Quotes
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"A Voc class robot has over a million multi-level constrainers in its circuitry. All of them would have to malfunction before it could perform such an action." ~ Dask"To the rational mind nothing is inexplicable, only unexplained." ~ The Fourth Doctor
Leela: So, explain to me how this Tardis is larger on the inside than the out.
The 4th Doctor: Hmm? All right, I'll show you. It's because insides and outsides are not in the same dimension.
(The Doctor gets two boxes from a cupboard.)
The 4th Doctor: Which box is larger?
Leela: That one.
(The Doctor places it on the time console then goes over to Leela with the other.)
The 4th Doctor: Now which one is larger?
Leela: That one.
The 4th Doctor: But it looks smaller.
Leela: Well, that's because it's further away.
The 4th Doctor: Exactly. If you could keep that exactly that distance away and have it here, the large one would fit inside the small one.
Leela: That's silly.
The 4th Doctor: That's transdimensional engineering, a key Time Lord discovery.
"I never carry weapons. If people see you mean them no harm, they never hurt you. Nine times out of ten." ~ The Fourth Doctor
Poul: He was murdered!
Uvanov: How do you know?
Poul: Because people don't strangle themselves.
"It's a corpse marker. Robot deactivation disc. They use them in the construction centres. If ever we used the stop circuit and turned off all our robots, they'd have to go back to a construction centre for reactivation. On arrival, each would be marked with a disc like that to show it was a deactivated robot. The technicians call them corpse markers. It's a sort of a joke." ~ Dask
Leela: Sometimes you talk like a Tesh.
The 4th Doctor: Thank you.
Leela: It was not well meant.
SV7: What were you doing in the scoop?
The 4th Doctor: Trying to get out.
"Leela? Leela? I wish that girl wouldn't wander off like that." ~ The Fourth Doctor
"Please do not cry out. It is important that I am not found here. If I had killed him, would I not have killed you too?" ~ D84
"I don't have to explain anything to you. You're just a mechanical man. You're not real." ~ Leela
"You try that again and I'll cripple you." ~ Leela
Poul: We've caught the man, too. Seems he killed Kerril. Poor Cass. You must be stronger than you look.
Leela: You must be stupider than you look if you think I did that.
"Oh, I see. A hundred million miles of uncharted desert and you just stumbled across us?" ~ Commander Uvanov
"You know, you're a classic example of the inverse ratio between the size of the mouth and the size of the brain." ~ The Fourth Doctor
"Whatever's locked can always be unlocked." ~ The Fourth Doctor
The 4th Doctor: One of your robots could have done it.
Poul: That's your great theory, is it? Well, my friend, robots cannot kill. Their prime directive
The 4th Doctor: I know, I know, I know. It's the first programme that's laid into any robot's brain from the simplest Dumb to the most complex Super Voc. But suppose, suppose someone's found a way of bypassing it.
"What do you mean, I can't imagine what it'll mean? This isn't the only robot dependent civilisation in the galaxy, you know." ~ The Fourth Doctor
"You know, people never really lose that feeling of unease with robots. The more of them there are, the greater the unease and of course the greater the dependence. It's a vicious circle. People can neither live with them nor exist without them." ~ The Fourth Doctor
Leela: No. There's something different. Something that could destroy us all.
The 4th Doctor: You're letting your imagination run away with you.
Leela: Can't you feel it?
The 4th Doctor: No, I can't. By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes. No, I can't, and neither can you.
"Please don't say I told you so." ~ The Fourth Doctor
The 4th Doctor: I know what you're thinking, but we had nothing to do with it.
Toos: It's strange how you're always around...
The 4th Doctor: It's a gift!
The 4th Doctor: I like a man who stays calm, Dask, but this isn't the Titanic.
Dask: I do not understand the allusion, Doctor.
The 4th Doctor: Well, if the damaged motive units can be repaired, the mine can float itself.
"I require, I require evidence. Your suspicions are not evidence, nor are lunatic threats of a robot revolution." ~ D84
"Oh, that's dim. Even for a Dumb, that's dim." ~ The Fourth Doctor
Poul: Please, go away. They know I talk to you. They watch me all the time. They hate me! They did what I told them, but only because that gave them the power, you see.
Leela: Do you mean the robots?
Poul: Not robots, walking dead. They pretend we control, but really, but really.
"Please do not throw hands at me." ~ D84
Toos: I don't understand what's happening. Robots can't harm humans. It's the first principle.
Leela: The second principle is that humans can't harm robots. I know, I've tried, and they don't bleed.
"Uvanov, you remind me very strongly of a lady called Marie Antoinette. There's a robot revolution going on out there and you say we've got no problems." ~ The Fourth Doctor
The 4th Doctor: Yes, you did. Do you know what's wrong with Poul, Uvanov?
Uvanov: Yes. Robophobia.
The 4th Doctor: That's right. The Loid call it Grimwade Syndrome.
