Episodes

Episode 13: Planet of the Giants

/ Kari / Leave a comment

The Dalens Aren’t Robots team returns to the First Doctor and the group that started it all: Susan, Barbara, Ian and the Doctor, plus the ever-beautiful and half-starving TARDIS. 

As it turns out, size DOES matter, but maybe not in the way you’re thinking. Who will hold the idiot ball this time? Listen and find out!

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.

Facebook: ​https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentrobots

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

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

SUMMARY

The Tardis has a malfunction, with the doors popping open and everyone having to shut them by force. They land and start exploring, finding a bunch of dead giant bugs, including an ant the size of a doberman. They eventually work out they ARE on earth, but shrunk to the size of an inch high. They split up and have to look for each other a couple times.

There are some full-sized humans in this episode. Forrester, Farrow and Smithers. Forrester is a businessman, Farrow a safety inspector and Smithers a scientist working on a new pesticide. Farrow finds the pesticide works but TOO WELL–it kills EVERYTHING, including beneficial bugs like bees and earthworms, and persists in the environment afterward, making it unfeasible as a pesticide. Forrester has been producing the pesticide for a year and will lose everything if it’s not sold, so he kills Farrow, which the Tardis Team sees. Smithers finds out about the murder, but he doesn’t realize the pesticide is bad, so he agrees to help Forrester cover up the murder of Farrow.

This means the Tardis team can’t just ask for help–even if the humans could understand their tiny high pitched voices one of them is a MURDERER and isn’t gonna want witnesses no matter what size they are. They also work out that the pesticide is unworkable–and Barb touches it before she realizes it’s on a piece of grain she’s picking up. Unfortunately she does not tell ANYONE and holds the idiot ball instead. UGH.

The Tardis team tries to call the cops about the murder, using a GIANT TELEPHONE but they can’t be understood with their high pitch. They set up an explosion to burn down the lab, which doesn’t really work but does wound Forrester, just in time for a policeman to come in and arrest him, because he ALSO tried to get away with pretending to be Farrow on the phone even though he sounds nothing like him, AND Smithers has worked out that the pesticide is bad and is determined to stop Farrow anyway.

The team gets back to the Tardis and the Doctor manages to restore them to their original size, which cures the by now VERY ill Barbara because… SCIENCE! I guess. and the Tardis starts to materialize again!

THE TEAM

  1. Barbara gets the worst treatment in this one, and she holds the Idiot Ball. It’s super unfortunate. She touches the poisoned grain, which isn’t unreasonable, but then she doesn’t tell anyone she’s touched it when she finds out it was poisoned. There’s no real reason given for this either, and it sucks. She even faints, although I’m willing to attribute that to getting poisoned rather than being a wimp.
  2. Ian also carries the idiot ball a little bit early on, in that he sees a giant seed thing with a bunch of text including “Norfolk” on it and can’t concede he’s tiny, even when he and Susan find the matchbox. Otherwise he does pretty well, and serves as the muscle and tries to illuminate some of the science.
  3. Poor Ian’s actor when he’s in the matchbox knocking back and forth. It’s hilarious and terribly fake but he’s doing the best he can with what he’s got!
  4. Susan doesn’t have a huge part here but she’s plucky and smart. She catches on to the fact that they’re tiny first. She climbs the drain spout. She does get a bit upset when Ian is picked up in the matchbox, but not to the point that it’s unreasonable.
  5. The Doctor has shown so much character growth here. He gets very snippy at everyone early on, but he apologizes SINCERELY to Barbara without being made to, and he voluntarily opts to look for Ian when he gets taken up in the matchbox.
  6. It is however HILARIOUS when he says he can’t expect sympathy from a murderer. WE’VE BEEN WATCHING THIS SHOW, MY DUDE.
  7. Also the Doctor has a cape now and it’s great.
  8. The Tiny Tardis is freaking adorable. I love that they use the miniature for the Tardis and it looks kind of silly and like it’s a miniature, and then you find out IT IS.

THE GUEST STARS

  1. There’s a cat, and at first I thought that was going to be the main antagonist, but the cat is not. Pretty cat, though.
  2. The plot with the guest stars is absolutely inspired. It adds a lot of complication to the story and gives them another reason not to just ask for help.
  3. Forrester is a murderer, and he’s pretty threatening, but also not very smart, as he assumes he can pretend to be his victim easily.
  4. Farrow is the one who’s been charged with testing the new insecticide, and he finds that it works–but TOO well. It kills EVERYTHING. EVERYTHING. He tells this to Forrester, who says he’ll be RUINED financially if they publicize that the pesticide is a bad one. Farrow won’t budge and says he’ll turn in the report with the truth in it. Forrester shoots Farrow.
  5. Smithers is another scientist who’s absolutely desperate to get the new pesticide out, because it will enable them to feed more people. He doesn’t know that the new pesticide kills ALL the insects and Forrester lies to him about it. Smithers decides rather than allowing Forrester’s murder of Farrow to derail their pesticide, he will help Forrester cover it up so that they can get the pesticide out and feed the world. When he finds out the pesticide is bad he tries to act.
  6. Smithers and Forrester seem like a couple. They stand super close to each other and Forrester is the worst boyfriend.

THE SETTING

  1. The science in this one is ridiiiiiculous so many times. From the pressure on the Tardis shrinking them, to the “fact” that Barbara’s tiny body is “too small” to fight off the insecticide. Also, I don’t think they get bio-accumulation thing quite right–they say the scientist has made the pesticide “everlasting.” rather than pointing out it persists through the food chain (like some real pesticides do, such as DDT).
  2. The setting is glorious, though. Things blown up to giant size are great. Sometimes they use rear projection and sometimes not. The bugs BASICALLY look like the bugs ought to look like. The “giant sink” set is pretty great, and the giant bit of grain is a cute prop.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. I really like the story in this episode. It’s a lot better than “honey I shrunk the tardis crew.” By adding the murderers as a plotline it gives you an added element of danger. The episode isn’t fast-paced but it steadily builds the tension, with a ticking clock in the form of Barb getting poisoned.
  2. How did they do the effects? What was their budget like?
  3. Where does this fit in with DDT/Silent Spring, which basically kills everything AND bio-accumulates?

DALEK SCORE
I really liked this one. It’s slower-paced but the tension keeps building and building.

Sources Include

Episode 3 and 4 Ian Levine Official Reconstruction

Episode 12: Spearhead from Space

/ Kari / Leave a comment

The DAR team travels to the 1970s to see the first serial of the Third Doctor era.  With the Doctor now stuck on Earth, do we feel as trapped as the Doctor or as happy as non-body slammed Nixon?  Find out.

