctor Who changed forever. From being a programme I watched if I happened to be indoors on a Saturday it transformed into essential viewing, something I became obsessed with (an obsession of which I haven’t particularly been cured since). The reason? Tom Baker. THE Doctor. The definite article, as he tells Harry Sullivan in this very episode.

        The programme was written by former script editor and long-serving show stalwart Terrance Dicks and directed by another long-term associate of the show, Christopher Barry. Their steady hands and deep understanding of the character of the Doctor despite externally changing personalities and faces, allowed for as assured a debut in the role as there has ever been. Or perhaps it was just that Tom Baker was a hand-in-glove fit for the part. Certainly no-one else, before or since, has quite so successfully convinced me that they possibly are an alien masquerading as a jobbing human actor.

          When the previous season had ended, Jon Pertwee had been well mashed up by the Spiders of Metebelis Three and by radiation poisoning. He collapsed back at UNIT headquarters and a funny abbot man appeared on a flaming pie (well on some clever BBC special effects) and told Sarah-Jane Smith and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart that the Doctor was about to regenerate. Robot, then, opens with that regeneration, Pertwee rapidly transmuting into Baker while Sarah-Jane and the Brig look on. “Well, here we go again” mutters the Brig, who has seen two previous incarnations of the Timelord already. He calls for the UNIT medical officer to ensure that the Doctor is checked over once he has changed.

Doctor Who 50th Anniversary: Robot

Doctor Who:

Robot

By Terrance Dicks

“If the square on the hypotenuse equals the sum of the square on the other two sides, why is a mouse when it spins? Never did know the answer to that one.”

The newly regenerated Doctor is sent to the infirmary and to the care of Lieutenant Harry Sullivan.   The Doctor seems a bit out of it since he regenerated after battling the Spiders of Metabillis 3 and while he is recuperating Sarah Jane asks The Brigadier for a pass to Think Tank.  Think Tank is a place where scientists are working on new inventions to help out the human race.   Sarah Jane has her suspicions about Think Tank and wants to poke around and see if she can find something out.

Meanwhile plans and components to make a disintegrator gun have been getting stolen.  The thing is no one knows who is stealing the components but whoever it maybe is really big and heavy as during its escape it left quite the footprint in the ground.   While snooping around Think Tank Sarah Jane slips on what could be oil on the floor.  She gets thinking about the robotics that was explained to her and decides to take a side trip to see Professor Kettlewell.  He explains to Sarah that the Robot he was working on was dismantled and is not still in operation.  Sarah Jane then returns to Think Tank and there she is confronted by a Robot. In fact the one Robot that has been responsible for all the robberies and doing it all for the Scientific Reform Society.

G.E. Commercial With Robots

I think you will recognize a few famous robots in this commercial!!