Day 803: Robot of Sherwood

Robot of Sherwood is not a brilliant episode. But, to be fair, it never set out to be a brilliant episode. A concept along the lines of 'The Doctor meets Robin Hood' is clearly opting for more of a rompy, throw-away episode than the two previous episodes in Capaldi's first series. And, looking at it through that lens, it's a very fun and happy episode. The Doctor gets interesting things to do whilst still being a hero, the villain (the Sheriff of Nottingham as played by Ben Miller) isn't bothering with such concepts as subtlety, which ends up giving us one of the best moments in the entire series ("First Derby, then Lincoln, then THE WORLD!"). In general, it's all just a generic episode of Doctor Who.

But there's clearly something that makes it a Capaldi era story. That something is Jenna Coleman as Clara Oswald, whose character has gone down a very interesting direction that we're beginning to see built upon here. As I mentioned in The Bells of Saint John, Clara is set up to be the Doctor's equal. Whilst this isn't so much focussed upon in the rest of Matt Smith's time as the Doctor, which focuses more on the Doctor puzzling over Clara as the perceived 'Impossible Girl', in Capaldi's time it certainly comes more to the forefront. Take, for instance, in Robot of Sherwood, where it's Clara that gets to have the more interesting conversations with the villain than the Doctor. Whilst he's locked up in a cell in the basement of a castle. Clara sits at a dinner table with the Sheriff of Nottingham and they discuss his evil plan. So, in terms of the overall structure of the story, we see Clara as the main driving force instead of the Doctor, which is a reasonably interesting thing to see.

What's also interesting to see is that Clara's actually acting like the Doctor. The Sheriff isn't eager to reveal his plans to her so she tricks him by using a mixture of psychology and guesswork to figure out what's happening. It's a far cry from the Clara that we saw in Deep Breath, where she faced down the villain and was able to take control whilst clearly being very afraid at the same time. In Robot of Sherwood, she shows a mixture of confidence and arrogance, noted at the point where she explains what she's done to the Sheriff at the conclusion of the scene, showing off how clever she is. And these things feel very Doctor-ish, which shows just how much she's been absorbing from the Doctor in their travels together.

So it's a hint towards a very interesting story arc for Clara's character, one that shall continue all the way up to her departure. But we'll have to wait and see how that all pans out, for tomorrow we've got far more of a Doctor heavy episode than is first apparent...