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.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentr…​

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

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

OUR TEAM

The Doctor:

  1. This Doctor is great. He flirts with Liz and seems very debonair. He is handsome for a 51-year-old guy and wears an apparently Edwardian-era opera cape and a cool hat (which needs more feathers). Also there’s another topless Doctor shot in this one and he has a hilarious white butt, though you don’t see it, just his tan line.
  2. This Doctor has a TATTOO and he wears a gold bracelet. Do we ever find out what the gold bracelet is from or says? Does it say anything? Do we ever find out what the tattoo is? Did they give it to the Doctor or does this actor just have a tatt? What is it and what does it mean?
  3. The Doctor knows how to drive. He is also very tricksy like First and tried to escape from Lethbridge-Stewart. He has a ton of charisma and he seems brave. Hasn’t tried to murder anyone who wasn’t already hostile… YET.
  4. At one point he runs away in a wheelchair and that’s hilarious and also very in character.
  5. At another point he bulls***s his way back to LBS and essentially he Karens his way into speaking with the ranking military guy onsite.
  6. He also cons Liz into stealing the Tardis key from LBS.
  7. He extorts LBS at the end to get a lab, facilities to fix the Tardis, a car like the one he LITERALLY STOLE, clothes, and Liz as an assistant. He lies and says his name is Doctor John Smith. SUUUUUURE.

Liz Shaw:

  1. She’s our only Companion at this point. She seems to be primarily a researcher but also has a medical degree, apparently? She’s super smart like Barbara but doesn’t take any crap from anybody, and needles Lethbridge-Stewart fairly often, which is fun. She is a skeptic and doesn’t believe in all this space crap until it happens.
  2. She seems pretty brave, and though she’s very creeped out by the mannequins she reacts a whole lot better than most of the other people in this story.
  3. She actually rolls her eyes when the old man general hits on her, but doesn’t seem to object when the Doctor hits on her… he IS pretty good looking for his age.

Lethbridge-Stewart, AKA LBS:

  1. He is a military dude in charge of UNIT, which… what is UNIT? Why did they call it that? Do they know what it’s slang for?
  2. He has a Mustache of Authority.
  3. To his credit, he points out to the general that Liz is not just a pretty face when the general makes a sexist comment to her. He seems to have a somewhat adversarial relationship with Liz and has worked with the Doctor before–presumably, the Second Doctor. What did they do together?
  4. He’s not technically a companion, but he kind of is?
  5. What are UNIT’s resources? Who ARE these people? Is this like a military Men in Black? HOW do they cover this s*** up?

The Tardis:

  1. We haven’t seen the inside of this Tardis yet, and apparently it’s broken.
  2. It sounds tired, when was the last time it had a Gavroche?

THE OTHERS

There are a lot of guests in this one.

  • Hibbert, AKA Good Factory Guy: The person who runs the plastic mannequin/doll factory, he’s being brainwashed into being an unwitting pawn of….
  • Channing, AKA Evil Factory Guy: He’s the local representative of the Nestene Consciousness and is actually a mannequin himself. He’s trying to collect the plastic globes so that the Nestenes can reform into the PERFECT BEING and take over the world. Also he’s got a plasticy complexion and is satisfyingly creepy and threatening but also capable of being VERY upset.
  • The Nestene Consciousness, which in this isn’t a pool of melted plastic but a bunch of plastic wrap around an eyeball with tendons that’s covered in applesauce. Then it becomes what looks like felted tentacles and I don’t understand why there aren’t plushies of the felted tentacles. WHERE IS YOUR MARKETING DEPARTMENT.
  • Evil Mannequins. These are actually creepier than the ones in the modern Doctor Who, I think. They look less human and their eyes are icky.
  • Ransome, AKA Inventor: He was involved with the factory and tries to blow the whistle on the weirdness going on there but gets brutally murdered. He has a fantastically rubbery face and mugs his terror for the camera beautifully. He dies horribly and gets vaporized.
  • General Scobie, AKA The General: He’s an annoying regular army guy that LBS reports to, and he makes a sexist comment to Liz. He gets replaced by a plastic mannequin but doesn’t die.
  • Sam the Poacher: He finds one of the plastic globes the Nestene consciousness is in and brings it home.
  • Meg, his wife: She’s awesome, when the mannequin comes to take the plastic globe her husband hid in her house, she GETS A SHOTGUN and shoots the mannequin. She gets clobbered but DOESN’T DIE and why can’t Meg be a Companion?
  • Assorted doctors and nurses and an evil vacuumer that calls the press, but we don’t really care about them.

THE SETTING

  1. It’s the 70s in Britain. Are we gonna stay here? It’s… very 1970s Britain.
  2. The hospital building is cool, it has some really nice wooden paneling. The woods are… woods. There’s a nice car.
  3. Everyone sounds like they’re in a cave now. 😦 And the offices are very impersonal, even the science room is very impersonal. Doesn’t anyone put up posters or pictures of families or even a “hang in there” cat?
  4. When you see glowing stuff from space why don’t you think “maybe it’s radioactive?”
  5. The factory is terrifying there are no safety shields ANYWHERE. HOW IS THIS ALLOWED???
  6. So the autons… the first time they shoot, are people dead or just stunned? The second time is disintegration. Why was this changed for NuWho?
  7. We did not get a fight between wax Gandhi and wax Nixon. 😦 😦 😦

THE PRODUCTION

  1. OOH COLOR
  2. THE SOUND IS “EVERYONE IS IN A CAVE NOW.”
  3. I wanna know about Pertwee. Why is Liz the way she is?
  4. WHY ARE THEY STUCK ON EARTH?
  5. WHY IS UNIT?
  6. Is this the first time we’ve seen blood in a Doctor Who?
  7. We did get some fire in this one, as there’s an explosion, also several gunfights. LOTS OF GUNS. No more angry complaints to the BBC?

Sources Include

Episode 11: Rose

/ Kari / Leave a comment

The DAR team explores the first post-reboot Doctor Who episode, “Rose,” the reboot that made the show more popular than it had ever been before.  But, is it as popular among the DAR Crew?

