Liv and Tula follow the leads and meet a man who shouldn’t exist.

It’s probably around now that it’s worth digging out your Blu-ray/DVD of The Robots of Death and giving it a quick rewatch (I’d normally say read the novelisation, but this comes from that period when Terrance Dicks wasn’t doing much more than relaying the dialogue on the page). Lots of clues seem to point back to the events on Storm Mine 4 – in the portions with the Chenka sisters, as well as those with Toos and Poul. There might have been more going on than just Taren Capel’s robot uprising.

And talking of the uprising, which we know from Liv’s departure and return to the TARDIS is coming, there’s a lot of deliberate muddying of the waters going on by the Sons of Kaldor in Lisa McMullin’s script (and someone asks the obvious question about their title). We spend a strand of the story with a potential new recruit to the organisation, for whom the title becomes applicable – but does it also to a robot at a scene of devastation?

There’s a lot going on in this episode, some of which seems at a tangent initially, but Louise Jameson directs this with an assured hand, and Toby Hrycek-Robinson’s sound design and Joe Kraemer’s score (nicely referencing itself in the first track) blend well. Given that the run has been extended to six sets, we’re only now at the halfway point – and there’s plenty still to discover.

Verdict: A number of twists in the overall plotline help keep this series one of the best of Big Finish’s current output. 9/10

Paul Simpson

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