 |
| Nurse Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) is kidnapped by robots from another world. |
1 episode. Running Time: Approx. 47 minutes. Written by: Russell T. Davies. Directed by: Peter Hoar. Produced by: Vicki Delow.
THE PLOT:
When she was a teenager, Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu)'s received a bizarre gift from her boyfriend (Jonny Green): a certificate officially naming a star after her. 17 years later, Belinda is now a hospital nurse, living a busy but thoroughly ordinary life.
That is, until a spaceship lands near the house she's renting with several flatmates, and giant robots emerge to kidnap her. The robots insist that they are taking her to "Missbelindachandra One," a planet orbiting the star in her name. She is brought to a world ruled by robots, with the humans serving as little more than slaves, and told that she is to be their queen - and that she must marry their ruler, the AI Generator.
As she struggles to process all this insanity, a man steps forward to explain. This is a "designated historian," who calls himself the Doctor. After detailing the current state of the planet, the Doctor leads a group of rebels in rescuing Belinda.
But why has this planet evolved into this state? How did the robots obtain the same exact star certificate that Belinda carries? And why does the robots' certificate appear to be thousands of years old...?
CHARACTERS:
The Doctor: A friend who has helped him on Missbelindachandra One dies early in the episode, during Belinda's rescue. The Doctor processes that death quickly, taking a couple of seconds to feel all the grief at once. He then moves immediately to the task at hand, proclaiming, "She's dead. Right... we have got a world to overthrow." Aside from that scene and the epilogue, he serves as the Designated Deliverer of Exposition, but Ncuti Gatwa mostly makes it work through sheer energy.
Belinda: The first companion in a long time who would really prefer not to be. She has no interest in traveling the stars. Even the teen version of her seems unimpressed with the gift of a star named after her, though she does keep the certificate. In the present, she mainly just wants to get home. She does her best to use her nursing skills to help the wounded at the rebel base, and she feels guilt for those who were hurt or died saving her. But when the Doctor tries to persuade her to join him in his travels, she refuses, labeling him as "dangerous" and insisting, "I am not one of your adventures!"
THOUGHTS:
The first half of The Robot Revolution is rather good. We share in Belinda's disorientation as, in quick succession, she is: whisked away from her life by the robots; declared queen of a planet named after her; and informed that she must join with their AI. The fact of a rebellion is efficiently introduced when she witnesses the robots violently suppressing a distant riot. Then the Doctor steps forward as the "designated historian" to fill in needed backstory and to demonstrate the robots' weakness. At the midpoint, as Belinda hides in a rebel bunker while explosions rock the area, this episode seems on track to be a terrific season opener.
Then the script decides that we don't really need a proper Second Act. There are elements that might have been used. Belinda sees the injured and immediately starts acting as a nurse, but this occupies all of about two minutes. One rebel, Manny (Max Parker), resents her, blaming her for those who died rescuing her. When she protests that none of this is her fault, he sneers: "Is that a royal decree? You're as bad as the robots." Absolutely none of this goes anywhere, save to spur Belinda doing something remarkably stupid that in a more interesting script would likely have backfired spectacularly on all of the characters.
But instead of developing any of these pieces, the episode just skims through one quiet scene and then has the Doctor and Belinda captured again so as to rush straight to the confrontation with the AI Generator. Meaning that, yes, it would have been structurally cleaner to have the Doctor's rescue fail, with the exposition being dropped in a prison cell while waiting to be taken to the planet's mechanical ruler.
The big confrontation also feels rushed, though there is one clever conceit that I didn't see coming and that binds stray bits of the story together. Unfortunately, elements that should have remained subtext are rendered into direct text, with Belinda at one point invoking some Internet terminology to make sure "da kids" aren't missing The Moral of the Story.
OVERALL:
The Robot Revolution opens extremely well... which makes it all the more frustrating when the second half squanders that by skimming over what might have been interesting plot and character elements and finished by becoming heavy-handed.
I can't help but wonder if the main episode didn't suffer for needing to accommodate a five minute epilogue that's there to set up the season arc. In fairness, the final moments are intriguing. But after last season, I have zero expectations that I'll be satisfied by the eventual answers, and it's unfortunate that what was on track to be a pretty good episode seems likely to have been compromised for the sake of an arc tease.
Still, while this is flawed, it's at least entertaining, which means that it's a whole lot better than Space Babies.
Overall Rating: 5/10.
Previous Story: Joy to the World
Next Story: Lux (not yet reviewed)
Review Index
To receive new review updates, follow me:
On BlueSky:
On Threads:
No comments:
Post a Comment