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.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentr…​

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

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 TEAM

THE DOCTOR:

  1. The Doctor. He’s a worthy successor to the First Doctor, but seems as reluctant to kill sentient creatures as Eight was. He definitely does not seem as deft as Eight, though–he tries to do a card trick and sprays the cards everywhere. And he’s EXTREMELY happy to blow up the building.
  2. He’s very acerbic. He’s equal parts totally flippant and completely earnest. He does seem a bit more self-aware than First and is aware that he thinks the world revolves around him.
  3. He does seem to still be capable of First’s level of bulls***. I assumed that he was bluffing on the “Convention 15 of the Shadow Proclamation” thing he cites but apparently not. We do not understand the Nestene Consciousness’s, the molten plastic thingy’s, words during their conversation so who knows. There’s a great line of bulls*** he slings when Rose asks who he is, about how he feels how fast the world is turning.
  4. He says at one point that he’s been in a war and it’s implied that a lot of worlds died during it, and he “couldn’t save any of them,” including the one that the Nestene Consciousness is from.
  5. This gives the Doctor a more sinister tone–conspiracy theorist Clive says that death is his only constant companion, and that the Doctor only shows up when a disaster is or has occurred. Clive is then proven right by being shot in the face by a mannequin. The Nestene Consciousness, which apparently is legitimately terrified, is also killed, along with a TON of bystanders.

ROSE:

  1. Rose does not seem to be afraid of much, to an almost concerning extent at times. It’s good to be brave but it works better at the beginning when she’s legitimately frightened of the mannequins but keeps asking questions anyway. It’s great that she only screams once in the episode and it’s a very reasonable reaction.
  2. She does react well to crises. She pulls the fire alarm and gets everyone to evacuate when a mannequin impersonating Mickey gets violent in the restaurant.
  3. I like the look of Rose. She’s very pretty, yes, but she’s built like a normal woman and wears normal woman clothing, and her hair looks pretty disheveled a lot of the time.
  4. When her mom calls her during the crisis she hangs up without telling her she’s OK, which is bad. Maybe this is bad editing?
  5. Her associated characters–Mickey and her mom, who is so far nameless–are awful. The mom is the worst, some sort of caricature of a poor person–she doesn’t want her daughter getting “airs and graces,” is implied to be promiscuous and is clueless to the point of stupidity. She’s also careless, doesn’t listen and wants to get money from Rose’s work exploding.
  6. Mickey is annoying, but seemed a little less annoying on the second watchthrough. However, he does want to leave the Doctor behind TO DIE. Even Rose calls Mickey a “stupid lump.” At one point a plastic trash can eats him and I wished he’d stay there. He clings to Rose’s waist and is a coward, is there some racism here? Is this a racism?

TARDIS:

  1. The Tardis has clearly gotten over its indigestion from the Master, because it’s making the “I’m hungry Seymour, feed me!” noise again.
  2. The Tardis looks great, but it is definitely not as large as Eight’s Tardis. It’s also not as liveable, and lacks the homey feeling of the previous one, with its cushy chair and side table and ottoman.
  3. It still has the plasticy tube in the center, but its dome is bronze-looking, with lived-in wear, and green light comes down from it and onto the console, which has a flatscreen monitor attached (must have been fancy back then). Green light shines on the console.
  4. The Tardis has not been spoken of as a person as yet.

THE GUEST STARS/VILLAINS:

  1. Apparently the Nestene Consciousness and the mannequins were in this in previous interations of Doctor Who? But you didn’t need to know that to watch the episode, the Doctor doesn’t explain things a ton anyway. So it’s fine.
  2. Clive is a conspiracy theorist who shows Rose images of the Doctor through history and says he shows up before catastrophes with big death tolls. He is vindicated and then is immediately shot to death.

THE SETTING

  1. The Sonic Screwdriver, what is.
  2. Gay people exist.
  3. Did Genghis Khan really try to get into the Tardis and fail? If so why can Rose just open the door without a key?
  4. The color is fine but unremarkable. No artistic use of color like in the Cushing movie, no unique shots like the TV movie.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. Who decided to reboot the show? Why, what prompted that?
  2. The violence, did it get complaints? There’s a mass shooting at a mall in this episode.
  3. Pacing is too fast. I feel like the right length for this stuff is somewhere between 45 minutes and 2 hours.
  4. Accents and weird class stuff. Why do we hate the poors?
  5. Icky editing, like the part where it cuts a bunch of times on “babe,” “darling,” “dear,” “sweetheart.” That and the “wacky music” makes it more like a children’s TV show than the original, even though that was also a children’s TV show. Like a crappy Disney channel show of this era. What’s with that?
  6. The effects? The show has a budget suddenly?
  7. The novelization, Josh read that, anything from that we haven’t talked about already?

Sources Include

Episode 10: The Doctor Who TV Movie (1996)

/ Kari / Leave a comment

In this extra long episode, the Daleks Aren’t Robots!? Team looks at the TV movie from 1996 starring Paul McGann and Eric Roberts.  They discuss the Wilderness Years, the BBC’s multiple attempts to kill the show and the Doctor’s elusive tea preferences.

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.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentr…​

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

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 TEAM

  1. The Doctor is the main character here, and he’s in fine form. He starts out as Sylvester McCoy, Seven, who I am basically totally unfamiliar with, but who drinks what is apparently black tea, with milk. What kind of tea is canon the Doctor’s favorite?
  2. After he dies the Doctor regenerates into Patrick McGann, a big-R “Romantic” Doctor with long fluffy hair, wearing part of a Wild Bill Hickock costume and looking like a happier and less creepy version of Lord Byron. He seems a lot more psychic than usual (and the Master is psychic too). I am told that this is considered the good-looking doctor, although, having not seen ANY of the others but First, I like Eccleston.
  3. This Doctor, he tells us multiple times, is somehow half human on his mother’s side. Also he has two hearts. Those two things are the only things I originally remembered about Doctor Who from this TV movie.
  4. This Doctor kisses Grace several times during the course of the movie and seems pretty into it, which is fine, because the First Doctor was pretty into Cameca in “The Aztecs.” Both One and Eight are into chicks at least.
  5. At one point the Doctor needs to get somewhere and a cop is blocking him, and he doesn’t threaten the cop–he threatens himself. This Doctor would probably NOT murder someone with a shovel or a rock. He is more stealy than murdery, and does sleight of hand to steal things from people twice.
  6. This is the first regeneration we have ever seen, so is this normal. Is it normal to be kind of manic? Is it normal to lose your memory and just kind of wander around confused? Also does anyone cosplay naked Eight in a sheet? THEY SHOULD.
  7. Grace is the main Companion in this, and also the love interest. She’s smart, great in a crisis, and funny. I like her. She’s a heart surgeon who isn’t able to save Seven after he’s shot a bunch of times, partly because he has two hearts, so she gets lost (surgically) in his chest. Now, the thing is, she had an x-ray that did show the guy having two hearts, which is a thing that CAN actually happen. Bodies can be weird in a number of ways, you can even have situs inversus which means ALL YOUR ORGANS are flipped around. Extra organs are called Supernumerary organs, and extra spleens are so common they’re called “accessory spleens” and more than one in ten people have them. It’d be weird to have an extra heart but not UNHEARD OF.
  8. Chang Lee is an Asian teenager who’s avoiding being gunned down by a gang when he sees Seven get shot. He makes sure Seven gets to the hospital and goes along with him in the ambulance, so he’s not a massive jerk or anything, but the Master is able to trick him pretty easily into helping him, the Master. Is he the first person of color to be a Companion? or just the first Asian person? Does he count as a Companion? I like him, though, he’s a bit cynical but not hard.

