Hey youtubers it’s Charlie and this week on Doctor Who we got to see some serious medieval
robot shit go down.
It was Mark Gatiss’ episode and I felt like it was a marathon of references to classic
who.
Thank you to everyone who live tweeted the episode with me, it’s always fun to do.
I think we did an okay job of avoiding spoilers.
If you’re just finding me for the first time I do weekly Doctor Who videos.
Be sure to subscribe to get everything.
I’m also doing a weekly giveaway I’ll explain at the end of the video.
So careful for spoilers from Robot of Sherwood if you haven’t seen it yet, but here my
top 5 moments…I’ll wait just a sec...okay.
Here we go
Number 5 - The Doctor’s Spoon
It had been a long time since i’d seen a sword fighting episode of Doctor Who, I think
David Tennant did some sword fighting in Christmas Invasion but since this was a Medieval episode
I got more of a King’s Demons, Time Warrior vibe.
I love how much he hates on Robin Hood from the start.
One of my favorite quotes from the episode was the punch to the face line.
I’m wondering if the series is building to that.
Eventually Capaldi just pops someone in the face.
That’s like the difference between Captain Picard and Benjamin Sisko.
Picard never punched Q in the face.
I like thinking of Capaldi as the Benjamin Sisko rough and tumble Doctor.
Feels very much like the 9th Doctor.
He always felt like he might jump out and strangle villains to death.
moving on to Number 4 - The Doctor Reacts to Sherwood Forest
Most of the first half of the episode was him calling bullshit on everything and it
was glorious.
The archery contest was the icing on the cake.
If the whole tone of the robin hood scenes felt weird.
Like Tom Riley was “Over Performing”, it was on purpose.
It was made to feel like Errol Flynn’s classic Robin Hood because the robots created a real
life Robin Hood simulation to keep people distracted.
Like a giant holodeck Robin Hood episode.
Oh wait, Next Gen totally did Robin Hood too.
There are so many fandom streams being crossed in my brain right now.
I’ll talk a little more about the whole vibe of the episode in my review, but Capaldi
just tromping across all the pomp and ceremony was great.
Like Clara was going squee all over her fantasy and the doctor just wanted to stomp all over
it.
I feel like you could take this as a meta moment whenever some of the fandom hates an
episode or a character.
They stomp all over it and call bullshit like Capaldi did.
Fun Fact: Steven Moffat claims he is THE Prototypical Angry Doctor Who fan.
Like in the years preceding the 2005 reboot he was one of the biggest Angry Classic Who
fans complaining about the state of things.
Which puts really puts this picture into context.
But Number 3 - Everyone Just Shut It
Series 8 could be summed up in a series of gifs of people telling each other to Shut
It.
That should be capaldi’s catch phrase.
“Shut It”.
I love that Capaldi can set that kind of angry tone in a scene and not make it feel off putting.
Like it’s fun to watch everyone shushing each other.
Normally that’s something I’d get really tired of fast.
Part of me feels like the “Shut It’s” are Moffat yelling back at the fandom.
If anyone remembers, he used to be really active on twitter around Series 6 but by the
time Series 7 started I think, he’d been completely bullied off social media by crazy
people just shouting obscene things at him.
I like the thought that he jumped at the chance to cast a very scottish doctor who could speak
what Moffat wants to say to all his haters.
Technically Mark Gatiss wrote the episode but he and Moffat have been writing partners
for such a long time.
You could also think of Capaldi as a very angry version of Mycroft in the episode.
Although in the Sherlock Holmes Canon, Mycroft despises the idea of human contact so much,
he would never have left the TARDIS.
I guess the TARDIS kind of is like a Time Lord Diogenes Club
on to Number 2 - The Legend Of The Doctor
The metaphor for the Doctor as a Time Lord Robin hood was a little on the nose, but I
still love the reference.
He’s totally the Robin Hood of Gallifrey.
I guess that makes Rassilon the Sheriff of Nottingham?
Or maybe The Master?
I thought the real message was about the burden of history.
Like Tom Riley was telling the Doctor to not be weighed down in the mire of his past mistakes.
The darkness that he’s working through in series 8.
You could also see this as prophetic for the Doctor’s own future.
He’ll just turn into a legend.
He kind of already is, being 2000 plus years old and all.
During the Matt Smith era the Legend was all about him being a warrior, the most dangerous
man in the universe.
I always wondered if that was because of the historical things he’d already done, or
if the Silence knew he would eventually get much more destructive.
To be fair, he did blow up the universe in order to save it.
But the idea that Capaldi’s doctor could be the fulfillment of the silence’s prophecy
is intriguing.
The short explanation is that the prophecy was just about Trenzalore and The Doctor helping
the Time Lords return.
But let me know if you think Capaldi will be the fullfilment of that, like Moffat will
carry the idea forward.
He does that a lot.
and my Number 1 moment - The Promised Land
There are a couple of things going on here that made it hands down, the most fun part
of the episode for me.
First, we see that The Promised land is in fact a planet.
Or what looks like a planet.
It’s rendered in complete orange so we don’t know more than that.
When you consider this is the first episode to not feature Missy, it makes me think that
the Promised Land is also the Nethersphere is also Heaven.
