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Dom Robinson reviews

Doctor Who: Robots of Death

Distributed by

    Cover
  • Cert:
  • Cat.no: BBCDVD 1012
  • Running time: 95 minutes
  • Year: 1977
  • Pressing: 2000
  • Region(s): 2, 4 (UK PAL)
  • Chapters: 24 plus extras
  • Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Mono)
  • Languages: English
  • Subtitles: English
  • Fullscreen: 4:3
  • 16:9-enhanced: No
  • Macrovision: No
  • Disc Format: DVD 9
  • Price: £19.99
  • Extras: Photo Gallery, Studio Floor Plans, Model Sequences, Writer/Producer commentary, In-Studio

  • Director:

      Michael E. Briant

    Producer:

      Philip Hinchcliffe

    Screenplay:

      Chris Boucher

    Music:

      Dudley Simpson

    Cast:

      The Doctor: Tom Baker
      Leela: Louise Jameson
      Uvanov: Russell Hunter
      Toos: Pamela Salem
      Dask: David Bailie
      Poul: David Collings
      Borg: Brian Croucher
      Zilda: Tania Rogers
      Cass: Tariq Yunus
      D.84: Gregory de Polnay
      S.V.7 Miles Fothergill


Transdimensional engineering, a key Time Lord discovery - that's how you should pull the girls!

Or at least it worked in as far as it kept new trainee Leela (Louise Jameson - whoever thought Eastenders' Rosa di Marco could be sexy?) interested and intrigued. The cast also includes another ex-Eastender, Ted Hills, aka Brian Croucher.

Similar to the James Bond series, the first actor you see in the leading role is the one you think is best. Tom Baker fits into that theory for me with his eccentric ways and is now the earliest Doctor still alive.

The Doctor and Leela find themselves teleported into Storm Mine 4, a sandminer searching for precious metals, with a small crew and getting smaller as each episode. The problem is that someone has reprogrammed the robots to bump off all the humans, but who would be so sadistic? Metal Mickey, also a regular Saturday afternoon favourite at the time, would not approve. Whoever's at fault, the finger is initially pointed at our heroes since they're the outsiders.

The Robots of Death was first transmitted from January 29th to February 19th, 1977.


The picture quality is rather good considering the age of the programe, with no artifacts but just a few scratches on the print, but watch out for those dodgy blue-screen effects which seemed so state-of-the-art at the time :)

Presented in the original fullscreen ratio, I was unable to determine the average bitrate since some of the standard DVD features have been disabled such as this and the bookmark function.

The sound is the original mono. The theme tune is as recognisable as ever and the special effects stretch to whizz-bang computer noises which, again, seemed the best thing since sliced bread 23 years ago. A shame we couldn't have a remastered Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtrack here as we did with The Five Doctors


Extras :

There's not a great deal of extras, but what's here will certainly appeal to the Who fans.

These include a 30-strong Photo Gallery, a map of the Studio Floor Plans from when the programme was made, Model Sequences which show original Sandminer footage before it was cut into the series and In-Studio, the rushes from the Doctor's and Leela's first meeting with SV7 before any special effects and music were added.

Finally, every episode contains a Writer/Producer commentary from Philip Hinchcliffe and Chris Boucher.

There are 24 chapters spread throughout the 95-minute feature covering all the major scenes and breaks down to six per episode. The language and subtitles are in English, while the menus contain suitable animation and music from the theme tune.


Overall :

It's well-presented, but it's time the BBC were more prolific with their DVD output and since they can fit all of a series of some programmes on a DVD for £19.99, including Only Fools and Horses and Absolutely Fabulous, why do we only get four episodes of Doctor Who here?

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS



OVERALL

Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2000.

The following is a list of all the Doctor Who DVDs reviewed to date :

Also visit Steve Roberts' Doctor Who Restoration site at : Restoration-Team.co.uk

Please tell him you found his site via my Doctor Who review.

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DVDfever.co.uk - Est. February 25th 2000

As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B 37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.

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