THE GUEST STARS

  1. The main other character here is the Master, who is played by Eric Roberts. I don’t know where to start with this guy. Now keep in mind I don’t know anything else about the Master. I have never seen the Master in any other incarnation in any material apart from maybe photographs.
  2. The Master is very, VERY queer-coded and in fact seems incredibly gay for the Doctor, but not in a good way. He’s definitely the s***ty abusive ex here that does not understand how to take no for an answer. He eventually wears this amazing flamboyant set of red and black evil robes and puts the Doctor in this weird fetishy bondage gear torture device looking thing. He said no, dude, and even if he hadn’t like, you didn’t even discuss safewords.
  3. This movie starts out with the Doctor in a voiceover telling us that the Master has finally been executed for his crimes on Skaro, the Dalek homeworld, which… frankly makes no sense to me because the Daleks are not super friendly with the First Doctor, but whatever. Also Skaro is red now and last time I saw it it was a vivid jungle green. So this is interesting, because the Time Lords DEFINITELY have capital punishment. Is this why the Doctor is so murdery?
  4. The Master is in this weird restraint thing that’s a super version of Hannibal Lecter’s restraints, and then he gets zapped into ash and put into an urn so the Doctor can bring him back to Gallifrey. Then he turns into, and I am not exaggerating, snot. For the first part of this movie the Master is literally a slimeball, and someone steps in him when he’s a slime puddle, and eventually he becomes a snot snake, and then he steals the body of an ambulance attendant played by Eric Roberts and stays there for the rest of the movie.
  5. What the f*** IS the Master? The premise here is that he is out of lives and needs to steal the Doctor’s body to stay alive but during this movie he can slime people and burn them with burny slime, and his eyes glow green-yellow and he can possess someone and hypnotize people into doing what he wants them to do. The Doctor can’t do any of these things, are they even the same species?
  6. There are some other people but none who are particularly important. The morgue attendant is meant to be comic, but no one really cares. Also is it that weird for some dude to come out of a refrigerator? He doesn’t look at all like the guy the morgue attendant just put in there, wouldn’t he just assume someone snuck in there or was hiding there from before somehow?
  7. Also Grace has a boyfriend named Brian who leaves her after she has to go to work because she’s on call during a date. When he leaves he takes the sofa but NOT HIS SHOES, LIKE A CRAZY PERSON. Also there’s an eccentric scientist in charge of the atomic clock at the fancy event, and there’s a stoic unbending security guard there too.

THE SETTING

  1. The time tunnel looks great, and we also actually get to see it DURING the movie, not just in the credits.
  2. The Tardis interior looks FANTASTIC. It’s warm and homey and has kind of a steampunk look to it, with lots of dark wood and dark metal, and a cushy chair and a record player.
  3. The Tardis is CONFIRMED TO EAT PEOPLE. The Doctor says it literally has indigestion at the end after it has just eaten the Master. Also at one point the Doctor says “The Tardis is dying” and I was like “Yeah, you haven’t fed it for EIGHT LIFETIMES.”
  4. There’s a lot of confusing stuff in this episode. I don’t know what the Eye of Harmony is, I don’t know why the Doctor is half human and they even mention he can change his species upon regenerating? Is that why he’s half human? I don’t know really who the Master is, other than that he’s bad and is SUPER into the Doctor and wants his body, probably on multiple levels.
  5. And I don’t know whose Tardis this actually is but when the Doctor says it’s his I thought: The hell you say, sir, I believe it is NOT yours. Also the Tardis can resurrect dead people?

THE PRODUCTION

  1. Why didn’t this work? This obviously didn’t kickstart a new era of Doctor Who. I liked the movie when I saw it when it originally aired, and I think it holds up really well too. It’s well shot and at one point there are chickens. It seemed good so why didn’t it work?
  2. This wasn’t through the BBC and seems to have been an American thing, what’s with that?
  3. Did they have trouble getting Seven back? What did he think of it all?
  4. Why did they choose the companions they did?
  5. Was the Master meant to be that gay? has he always been gay or at least, into the Doctor, since their genders have both swapped now at least once.
  6. How much did this cost, what were the ratings?
  7. What was the fan response?

Sources Include

Episode 9: Dr. Who and the Daleks

/ Kari / Leave a comment

The DAR team looks at the first of the Peter Cushing movies, Dr. Who and the Daleks.  Is it an improvement on the original Doctor Who serial?  What’s the official favorite color of the Daleks?

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.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentr…​

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots​

Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

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 TEAM

  1. The Doctor is a human man, a scientist, and invented the TARDIS. Also, his name is actually Dr. Who and he APOLOGIZES to someone.
  2. He’s also a kinder and gentler and less murdery version of the Doctor, although maybe that’s just because Barbara is his teenager granddaughter and Ian is Barbara’s boyfriend. He’s more watchful of Susan as well, but that’s because…
  3. Susan is now a kid instead of a teenager. She’s still a smart, capable kid, but everyone is a bit more protective of her. She takes out the Dalek camera with a pen, which is impressive.
  4. Barbara doesn’t really have a niche here anymore. She doesn’t seem to do a ton in the plot, but at least she’s not damseled.
  5. Ian is the biggest change. He’s now Barbara’s boyfriend, and his main characteristic is that he’s clumsy and this moves the plot forward sometimes–for example, he accidentally hits the lever of the TARDIS and prompts the first time and space jaunt. This Ian is still protective of Susan, though, and while he’s a bit less physically capable he’s pretty brave. And not inclined to mansplain at all.

