Embedded Files
Doctor Who has got a new mate to play out with, and she's called Leela. This is the first time he's found a new friend in a while, and so he's kind of forgotten what you do.
What you don't do, Doctor Who, is instantly take them to a horrible grimy death-trap in a place full of sand and rocks. What are you thinking? We all know that you enjoy the worst places in the universe, but you need to realise that this is not a good first impression.
Leela tries to be polite for a bit, but is soon bored of looking at rocks. She didn't come with Doctor Who to watch sand - she came because he looked like the sort of person who might constantly get into trouble and need her to murder his enemies.
We seem to be on some kind of boat, except one that wanders around the desert instead of the sea, yumming up all the sand. No-one in this story calls it a Sand-Boat, but I can't help thinking that they'd all have a lot more fun if they did.
Turns out the Sand-Boat-Thing is run by these guys. They are the Robots of Death, though they don't call themselves that in public. They call themselves "The Robots of... um... Nothing..."
They stand around on this exciting space-bridge all day, driving the Sand-Boat up and down the desert looking for valuable stuff. I like the massive texty computer behind King Robot at the top. It doesn't look like a very efficient use of space, so we must assume that either the robots are all very short sighted, or that they consider all their messages to be incredibly important and exciting.
The one at the front has just got a message that Doctor Who is wandering about downstairs. Even though his face is a blank metal mask, you can tell that he's exasperated by this news. He bets that Doctor Who has already broken several expensive things, and made at least two people cry.
Doctor Who and Leela get captured by the Robots of Death, and imprisoned in this rather lovely looking room.
For Doctor Who, getting captured is an essential part of his daily routine, and so he's feeling pretty chipper. He's trying to work out what he'd most like to do next - annoy his captors by instantly escaping? Order breakfast and see what happens? In the end he seems to have gone for "Set up an impromptu detective agency at the desk, like a child might."
This looks like it might be Leela's first time on a chair. She's not quite got the hang of it yet, and is clinging on for dear life in case it goes wrong.
It's not just Robots of Death on the Sand-Boat. There are people too. And look at their awesome hats! These guys are in charge of the Robots of Death, though they don't really do an awful lot apart from saying "Yeah - keep doing that!" and admiring themselves in mirrors.
The guy on the left is the Commander. I think he's spent the afternoon making mindless small talk to the Robot on the right, and the Robot is accordingly keeping his head down as if to suggest "Please leave me alone, I don't care about any of the crazy characters you knew at university."
Look out! This Robot of Death has gone all murdery. You can tell because his eyes have turned red - the colour of murder!
He's been reprogrammed or something, and instantly starts strangling people in the neck. This is a surprise to everyone because, remember, the humans never knew about the "...of Death" bit of their name.
They are a super cool bit of design, aren't they, these robots? They have great hair and snappy dress sense. This has to qualify as one of the best dressed threats Doctor Who has ever faced, up there with that time The Autons went on a murderous rampage in a series of elegant smoking jackets.
Leela has been grabbed by this guy, but it's OK, because he doesn't do any "Of Death" on her. He's a special, different kind of Robot. He's a sneaky spy, who's doing detective stuff to find out who is doing all the murders.
He's very pleasant company, and turns out to be quite fun to be with. He is, however, not a very good detective. He's all, like, "I wonder who is doing the murders?" The story is called The Robots of Death, Mr. Detective. It's the Robots. They're doing it. They are Robots of Death.
Even if you don't know that, look at the possible culprits.
a) Super strong emotionless machines with no morals, that you can program to kill if you have the right kind of spanner.
b) A bunch of flamboyant middle managers in stupid hats who cry when anything bad happens.
Soon enough, all the humans start shouting at each other about who is doing all the murders. The woman in purple is having a right old yell at the sad looking man in the space-smock. She's so cross that he's wondering if maybe he did do the murders, and has just forgotten.
They have all brought their best hats, I see. There's clearly no crisis so serious that they don't have time to choose colour co-ordinated headgear.
