Series 8, Episode 3 | 1 part | First broadcast: 6 September 2014 | Writer: Mark Gatiss | Director: Paul Murphy
Cast
- Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor
- Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald
- Tom Riley as Robin Hood
- Ben Miller as the Sheriff of Nottingham
- Roger Ashton-Griffiths as Quayle
- Sabrina Bartlett as Maid Marian
- Ian Hallard as Alan-a-Dale
- Trevor Cooper as Friar Tuck
- Rusty Goffe as Little John
Summary
The Doctor and Clara land in Sherwood Forest in 1190, where they meet a Robin Hood the Doctor is convinced must be fictional — a suspicion reinforced when Robin bests him in a duel using nothing but a spoon. Investigating the Sheriff of Nottingham’s gold-plundering archery tournament, the trio are captured by the Sheriff’s robotic knights and learn that a crashed alien spaceship, disguised within the castle, is being repaired with looted gold to power its damaged engines, which threaten to explode and devastate half of England. After the Doctor leads a prisoner revolt and Robin defeats the Sheriff in single combat, the group works together to fire a golden arrow into the ship’s engines, giving it just enough power to reach orbit and detonate harmlessly in space. The story closes with the Doctor and Robin trading barbs about who is the “real” legend, before the Doctor reunites Robin with a freed Maid Marian.
Interesting Facts
- Writer Mark Gatiss described his goal as doing “the Doctor and Robin Hood in 45 minutes,” intending a lighter, more frivolous outing after the darker tone of the first two episodes.
- A scene in which Robin decapitates the robotic Sheriff was cut from broadcast just before transmission out of respect for the recent real-world beheadings of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff by ISIL; the uncut version had already leaked online.
- The episode was filmed at Bodiam Castle, Caerphilly Castle, and Fforest Fawr, locations that had previously doubled for other eras of the show, including “The Stolen Earth” and “Vampires of Venice.”
- Among the images of Robin Hood the Doctor shows the “real” Robin is a clip of Patrick Troughton in a 1953 TV adaptation — an in-joke, since Troughton later played the Second Doctor.
- Trevor Cooper (Friar Tuck) and Ian Hallard (Alan-a-Dale) both had prior Doctor Who connections, having appeared in “Revelation of the Daleks” and “An Adventure in Space and Time” respectively.
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