Well that was ok….
I’m never really on board with
these kinds of episodes. Bringing Robin Hood into Who is a gateway to reach stupid levels of cheese, that threaten to
undermine the shows point more than that Power of Three Episode and most of
Series 2 combined.
Thankfully, while this episode
does have some of that, Mark Gatiss manages to turn most of it on itself.
Tom Riley is doing a good job
as Robin Hood, but as the Doctor even points out, men like this never existed.
It would have been nice to see some shaking up of the character, if they were
going to make him “real”. Take away some of the heroism, add some selfishness
or something.
Ben Miller is also putting in
a good performance as the Sheriff of Nottingham, with subtle comedic turns,
based around him being a moron.
Clara just about stays in
character, but her interrogation scene is a bit silly and risks sending her
into Amy Pond levels of writer-personality tampering. Personally, I like Clara
as a character and I’m not sure why many viewers don’t. Most of what she does
is based around things that have already been established about her, rather
than things that any given writer could add at any given time. However, the
Clara suddenly knows Taekwondo bit is straying into that territory.
On that point, the Twelfth
Doctor is like the Third in more in more than just dress sense, as he wins a
sword fight with a spoon, at the cost of one of his buttons of course. I like
the idea of this Doctor knowing how to fight, especially since it lends
something to the “did he throw that guy out of that airship?” question from the
first episode.
Soo, have you noticed what’s
missing yet? Despite being the primary antagonists, the robots in this episode
aren’t very well fleshed out. For the moment I’m hoping (since they’re going to
The Promised Land) that that’s an intentional move. It could be that only
robots who are dogmatic in their intention to get there are actually able to.
All in all it was good, a few
missed opportunities, but a solid writer at the helm saw that a dangerously
cheesey premise didn’t get out of hand.
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