Doctor Who has explored the idea of companions who aren’t immediately dazzled by the Doctor’s life plenty of times, but few quite so immediately want to have their moment of fun (slash terror) and get back to their daily routine quite like Belinda Chandra. Who‘s new companion gives us a hell of an introduction, promising incredible chemistry with Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor, even if he finds his usual charm offensive hilariously failing him. But it also raises an interesting question: how do you do a Doctor-companion relationship where the second one wants out almost immediately, without the Doctor just seeming like a massive asshole?
You blow up planet Earth on May 24, 2025, apparently. More on that later.
Much of “The Robot Revolution” is about quickly sweeping us up into Belinda’s life, and then sweeping her up in the Doctor’s. It has a truly brilliant premise—giant robots kidnap Belinda and take her to their home planet, Belinda Chandra, to settle a civil war, because as a teenager Belinda’s shitty boyfriend brought her one of those similarly shitty “here’s a certificate that says you own this random star” gift packages that eventually made its way into the robot’s hands. It’s kind of insane Doctor Who hasn’t done a riff on this yet, although “Robot Revolution” eventually twists the story into more about Belinda’s terrible ex rather than interstellar ownership rights (turns out Al the shitty boyfriend, already kidnapped by the robots, became the Al Generator, meant to be read as A.I., but no amount of cybernetic implants can stop him from being an awful human being), so it kind of feels both great and a little wasted. But it’s also not really the point of the story.
The point of the story is Belinda’s first encounter with the Doctor goes about as badly as a Doctor-companion encounter can go. People immediately start dying (Doctor Who simply has to stop giving Gatwa’s Doctor an established-offscreen-relationship he can be dramatically upset about when they die minutes after we meet them, but RIP Sasha I guess?), Belinda does not take too kindly to being ordered about, and she’s both confident and strong-headed enough that she is willing to make decisions without consulting the Doctor either. It nearly gets them both killed when they find Al, but even that’s kind of an awful outcome even in victory: Belinda has all the memories of what a terrible boyfriend Al was dragged back up, has to nearly go through sacrificing herself, and then still has to watch someone she once loved horrifically die. Which the Doctor celebrates with a high kick and a triumphant “yaas, Queen!”, because what would Doctor Who be if not tonally wild?
And that’s not the only way in which the Doctor himself fails to make much of this situation better. With the dust settled on their little near-death experience, he whisks her away in the TARDIS like Belinda is the catch of the day, going to town on the usual tricks and razzle-dazzles that otherwise get him a new best friend hook line and sinker as he shows off the TARDIS… and then he immediately tells Belinda he’s already met someone with her face, and scans her genetic material without her consent. Belinda is, naturally as a nurse, not wowed by his ability to do this, but disgusted by the ease at which he crosses boundaries with people, while also being very perturbed at what he’s showing her. Suffice to say, it’s not the Doctor’s best moment, and at the end of it all, you kind of understand why Belinda would take another nightmare shift at the hospital the next morning rather than spend any more time around the Doctor.
Yet despite this situation, there is undeniably a spark of connection between the two of them, and not just because Gatwa and Sethu are firing on all cylinders around each other. There’s tiny moments of joy between the Doctor and Belinda where you can see a bond forming, in spite of the increasingly bad situation unfolding around them. It’s in there, but there’s also just so much going on that Belinda doesn’t want to really invest any further than this guy getting her home as soon as possible, which the Doctor ultimately has to relent to (because, while an occasionally not-great person, the Doctor isn’t all that regular of a kidnapper—just don’t let Ian or Barbara hear you say that). Except… he can’t.
The Doctor realizes something is stopping the TARDIS from returning to Belinda’s contemporary Earth, but it’s only we the audience that gets to see in the closing moments that the reason is because Earth is simply not there any more, bits of debris floating through space. It’s a killer hook for the season especially as we know that the penultimate episode of the season will actually air on May 24, 2025—and preventing the destruction of Earth seems like a far stronger season arc than, say, Rise of Skywalker fix-it-fic.
But it’s also just a really compelling way to keep the Doctor and Belinda in each other’s orbits to really test the potential of their friendship. They kind of have to go on adventures simply because home is not an option yet, and Belinda still gets to (not entirely rightfully just yet, considering it’s not exactly the Doctor’s fault Earth might have been blown up for a bit… well, depending on what we learn about it happening!) have this kind of tempestuous relationship with him, warming up to the idea of life in Time and Space while still challenging the Doctor on his boundary and promise-breaking antics.
We know this season is still going to visit Earth a few times, both in the modern day and in its past—next week we’re in 1952 Miami, and trailers have already shown us Ruby and UNIT’s return, so it’s not like it’s going to be all alien planets all the time, but this is a fantastic way to both give Doctor Who‘s latest set of adventures a really compelling arc simmering in the background, while providing fertile ground for this really interesting dynamic between the Doctor and his new not-quite-bestie to flourish.
Where it’s all going though? We’ll have to wait and see… well, until May 24, 2025, at least.
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