Doctor Who season premiere review: Robot Revolution makes us reluctant companions
For a show that clings to a six-decade-old premise — it's about the Doctor, an alien time traveler who can regenerate their body before death, the TARDIS, a time-and-space machine that's bigger on the inside, and the human companions along for the ride — Doctor Who can seem surprisingly fresh when it's done right.
Why? Not because of the Doctor, as magnetically charming as the lead usually is (current charmer: Ncuti Gatwa). The Doctor may have doubts, setbacks, and mysteries to solve, but as any actor will tell you, very little in the way of character development. Freshness arrives via the companions, who provide the ever-shifting perspective of present-day culture. If the audience is not on board with a new companion by the time they step aboard the TARDIS, many will decline to take the trip.
So will fans (not to mention newbies) feel fresh on April 12? That's when Doctor Who returns for Gatwa's second season (also known as season 2 in the new Disney+ numbering, season 15 since showrunner Russell T Davies rebooted it in 2005, and season 41 for the really old-school fans). It's also when we meet new companion Belinda Chandra (Verada Sethu).
And based on Episode 1, "Robot Revolution," Davies has his work cut out for him when it comes to convincing us to join her. That's not a knock on Sethu, who is about to light up the screen here and in Andor season 2 (where she plays Cinta). It's the fact that Davies has made Belinda the first full-on 21st century iteration of an ancient Doctor Who trope — the reluctant, accidentally-kidnapped companion — without fully locking in a reason to care about her in the first place.
Meet Belinda Chandra, reluctant companion
We meet Belinda immediately in the cold open, a flashback to 17 years ago that tells us everything about the indignities she's suffered and nothing about her reaction. On a park bench under the stars, then-boyfriend Alan presents Belinda with an International Star Registry-style certificate for a star he's bought and named for her.
Instantly, we learn everything we need to know about Alan: not only does he want her to fold up and save the wrapping paper, but he insists on naming the star Miss Belinda Chandra. "Are you married?" he asks superciliously when she questions this. Belinda concedes she is not.
Remember, this scene isn't set in the distant pre-feminist past. It's 2008, by which time Doctor Who had been offering us formidable female companions for 3 years. Put Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) on that bench, even before her life-changing encounter with the Doctor, and she'd knock Alan back with a zinger. Put Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) there, she'd probably knock him back with a fist too.
So Belinda is acting meek. Fair enough, but why? Is it her family? Some other culturally conservative institution? And what drew her to this humorless wrapping-saving male chauvinist in the first place? Ironically, there's no equivalent of Alan's character-sketch lines to tell us.
We simply fast-forward to May 2025, when Belinda is a nurse in A&E (for Americans, the ER). She mutters her suspicion that a catatonically injured man was attacked by his wife. And she's still suffering indignity in her private life; one of her flatmates falsely accuses her of stealing food and calls her "Linda."
And still there's not one moment of agency for Belinda, as much as we may sympathize. There's no personality quirk that makes her come alive before or after she is kidnapped by robots who take her back to their planet and in a sense, her planet. The robots land in a big old 1950's style sci-fi rocket that they beam her up into, Star Trek-style. (This belt-and-braces approach is typical of "Robot Revolution," which seems giddy about how many cool Disney-money effects Doctor Who can finally deliver.)
The rest of the episode sprinkles on up-to-date cultural references, including the show's first use of "incel," and its response to ChatGPT-style generative AI. But like Belinda's backstory, we move past the references too fast for the show to say anything meaningful or memorable about them.
By the time Belinda is effectively kidnapped again, as the Doctor finds the TARDIS unwilling to return her to Earth, we're with her, but not necessarily in a good way. Her motivation is to get back home (though why, given how home treats her, we're not told). She's shunning the traditional all-of-time-and-space offer. "I am not your adventure!" Belinda snaps at the Doctor.
'Doctor Who' and the kidnapped companions
The "accidentally kidnapped companion" concept isn't new. It goes back to the very first episode of Doctor Who in 1963, when schoolteachers Ian (William Russell) and Barbara (Jacqueline Hill) strayed onto the TARDIS when following the Doctor's granddaughter Susan (Carole Ann Ford); with the Doctor's unreliable piloting, it took them two seasons to get home.
Then in 1981 came Tegan Jovanka (Janet Fielding), an Australian air stewardess who stepped into what she reasonably thought was a phone box for police when her car broke down. Another two seasons elapsed before the Doctor successfully delivered her to Heathrow airport.
The companions were clearly drawn and had agency. Ian and Barbara went into that police box out of concern for their pupil. Tegan was heading to Heathrow on her first day of work, fearing she'd be fired before she began — and was instantly as upset as Donna Noble about it.
Davies, an old-school nerd whose first memory is the first Doctor regenerating, knows all this. And to be fair, he has more than earned the trust of seasoned fans. He's a master of the slow-building season arc, as you know if "Bad Wolf" and "Torchwood" mean anything to you; this one promises much in ways that we can't talk about yet.
And remember that Davies often opens a season with his silliest, most kid-friendly offering; for many casual fans, Gatwa's first season was hobbled by the fact it started with "Space Babies."
But at least in that case, we had Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson, who is returning for season 2 — but not yet). Ruby had a clearly established desire, to find the identity of her birth mother. In character, she was herself a TARDIS full of quips and comebacks. "If you talked to me and the girls like that on a Friday night," Ruby told a 19th century male chauvinist in "Rogue," one of season 2's more successful episodes, "we'd rip you a new one."
Belinda isn't anything like that. Fair enough, but Davies has given himself a mountain to climb here with a companion who rejects all Doctor Who tropes, including the endearing quips.
In effect, Belinda doesn't just want out of the TARDIS. She wants out of Doctor Who. And when this trained nurse points out that the Doctor did not ask her consent before scanning her with his Sonic Screwdriver — when we realize that the Doctor has always had a problem with this kind of consent — we may be forgiven for agreeing about wanting out, no matter how promising the season arc that lies ahead.