Doctor Who: Robophobia

As is clear from both the title and the cover, this is a sequel to the acclaimed 1977 TV story The Robots of Death. The set-up here is somewhat similar, with the sand-miner being replaced by a cargo spaceship transporting robots between planets. The opening moments of the play even summarise the events of the TV story, as once again, the supposedly harmless robots begin killing humans.

Much of the first half of the story is seen primarily from the perspective of the spaceship crew, something that's helped by the Doctor not having a companion. This enables the listener to figure out what's going on as the crew do, despite the fact that the Doctor essentially knows the full story right from the beginning. Insofar as this is a murder mystery, you'll probably guess the identity of the murderer well before the big reveal, but the focus is more on his motives, and how the other characters are going to escape from their predicament.

There is, inevitably, quite a lot of similarity with the TV story, given that there isn't an awful lot else you can do with the robots other than have at least some of them appear to go nuts. However, the play does ring some changes, and what's going on (and the reason for it) is far from a carbon copy of Taren Capel's scheme in the original. Everyone is on good form, and the characters are all well-realised, with Nicola Walker and Toby Hadoke deserving particular praise.

If there's a weakness, it's that it proves implausibly easy for the villain to wipe out all the non-speaking members of the crew - of which it's strongly implied that there's rather a lot. Plus, Briggs seems to forget in the final segments that space is, as Douglas Adams said, big. It's more these niggling flaws than any fault of the core plot, or the performances, that lead to me giving this 4.5 stars, rounded down to 4.