











The First Doctor and his team go to ancient Rome and hang in Nero’s court. But does the Daleks Aren’t Robots!? team feel this serial has the favor of the gods…or cast it to the lions?
Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though. – Kari
The Tardis falls off a cliff and the team LEAVES HER THERE to hang out in an Imperial-era Roman city as a vacation. The Doctor and Vicki go to Rome out of curiosity, the Doctor assuming the identity of a murdered lyre player on the way to Nero’s court. Meanwhile Barbara and Ian are kidnapped by slavers.
Ian ends up as an oarsman on a galley and Barbara gets creeped on and sold to Tavius, who works for Nero. An assassin tries to murder the Doctor, and gets his butt roundly kicked and tossed out a window by Vicki.
Nero creepily chases Barbara around and the show thinks this is funny (it is not), and Nero’s wife Empress Poppaea tries to kill Barb with poison. Vicki almost poisons Nero but the Doctor saves him and then fakes playing the lyre in a hilariouos Emperor’s New Clothes scenario. Nero decides to feed the Doctor to the lions because his playing is TOO GOOD.
Ian fights in the arena in front of Nero and Barbara and escapes, and then returns to rescue Barb. The Doctor accidentally sets Nero’s diagram of Rome on fire and Nero decides to burn Rome down so he can build it to his liking.
Tavius helps Barb and Ian escape and is revealed to be a Christian (because he has a cross around his neck). They all return to the Roman villa they were squatting in and then depart the era, the Doctor revealing that the Tardis is stuck somewhere and being dragged down.
This is so the Doctor‘s serial. He has SO many moments when he’s at his trickster best in this one it’s actually amazing.
Vicki doesn’t do a LOT here but she has a couple good moments. I’m actually starting to like her!
Ian has finally relaxed.
Barbara gets the short end of the stick in this episode.
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We return to the Third Doctor to finish his first season with a bang! The Doctor battles nuclear werewolves, evil counterparts, and evil scientists in this classic serial.
Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though. – Kari
The Doctor goes to ANOTHER nuclear facility, this one powering a drill attempting to pierce the earth’s crust so that they can access a mythical magic gas that would provide essentially free energy for the world. (Bull butter.)
Stahlman, the scientist in charge of the project, is the obvious bad guy and is maniacal about getting through the crust ASAP regardless of safety. Hot green goo starts coming up during the drilling; a guy touches it and starts turning greenish-blue and growing hair, like some kind of Dracula in a low-budget foreign film. He kills someone and acts like an animal.
The Doctor tries to get the Tardis console to work with the power from the reactor, and argues with Stahlman when the power is taken away from him, then fixes it on the sly. During his second attempt to use the console it takes him to an alternate universe where the Brigadier DOESN’T have facial hair but an eyepatch and a scar, and where Liz has a dark bob and isn’t a scientist. Also fascists, they are all fascists.
In the evil mirror universe the drilling is further along and they pierce the earth’s core despite the Doctor’s attempts to stop them. This begins a chain reaction of lava or something that will inevitably destroy the world. The Doctor can’t save it but persuades some of the survivors of the Turkish Dracula Disease (which has become the Turkish Werewolf Disease) to help him get back to the other world to save THEM.
He gets back and averts the disaster (barely). Then he tries to use the Tardis console again to escape, but ends up in the garbage dump. WHAT IS DIGNITY
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Jumping back to 2005 (or 2006, depending on your point of view) the Daleks Aren’t Robots crew meets the Slitheen for the first time.
How do Kari and Justin react to the fat, flatulating family of felons? Find out! (Badly. We react badly. It’s bad.)
Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though. – Kari
The Doctor takes Rose back to visit her mom, but it’s been 12 months and not the 12 years they thought it was. Rose has been missing 12 months, and her mom is glad to see her but very worried, and unimpressed with the much-older Doctor. Mickey has been under suspicion of murdering Rose, too. Why can’t they just pop back in the Tardis and go back a year? Anyway, an alien ship crashed into Big Ben and then into the Thames in London. We see three fat politicians meet in 10 Downing Street, one of whom is farting, and they all laugh evilly over the briefcase with the alien invasion emergency plans for Britain in it.
It turns out that the fat people in these two episodes are the Slitheen, a family of evil exhibitionist fat gay incestuous hunter capitalists who want to, get this, irradiate the earth with our own nuclear weapons and sell the radioactive bits as spaceship fuel. The farting is because they have to compress down to get into even fat human skins, and Mickey saves the day by launching a missile, stopping others from intercepting it and blowing up 10 Downing Street with the aliens in it. After so many “farts.” So. Very. Many.
The Doctor is right most of the time in this one, which is annoying, but he does have some good moments. At one point the Slitheen vivisect a pig into a bipedal creature to fake an alien crash landing, and the Doctor legitimately tries to help the pig, by just bossing Unit around like a King Karen. It works but ultimately he’s unable to save the pig from the gun-happy UNIT. He does care.