THE GUEST STARS

  1. The Daleks come in color, they’re M&M Daleks in blue and red and black. They’ve also been given some upgrades. Now their rays are visible sprays of something and some of them have pincers for grabbing stuff. Later one has a FLAMETHROWER/welding torch thing.
  2. There’s also a scene that more explicitly ties Daleks to fascism–when they’re all lined up in a formation and a lead Dalek is giving a speech.
  3. These Daleks might be different creatures entirely than the ones we saw in the show, as when they remove the Dalek from its can it seems to have a claw. Also, it stops moving, so maybe they killed it?
  4. The Thals are still fabulous and they’re much MORE fabulous in color, with their weird blond wig hair, their gold-pale skin and their hilarious Cruella DeVille eye makeup. It’s a very specific style of makeup and it is bizarre to see on a whole group of people. Unfortunately they have lost their cool hats and fascinators. 😦

THE SETTING

  1. It is great to see these locations in glorious color. Skaro exteriors are intensely green; the interior of the Daleks’ city is very pink. It’s all very candy-colored, with lots of soft pastels and bright, cheerful hues.
  2. The Dalek city has some pretty outre decor. Twisty mirror sculptures on the walls, funky satellite-looking sculptures on the exterior.
  3. They call the Tardis Tardis rather than THE Tardis. It is much larger than the regular Tardis.
  4. Susan writes her letter to the Thals by the light of three glorious lava lamps.
  5. There’s a beautiful matte painting of a hill that Ian and Barbara and some Thals have to climb.
  6. The consoles we see are much more real-looking and complex than the ones in the show–they clearly had real sets. But they were also beautiful–the Doctor’s radar-looking thing is vivid blue and purple, the Daleks’ map of Skaro has a beautiful pearlescent sheen, and the Tardis’s interior is a chaotic mass of many-colored hanging wires and doodads.

OTHER CHANGES

  1. The pacing is better here than it was in the show, because they don’t need to fill time, but there are still some spots where it drags, particularly in the caves.
  2. The Thal guy who falls in the cave doesn’t die this time.
  3. The Thal archives aren’t Settlers of Cataan tiles anymore, they’re geometric cubic shaped things that were once probably redshirts on the Enterprise.
  4. They use mirrors to confuse the Daleks’ sensors, but it doesn’t work.
  5. At the end they try to go home, only to open the door to the Tardis and get charged by apparently Romans.

THE PRODUCTION

  1. Why? Just why.
  2. Why the changes in cast? Why the other changes? Why did they keep what they kept?
  3. How did the cast feel about it?
  4. How much money did it make?
  5. How many years between?

Sources Include

Episode 8: Reign of Terror

/ Kari / Leave a comment

Today, we look at “Reign of Terror,” a Doctor Who story that sees the TARDIS team travel to revolutionary France.  Will they lose their heads?  Will we lose ours? Will we confidently discuss French politics despite not knowing anything much about it? (Yes. Yes we will.)

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.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daleksarentrobots

Twitter: https://twitter.com/daleksrntrobots

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8ngosXDOzVLrJe4KIcW8Qg

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

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 GUEST STARS

  1. There are only humans in this one, and they’re all French, except for one English spy. They are the most British French people since Star Trek: The Next Generation.
  2. I had a hard time telling some of the characters apart sometimes, and it was harder during the animated parts–this is another one where we’re missing some episodes. In this case the BBC commissioned the missing episodes to be made as cartoons. The animation is good but a little uncanny at times.
  3. I feel like the historicals where they don’t have to work with any specific people might be better so far, because that way they don’t have to work around reality. For example, Robespierre is in this and he had to end up executed, yes, but before that he also had to be badly wounded in the jaw, which was actually significantly gorier than this episode showed, and I can do without that kind of historical accuracy.
  4. There are some important French guys. Jules kinda looks like Miles O’Brien on Star Trek and he is working to rescue aristocrats from the guillotine. One, Leon, is a guy who hits on Barbara and turns out to be a super obvious traitor, meaning he believes in the Revolution. And one, LeMaitre, is an important official with the revolution who seems to be the main antagonist at first but then turns out to be an English spy. His other name, and I am not kidding, is JIM STEPHANIE F***ING STERLING SON. (Editor’s Note: Jim Stephanie came out as nonbinary just after this episode was recorded but before it was released; I’ve edited these notes accordingly but we did not re-record the podcast episode.)

THE TEAM

  1. The Doctor has a LOT of cool moments in this one, as he’s split off from the rest of the team for a lot of it. He finally gets to murder someone, although the guy starts snoring afterwards as if we’re dumb enough to think that people knocked unconscious with a high-velocity shovel would be a. alive afterward, b. snoring and c. totally fine when he wakes up, guys.
  2. The Doctor gets into trouble due to his ego, but then gets out of it with trickery and also a shovel.
  3. The Doctor also gets to pull a con and trick a bunch of people into thinking he’s an important official in the French revolutionary government. This involves wearing an absolutely incredible hat as well as some pretty awesome clothes.
  4. Susan is useless again in this episode, and that is sad. She gets to wear a cute dress, but then she gets sick and doesn’t do much the rest of the time.
  5. Barbara figures out a way to escape a French prison, she gets flirted with by a bad guy, and she’s pretty awesome throughout. Her dress isn’t as cool as it should be and certainly does not measure up to the Doctor’s hat.
  6. Ian meets an English spy and then helps him; he also gets tied up and tortured for a while, which is nice. He does some action stuff. At one point he and Barbara apologize to each other.

THE SETTING

  1. The show really takes a side here against the Revolutionaries, which… I’m not saying that they don’t have a good point, because they beheaded a lot of people and by the time we look in on the story we’re to the point where they’ve started purging their own ranks with the guillotine.
  2. At the same time, we get a lot of nefariousness from the rebels without any recognition of the cause of the revolution–a massive increase in population and unemployed people, plus a massive increase in food prices due to bad harvests. The cost of living increased 62% in just 44 years. Peasants were 80% of the population but owned 35% of the land. Meanwhile, the Crown was having a debt crisis, partly caused by helping the Americans during their revolution.
  3. Like, there was a lot going on and if you starve people to death don’t expect them to be sweet and kind and nice and good when you sit in a massive castle eating fancy food all day.
  4. There’s some dispute that the “traitor” was a bad person, mind you, but it seemed really token to me.
  5. At one point when Susan gets sick they go to a doctor, and the doctor indicates he’s going to bleed her. Fortunately they get arrested again first, but shouldn’t they ALL know not to go to a doctor of this era??
  6. The women’s hair is terrible for the era and no one ever comments on it or suggests they cover up the mess with a hat or a wig.

THE SHOW

  1. I think this one gets bogged down a little bit in its details. If you think about it, it gets hard to remember what happened when and why, meaning that even though things are continually happening it gets fuzzy about why.
  2. It’s also super hard to care about the NPCs, since starving the peasants is wrong and bad, and chopping heads off is also wrong and bad.

I know you guys reviewed Revolution of the Daleks and no spoilers but I have to know: Do the Daleks get a hat like the Doctor’s?

Sources Include

Episode 7: The Sensorites

/ Kari / Leave a comment

Today, we look at “The Sensorites,” a return to space and some new aliens for Doctor Who.  Are they as captivating as the Daleks?  Are they as ridiculous as the Voord?  Will Kari survive this episode without laughing to death?  FIND OUT!

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.

