Season 12, Episode 1 | 4 parts | First broadcast: 28 December 1974 – 18 January 1975 | Writer: Terrance Dicks | Director: Christopher Barry
Cast
- Tom Baker as the Doctor
- Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith
- Ian Marter as Harry Sullivan
- Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart
- Michael Kilgarriff as the Robot (K1)
- Patricia Maynard as Miss Winters
Summary
Freshly regenerated and still finding his feet, the new Doctor is recuperating at UNIT headquarters when a series of break-ins at high-security installations point to an enormous, humanoid robot prototype gone rogue. Investigating alongside new UNIT medical officer Harry Sullivan, the Doctor traces the thefts to the Think Tank research institute, where the ruthless Miss Winters is secretly directing the fascist Scientific Reform Society. The conspirators intend to use the robot, K1, and a stolen disintegrator gun to seize the nuclear launch codes of the world’s superpowers and usher in their own vision of order. As K1’s programming buckles under the strain of harming humans against its core directives, it grows to giant size in a destructive rampage, forcing the Doctor and Sarah Jane to race against a nuclear countdown.
Interesting Facts
- Robot is Tom Baker’s debut serial as the Doctor, though it was written and largely designed under outgoing script editor Terrance Dicks to feel like a safe, traditional send-off for the Pertwee/UNIT era rather than a radical reinvention.
- The giant robot’s climactic rampage was achieved with Colour Separation Overlay effects that even the production team regarded as some of the shakiest model work of the era.
- Ian Marter’s Harry Sullivan was introduced partly as an insurance policy: producers were unsure whether the new, more eccentric Doctor would be as physically active as Pertwee’s, so a capable companion was added to share the action.
- This was the first Doctor Who story overseen by incoming producer Barry Letts’ successor, Philip Hinchcliffe, who would go on to steer the series toward its celebrated “gothic horror” period.
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