One of several attempts by Phillip Hinchcliffe to avoid the dragging six-parters of the Pertwee era (not letting Robert Sloman write for the series anymore was a more useful step), this two-part story was filmed entirely on location, while Rodney Bennett's team also filmed the preceding story, "The Ark in Space". I really can't manage a better introduction for this one, I'm afraid.

Script editor Robert Holmes drafted a loose outline of this story, before production hassles saw him hand it over to Bob Baker and Dave Martin, who don't actually seem to have done anything at all to pad it out. Pretty much nothing happens for much of the story, which generally involves the regulars sneaking around some rocks, avoiding the worst damn robot you've ever set eyes on.

There are quite a few good bits. Tom Baker is well and truly into the swing of playing The Doctor. The Hinchcliffe-era trademark of practical knowledge of the likes of Sontarans (rather than useless nonsense like communicating in Delphon or pink horses) fits in nicely with his personality, and this information isn't distributed in the show-off way the third Doctor would, but to actually help people. His goading Styre into a duel is fantastic, as is The Doctor holding his own in a straight fight against a Sontaran. The Sontarans, being a Holmes race, are interesting and well-defined, and Kevin Lindsay is great once again. Rodney Bennett does a fair job of filming a pile of rocks from a variety of angles, while (as is sadly a trend for this series) Ian Marter turns in a marvellous performance despite Harry being a passenger in the plot. It would have been rather wonderful if Harry had got to clobber Styre with the great big stick he carries around... The character is very likeable, especially his rather old fashioned dialogue (on finding a dead astronaut: "Murdering swine!" - superb!) and morals, coming across as sweet rather than chauvinistic, and he has a great rapport with Baker. Elisabeth Sladen does her usual great job, despite the script requiring Sarah Jane to be more useless than ever. The torture scenes, especially the gravity bar, are well-realised and actually rather harrowing.

Sadly, that's about it. The pacing is all wrong - this really feels like the first two episodes of a four parter, with a very sudden ending. There's lots of charging around and regulars being captured and/or knocked unconscious, and then suddenly Harry pulls a bit out of Styre's ship, Styre dies, and the Sontaran invasion is foiled because we've got another story to be getting on with, thank you very much. It's a laughable little conclusion that throws doubt on a lot of the story - how gullible are the Sontarans? Why do they send just one Sontaran to check out Earth when they have an entire fleet just loitering around in space? Surely the fact that Styre has been casually torturing humans for about a fortnight without seeing anyone else tells the Sontarans they can take the planet by force?

For an all-location story, it's also very claustrophobic. Despite Bennett's best efforts, the story really feels like it takes place in a single square mile on a moor, which raises the question of why the astronauts insist on hanging around nearby so Styre can keep capturing them, instead of just legging it.

A nice angle in the script is that Sarah Jane mistakes Styre for Linx from "the Time Warrior", this leading to a nice bit of background about the Sontarans being a clone race. Sadly, due to a make-up redesign (admittedly for the honourable reason of trying not to kill Kevin Lindsay) means Styre looks nothing like Linx. The Sontaran's deflating death sadly undoes the fact Styre still looks pretty good, by literally showing the audience he's a man in a mask. Good show, lads. The robot's utterly poor, too - the thing looks incredibly light, and it's obvious that climbing over a couple of rocks would break its' spindly little legs. The astronauts, beyond having Sith Efriken accents, are a faceless bunch - even Vurall, who gets to be traitor then last-ditch hero, is utterly unmemorable.

Despite all this, the story just about manages to be a passable run-around. It doesn't have time to really bore the viewer, but it's still an insignificant little filler story.

Review written: 22/07/2006
"Robot" VHS @ Amazon.co.uk