With a growing variety of continuing series scripts on his CV Mark Gatiss has proven to be one of the most creative and prolific of Doctor Who writers under Steven Moffat’s watch. We are never quite sure what to expect from each new offering such is the diversity of his scripts. After contributing one adventure apiece for the Ninth and Tenth Doctor, his close working relationship with Steven Moffat has already brought five more stories. His knowledge of the production side has enabled him to write stories that allow authentic historical settings to be constructed within budget – not an easy task by any means. From Victorian Cardiff to a London suburb in 1953, the second world war to the cold war he has certainly not shied of taking the viewer to ‘all of time.’
We have yet to see him expand on the first part of the Doctor’s offer of ‘all of space and time’ but with such a rich minefield of historical settings to exploit – who can blame him. Whilst the scripts themselves have received mixed reviews, undoubtedly Gatiss’ episodes have been some of the best realised in terms of their look and feel. Who better then to tackle the legend that is Robin Hood and the iconic setting of Sherwood Forest?
The first thing that strikes you about Robots Of Sherwood is indeed it’s visual beauty. Deliberately giving a Hollywood feel to the scenery and costumes, we are meant to suspect that it is all too good to be true. It’s as if the Doctor and Clara might just as well have arrived in the Disney version of Robin Hood and it would not be at all shocking if one of the merry men turned out to be a Racoon (though perhaps not ala Guardians of the Galaxy). The Twelfth Doctor’s contrast to Robin Hood is almost akin to Shrek’s, where Robin and his merry men similarly comes across as unreal compared to the down to earth lead character.
Completing this heightened reality feel, the script adds to the overly romanticised settings some stock characters and stereotypical traits, such as Robin’s laughter, along with a few twists on classic movie scenes. The Doctor even references the greatest screen Robin Hood of all time – Errol Flynn, a legend in his own right. It one of the best treatments of a fictional character since Gulliver in The Mind Robber. But - and this is the whole point – is Robin a real hero or nothing but a legend? It is not only the setting that seems unreal, as the Doctor notes, Robin’s teeth are whiter than white and his language more poetry than prose:
Dame Autumn has draped her mellow skirts about the forest, Doctor. The time of mists and harvest approaches
A common trope for any historical drama is to take a well known character and demythologise him or her, provocatively challenging the stereotype. More recently however, Doctor Who has followed the opposite route of exaggerating popular impressions, notably Queen Victoria (I am not amused) and Elisabeth the First (the Virgin Queen), or Nixon and Churchill. It’s fair to say that children will learn far more actual history in one of Mark Gatiss’ other shows – Horrible Histories than Doctor Who. Much is deliberate of course, but there are also little anachronisms such as “the final curtain.” The standard components of the legend of Robin Hood are all present and correct complete with the historically questionable view that Robin was a contemporary of King Richard. It is the later additions to the legend that are revealed as true at least in the Doctor Who universe, such as the belief that Robin was once a member of the aristocracy.
The supporting actors are clearly having a blast and this shines through in their effervescent performances with Tom Riley evoking the old school Robin Hoods having clearly bottled the rare formula for suave and measured Englishness. It is delight to see Ben Miller finally guest star as the nefarious Sheriff. A sniff, a flick of the hand – it’s the subtle movements that make him so sinister, not to mention the uncanny accidental resemblance to Antony Ainley’s Master (at least for my eight year old son who immediately misidentified him). But once again the focus is on the new dynamic between Clara and The Doctor. He starts to sound a little like Matt Smith with his “Your choice. Wherever. Whenever. Anywhere is space and time.” But, whereas we suspect The Eleventh Doctor would have argued against Amy Pond that Robin Hood was real and that he’d met him, the Twelfth Doctor accentuates his differences from his predecessor with his dismissive
“Old fashioned heroes only exist in old fashioned story books, Clara”
Three episodes in and it has become apparent that a running device this season is to set up the viewer to expect a pay off that never actually arrives. How much longer the writers can get away with this is a moot point, but here we are hoodwinked into believing that Robin Hood will indeed be exposed as a fake - that it will all be some alien trickery in play to trap the Doctor and Clara. Once again the Doctor gets it wrong and is more than a little annoyed at this. We saw in Into The Dalek how important it is to him to have his beliefs proven right (when Clara scolds him for his smugness about there being no such thing as a good Dalek). The Doctor is determined to unmask Robin and his Merry Men. Like a fan steeped in the show’s history he rattles off a few alternative explanations from a Westworld style theme park to even the miniscope from Carnival of Monsters. But, his obsession with being right means that he misses the real truths.
Clara perceives the sadness behind the laughter in Robin; a level of understanding that is beyond the Doctor. He assumes the laughter to be a clue that Robin is not a real person, Clara on the other hand recognises the merriment as a mask to hide his pain. In this story she truly functions as the traditional companion in this respect, as we identify with her as opposed to the alien Doctor. The episode is a great vehicle for Jenna Coleman to endear herself to fans and the character is far more sympathetic for the viewer this season. The only question mark in Clara’s scripting here would be the choice of Robin Hood. For continuity’s sake we would expect Marcus Aurelius to be the historical figure she would most like to meet.
One of the central mysteries of Doctor Who is that we never quite know what he believes in. Occasionally characters have raised the question – Ada, in The Satan Pit, Amy in The God Complex, but each time the Doctor’s response is evasive. The important question for the writer is not what he believes in but how he believes – does he for instance have a strong set of moral non-negotiables or is he a seeker after truth, relativising, challenging and changing his own worldviews. In truth the Time Lord journeys through different stages of faith and has expressed both a conformist and non conformist attitude towards his inherited time lord traditions. Refreshingly Capaldi’s Twelve Doctor is at the cynical extreme, a sharp contrast to the Eleventh Doctor’s sense of wonder. It’s hard to imagine him appreciating the music in The Rings Of Akhaten for example. The Doctor here openly lacks faith, and even sees it as negative:
Well, what does every oppressed peasant workforce need? The illusion of hope! Some silly story to get them through the day, lull them into docility and keep them working.
