Doctor Who had a bit of an up-and-down 2024. Coming off of the highs of its 60th anniversary celebrations and a fantastical holiday special the year prior, anticipation was high for Ncuti Gatwa’s debut season to begin in earnest. And while there were some definite highlights, Doctor Who‘s broad refocusing and the season’s particular mystery around its latest addition to team TARDIS, Ruby Sunday, wasn’t without its stumbles. Now, the show is back for round two, and with it, a brand new companion in Ruby’s wake—and she might just be the key to making this particular era of Who really click.
“The Robot Revolution,” the premiere episode of Doctor Who‘s 2025 season (whether you call it season two, season 15, or season 41 if you’re really picky), is a Russell T Davies opener in that classic style. We’re immediately introduced to the day in the life of Belinda Chandra (Andor‘s Varada Sethu), a young nurse with all the stresses that entails, from nightmare shifts, to flatmates and discarded personal connections, being early to rise and late to bed, the treadmill never stopping. When her life is rudely and promptly interrupted by giant killer robots that want to whisk her away into space and a war she doesn’t understand—where, of course, her path crosses with the Doctor, we tend to expect to how this will go: our new best friend, albeit a little frightened by the thrills and chills around them, is instantly captivated by the Doctor’s adventurous but dangerous lifestyle and wants in on adventures in Time and Space.
Belinda wants to go home. Immediately. After all, she has a shift tomorrow, and while the bit with the killer robots and outer space was all fun and scary, she is done with it. Whether or not it’s done with her is a different question, of course, but it’s this fascinating twist on the Doctor/Companion dynamic that suffuses “Robot Revolution” with a crackle that you can’t help but love.
Doctor Who has, of course done this before—it’s 62 years old at this point, it would be hard not to have. Ian and Barbara, the first companions alongside the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan those six decades ago, were abducted. Tegan frequently expressed her desire to get home to her life and job on Earth in the ’80s, and even in the modern era, Clara’s feisty relationship with the Twelfth Doctor saw her try and divide her time in the TARDIS with teaching back home. But what makes Belinda stand out as the latest riff on that idea—aside from Sethu’s brilliant performance, briskly imbuing Belinda with a frankness and confidence that makes for some remarkable chemistry with Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor—however, is just how much Doctor Who is ready to engage with the idea, front and center, from the get-go.
Much of “The Robot Revolution” is a plenty charming sci-fi riff, built around a deliciously fun premise (that we don’t want to spoil yet, but it brilliantly plays on Doctor Who‘s classic tropes of imbuing an everyday concept with that fantastical, sci-fi bent)—there’s action, there’s tragedy, there’s big twists and clever, funny word play. There’s even some things carrying over from last season that still don’t quite hit, like the awkward trope of having Gatwa’s Doctor get very emotional about something we’re told he’s been invested in, rather than shown. It’s up there as one of modern Who‘s stronger openers, and definitely a marked improvement from “Space Babies” last year, but it’s Belinda herself that the episode shines with, rather than the Doctor Who-ness surrounding her.
Belinda is immediately challenging to the Doctor, but not in an antagonistic way. They’re not squabbling with each other; they do clearly begin to find some connection together across the episode. But Belinda is not there to nod along to every word he says and be bedazzled by the terrors and delights of the Doctor’s aura. She has her own values, she has her own boundaries, and she is more than willing to stand up to an ancient Time Lord and be as equally awestruck at his alien physiology as she is to firmly remind him when he crosses a line (and being the Doctor, he regularly does that), bringing something fresh out of Gatwa’s Doctor as he comes to realize that his charms don’t always work on people. They don’t always agree on the solution a problem, they don’t always consult each other before making a decision—there is a push and pull, a tension beneath their positive chemistry and the things they learn about each other that they do share in common, that makes their relationship compelling from the moment they crash into each other’s orbit.
And perhaps most importantly, it’s a relationship we actually get to see developing on-screen. One of the biggest issues with Ruby Sunday last season—beyond the mystery core to her character not really being much of a mystery at all, intentionally for better or worse—is that, in spite of Millie Gibson’s similarly fantastic chemistry with Gatwa, we only really see that the Doctor and Ruby were best friends because they, and other characters, would just say that they are best friends. We rarely spent time with the two actually really talking to each other, never got to see them relax between stories in the TARDIS. In just a single episode however, Belinda and the Doctor’s relationship feels different not just because of the dynamic, but because Doctor Who is once again actually willing to spend time in showing it working in action, and to let its two leads really dig into that connection.
That makes “The Robot Revolution” an incredibly exciting premiere, kicking off us off into a season brimming with potential—into a season that might be do or die for Doctor Who, considering we’ve yet to hear anything about the show’s renewal beyond this season. But with a team like the 15th Doctor and Belinda at the helm, whatever’s coming, Doctor Who has a secret weapon far handier than a time machine or a sonic screwdriver this season that will gladly keep us checking in as much as any creepy monster or dazzling location ever could.
Doctor Who returns to Disney+ around the world, and the BBC in the UK, on Saturday, April 12.
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