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Robophobia is a title that sounds like someone sneezed while naming a spreadsheet and just committed to the bit, and yet somehow, against all odds, the story attached to it is… actually pretty solid? I know. I’m shocked too.
We’ve got Sylvester McCoy’s Seventh Doctor, in full “I know what’s going on and I’m absolutely not telling you yet” mode, which means half the time he looks like he’s wandered in by accident and the other half he’s ten steps ahead playing 4D chess with your expectations. It’s a vibe. A slightly unsettling, manipulative vibe, but a vibe nonetheless.
And then, HELLO, we meet Liv Chenka, played by Nicola Walker, who walks into this story like she’s been here the whole time and frankly steals every scene she’s in. Competent, grounded, medically inclined, and refreshingly unimpressed by nonsense. You can absolutely see why she goes on to stick around in later adventures.
The setup is deliciously simple. Spaceship. Cargo hold. Several hundred robots. And oh look, they’re acting a bit… murdery.
Cue panic. Cue humans immediately deciding, “yes, the robots are rising up, this is definitely a rebellion, time to panic and/or pre-emptively destroy them.” Which, to be fair, history and sci-fi have trained us to expect exactly that. The story leans HARD into that expectation for the first chunk, playing it straight like a greatest hits album of “robots turn on their masters.”
Except the Doctor is there, quietly side-eyeing the entire situation like, “no. This is too neat. Too obvious. I smell a setup and it reeks.” And he’s right. Because the twist is that this isn’t a robot uprising at all. It’s a frame job. A deliberate attempt to make it look like robots are turning on humanity, so that humanity will respond by wiping out all robotic life. Not robophobia as a quirky fear, but robophobia as systemic paranoia weaponised into genocide. Which is a LOT more interesting than “beep boop revolution.”
Thematically, it lands nicely. Fear of the other. Manufactured panic. The ease with which people will accept a convenient enemy if it confirms their biases. It’s not subtle, but it doesn’t need to be. It’s effective.
Performance-wise, it’s doing the heavy lifting in all the right places. Sylvester McCoy absolutely nails that slippery, enigmatic Doctor persona, keeping you just off-balance enough that when the truth clicks, it feels earned. And Nicola Walker? Instant win. She brings a naturalism that grounds the whole thing, making the stakes feel more immediate even when the plot is playing in familiar territory.
Which, okay, let’s address that. Because while the twist is good, the journey getting there can feel a bit… standard. You are essentially sitting through a fairly by-the-numbers “robots might revolt” story before the curtain gets pulled back. It’s well done, but you might find yourself thinking, “okay, I’ve seen this before,” just before the story goes “aha, but have you seen THIS version of it?”
Also, I did occasionally want it to push further. The ideas are strong, but there’s room to dig deeper into the implications, especially around the human characters and their willingness to buy into the panic.
Still. It works. It entertains. It sticks the landing. And honestly, with a title like Robophobia, that’s already exceeding expectations.
Final Thoughts
A cleverly subversive take on the classic “robot uprising” trope, elevated by strong performances and a solid twist, even if the road getting there feels a bit familiar.
3.5 out of 5 extremely misunderstood robots just trying not to get cancelled by humanity