Channeling Marx and Neitsche the Doctor calls Robin “The Opiate of the masses”. Imagine the furor if this was Jesus and not Robin Hood in the script? It would though be a perfect fit. The conflict between idolising Christ and following his example is exactly what is in view here. By thinking in such terms it is possible to find a real application to this story. The anti-religion message is further illustrated by the Robots themselves with the image of the cross reflecting onto their victims faces. The Robots are well designed but somehow not quite as threatening as say The Voc Robots in The Robots of Death. In fact the Jaws like jailer is scarier.
But the moral picture is far more complex and not as easily dismissed by the viewer. Persecuted or marginalised races and cultures in the show’s past have made the Doctor their object of hope (see for example the Thal stories of the First Doctor passed down the generations in Planet of The Daleks). He has even become a household god (ironically to Capaldi’s Caecilius - The Fires Of Pompeii) The stories and legends about the Doctor have motivated countless on and off screen groups, but the Doctor would be horrified to be treated with such reverence. It is neither humility nor a dereliction of duty that causes him shrug “I’m just passing through” in reply to Clara’s “You stop bad things happening. Every minute of every day. I’d say that was pretty heroic.” The Doctor is simply unaware that what he does creates belief in others. But his dislike of docility is telling and reminds us that the suppression of civil liberties has always been part of the Doctor’s ethic, from Troughton in The Macra Terror, Baker in The Sunmakers and McCoy in The Happiness Patrol, the Doctor takes on the causes of the underclass. And here the Doctor does indeed facilitate a peasants’ revolt.
Last week Steven Moffat and Phil Ford boldly added to the ongoing mythology of the show by suggesting that the events of The Daleks turned him from a restless wanderer to something of a moral crusader. Robots of Sherwood shows that he carries out his mission reluctantly. However, for the first time this series we see the Doctor succeeding in doing what the Doctor does best. He is secretly enjoying the role and in an off guard moment even starts “bantering”.
The highlight of the episode is the final scene between Robin and the Doctor. In it we get to the heart of the Doctor’s ambivalence. Robin suggests that whilst the two of them might not be real heroes, by adopting that role others could follow in their footsteps. It’s not about other people’s belief in the person, but what their belief creates. The Doctor fails to see that by becoming a hero for Clara and others he is not blindly worshiped but boldly emulated. The Twelfth Doctor is a hero by deception rather than default even more so than Robin, his heroics formed from invention and trickery rather than natural talent (the arrow admission). Mind you he does display a quite spectacular skill with a spoon, trumping even McCoy.
Ironically, given that it lauds story over history “good history is a burden, but stories can make us fly”, this scene adds significantly to the Doctor’s past mythology. Original scripts of what became An Unearthly Child followed initial guidelines from Webber by setting up the Doctor and Susan as members of royalty in hiding. In his research into An Adventure In Time And Space Gatiss will no doubt have refamiliarised himself with the tale of how Sydney Newman overturned this part of the backstory:
Is it so hard to credit, that a man born to wealth and privilege should find the plight of the oppressed and the weak too much to bear … till one night he is moved to steal a TARDIS and fly among the stars to fight the good fight.
For Doctor Who fans this is massive. Since Newman vetoed the idea, the series has never explicitly stated that the Doctor hailed from a wealthy family (the nearest we get to it would be The Deadly Assassin). Steven Moffat has more co-writing credits in this series than in previous years, taking great care in the way the twelfth Doctor’s story is told. Surely then this is an indication of a longer term agenda and cannot be dismissed as a throwaway line like McGann’s “Half human from my mothers side” It’s something of a gamble.
In all the shenanigans and testosterone fuelled rivalry between the Doctor and Robin Hood it would be easy to forget that Clara is the real hero let alone leader of this story. Whilst the Doctor in his cynicism seems hell bent on undermining faith and hope, Clara tenderly encourages Robin Hood.
Don’t give up. Not ever, not for one single day.
The fact that the Doctor then leaves Robin his object of faith shows that Clara’s role as his teacher is working to good effect. It shows that the Doctor in his cynicism is not a closed book and that he does in truth want to give people something or someone to believe in.
This story was billed as being a lighthearted comedy romp, with the promise of softening the image of Capaldi’s Doctor. Whilst it contains the obligatory quota of in house jokes and banter (the heavily criticised tendency to overuse the sonic screwdriver is sent up in this one), it is a deeply meaningful tale and the Doctor is only slightly less abrupt and aloof. Gatiss acknowledges “The premise is inherently funny, but I didn’t think of it as the funnier episode when I was doing it. It’s still asking big questions” (quoted in DWM issue 477, p22).
Robots Of Sherwood is refreshingly open-ended and allows for multiple interpretations and debates about the merits of believing in legendary figures. Like the Doctor many viewers will have grown tired of the “sweet” love triumphs over evil resolutions that even Gatiss has succumbed to (Victory of The Daleks, Night Terrors). It will perhaps not be remembered as a classic but it is an episode so brimming with quotable lines that it will no doubt feature in celebratory clip montages.
Errol Flynn once said “it’s not what they say about you, it’s what they whisper.” So when it comes to assessing Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor I’ll just mutter under my breath “don’t you think he’s looking good?” Rest assured fellow pudding brains – the legend lives on.
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