He also does legitimately have concerns about putting Rose in danger. REMEMBERING ADRIC ARE WE. He calls Mickey Ricky whenever he’s around and Mickey when he isn’t, but in the end he does invite Mickey to come with and help keep Rose safe (Mickey says he can’t). He also is kind of a brat about taking Rose with him in a few hours rather than waiting a day after the crisis is over.
Rose is OK in this one but unfortunately, she’s more of a sexy lamp than anything. Her return influences the plot a lot more than she does–Jackie was devastated by her disappearance, Mickey was accused of murder and had a very difficult time. Rose is brave, though.
Mickey shines the brightest in this episode. Last time we saw him he was having an anxiety reaction of exaggerated cowardice. In the past year he’s done extensive research on the Doctor and UNIT, and he’s become very level-headed and good in a crisis. He’s the one who successfully bombs 10 Downing Street to kill the aliens. He’s upset about the Doctor but he does not hesitate to work with him, or to save Jackie’s life even though she hated him. When the Slitheen come for Jackie and him he grabs a baseball bat and gets ready to fight.
It’s a shame about the actor. >.<
Jackie is also great. She slaps the daylights out of the Doctor at one point, which is well-deserved, and she consistently expresses concern about Rose throughout the episode, worries about her relationship with the clearly older Doctor and then about the safety of her journeys with him. She’s clearly compassionate, but opinionated and fierce too. Jackie is the one who gathers the vinegar solution to throw on the alien. Which explodes with a fart sound. Siiiiiiiiiigh.
Harriet Jones is the principle one, a politician from a British backwater who gets caught up in events. She figures out that there’s something off about the Slitheen politicians and approaches Rose about it. She’s very upset but keeps a cool enough head to reach out to Rose and the Doctor for help. She even distracts the Slitheen away from Rose in a pinch. The Doctor says she becomes Prime Minister and ushers in a golden age for Britain.
The Slitheen: A family of evil aliens who can wear human skins as a suit, provided they’re the skins of fat humans. They’re evil and stuff. With extra evil, fat and farting. They’re capitalists and want to irradiate the earth so they can sell the radioactive bits. They’re all evil. That’s it. This is definitely a downward trend from previous NuWho and previous Classic Who where a lot of aliens have good and bad people in their groups. The Slitheen are the worst.
A bunch of boring politicians and others we don’t care about.
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Welcoming special guest Blue aboard the Daleks Aren’t Robots TARDIS (DARDIS, if you will), we look at the first episode with the First Doctor’s new companion, Vicki.
Daleks Aren’t Robots!? is a podcast in which two Whovian friends take two non-Whovians on a deep dive through the show from the very beginning.
Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though. – Kari
The Tardis lands on Dido (so I guess a woman immolating herself for a man DOES feature). There Barbara and the boys (Ian and the Doctor) are separated when a spiky looking alien fires a weaponlike object at Barbara. There is a crashed ship on Dido with a girl named Vicki and a man named Beckett in it; both of them fear someone named Koquillian, who sounds like he might be a native to the planet. Barbara meets Vicki, who tells her the Didoans killed ALL the other people on the ship who didn’t die in the crash. Barbara accidentally kills Vicki’s pet, Sandy, mistaking it for a monster.
The Doctor has been to Dido before and knows the people there, a small population that’s friendly and cool. It turns out that Bennett is Koquillian and he murdered a guy on the ship, and killed all the other survivors AND a bunch of Didoans to cover it up. Vicki didn’t know about it because she was a kid. Bennett has been using a Didoan temple and their holy gear in his masquerade; the Doctor confronts him there and almost dies, but two surviving Didoans intimidate Koquillian off a cliff. They take Vicki with them when they leave.
The Doctor: He’s a bit sad in this episode, clearly missing Susan. He’s a lot gentler to Barbara and Ian than usual, and he’s also super kind to Vicki. He might be seeking to fill the granddaughter-shaped hole in his heart. At one point he’s about to order Susan to open the door, says her name and then gets this sad look on his face. He’s very sweet with Vicki.
He figures out Koquillian isn’t who he seems. He also has a near-fatal moment of overconfidence when he confronts Bennett in the Didoan temple and Bennett kicks the crap out of him, until two Didoans come and save the day.
Ian: Ian is JOVIAL and cheerful in this episode. Maybe it’s just an effect of the Doctor being nicer, but he’s really grown a lot and removed the stick from his ass over the past season and a half.
Barbara: Barbara makes a rare mistake in this one, and kills Vicki’s pet monster when she mistakes it for, well, an actual monster. She grabs a flare gun and straight up murders the thing. She isn’t as apologetic as I would have expected, when she finds out it was a pet, which seems out of character for Barbara.