"You see, most living creatures use non-verbal signals. Body movement, eye contact, facial expression, that sort of thing. While these robots are humanoid, presumably for aesthetic reasons, they give no signals. It's rather like being surrounded by walking, talking, dead men. It undermines a certain type of personality, causes identity crisis, paranoia, sometimes even personality disintegration. Robophobia. At least, that's Grimwade's theory." ~ The Fourth Doctor
"Today the mine, tomorrow the world. Right now he must be a happy little maniac." ~ The Fourth Doctor
"I see. You're one of those boring maniacs who's going to gloat, hmm? Are you going to tell me your plan for running the universe?" ~ The Fourth Doctor
"Because I'm a Time Lord. I've been around, you know. Two hearts, respiratory bypass system. I haven't lived seven hundred and fifty years without learning something." ~ The Fourth Doctor
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Trivia
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Working titles for "Robots of Death" included Planet of the Robots and The Storm-Mine Murders. The story takes place on Storm Mine 4 in the 23rd Century.
Although this serial has gone on to become one of the most popular Doctor Who serials ever made, director Michael E. Briant revealed on the DVD commentary that neither he nor star Tom Baker liked the script by Chris Boucher very much. Briant claimed he believed it owed too much to Agatha Christie and was fairly average, and added that he thought the story's greatest attribute was its design work.
According to Briant on the DVD commentary, producer Philip Hinchcliffe was against his casting of Russell Hunter in the part of Commander Uvanov, who Hinchcliffe initially believed lacked the presence and authority for the character.
Chris Boucher acknowledged his sources by littering the script with name checks to well-known science-fiction authors: Uvanov was a corruption of "Asimov", Poul was a reference to Poul Anderson, and Taren Capel was an homage to Karel Capek (who first coined the term "robot" in his play RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots) in 1921).
The element of an outside influence inciting a robot rebellion was inspired by Clifford D Simak's 1950 short story Bathe Your Bearings In Blood! (also known as Skirmish), while the axioms which held the robots in check were reminiscent of the Laws of Robotics created by Isaac Asimov, as first given in the 1941 short story Liar! (later included in I, Robot).
The sandminer was inspired by Frank Herbert's Dune.
Tom Baker disliked the scene where SV7 rescues the Doctor from being buried alive. He suggested an action-packed sequence in which the Doctor swings on his scarf to kick the door open. He and Michael E. Briant argued vociferously until Briant revealed that incoming show runner Graham Williams was present to observe the shoot. Baker quickly agreed to follow the director's instructions. (Williams would take over the show the following season.)
Because episode 2 ran short, the closing moments were augmented with the subplot about the overloading motive units. The cliffhanger had originally centered on Zilda's death.
Louise Jameson was given a sharp knife to work with, but when she was required to throw it at a robot, she nearly ended up hitting one of the camera men with the blade. The set was cleared for take two with only one camera man cowering behind is camera in fear for this life. After that, the sharp blade was taken away from her, and she was given a dull edged prop to work with.
Voted by fans as the sixth greatest classic Doctor Who serial in Outpost Gallifrey's poll in 2003 to celebrate 40 years of the series.
In 2000 this became the first Doctor Who serial from the Tom Baker era to be released by the BBC on DVD.
Writer Chris Boucher wrote a sequel, Corpse Marker, for BBC Books, which was published in 1999.
This is one of the few stories which explains, in relative simplicity, using a demonstration with two boxes, how the TARDIS is dimensionally transcendental. This story is the last one in which the wood-panelled TARDIS control room appears.
The Heavenly Host in Voyage of the Damned bear many similarities to the robots in this story. Not only do they look vaguely similar, they also have a habit of chanting, "Kill, kill, kill!", and one even has to remove its hand after getting it trapped in a door.
Robophobia, an irrational fear of robots, is at one point referred to as 'Grimwade's syndrome'. This was an in-joke reference to production assistant Peter Grimwade (later to become a director and writer on the series) who had bemoaned the fact that the stories on which he was assigned to work almost always involved robots. However, the description of robophobia given by the Doctor in fact coincides with a real-life phenomenon called the Uncanny Valley.
The precise setting of this story is disputed. Some expanded universe material places it on Io, one of the moons of Jupiter, despite the fact the story suggests the atmosphere outside the sandminer is breathable and the presence of a vast sandy desert is somewhat integral to the plot (neither of which would be the case on Io). One story places it on the planet Kaldor. The Kaldor City spin-offs do not name the planet where the city is located.
Decades later, the episodes The Impossible Planet/The Satan Pit and Planet of the Ood would also feature subservient creatures (albeit living ones this time) turning on their masters after being manipulated; like the robots, the Oods' eyes would also glow red when under this influence.
This story is the last one in which the wood-panelled TARDIS control room appears.
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Links (Watch on DailyMotion.com)
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Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Doctor Who: The Robots of Death (Story 90) - Special Edition DVD available at Amazon.com
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