On the one hand, the show is leagues better than what fans were used to in the dark days of showrunner Chris Chibnall and 13th Doctor Jodie Whittaker. Even as a defender of many of their episodes, I can’t deny that starting with the 2023 60th anniversary specials and the return of showrunner Russell T. Davies, the show instantly saw a dramatic increase in quality.
On the other hand, opinions have begun to sour on that same showrunner whose return to the show we all celebrated. What appeared to be a compelling mystery at the beginning of last year’s season turned out to be a stupid non-answer, and interviews with Davies have frustrated fans for his insistence that “no, you just don’t get it, it’s actually genius!”
It’s with that context that we enter the first episode of Doctor Who’s 41st, 15th, or second season, depending on how you decide to count them. “The Robot Revolution” is funny and exciting and entices audiences to care about the new and ongoing mysteries introduced and carried forward.
Will they pay off? That remains to be seen.
The episode kicks off by following Belinda Chandra, whose actor, Varada Sethu (Andor, Jurassic World Dominion), made an appearance as a relatively minor character in the previous season’s episode titled “Boom.” It’s been confirmed that the main companion of that season, Millie Gibson’s Ruby Sunday, will return sometime later on, but she makes no appearance during the season premiere.
After a quick flashback, we follow Belinda’s shift as a nurse while the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) follows her in a not-so-sneaky manner. Quickly enough, however, she gets whisked away not by the Doctor, but by a spaceship manned entirely by robots, who claim she is queen of a star system because her boyfriend at the time bought her one of those scammy “own a star” certificates a number of years ago. It’s a very funny reveal, and it only gets sillier from there.
Sethu gives a fresh performance as Belinda, acting far more skeptical and unimpressed by the science-fiction landscape she finds herself in than previous companions. Of course, she is initially surprised by her surroundings, but she genuinely appears to have little thirst for adventure and simply wants to go home. Intentional or not, this harkens back to the original adventures of the First Doctor and his companions, Ian and Barbara, all the way back in 1963. Like Belinda, they just wanted to go back to being schoolteachers, but due to a malfunctioning TARDIS, took the long way around to getting back.
There are many elements of Doctor Who that have inconsistent qualities, but Gatwa’s performance as the 15th Doctor is never one of them. He is at once fun and bursting with energy while also harboring deeper, sadder and darker intentions and feelings at every moment. A single smile or laugh from this Doctor reveals more pain than his occasional outbursts of tears or rage.
Another member of the show who has never let me down isn’t a cast member: It’s Murray Gold, the series’ composer since 2005 (although he did have a hiatus from the show during the 13th Doctor’s reign). All the variations on the 15th Doctor’s theme are brimming with the childlike and powerful energy of the Doctor himself. Getting to hear the Gallifreyan theme while the Doctor reminisced about his home planet filled me with just as much awe as it did when I first heard it over a decade ago.
If there’s one thing “The Robot Revolution” does well at a level higher than usual, it’s the humor. Doctor Who is always a silly, tongue-in-cheek kind of show, but it brings the laughs to an entirely new level this time around. With a typical plot of artificially intelligent robots enslaving its organic population, there are plenty of well-deserved jabs at the current state of AI on 2025 Earth, plus just great jokes all around on a variety of topics. I burst out laughing multiple times from start to finish.
Episodes like this one prove that Davies hasn’t completely lost his touch as a writer or showrunner. Ongoing mysteries like the true identity of Mrs. Flood (Anita Dobson) and new ones introduced here are compelling, and the self-contained story is a blast.
But if the season doesn’t pull out all the stops and pull in as many viewers as possible, it could spell bad things for the beloved sexagenarian series. With this season and the upcoming spin-off series, Disney’s 26-episode order will have been filled, and as of now, the company has not renewed that order.
In many ways, Davies saved Doctor Who in 2023, revitalizing the show with an explosive trio of specials in November and a stellar introduction to a new Doctor in December. But if this season’s middle and ending aren’t as good as its start, Davies might also cause the series’ demise.
Joseph Stanichar is a freelance writer who specializes in videogames and pop culture. He’s written for publications such as Game Informer, Twinfinite and Looper, and currently works as a full-time reporter for The Morrison County Record in Little Falls, Minnesota. He’s on Twitter @JosephStanichar.