Vicki: The new girl! She seems more childish than Susan–is the actress younger as well? She’s also kind of… well, it was SUPER obvious that Bennett was Koquillian almost immediately. She seems kind of gullible.
She’s mad at Barbara for killing her pet, but that’s totally reasonable (even if the show doesn’t seem to think so). She does immediately have a rapport with the Doctor, and she’s pretty brave–she helped Barbara and hid her from Koquillian, and helped treat her wounds. She’s apparently an orphan (her father was in the wreck) and she’s from the future (she left earth in 2493 after her mom died).
She’s independent minded and doesn’t want people to feel sorry for her. She does have kind of a hysterical crying fit at one point, but it IS right after her pet was killed, so…
Bennett: The bad guy. He’s a murderer who killed the crash survivors AND did a genocide in order to hide his murder. He is not as scary as Reegan, but I was legitimately worried for the Doctor when he was trying to kill him at the end. His monster suit is pretty good, and for once there’s a damn good reason it looks like a guy in a suit!
Two Didoans: They don’t say anything, they just stop Bennett from murdering the Doctor and intimidate him off the cliff. They’re just wearing white coveralls with capelets and boots.
A couple of ADORABLE monsters who are obviously just a guy in a lobster/lizard suit lying on the ground. I’m sure there are no toys of it for STUPID reasons. The monster-pet that Barbara kills is named Sandy and it appears to have light-up eyes.
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A look at the Third Doctor’s third episode. An investigation into a failed space rescue takes a turn when the returned astronauts seem to be something quite different than they were before.
How does the Daleks Aren’t Robots team react to it? Find out!
Editor’s Note: The following are my original notes for the podcast, slightly edited for readability. They’re very far from the full contents of the pod, though. – Kari
An astronaut is being sent up to retrieve the astronauts of Mars Probe 7, which has been silent for more than 7 months, but the rescuer hears a nasty noise up there and then goes silent himself. Because we are not on our earth, this is an AU.
The Doctor sees it on the TV and goes to help. It turns out it’s a message and a group of people on Earth is replying to the messages; when Briggy sends guys there there’s a huge gunfight and half of UNIT dies.
Eventually we retrieve 3 guys from space, but it turns out they’re radioactive aliens that can kill with a touch and NOT the astronauts. The astronauts are being held hostage by aliens who want their ambassadors back–it turns out that a bunch of crappy humans kidnapped their ambassadors and mindcontrolled said ambassadors into committing crimes for them.
The ringleader is Carrington, a military bad guy who is basically a xenophobe and wants to nuke the aliens, and his dragon, metaphorically, Reegan, is a frighteningly competent asshole helping for the paycheck. Carrington wants to fake an alien attack so that earth’s governments all nuke the aliens, but the Doctor and Liz rescue the aliens and then it ends and YES IT IS ACTUALLY THAT ABRUPT.
Loads of one-hit wonder characters in this one, most of whom don’t really have personalities.
Carrington, Evil Military Guy: He’s basically a caricature, and he’s doing this because the aliens accidentally killed his coworker when he went on an earlier Mars mission. He’s explicitly called out as being mad in the show, and claims that it was his moral duty to nuke the aliens. Sure, Jan, nuke the scary brown I mean blue people who literally came here as ambassadors. You bet.
Reegan, Terrifying Competent Dragon of the Big Bad: This guy was actually pretty spooky. He absolutely does not care about alien life but he also doesn’t care about human life or anything, apparently, other than money. He was almost certainly planning to screw Carrington over and use the Ambassadors to commit robberies, and he’s not even ruffled when he gets caught at the end.
Cornish, Competent Bureaucrat: This guy is just like the bureaucrat in the Silurians except he’s not evil, he doesn’t suck at his job and he’s totally cool under pressure. So basically exactly the opposite of that guy. This guy had a lot of charisma for kind of a thankless part, he did a good job.
Taltalian, AKA Evil Beardo: Bad guy scientist, turns out to be a mook and is then blown up by his own boss.
Lennox, AKA Wormy Scientist: Scientist who tries to care for the Ambassadors as much as he can, even though he’s working for the baddies technically. He tries to help Liz escape, escapes himself and is then horribly murdered by radiation.
There are some other guys, like a reporter who’s got 80s style a few years before the 80s, but I don’t really care about them.
The Ambassadors themselves? They’re not characters, and neither is their alien captain. They are just plot devices. Only for a very little portion of the show are they able to act under their own power and they don’t really talk about how traumatic it’s been to be forced to murder people or anything. There is SO LITTLE RESOLUTION after this show. It’s even more abrupt than the Silurians, who at least got blown up. These people are gonna be super traumatized! They were mind controlled and dazed and zombielike for a long time! They were forced to murder people on a weird planet! They’re gonna need SO MUCH THERAPY.
Also they are tinsel mummies.
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