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Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
PLEASE NOTE: Michael D's is currently in READ ONLY MODE. Anything submitted will simply not be written to the database.
Lots of stuff is still broken, but at least reviews can now be looked up and read.
Doctor Who-The Robots of Death (1977)

Doctor Who-The Robots of Death (1977)

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Released 3-Jul-2001

Cover Art

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Details At A Glance

General Extras
Category Science Fiction Main Menu Introduction
Menu Animation & Audio
Audio Commentary-Philip Hinchliffe (Prod) & Chris Boucher (Writer)
Featurette
Gallery-Photo
Notes-Studio Plan
Rating Rated PG
Year Of Production 1977
Running Time 96:08 (Case: 95)
RSDL / Flipper Dual Layered Cast & Crew
Start Up Menu
Region Coding 2,4 Directed By Michael E. Briant
Studio
Distributor

Roadshow Home Entertainment
Starring Tom Baker
Louise Jameson
Russell Hunter
Pamela Salem
David Bailie
Gregory de Ponlay
Case Soft Brackley-Transp
RPI $34.95 Music Dudley Simpson
Ron Grainer


Video Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame Full Frame English Dolby Digital 2.0 mono (192Kb/s)
English Audio Commentary Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio None
16x9 Enhancement No
Video Format 576i (PAL)
Original Aspect Ratio 1.33:1 Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures No
Subtitles English for the Hearing Impaired
English Audio Commentary
Smoking No
Annoying Product Placement No
Action In or After Credits No

NOTE: The Profanity Filter is ON. Turn it off here.

Plot Synopsis

    As a fan of Doctor Who who had forgotten just how big a fan he was until he saw The Five Doctors on DVD, I have constructed what I like to call the Doctor Who plot synopsis kit:

    As the Fourth Doctor and Leela, who literally barged her way into the TARDIS at the end of The Face Of Evil, are travelling through time and space, Leela is playing with a yo-yo because she misinterpreted some of the Doctor's explanations to mean that it is an important part of how the TARDIS works. This is just a couple of serials after The Deadly Assassin, a serial so well-written that it joins the elite ranks of Places Where Ideas In The Matrix Were Stolen From (this is a hint to the BBC and Roadshow to get said serial onto DVD). Anyway, the Doctor somehow manages to land inside Storm Mine 4, a sand-crawling mobile mine that is run primarily by a small group of human personnel and a slightly larger group of robots. As he and Leela explore their surroundings a little, the miners are preparing to bring a large sample of materials through the very same duct that the TARDIS landed in. So, as a robot arm picks up the TARDIS and carries it to a safer location, the robots detect our heroes in the duct, resulting in a rescue that can be seen as well-timed and badly-timed in equal measure.

    Unfortunately, around the same time as the TARDIS landed within this vessel, members of the crew have been turning up dead with little red discs stuck on them, presumed to be a sick joke on the part of the killers. These little red discs are called "corpse markers", essentially being markers placed upon broken robots to show that they have been deactivated. Soon, the robots are killing all and sundry, but we soon learn that they are not acting entirely of their own volition, with one of them even revealing itself to be an undercover investigator built by the company that owns the mine-crawler. As far as the stupid props department is concerned, you have to admire their efforts with the tin-foil shoe coverings worn by the robots at numerous points in the serial. I can't exactly reveal any of the hilarious escape methods in any serial, but suffice it to say that one of the best ones ever, involving a straw, is seen during this serial.

    The Robots Of Death was first transmitted in 1977, a time that is widely acknowledged to be the very height of Doctor Who's popularity, and the addition of a cavewoman in a skimpy leather outfit certainly helped boost the number of viewers in the young male bracket. Of course, it didn't hurt the stories at all that she was a great deal more self-reliant, not to mention tougher, than previous Doctor Who companions of the female persuasion. Frankly, if I want women in my viewing who do nothing but scream and drag everyone down with their dead weight, I'll watch a Bond film. Writer Chris Boucher and producer Phillipe Hinchcliffe state in their commentary that they wanted to create new stories that would engage the children of the time as well as a more adult audience. While The Five Doctors wound up being quite a distance from what the producers were attempting to create, The Robots Of Death makes a better introduction to the series because the makers knew exactly what they wanted to do, and how to do it. I will say it once again: this is the only series that really is suitable for audiences of all ages, so grab a bottle of lemonade, the most forgiving part of your imagination, and start viewing.

