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Dom Robinson reviews
- Cert:
- Cat.no: BBCDVD 1012
- Running time: 95 minutes
- Year: 1977
- Pressing: 2000
- Region(s): 2, 4 (UK PAL)
- Chapters: 24 plus extras
- Sound: Dolby Digital 2.0 (Mono)
- Languages: English
- Subtitles: English
- Fullscreen: 4:3
- 16:9-enhanced: No
- Macrovision: No
- Disc Format: DVD 9
- Price: £19.99
- Extras: Photo Gallery, Studio Floor Plans, Model Sequences, Writer/Producer commentary,In-Studio
Director:
- Michael E. Briant
Producer:
- Philip Hinchcliffe
Screenplay:
- Chris Boucher
Music:
- Dudley Simpson
Cast:
- The Doctor: Tom Baker
Leela: Louise Jameson
Uvanov: Russell Hunter
Toos: Pamela Salem
Dask: David Bailie
Poul: David Collings
Borg: Brian Croucher
Zilda: Tania Rogers
Cass: Tariq Yunus
D.84: Gregory de Polnay
S.V.7 Miles Fothergill
Transdimensional engineering, a key Time Lord discovery – that’s how you should pull the girls!
Or at least it worked in as far as it kept new trainee Leela (LouiseJameson – whoever thought Eastenders‘ Rosa di Marco could be sexy?)interested and intrigued. The cast also includes another ex-Eastender, Ted Hills,aka Brian Croucher.
Similar to the James Bond series, the first actor you see in the leading role is the oneyou think is best. Tom Baker fits into that theory for me with his eccentric waysand is now the earliest Doctor still alive.
The Doctor and Leela find themselves teleported into Storm Mine 4, a sandminer searchingfor precious metals, with a small crew and getting smaller as each episode. The problemis that someone has reprogrammed the robots to bump off all the humans, but who wouldbe so sadistic? Metal Mickey, also a regular Saturday afternoon favourite at the time,would not approve. Whoever’s at fault, the finger is initially pointed at our heroes sincethey’re the outsiders.
The Robots of Death was first transmitted from January 29th to February 19th, 1977.
The picture quality is rather good considering the age of the programe, with no artifactsbut just a few scratches on the print, but watch out for those dodgy blue-screen effectswhich seemed so state-of-the-art at the time 🙂
Presented in the original fullscreen ratio, I was unable to determine the average bitratesince some of the standard DVD features have been disabled such as this and the bookmarkfunction.
The sound is the original mono. The theme tune is as recognisable as ever and the specialeffects stretch to whizz-bang computer noises which, again, seemed the best thing sincesliced bread 23 years ago. A shame we couldn’t have a remastered Dolby Digital 5.1soundtrack here as we did withThe Five Doctors
Extras :There’s not a great deal of extras, but what’s here will certainly appealto the Who fans.
These include a 30-strong Photo Gallery, a map of the Studio FloorPlans from when the programme was made, Model Sequences whichshow original Sandminer footage before it was cut into the series andIn-Studio, the rushes from the Doctor’s and Leela’s first meetingwith SV7 before any special effects and music were added.
Finally, every episode contains a Writer/Producer commentary fromPhilip Hinchcliffe and Chris Boucher.
There are 24 chapters spread throughout the 95-minute feature covering allthe major scenes and breaks down to six per episode. The language andsubtitles are in English, while the menus contain suitable animation andmusic from the theme tune.
Overall :It’s well-presented, but it’s time the BBC were more prolific with theirDVD output and since they can fit all of a series of some programmes on aDVD for £19.99, including Only Fools and Horses and AbsolutelyFabulous, why do we only get four episodes of Doctor Who here?
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS
OVERALL
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.