Doctor Who: Robot of Sherwood First Impressions

This is late.  I had a long day yesterday and I went to bed right after the episode.  Deal.

  • This felt a bit like a Sixth Doctor episode.  At least, Twelve was acting very Six-ish.
  • The Doctor fights a man wielding a sword with a spoon, I’m really not sure what to make of that.  Also, where did he get that glove?
  • Boy, the Doctor really stuck with that “None of this is real!” thing up until the bitter end, didn’t he.
  • Nice bit of business with the Doctor wondering where Clara got her belief in heroes, and Clara being all “Duh!”  What Clara is doing here is what a companion should do, showing the Doctor the best parts of himself.
  • The sheriff was suitably dickish for the setting.  I liked it.
  • Check out Robin Hood getting all Merida up in here!  Or was Merida getting all Robin Hood?  Whatever.
  • And the Doctor showing off in order to get captured.  Nice plan.  /sarcasm
  • I actually kind of liked the design of the robots.  I’m sure it was just a function of where and when they crashed, but it shows the amount of thought that Gatiss put in to the writing.
  • The part in the dungeon with the Doctor, Robin and Clara was the part that reminded me the most of Six.  With Clara being a much more proactive companion than Perri or Mel were.
  • Props to the Merry Men for figuring out what was so weird about the sheriff’s plundering of the people.
  • This show has a long history of overly ambitious humans allying with bad guy robots, and it never turns out well for the human.  In short, the sheriff really should have known better.
  • There’s a neat little easter egg in all those Robin Hood pictures that the databank on the ship displays.  I didn’t notice it until someone pointed it out; but apparently, Patrick Troughton once played Robin Hood.
  • You have to feel for Robin when he finds out that as far as history is concerned, he never existed.  For a minute there, I was convinced he wasn’t real either.
  • Of course Robin has a sword fight with the sheriff.  Why wouldn’t he?
  • I liked that Robin came to terms with being a legend instead of a slightly flawed real person.  Of course the Doctor has been a legend in the past (the whole Oncoming Storm thing) it didn’t exactly work out well for him.

Overall this really did feel Six-ish to me.  Not that that’s a bad thing, I happen to like Six, but the humor did seem to overwhelm the episode.  But I didn’t hate it by any means.

Next week looks to be really creepy, things grabbing people from under beds and all that, I look forward to it.

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