Don't wish to see plot synopses in the future? Change your configuration.

Transfer Quality

Video

    The BBC have often been mockingly called the British Broadcasting Charity for a good reason, in that they will cut as many corners as is necessary to shoot and broadcast a programme as cheaply as is possible. Doctor Who was just one victim of this approach to filming, with serials such as this one having been captured with a combination of sixteen millimeter film and video. In 1977, the idea that one could purchase television serials such as this for viewing in the comfort of one's home was a fantasy, never mind the idea that the medium of choice would be digital one day. The result is a cornucopia of artefacts that betray the age of the serial and the short-sightedness of its production company.

    The transfer is presented in the aspect ratio of all television programmes in that day, namely 1.33:1, and it is not 16x9 Enhanced. The transfer is sharper than you could really expect for this programme, and almost comparable to television programmes that were properly captured on film at times. The shadow detail is lacking a lot of the time, but this is acceptable given that very little of the action takes place in darkness. There is no low-level noise.

    The colour saturation of this transfer varies between muted and slightly oversaturated, depending on the location in which scenes were shot, the switches between the hopper and a storage room in which Leela hides being a good example. A cornucopia of composite artefacts plague this programme, however, with dot crawl being readily apparent in some props, while cross-colouration almost gives some shots the feel of a drug trip. The composite nature of the master used to create this DVD notwithstanding, I'd say that a lot of these artefacts were simply introduced by the filming process.

    MPEG artefacts are not a problem in this transfer, which is quite a surprise given the limited resolution of the source material. Film-to-video artefacts were seen in the form of mild aliasing, which was partly accentuated by the presence of the dot crawl in some sequences. Film artefacts were occasionally found on the picture, usually in the form of black marks on the print during the sixteen millimeter film sequences. In these areas, the picture was surprisingly clean, so the actual transfer faults can be considered minimal.

    This disc makes use of the Dual Layer format, with the layer transition apparently taking place between episodes, which is a sensible way to handle the it considering the format of the serial.



Video Ratings Summary
Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    Another area where the BBC's desire to save money by any means possible becomes apparent is in the soundtracks, with only the Seventh Doctor's serials, if I understand the official information correctly, getting so much as a stereo broadcast. Granted, they did and still do have to answer to a rather surly lot called the British taxpayers, but even their radio broadcasts were in stereo after a certain soon-to-be Doctor Who script editor named Douglas Adams found fame with The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

    There are two soundtracks on this DVD: the original English dialogue in Dolby Digital 2.0 mono with a bitrate of 192 kilobits per second, and an English Audio Commentary in Dolby Digital 2.0 with a bitrate of 192 kilobits per second. The lack of a 5.1 remix is somewhat disappointing, but to be expected since the serial itself is old enough that the idea of stereo televisions would have been beyond the comprehension of even the commercial broadcasters. I listened to both of these soundtracks.

    Unfortunately, there are a handful of moments scattered throughout the serial's ninety-six minutes when the dialogue is almost inaudible, such as the moment when the Doctor offers one of the miners a jelly baby, only to be rather rudely refused. The only words in the Doctor's offer that I could make out when I viewed the disc for the first time were "jelly baby", making it handy to have the English for the Hearing Impaired subtitles. The most plot-relevant details of the dialogue are clear and easy to understand, but one can't help but think that a new remix would have helped a great deal, especially in the first ten minutes of the first episode. Thankfully, there were no discernable problems with audio sync.

    The music in this serial can be divided into the incidental music by Dudley Simpson, and the ever-so-wonderful Doctor Who theme by Ron Grainer, which has been somewhat modified from its incarnation during the first season form to suit the current Doctor (as has been the case with Doctors #2 and #3). The music generally only appears during dramatic moments, especially the opening and ending credits, but it adds a wonderful dimension to the sequences in which it appears.

    The surround channels are not used by this soundtrack, and there is no stereo separation to boot, which is somewhat disappointing considering that The Five Doctors was originally presented in mono and contains an excellent example of a remix from such a source. Nonetheless, the subwoofer gave a little bit in order to support the soundtrack in spite of not being specifically called upon to do so, with a number of sound effects receiving a vague, but noticeable low-end boost. Considering how bass-heavy the opening and closing music is, I am constantly thankful that the Dolby Digital specification allows for the redirection of sound information to alternate channels. Considering the age of this programme, I guess you can't really ask for much better than what we get here, except maybe for the dialogue being brought into sharper focus during the aforementioned points.



