Robot Of Sherwood Put DOCTOR WHO In A Whole New Light

By BDC on Friday, September 12th, 2014

We’re three episodes in, and already we have experienced what some Whovians would call a fluff piece. I mean, it doesn’t even have Steven Moffat writing it, right? But after Robot of Sherwood, I find myself pleasantly surprised.

But this isn’t a review. This is my continual analysis of the form and growth of the new Doctor, Peter Capaldi. Many have already started nit-picking his performance to death and decried this last episode, but I find myself having to call their bluff.

Doctor: Old fashioned heroes only exist in old fashioned story books, Clara.

Clara: What about you?

Doctor: Me?

Clara: Yeah, you. You stop bad things from happening

every minute of every day, that sounds pretty heroic to me.

Doctor: Just passing the time.

The farcical premise of the story had me laughing from the beginning. The Doctor offers to take his companion anywhere to meet anyone of their choosing as he had so many times before. It is the allure of the madman in a blue box. He sweeps into your life and offers you all of time and space as your vacation land. Of course, that’s when he says, ‘Run’ and the screaming starts, but you find you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Clara feels the same way, although she is at odds with this new ‘familiar’ face. She still loves the old coot or she would have been gone a couple of episodes ago. But, when she tells the Doctor she wants to visit Sherwood Forest and meet Robin Hood, things go awry. He insists that it’s all a waste of time; that Robin Hood doesn’t exist. The Doctor spends the rest of the episode either trying to prove they’re in a simulation that isn’t real or that Robin Hood isn’t Sir Robin of Loxley after all. Why? Is he concerned about young Clara being led away by the dashing young vagabond? Or is he at all worried about the danger they can all be in? That would be no to both.

No, the Doctor is more interested in personally competing with Robin Hood as to trip him up and show him as the fraud he obviously is. He is continually at odds with the legendary scamp; so much so that Clara seems to have had her fill of the two of their bickering less than halfway through. The Doctor can’t see past Robin and will do anything to prove to Clara that there is no such thing as Robin Hood as he is presented in the well known stories. This includes getting them captured and thrown into the dungeon.

The funniest scene in the whole episode is when the spy comes in to take the ‘ring leader’ away to see the sheriff. As Robin and the Doctor bicker about who said ‘ring leader’ is, the spy carries off Clara. And Clara doesn’t seem at all upset about it as long as she can put some distance between the two of them. he funny thing about series 8 so far is that it is now Clara who is calm, cool, collected and always in control of the situation. She knows the right thing to say and do; much like the Doctor did for the last 9 years or so. He is the one now who needs saving since he is too busy picking apart a historical figure to pay attention to what’s going on.

Anybody find it too much of a coincidence that two sets of droids are found to be heading to the ‘Promised Land’? What does this mean for the soldier taken in INTO THE DALEK?

That brings us to the question of ‘WHY?’. Why does he go to such great lengths to expose Robin Hood as a fake and a liar? Why does he push so hard to destroy a man who Clara has idolized since probably childhood? Well, it is as simple as that. That look in Clara’s eyes makes him uncomfortable. She still fawns over him, albeit in a different way, and looks to him as her hero. This unnerves the Doctor. Suddenly, his heroic past of which we Whovians relish in has become a sore spot for the man who lived the legend in the first place. Something about the ‘mistakes’ of which he spoke of in the first episode, haunt him and follow him everywhere he goes. Is Missy all a part of this past or future that scares him so? Well, according to the writing, at least, she is.

Patrick Troughton, who played the second Doctor, can be seen briefly in the ship’s COMPUTER databanks when the Doctor brings up images of Robin Hood. Troughton played the first TV Robin Hood in the BBC One series Robin Hood back in 1953.

So, when the Doctor looks into the eyes of young Robin Hood, the hero of the people, he sees himself and feels the need to dissect him and bury him. There must be something wrong with this ‘legend’, this ‘hero’ simply because there is something dreadfully wrong with him (according to the Doctor, at least).

Does anyone else think that actor Ben Miller bears a striking resemblance to THE MASTER?

This has been the task of the Doctor ever since his regeneration into this body. It is all wrapped up in ‘why this face?’ and ‘What am I trying to tell myself?’. It is all about that ‘familiar’ face of his. What started as a joke to his previous Doctor Who appearance has now become a plot device. And he almost refuses to let people ‘worship’ him like they used to. He considers himself too damaged.

Clara: When did you stop believing in everything?
The Doctor: When did you start believing in impossible heroes?

Clara: Don’t you know?

The journey the Doctor must go through takes him where he dares not go; into the depths of who he really is. Is he a hero? Is he a good man? Is he capable of murder? And when did he stop believing in everything? These are all things we must discover with the Doctor along the way to season’s end.

For more speculation concerning Doctor Who, especially who MISSY is (Is it eating you like it’s eating me?), CLICK HERE