Robot of Sherwood

I have a meh-hate relationship with Mark Gatiss’ Doctor Who scripts. At their best, they’re tolerably pointless. At their worst, they’re accidentally horrible, like ‘The One Where The Doctor and His Friends Shot a Crazy Old Lady and then Crushed a Defenceless Slug Creature’.

I’m still bitter.

This is definitely far more on the “meh” side of the scale. In fact at times, it’s actually quite clever. But I have two main problems with it:

• Gatiss’ sense of humour and mine just don’t get on–I’m not a big fan of making your characters and situations utterly stupid, and then pointing and laughing at them. And in this story, that’s almost all he’s got. Even the Doctor comes across like a moron this week, despite Capaldi’s best efforts.
• I was suckered in by the Doctor’s constant search for the twist in the story, and believed that there was going to be a cool and interesting explanation for why Robin was acting like an idiot and everything was so over-the-top. So I was rather underwhelmed when the twist was: “there is no twist”.

Aside from those, there is a bit of fun to be had here. But not a lot. It’s possible I’m just a grumpy old curmudgeon, but I thought 'Into the Dalek’ was funnier than this.