All three of those places are the same.
Regardless of who or what Missy is, I think we just got confirmation that Heaven is an
actual place, not just a mainframe.
There was a big reference to Miss Evangelista with the Ice Cream on the Spoon at the beginning
of the episode.
So until I saw this picture I was still thinking Heaven could be a digital place.
Also, big Promised Land callback to the first episode.
The Robots in that story were also searching for the Promised Land.
It wasn’t clear if these robots were the same type of robots in deep breath, the clockwork
droids.
But part of me feels like they’re different.
Which would mean that a lot of robots are searching for the promised land.
Missy is saving robots and people so it’s still a little confusing as to who is ‘allowed’
into the promised land.
So far it seems like missy is only saving people that sacrifice themselves in the name
of the doctor.
But she doesn’t seem like she’s saving them out of spite to the doctor.
The other big moment was when the Second Doctor flashed on the screen.
In real life in 1953, he became the first actor to portray Robin Hood on TV.
That was before he became the doctor.
So this picture was taken when he was much younger.
But let me know what your favorite moment was and let me know what your favorite promised
land theory is!
Here’s a couple of the bigger references I spotted in the episode.
Feel free to add any if there’s something you think I missed.
I’m just going to list the biggest ones:
There’s the Spoon and the ice cream.
Spoons were a big thing for the seventh doctor when he first started his run.
Ice Cream was a recurring subject during the Matt Smith years and during Silence in the
Library.
Evangelista whispered Ice Cream before she faded away.
The Medieval Robots theme of the episode was a huge callback to Time Warrior from the Third
Doctor’s Run.
That was Sarah Jane’s first big episode as a companion and the story was somewhat
similar.
In that episode, a Sontaran gives a local robber baron a robot knight while he tries
to repair his spaceship.
The fifth doctor also went back to medieval times in King’s Demons.
It featured the master and introduced Kamelion who went on to become a robot companion.
Lots of Medieval Robots in Doctor Who history.
Visually it felt like the arrow shots in bullet time were a reference to the Kevin Costner
Robin Hood movie.
If you ever watched the Mel Brooks parody, Men in Tights, they did a version of this
where the arrow just goes around doing ridiculous random things before finding it’s target.
The voices of the Robots sounded very Borg like.
Maybe there’s a star trek fan on the crew?
There were a lot of later references to similar things in the third and fifth doctor episodes,
like the sword fighting, arrow shooting and alien spaceship.
I’m sure there were a lot more I missed.
But feel free to add any big classic who references I didn’t mention.
There were lot of minor Matt Smith references, like Clara trying to explain when she started
believing in heroes.
Right after that the doctor flipped the 11th doctor’s sonic in the air.
Overall I gave the episode a B, I loved that the story turned into the simulation trying
to get Capaldi to reaffirm his own sense of self.
I think part of those chalkboard equations are Capaldi trying to figure out his own self
in addition to finding Gallifrey.
In practice a lot of the Doctor Robin Hood banter drug the the pace down.
I don’t expect every episode to be as quick as Into the Dalek or Deep Breath but Robot
of Sherwood felt a little out of place.
We were already told that series 8 would feature more stand-alone episodes.
And this was very much a stand alone.
I feel like they weren’t sure where to air this episode so rather than have it slow the
pace of the Missy story down later on, they wanted to get it out of the way early.
I think once we get to the halfway mark in terms of episodes, the Missy Nethersphere
plot will start to dominate more and more.
And putting robin hood in the middle of that would just be weird.
Tom Riley and Ben Miller were great as an Errol Flynn version of Robin Hood and the
sheriff of nottigham.
I was bummed that they didn’t definitively answer the Robin Hood robot question.
It seemed like Capaldi was saying he was manufactured as part of the narrative disguise the robots
were using.
But he seemed like he was flesh and blood.
And at the end of the episode, he was still walking around believing he was the real life
Robin Hood.
Very confusing.
There was a real life robin hood in history, but the real story is very different.
King Richard the Lionheart almost bankrupt england with the crusades, and his brother
the prince actually tried to save the kingdom.
So in real life Prince John wasn’t evil.
The ending with Maid Marion was also unnecessary.
Here’s what I think happened, the Doctor time traveled picked her up and dropped her
off before leaving again.
And she just seemed to appear because we were seeing things from the perspective of Tom
Riley.
The other explanation is that Robin Hood really is a construct and the Doctor, as thanks,
made a marion construct to give Robin Hood closure.
You can let me know where you fall on the Robin Hood as real person or robot but I still
enjoyed the episode a lot despite a few pacing and logic issues.
Usually when stories don’t make sense like this, it’s because scenes explaining things
get cut out at the last minute.
My next bonus video will be my favorite fictional and historical doctor who characters, like
when the doctor talks about famous people real or not real he’s been with.
Be sure to subscribe to get it.
That will post next, tomorrow I’ll post my Q&A, so you should have plenty of time
to re-watch the episodes and ask questions.
I’ll also announce the giveaway winner for this week in that video.
Right now click here for the bonus video I’ll add the annotation in a couple hours when
I post it.
And click here for the Q&A.
I’ll update that tomorrow to with the right link.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tonight.
High Fives!