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

What we showed Kari: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cddgvs3yGgg

Check out our YT version for pictures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck7tGXIc3CA

Podcast Contents Include

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

SUMMARY

The crew finds some dead human astronauts from earth in the future, but they turn out to not be dead. Instead they’re being mentally affected and/or mind-controlled by the Sensorites. Some weird stuff happens and then the dumbest looking aliens ever to exist show up. They look like an alien from Mac and Me banged a dufflepud from the Narnia books, and I died laughing.

We had to take a break. I wiped the tears away from my eyes and got a snack and we started the show again and then I saw they were wearing footie pajamas and we had to stop again so I could laugh.

The Sensorites aren’t bad people, they’re afraid of humans and it turns out one of the astronauts had discovered their planet was made from a valuable mineral, molybdenum. Eventually everyone but Barbara ends up hanging out with the Sensorites, who have a problem where a lot of them are dying for no obvious reason, a problem which started when a group of humans arrived 10 years ago.

Barbara comes down and sorts everything out. It turns out some humans who were crazy due to Sensorite mind influence were poisoning the Sensorites, and a Sensorite city administrator trying to murder our team and definitely murdering other Sensorites is caught offscreen in the largest anticlimax since the final book in the Twilight series.

THE GUEST STARS

  1. The Sensorites are absolutely hilarious-looking. They have the features of the Mac and Me aliens, but with an upside-down wig glued to their chins and caterpillars glued around their eyes. They have two plate-like feet and wear soft baby blue footie pajamas.
  2. The Sensorites are utterly nonthreatening. They cannot stand loud noise or even loud THOUGHTS. They cannot see in any kind of dim light. They do not move particularly quickly and are frightened of humans. These are the least scary aliens to have ever existed.
  3. They can do some telepathy stuff, but only with the aid of a silly stethoscope thing they hold up to their heads, which makes them look even funnier.
  4. The astronauts, Carol, John and Maitland, are fine. Maitland exists to be thoroughly English; he probably has an alarm clock that plays the Big Ben chimes, sweats black tea and says pip pip cheerio I say old chap. Carol is the official The Girl and John is her love interest, who when we meet him is crazy due to the Sensorites’ mind control. John is a large ham and he’s fun to watch until his mental issues are solved, whereupon he’s only about half as English as Maitland and only about twice as interesting. AKA he’s real boring.
  5. There are a few Sensorites with personalities as well. The First Elder, the leader, is a compassionate, gentle and cautious person. The Second Elder, his second-in-command, is more willing to believe humans are bad, but also willing to try making peace with them. The City Administrator is less powerful than either, and is an evil vizier type. He ends up murdering the Second Elder. Other Sensorites include a Scientist, who works with the Doctor to figure out what’s killing the Sensorites, and the City Administrator’s flunky.

THE TEAM

  1. This serial is FINALLY good to Susan, who is revealed to have some capability for telepathy and is able to communicate with the Sensorites to some extent. She’s able to get them to trust her because of this.
  2. Susan also has some good conflict and character building with the Doctor, as she argues with him apparently for the first time ever.
  3. If Barbara had been around the whole time this serial would have been a two-parter. She turns up and essentially solves everything except the poisoning. Why isn’t this show called “Barbara Solves Everything”?
  4. Ian looks like Steve Jobs the whole time. Despite this he is not insufferable in this serial, even though he is still overprotective of Barbara who can, as we all recall from Marinus, beat him up.
  5. The Doctor does some science in this episode and figures out that the Sensorites didn’t catch an illness from the humans, but are being poisoned by atropine, or belladonna. For some reason no mention is made of the way this probably affected the affected Sensorites’ eyes–atropine dilates your pupils and makes you sensitive to light. Which is weird because the sensorites are terrified of the DARK, so you would think suddenly WANTING to be in the dark would be a symptom definitely worth mentioning.

THE SETTING

  1. There were a few sets here, and some succeeded more than others. The control room of the human astronauts was cool. It was clear they had very limited sets made for their spaceship and they had to use them in creative ways to make it look like there was a lot there. Their design was distinctive, with stripy walls that gave it a lot of texture and made it look a bit industrial.
  2. The Sensorites have big spacious rooms and curved portals, not a lot of texture. The kind of place someone wearing footie pajamas would build.
  3. There is some attention given to Sensorite society, which has a caste system. Due to their bad eyesight they rely on certain marks of office such as sashes and collars to tell each other apart, which the City Administrator uses to sneak around in the guise of others.
  4. There are some hints about the earth of the future from the human astronauts. There is no longer a London, it’s all Central City.
  5. The Sensorites have some cool-looking guns that kind of look like one of those old-style coiled egg beaters, leaving me wondering if someone in the props department had a fear of kitchen implements.

THE SHOW

  1. I feel like they meant to make this serial more of a commentary on ambition and the way caste systems destroy social mobility and lead to destructive behavior on the part of people who can’t get ahead. However, this commentary wasn’t actually really present much.
  2. At one point the Doctor gets his coat wrecked and it’s replaced by a long cloak instead. I liked the coat better but the cloak looks nice too.
  3. We get some hints about the Doctor and Susan’s homeworld–it’s got orange skies at night and silver leaves on the trees.

Sources Include

Episode 6: The Aztecs

/ Kari / Leave a comment

Today, we look at The Aztecs, a famous serial and Josh’s favorite of the Hartnell era.  Are its awkward brownface and excessively clothed Aztecs dealbreakers, or is all that outweighed by the Doctor’s first love interest, Barbara’s steely determination and Ian’s hilarious chicken outfit?

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.

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

What we showed Kari: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ysa7jRW-B7w

Podcast Contents Include

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

SUMMARY

The Tardis lands in an Aztec tomb, and the group can’t get back into the tomb once they leave it because the door shuts. Barbara is mistaken for the reincarnation of Yetaxa, an Aztec god-priest. Luckily, the Aztecs are one of her academic specialties and she can play along and stall for time. Things get political, but fire-free, when Barbara tries to stop human sacrifice, Ian wears a Battle Chicken outfit, and the Doctor gets engaged, but in the end they find a way back into the temple AND the TARDIS, and escape.

