Doctor Who: Robot of Sherwood (8x03)

The best episode yet... which unfortunately isn't really saying much. I did have fun watching this, though. Onward! To the plot!

The Doctor asks Clara where she would like to go, and Clara admits that she's always wanted to meet Robin Hood. The Doctor declares there's no such thing, but when he programs the TARDIS to take them to Sherwood Forest, they immediately meet Robin Hood and his Merry Men.

The Doctor and Robin fight, the Doctor using a spoon. They prove fairly evenly matched, although Robin does get the last laugh. Robin, his men, the Doctor, and Clara go to an archery contest thrown by the Sheriff of Nottingham. Robin appears to win, but then the Doctor takes his shot and wins. The two participate in a silly back-and-forth, continually shooting their arrows and splitting each other's on the target. Then, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to blow up the target. The Sheriff orders his guards to capture the Doctor - and we then see that the guards are robots!

The Doctor, Robin, and Clara are all captured. The two men argue continually about how they will escape. Clara tells them to shut up and gets a handle on the situation. Unfortunately, her commanding tone makes the guard think that she's the real mastermind behind the operation, and Clara is taken to the Sheriff. Although the Doctor and Robin continue to bicker, they eventually manage to escape and explore parts of the castle. There, the Doctor finds a database including the myths of Robin Hood. He is convinced that Robin is also a robot, there to placate the common folk while the Sheriff goes about his evil business. He also realizes that this ship, and these robots, wish to go to the "promised land," just like the cyborgs from "Deep Breath."

Meanwhile, Clara has managed to extract information from the Sheriff along this same vein, However, when the Sheriff realizes that Clara is not flirting with him but rather getting information, he takes her with him to confront the Doctor and Robin. Robin and Clara manage to escape, while the Doctor remains a captive. The Doctor then realizes that the robots are making a gold matrix to get their ship off the ground, but he fears there won't be enough gold, and instead the ship will explode, killing everyone in the area. He also realizes that Robin isn't part of the robot's group, and that in fact he is a real man.

The Doctor, along with a captive woman, manages to escape from his prison, inciting the other prisoners to revolt and escape. Robin, Clara, and the Merry Men show up, and Robin is able to defeat the Sheriff, using the same trick that the Doctor had earlier used against him in their duel. The ship takes off, and Robin, whose arm is injured, needs the help of the Doctor and Clara to help shoot a golden arrow (the prize of the earlier archery tournament) to give the ship the last blast it needs to make it out of the atmosphere, where it then explodes.

The Doctor and Robin have a conversation about heroism, wherein neither of them believe that they are heroes, but they decide to keep acting like heroes so as to inspire others. As Clara and the Doctor take off in the TARDIS, we learn that the girl who helped the Doctor was in fact Maid Marian, who is then reunited happily with Robin Hood.

So... problems.

Clara had a few cool moments in here, but she was for the most part relegated to a damsel in distress. She was able to manipulate the Sheriff briefly, but then she had to be rescued by Robin, who carried her heroically to safety in his arms. She was going to help fight off the robots, but the Doctor stopped her. She didn't figure out anything important or contribute much to the plans of escape or of defeating the robots. In most instances, she was... a pretty face. And then we have Marian, who was just there to give Robin a prize at the end. Wouldn't it have been so awesome if we had reversed the Doctor and Clara for the last section of the episode? Imagine if Robin had had to save the Doctor, and Clara had been captured again. She and Marian had escaped from the prison. The Doctor and Robin had met back up with them at the end. Clara had put the truth together (or at least helped to do so). Those changes would have made this episode so much stronger. As it is, the only two ladies in the entire story didn't even share screen time. Very irritating.

I also thought that the Sheriff of Nottingham was a completely one-note and boring villain. He was a mustache-twirling cliche, right down to literally saying that he plans to conquer "the world!" Mwa hahahahaha. I was rolling my eyes at him quite a bit.

It's hard to say "even though this episode was sexist, it was still good!" But I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it. There's a part of me that wouldn't have minded if Clara weren't there at all - not that she wasn't fun, or whatever, but I would almost rather have an episode where the companion is sidelined intentionally (like "Midnight," in Series Four) than an episode where it seems as if the writer is unaware that he is sidelining the companion quite a lot.

Some good elements to discuss:

The Doctor and Robin's bickering. We've seen a lot of the dark and brooding Doctor over the past two episodes, so I was happy to see some humor here. Sometimes the Doctor needs to be silly and child-like. This was our first look at Capaldi fulfilling that role, and I think it worked quite nicely.

(Of course, it was brilliant that the guard thought that Clara was the mastermind - that guard ain't got time for society's sexist bullshit, thank you very much!)

As a big fan of Robin Hood myself, it was quite a thrill to see a lot of the canonical characters. I was annoyed about the lack of Guy of Gisborne, and about how silly the Sheriff was, but I was delighted to see Little John, Friar Tuck, Allan-a-Dell, Robin, etc. What a treat! I particularly love the idea of Robin Hood being a real figure who became a legend later. That was an interesting twist on the story, particularly since a lot of the other things going on were so artificial in nature - the robots putting on a pretense, and whatnot.

Going along with the Doctor's childish behavior, I love that he cheated with the arrow. I was annoyed that he randomly had expert skill with a weapon, so I was glad that it turned out to be a hoax. The little teamwork moment at the end, when the Doctor, Robin, and Clara all had to join together to shoot the arrow was a bit cheesy, but it hit the spot.

Although I complained about Clara being sidelined, I did genuinely enjoy her enthusiasm for Robin Hood. I loved it when she got to swing down to the ground in his arms: he asks her if she's alright, and she responds "hell yeah." That was so cute. I liked the idea that she got to pick where they went, and even though things went wrong (as they always do) her childhood hero remained intact and good to the core. It was an odd moment of triumph for Clara as an individual.

I think I'll wrap things up there. This was the best episode we've yet had this season, but it still had quite a few problems. Hopefully things will get better!

8/10