Doctor Who - "Robot of Sherwood"

Look, I'm going to be upfront with you guys here: I don't have a lot to say about this episode of Doctor Who. It was a light, fluffy episode that was obviously meant to serve as a bit of a comic relief in what's shaping up to be something of a darker season of the show. And that's fine! Every season of the show has at least one frivolous, carefree adventure - as it should, because this is a television show about a man who travels through time and space in a police box. Not everything has to be so self-serious. It wouldn't be Doctor Who if it was.

So "Robot of Sherwood" was...fine. It was not the best example of a "light adventure", and it was not the worst example of one. It had some parts that were very good, some parts that were hilarious, a ton of parts that were a slog to get through, and an ending that wound up wrapping everything together surprisingly nicely. It's pretty much everything you would expect a "The Doctor meets Robin Hood!" episode to be - there's some silly fight scenes, campy and over-the-top historical dialogue, and a moral that brings a surprising amount of depth to the idea of a fairy tale. It is, in other words, your standard "the Doctor travels to the past and meets a historical figure" episode (even if this one happens to be fictional - sorry, Robin Hood), a format that was a seasonal affair during the Russel T. Davies era of the show but has become less prevalent since Moffat took the wheels. The last one we've had was "Vincent and the Doctor" in 2010, which is one of my all-time favorite Doctor Who stories. In fact, I sort of thought "Vincent and the Doctor"was the perfect cap on those types of episodes, since it turned the format around by bringing some dramatic weight to the idea of the Doctor meeting an important and famed figure of the past. These types of episodes tend to play closely to the version of the show that's a kids' educational program, never really forming a coherent story around the figure or the time period they set foot in. "Vincent and the Doctor" really changed that, as it used the Doctor and Amy's time with Vincent Van Gogh to make some very powerful statements about artistry, legacy and creating your own story.

"Robot of Sherwood" sort of attempts to make similarly bold statements, but it doesn't commit enough to fully make the landing. Like Rusty last week, the show sets Robin Hood up as a parallel to the Doctor himself - Robin Hood is just a legend, or so the Doctor thinks, and there's no way anyone could believe this guy is real right? The Doctor assumes that he's a robot, just like several other people in the town have become, and we're meant to believe so, too - until a twist ending reveals that no, Robin Hood is real, but people stop believing that he really existed and thus, becomes no more than a legend, or a myth. This twist is not really as surprising as the show would like us to believe, but it works as a way to subvert our idea that the Doctor is always right and that we should always believe him. It also works as a nice way to point out that the Doctor himself could be constructed as a myth. That's all well and good, but it doesn't quite mesh tonally with the rest of the episode, which is trying so hard to be carefree and silly that it winds up sinking whatever lesson the episode is trying to teach. It's not that Doctor Who can't be carefree, silly and thought-provoking all at the same time, but "Robot of Sherwood" tries so hard to be silly and so little to say anything that at one point, you sort of wonder why it's bothering to say anything at all.