Robot Of Sherwood

Every series of Doctor Who seems to have an episode that fans put down as “the duff one”. If I’m being fair, then some series have more than one. The reasons for this vary although traditionally it has been down to lack of budget, lack of fresh ideas or shoehorning a good conceptually square peg into an unforgiving, round, Doctor Who shaped hole. I was rather fearful that this series’ “duff one” was going to be Robot Of Sherwood. As it turns out I was rather pleasantly surprised.

In a way I shouldn’t have been because this was written by Mark Gatiss who I have often thought of as one of the new series best writers, if one of the quirkiest. The other thing that this particular series has going for it is Peter Capaldi who is actually surpassing my expectations for him in the lead role. In a way, I suspect that this particular episode may have been written more with Matt Smith in mind – particularly the sword fight with the spoon that would have all the marks of Smith’s quirkiness but somehow Capaldi pulled it off – possibly reminding me of Jon Pertwee again who was always up for a fight as the third Doctor.

One of the other things that made this work are the supporting cast who could have just hammed the whole thing up (and in fairness this did require a certain amount of porcine thespianism) but the subversion into where the dividing line between myth and legend lies an interesting one. From that perspective it was very clever to get a cameo of Patrick Troughton as Robin Hood. As far as the supporting actors went I particularly liked Ben Miller as the Sherriff of Nottingham – possibly the best portrayal since Alan Rickman. Also, as a thought, could we have Jenna Coleman in her Maid Marion outfit every week?

I suppose the episode was more of a nod to the Errol Flynn era of swashbuckling Robin Hood rather than the more recent po-faced (and remarkably dreary) adaptations and it is a reminder that the BBC have done rather well out of series like Merlin and Atlantis when Doctor Who isn’t on. This worked remarkably well and it does make a nice change from the seat of your pants Dalek episode and next week’s Listen which looks like the episode to get the kids wetting the bed again.