GUEST STARS

  1. The Aztecs. There are a lot of them, and many receive some characterization, good or bad or some of each. I have read a little bit about the Aztecs but not a ton, so I don’t know how accurate it all is, but while there is a little bit of smugness about how “civilized” they aren’t compared to the Doctor and his time traveling team, it’s honestly not as bad as I thought it was going to be.
  2. The Doctor gets a LOVE INTEREST! It’s Cameca, an Aztec wise woman who gives good advice to others and knows a lot about botany. She’s very intelligent, pretty, age-appropriate, really keen on him, and while initially it appears he’s just buttering her up to get help back to the TARDIS, he keeps the token she gave him when he leaves. She even manages to get engaged to him, though it’s an accident on his part.
  3. There are two baddies, an evil high priest named Tlotoxl, who I mostly called Evil Priest, and Ixta, a warrior that Evil Priest sets up as Ian’s enemy. Evil Priest is SUPER over the top and just chews every speck of scenery ever. He doesn’t believe Barbara is a reincarnation of Yetaxa, and sees the strangers as political threats to his power. Ixta wants to command the armies instead of Ian.
  4. There’s also a good priest, Autloc, who does believe Barbara is Yetaxa, and even when he’s not sure, he’s generally presented as a decent person. In the end he loses his faith and goes to wander in the woods, which is sad, and it is presented as such.

THE SETTING

  1. The setting is earth! And an actual place in actual history.
  2. There are multiple sets for multiple locations in this episode, and both the sets and the costumes look pretty good for the most part, apart from the hilarious Battle Chicken Ian and the Puma Man outfit Ixta wears.
  3. However, all the outfits include pants, which is hilarious. These are the most clothed Aztecs who have ever existed.
  4. They are also, apparently, all white. Yikes on trikes. >.<
  5. Susan really gets the short end of the stick in this episode. She’s in a tent going to Aztec school for much of the episode, and then imperils the party by not agreeing to an arranged marriage with the next sacrificial victim due to die in a couple days. He honestly didn’t seem that bad, I’m not saying she should have agreed but she didn’t even try to stall for time by asking to think about it or anything. Susan’s not this dumb, show! This is getting frustrating!

THE TEAM

  1. Barbara is the queen of this episode, successfully pretending to be an Aztec priest-goddess.
  2. Not only that but she heads straight for the corpse of Yetaxa to investigate it, identifies where and when they are and lets no one push her around. At one point Evil Priest tries to gatekeep her by asking her about Aztec cosmology but she knows all the answers.
  3. Her motive throughout is preventing the Aztecs from sacrificing people, which for some reason she thinks will stop Cortez from destroying their entire civilization (which is absolutely not correct). She’s really upset when it doesn’t work, because she genuinely loves the culture. Again, a lot less smugness than expected, and they end up not interfering in the indigenous culture (though not from lack of trying).
  4. Ian gets a surprisingly large amount of fighting in this episode, most of which is cheesy and should have the Star Trek fight music playing while it happens. He also gets to wear an INCREDIBLE bird warrior outfit that has feathers everywhere and he looks like an overgrown Pokemon. BATTLE CHICKEN ATTACK! Also Ian can do the Vulcan nerve pinch!
  5. The Doctor gets to woo Cameca, who is presented as pretty wise and daring herself, and he was very flirty. I could ship it, it’s a shame she’s probably not going to come back.
  6. The Doctor also gets at least one comeuppance, when he is deceived into helping Ixta in his fight against Ian, providing some knockout juice to slow Ian down. And at one point he actually DOES apologize to Barbara, a real apology.
  7. But he also turns out to be right in his conflict with Barbara and Ian at the beginning. They CAN’T stop the sacrifices; the societal inertia and religious practices are too much.
  8. Speaking of which, the Doctor is TOTALLY willing to let people be sacrificed in this episode. Zero issues with that, yet again.

THE SHOW

  1. The show is really really reaching already for reasons they can’t get back to the TARDIS. And at the end the TARDIS breaks again. It’s got the same downtime as the transporters on Star Trek, it seems.
  2. They still haven’t fed it. Couldn’t they have gotten a leg or an arm from the Perfect Victim? Surely the Aztecs could spare ONE limb for a hungry time machine!
  3. The Doctor had his first romance on the show, and almost ended up getting married. His eyes almost fell out of his head when he found out he was engaged, but he couldn’t leave Cameca’s ornament behind.

Sources Include

Episode 5: The Keys of Marinus

/ Kari / Leave a comment

Today, down a member, the Daleks Aren’t Robots!? team looks at “The Keys of Marinus,” a much-maligned Doctor Who serial.  Is it truly as bad as some say? What do all the weird references to fascism mean? And what’s with the brain slugs?

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.

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

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

SUMMARY

The TARDIS and crew visit a planet with acid oceans, and they find a monk named Arbitan being attacked by a bunch of goons called Voords who are all wearing wetsuits with handles on the head. Arbitan tells the team he has a machine that can brainwash everyone on the planet into making moral decisions but he hid the keys so the Voords couldn’t use it for evil. He asks them to get the keys back, so they go get them: one from a location where brain slugs have taken over, one from a jungle, one from a frozen cave, one from a city where Ian is framed for murder. They get the keys back but Arbitan was killed by Voords while they were gone, so they blow it up and leave.

THE SETTING

  1. The settings are really the stars in this one and there are MULTIPLE ones.
  2. I love how foreign the world is this time–the glass sand, the deadly acid sea. Never try to go swimming in unfamiliar water, folks!
  3. For a while people kept getting sucked into the building, and I started wondering if it was an oversized gazebo or some other carnivorous masonry monster.
  4. The TARDIS has an invisible force field barrier around it, which turns the cast into mimes and it’s hilarious.
  5. The team is fitted with teleportation watches to zip them around the planet to where each key is, and the plot utilizes them to pretty good effect I think. Although they split the party again.
  6. Each of the settings for the keys is nicely themed. The first is Morpit, which seems to be a luxurious Greco-Roman world but only because giant slugs make everyone think it’s that way by putting stickers on their foreheads. It’s actually a run-down, shabby, nasty place, but Barbara escapes, smashes up the evil brain slugs (which are ADORABLE) and rescues both Altos, Arbitan’s associate, and Sabeetha, Arbitan’s daughter, from the brain slugs. The group splits up because OF COURSE.
  7. The next key location is a jungle filled with human-strangling plants, and it’s through a hidden temple full of boobytraps. They get a fake key here, puzzle out the location of the real one, and escape.
  8. The third place is a snowfield, a scary trapper’s hut, and then an ice cave. They escape from the trapper, who tries to murder them by giving them raw meat so the wolves will attack them, and then tries again by pulling down a bridge across a cave chasm. The group solves the puzzle, retrieves the key and steals their stuff back from the murderous trapper.
  9. The last place is a city, and we see what looks like a jewelry store. Ian immediately gets hit on the head, yay, and framed for murder, boo, forcing the Doctor to defend him in court, and the group to find the key, which was stolen from the jewelry store by the real murderer.