Luckily for the humans, Doctor Who turns up. This is great news for them, as it means they can all start pointing at him and shouting and blaming him for the murders.
Doctor who looks a little more sheepish than usual. This is odd, because literally everyone he meets accuses him of murder, and usually all he does is laugh and say "Hurray! Murders!"
In this instance he might be thinking about all the dead bodies, and wondering if they have anything to do with the fact that he's brought on board a knife wielding jungle savage who genuinely enjoys killing people, and was earlier asking if there might be any stabbing in this adventure.
This is a creepy old image, isn't it? This is where they put the Robots of Death when they stop working properly. Which seems to happen quite a lot, given the number of them on the shelf-things. I wonder why?
Maybe the Robots are this civilisation's equivalent of printers, and the humans spend all their time kicking them violently in the head shouting "For the love of God could you just do the simplest, most basic task without going wrong and destroying an entire day's work, you horrible, stupid, loathsome machine! What do you mean there's a paper jam? There isn't! I've looked everywhere! Just do the job for which you were designed! I mean what's the point in having you if you don't do anything? If you don't start working I'm going to throw you down the stairs! I hate you!"
Bloody printers.
What were we talking about?
Doctor Who manages to persuade the humans that it probably isn't him doing the murders, and goes off to find out who it actually is. He meets the Detective Robot from earlier, and is instantly delighted by everything he says.
I think Detective Robot is whispering things about how he's narrowing down his list of suspects, and he's got it down to "One of the humans but definitely not one of the Robots of Death." Doctor Who doesn't care about the actual words... he's just enjoying the musical quality of Robot Detective's Voice. It's clearly very soothing, and it's possible that Doctor Who has actually fallen asleep.
It turns out that -surprise! - the Robots of Death are the killers.
They have been programmed to do murder by this guy, who loves robots, and thinks he is a robot, and has gone mad, and is maybe also thinking of starting a David Bowie tribute act.
The robot on the right looks quite concerned, and also a bit cross. He's saying, "I see we've gone from 'mysterious deaths that could be anyone' to 'rampaging around the place killing everyone we meet, and telling the survivors that they're next'. I thought we were going to have a vote before we made any big decisions? Also what's that on your face? Because it looks a lot like cultural appropriation."
All the humans have an emergency meeting. The Captain of the Sand-boat is very sad indeed. He liked it when the Robots of Death were bringing him coffee and helping him complete his sudoku, and he's much less keen now they are strutting around snapping people in half.
Even Doctor Who and Leela look a bit glum. Doctor Who was planning to do a big "It was the Robots!" reveal, and was considering going back to the TARDIS to get his pipe so he could waggle it at people, but now everyone's going "Obviously it's the Robots," so that's out. And Leela has discovered that when you throw a knife at the Robots, it just makes a "Thrrrrrannnng" sound, and doesn't kill them even one bit.
Detective Robot is considering how all this is going to look on his CV. "I had to investigate some murders, and I said it wasn't the Robots, and it was the Robots, and as you can see I'm a Robot." It doesn't look great.
The King Robot has gone full on crazy and is trying to get in and kill the rest of the humans. He tries a variety of techniques, such as:
a) Saying, "Please let me in, I'm not one of the bad Robots. You're thinking of Steve the Robot, he's awful."
b) Admitting, that yes, he is going to kill everyone, but has anyone considered that having your head torn off might be tremendously enjoyable?
c) Banging his head on the door and going "Aaaaarrrggg!"
d) Pretending to go away and hoping they get bored and come out.
The last one does kind of work, because humans are idiots.
The story ends with an exciting battle between Doctor Who and Evil Bad Guy Pretend Robot Bowie. They wrestle about with a huge disco-syringe for quite a while, trying to stab each other in the head.
In the end the Robots of Death get confused and strangle the Pretend Robot Bowie, and then all their heads explode. It's a thrilling end to a very enjoyable story, and the moral is... um... if you oppress the working classes for long enough, they will rise up against you. So you should make sure to kill them, and then you can get on with wearing exciting hats.
Maybe don't think about the moral.
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