Robot of Sherwood: A Robin Hood Who Shouldn’t Exist

Robot of Sherwood is a nice change of pace after two heavier episodes, and it starts with the Doctor telling Clara to “take a punt” and pick anywhere in history she likes. She picks Robin Hood, and the Doctor tells her straight away that he’s a complete myth, so you know that’s going to come back and bite him. The TARDIS lands in a forest in medieval Nottingham, and within a couple of minutes Robin appears and challenges the Doctor to a swordfight. The Doctor takes him on with a spoon.

The set-up works because the Doctor is so certain he’s right. He tells Clara that Robin Hood is a legend, that he never existed, and that she’s wasting a trip on a story, and then the man himself steps out of the trees and proves him wrong in front of her. After that the Doctor spends most of the episode trying to explain Robin away, looking for the trick behind every bit of swagger. It’s a fun reversal of the usual way he wins arguments, and Clara clearly enjoys watching him lose one. I thought it gave the first half real energy, even when the jokes were a little broad.

What we get is an inventive twist on the Doctor Who historical story, in the same spirit as The Shakespeare Code but with a different question underneath it. Instead of showing history through myth and fiction, it has the Doctor trying to prove that history is an artificial construction. It’s partly a parody of Robin Hood films and TV, particularly the way the Merry Men laugh at nothing, and partly a new take on the story itself. Apart from the infantile slapstick of the spoon fight, I think it comes off superbly.

A Spoon Fight and a Very Suspicious Merry Men

I’ll admit the spoon fight is the one bit of the episode I’d cut, because it’s slapstick that’s aimed squarely at the youngest viewers. I get why it’s there, since it’s the first thing that shows us how Robin and the Doctor are going to clash, and the Doctor can’t resist winding him up. Robin is cheeky but also a credible hero, and that balance is what keeps him from being a joke. He laughs at the Doctor, and the Doctor can’t stand it, which is one of the better running gags in the episode.

They meet the rest of the Merry Men, and the Doctor grows suspicious that these men are synthetic beings rather than real historical figures. They do laugh at everything, which the episode knows perfectly well, and it’s why the whole group feels like a send-up of every Robin Hood story I’ve ever sat through. At an archery contest Robin splits the Sheriff of Nottingham’s arrow, and the Doctor finally works out that the knights guarding the Sheriff are disguised robots. My one real complaint is that the Merry Men are severely underdeveloped, and not enough is done with the set-up in Sherwood Forest for my liking.

The Sheriff, the Robots and the Golden Arrow

The Doctor, Clara and Robin are captured and thrown into the castle, and while the Doctor and Robin argue over their escape plan, Clara is taken to the Sheriff. The Sheriff is the best thing about the middle of the episode for me, a comic villain who’s always a genuine threat, a bit like every pantomime baddie you’ve seen but with more teeth. Clara manipulates him into admitting that he’s helping robots from Earth’s future repair their spaceship, and the payment is gold. I like how she’s written here, because she’s strong without being extreme about it, and she gets the information the Doctor can’t.

Robin and the Doctor find the spaceship’s databanks before Robin and Clara escape, and with the help of a golden arrow the three of them reunite to destroy the ship before it leaves to destroy London. That’s about as classic as an ending gets, and it’s the right kind of silly. Clara tells Robin about the Doctor, and Robin compares himself to the Time Lord to explain how he can be real. It’s a lovely scene, and it says a lot about what the episode is trying to say about heroes and stories. The robots are a little forgettable, honestly, but they do what they need to do.

The dungeon scene is the one where the episode’s two lead men really get under each other’s skin. The Doctor and Robin argue over how to escape, and neither will give way, because both of them are used to being the hero in the room. It’s funny, and it’s also the clearest sign of how alike they are, which is what the ending leans on. I liked that the story let the pair of them be childish with each other before it asked for any sincerity.

A Throwback With Pertwee in It

The episode feels like a throwback to an earlier era of Doctor Who, when the companion was always in the TARDIS and periods in Earth’s history were visited regularly. It’s very much a one-off, using Robin Hood to ask what place the Doctor might have in the popular culture of the future. That means it doesn’t do much to develop the ongoing story, and it reflects on the programme’s own history instead. Danny is temporarily forgotten, there’s much less of the Promised Land arc, and the episode could sit anywhere in the season.

More than the first two episodes, it shows how much this Twelfth Doctor is going to be connected to the classic era. There are plenty of references to the Jon Pertwee serials, including the return of Venusian karate and a mention of the mini-scope from Carnival of Monsters. Capaldi still sets this Doctor apart from his past selves, though. There’s an arrogance about him that borders on anti-social, and it’s a shock to see him so routinely unpleasant to everyone around him. Clara is well written, but she’s more of a generic companion here than the woman who stood up to him in Into the Dalek.

The references to the older stories are a nice touch for anyone who’s watched the classic series, but you don’t need to know them to follow what’s going on. Venusian karate, the Pertwee-era Doctor’s trademark move, gets a straight-faced reintroduction, and the mini-scope from Carnival of Monsters turns up as a gadget rather than a gag. They make the Twelfth Doctor feel connected to every Doctor who came before, and I’d say that’s the point of them. It also fits the episode’s bigger idea, which is that the Doctor himself is a story other people tell.

A Brasher Doctor, and the Season Arc on Hold

It’s refreshing to get a different view of the Doctor after the first couple of episodes, and this brasher, less complicated version seems far more workable in the long term than the cold-hearted one we saw inside the Dalek. The episode interweaves nostalgia for the classic era, and for Robin Hood stories, with a clever idea about myth and history. For the most part it’s well balanced between comedy and drama, which is a blend Doctor Who isn’t exactly known for getting right. That said, the 45-minute format does feel like a restriction when the story wants to explore its characters, and the Merry Men are the clearest casualty.

Next to the heavy moral questions of the previous episode, this one lets the Doctor be rude and clever without worrying about being good. He’s lighter, but no less aggressive, and I found that a more workable Doctor to spend a whole season with. The second half still has some of the harder edge, particularly in how he talks to the robots and to Robin when he’s frustrated. Clara gets less to do beyond the scene with the Sheriff, and Danny is nowhere in sight, which is why it feels like a break from the season rather than part of it.

It doesn’t contribute much to the season arc, but it shows that the strengths of Doctor Who now lie in the standalone quality of its individual stories. I’d happily take another one of these, as long as the supporting cast gets some room to breathe.

Do you think Robin Hood really is a myth in the Doctor Who universe, or is the Doctor just too proud to admit he was wrong? Tell me in the comments.