ARBITAN, THE VOORDS & OTHER GUESTS

  1. We need to talk about Arbitan. He ran a machine that made moral decisions for everyone on Marinus and mind-controlled them. NO ONE IN THE GROUP POINTS OUT THAT THIS IS HORRIFYING until the very end, and then it’s still mostly an afterthought! The doctor tells Sabeetha, Arbitan’s daughter: “I don’t believe that man was made to be controlled by machines. Machines can make laws, but they cannot preserve justice. Only human beings can do that. Now I only hope that you’ll carry on his good work, please.”
  2. The Voords wear wetsuits with big rubber handles sticking out of the head, which was hilarious. But. One of the Voords’ wetsuits had a tear in it, and they were completely dissolved by acid, leaving only the wetsuit behind in his tiny coffin-submarine. That is kinda hardcore for a children’s show!
  3. There are several minor characters who get their own subplots. Arbitan’s daughter, Sabeetha, and Altos, Arbitan’s former associate, help find the keys and end up as a couple and it’s cute.
  4. There’s a violent, scary mountain man named Vasor who tries to sexually assault Barbara. He says a lot of scary, unsettling things.
  5. And there’s a whole courtroom of people in the trial episode–they don’t get much time but they all have at least a little personality. I thought they did a nice job considering the number of NPCs in this episode.

THE TEAM

  1. I would say there’s not really a ton of character-building for the Doctor and his team in these episodes, because by this point we know who these people are.
  2. Susan freaks out about the homicidal vines, and Barbara doesn’t believe her, even though Susan is always right.
  3. The Doctor gets to play lawyer, which is fun. He’s surprisingly good at it.
  4. Ian stays cool under pressure, even as he’s about to be executed.

THE SHOW

  1. The TARDIS miniature is freaking adorable! Did they save any of the miniatures from the early show, or are they all lost like the Marco Polo ep?
  2. This time the TARDIS is working but the color TV is broken.
  3. Costuming for the Voords was hilarious. A wetsuit with a big rubber handle coming straight off the head-cover? What prompted that?
  4. A lot of elements from this episode were reused from previous episodes, which you said was to save money. I recognized a hallway and some other stuff, but was there anything prominent I missed?
  5. There’s an attempted sexual assault in this, from Vasor, who is a bad guy, and also you hear another bad guy hit his wife, who later also turns out to be a bad guy. Did anyone complain?

Sources Include

Episode 4: Marco Polo

/ Kari / Leave a comment

Today, the Daleks Aren’t Robots!? team looks at their first missing episode of Doctor Who.  Can “Marco Polo” overcome the slideshow and fan-animated presentation? Why did they lose the episode with the most beautiful sets and sumptuous costumes? And can we all overcome the distressing racism? (Nope!)

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.

Theme: Garage – Monplaisir

Podcast Contents Include

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

SUMMARY

Marco Polo wants to claim the broken-down Tardis to give it to Kublai Khan in an effort to get Kublai Khan to let him go home. Our team wants to fix the Tardis and leave. There’s an agent of an enemy warlord, Tegana, who does evil stuff because he’s evil and finally he gets killed trying to assassinate Kublai Khan.

THE SHOW

  1. Technically these episodes don’t exist; we just have the audio track. We watched several different types of “reconstituted” episodes, one with black and white pictures, one with color photos and one that was created in a 3D virtual environment, which made it a little like watching the show in the form of a Playstation 2 game.
  2. The pacing is awful on this one, and it should have been 2-3 episodes long, because half of it is just Marco Polo going “Tegana says x, the others say y, I believe Tegana!” and this is very tiresome. In my notes, after the first episode was over, I wrote, word for word: I just realized, the whole plot is in this first episode and the entire rest of the series is just faffing about.
  3. The yellowface, oh gosh the yellowface. Why are some people Asian and some people white people made up to look “Asian,” with the biggest finger quotes ever?
  4. They still haven’t addressed why everyone is speaking English.
  5. There’s some swordfighting. No idea if it’s any good, because these episodes don’t exist.

THE GUEST STARS

  1. There are a few important characters this time, with the most prominent being Marco Polo, who is probably not meant to read as a jerk, but definitely does seem like a real jerk. In this story he’s working for Kublai Khan.
  2. Ping Cho is a sweet noblewoman of 16 who is set to be married to a 75 year old dignitary at the court of Kublai Khan. She has amazing chemistry with Susan and I really enjoyed reading them as a couple.
    2A. Ping Cho’s relationship with Marco Polo is really weird, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be reading it as fatherly or brotherly or what. This element is underdeveloped; if he’d been protective of her and related to her more as a dad it would have been a stronger episode, because he would have been more sympathetic.
    2B. Ping Cho’s storyline is resolved when her ancient husband-to-be poisons himself taking a lethal concoction intended to make him “younger” for her. She decides to stay with Kublai Khan’s court.
  3. Tegana is the transparent baddie. He’s a warlord and an emissary of Nogai, an enemy of Kublai Khan, and even though he couldn’t be more obviously evil if he was wearing 47 skulls, Marco Polo trusts him over anyone else. Even though he’s the enemy of Kublai Khan. For no reason. Because that’s the plot. Also, he wastes fruit, so you know he’s evil.
  4. Kublai Khan in this story is a nice old man with lots of aches and pains, who is the best administrator in the world. He bonds with the Doctor about being old. He also plays backgammon with the Doctor with horrifying stakes, including, at one point, the Tardis.
  5. Eyepatch pirate guy.

THE TEAM

  1. FOR THE LOVE OF LITTLE GREEN MEN STOP SPLITTING THE PARTY. We need to make a drinking game for this and the first rule is going to be “take a shot when they split the party.” And everyone will die of alcohol poisoning in the first hour.
  2. No one believes Barbara even after she saved the day in the last episode. She screams again in this one.
  3. No one believes Susan, either, that the eyes on one of the paintings in the cave moved, even after she’s repeatedly been shown to be reliable. When she’s proven right, no one apologizes for doubting her. Again.
  4. Ian is actually slightly, a tiny bit, useful and explains thin air and later, condensation in the episode, both times in an appropriate way. He also comes up with a way to distract baddies by making an explosion later. At one point Ian pretends to be drunk, and this was funny. Maybe it would be better for Ian to just be drunk all the time.
  5. The Doctor is an arrogant jerk again for a lot of this episode, but it doesn’t seem to matter much either way.

THE SETTING

  1. The Tardis breaks AGAIN, and this time it has no water or temperature control. And it will take A WHOLE WEEK of work to fix.
  2. The Palace sets looked pretty, particularly in the color photos.
  3. At one point, there’s a sandstorm and I remembered the episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 featuring a sandstorm; this was just as much DEEP HURTING.
  4. AND STILL NO ONE HAS FED THE TARDIS.

Honestly, this episode just shows the road trip from hell: Everyone is angry with everyone else and anyone who isn’t is just whining constantly.

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