Audio Ratings Summary
Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Extras

    Although its not what I would call a great collection, we do have enough to justify purchasing the disc for posterity's sake.

Menu

    Featuring a similar introduction and theme to The Five Doctors, this menu features heavy animation and Dolby Digital 2.0 audio. It is not 16x9 Enhanced. I only have one serious gripe about this menu that I would like to see addressed before any more Doctor Who serials are committed to DVD: please turn off the feature that kicks the viewer out and plays the programme from the start.

Audio Commentary - Phillip Hinchcliffe (Producer) & Chris Boucher (Writer)

    There are lots of silences in this commentary, but Phillip Hinchcliffe and Chris Boucher manage to give a pleasant, revealing commentary that deals with the technical considerations and challenges faced by the creative team at the time of shooting. The commentary only has a passing relationship to what is taking place on screen, but it is well worthy of your time if you want to know why Doctor Who was watched by fifteen million people a week in England alone during this era.

Featurette

    This featurette, presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 with Dolby Digital 2.0 sound, contains some between-shows advertising material from the BBC and some previews of sequences before they made it into the final cut of the serial. (Assuming that they were used at all, of course.) Annoyingly, it is not encoded with any timing information.

    This could have been so much more interesting with commentary or annotation of some kind. Given that there is no sound at all after the first test footage sequence, and the featurette runs for about ten minutes and fifty seconds, the lack of such commentary is criminal.

Photo Gallery

    A collection of twenty-nine unannotated stills taken between takes, these are of mild interest.

Notes - Studio Plan

    Now this is the extra that really justifies its space on the disc. Essentially, this is a submenu of floor plans for the sets that were used during this serial, including plans of the TARDIS, various rooms within the ship, corridors, and the dust scoop. Anyone with an interest in architecture or planning their own sets for a science fiction show will appreciate this extra.

R4 vs R1

NOTE: To view non-R4 releases, your equipment needs to be multi-zone compatible and usually also NTSC compatible.

    Given that this is a UK television programme, it would be fairer to compare this disc to the UK R2 version (it is currently unavailable in America). Since these episodes were very much intended for broadcast on the PAL system, it should come as little surprise that the transfer quality is reportedly much the same. The extras package is also pretty much the same, and neither version exhibits any difference in running time. Just to clarify, the model test sequences mentioned in the product description for the R2 disc are a part of the featurette included on the local version, so unless you feel like throwing away the Australian Peso equivalent of nineteen Pounds, stick with this version.

Summary

    There is a reason why Doctor Who still survives, albeit in different formats, after thirty-eight years, and The Robots Of Death is a good example of it. This serial is basically a great murder mystery set on a strange world, one that once you start viewing, you just can't stop (I should know this, I tried very very hard on several occasions). However, even this description is selling it short because it surpasses that genre, too. Regardless of whether you're five years old or twenty-five years old, or even seventy-five years old for that matter, you should be able to enjoy this one to the same degree.

    The video transfer is an excellent representation of decidedly ordinary source materials.

    The audio transfer is okay, but more channel separation or a rebalancing of the soundtrack's levels would have been appreciated.

    The extras are limited, but the commentary and studio plans are excellent inclusions. The only real complaint I have for the BBC and Roadshow is that I would like to have been able to view the studio plans for longer than thirty seconds without being kicked out back to the menu, and to view the main menu for longer than thirty seconds without being kicked out into the feature. Encoded timing information for the featurette would also have been handy.

Ratings (out of 5)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall

© Dean McIntosh (Don't talk about my bio. We don't wanna know.)
Saturday, June 30, 2001
Review Equipment
DVDToshiba 2109, using S-Video output
DisplaySamsung CS-823AMF (80cm). Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum. This display device is 16x9 capable. This display device has a maximum native resolution of 576i (PAL).
Audio DecoderBuilt in to amplifier/receiver. Calibrated with Ultimate DVD Platinum.
AmplificationSony STR DE-835
SpeakersYamaha NS-45 Front Speakers, Yamaha NS-90 Rear Speakers, Yamaha NSC-120 Centre Speaker, JBL Digital 10 Active Subwoofer

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