Despite a couple of flaws — which I'll get to in a bit — "Belle Chose" was Exhibit A for how great Dollhouse can be when the concept is handled right. So it's not surprising that it was written by Tim Minear, the man who gave us Firefly's "Out Of Gas" and many of Angel's best episodes.

So what's the secret these two men share? They're both in positions of great power — the college professor is tenured and at the zenith of his career, the serial killer is wealthy and connected. But neither of them can have what they want, and their fantasies about women remain tantalizingly out of reach. That's frequently the larger thread of Dollhouse: The wealthy may already own your bodies and souls, but they want to own your hearts and minds as well. They always have some unfinished business, something that people (usually women) are unable to give them freely for whatever reason.

The professor wants a young, impressionable, none-too-smart student (named Kiki!) whom he can teach and condescend to, in a sort of Educating Rita pastiche that turns pornographic. It's not just that he wants a student to sleep with him to get an "A" — watch those scenes where he tells her about Chaucer. (Or "Chauncey," as she insists on calling him, in a lovely reference to Being There.) And even though the professor really does have all the power in this situation — even disregarding the meta-point that Kiki only exists because he had the Dollhouse create her — he wants to teach Kiki that she really has all the power. He trots out the standard second-wave feminist analysis of Chaucer's Wife Of Bath as empowered woman, who uses sexuality to get what she wants. Traditionally, people viewed the Wife Of Bath as a harlot, a cautionary tale for women, but it became fashionable to view her as a feminist heroine instead.

Here's the Wife Of Bath giving the Fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, a hand job — from Pasolini's Canterbury Tales movie:

As that montage up top makes clear, the professor and the serial killer, Terry, both have the same fantasy about women: that the women are in control, that they're constantly using their sexuality to gain advantage, and that the men are helpless. (The only difference is, the professor enjoys this fantasy, and insists the women aren't whores — Terry thinks they are.)

So Terry, the serial killer, collects "Dolls" of his own — but instead of the mindwiped, programmed puppets the Dollhouse supplies, he creates his own, injecting people with paralytic drugs and then turning them into human mannequins — they each represent one of the women in Terry's family, who ignore him and leave him out of their games. If you really had any doubt that Dollhouse is a metaphor for how powerful people objectify and mistreat everyone, especially women, then the opening scenes of this episode ought to have set you straight.

The underlying metaphors in "Belle Chose" are by no means subtle — and that's a big part of what I love them for. They come right out and say it: the professor, a model Dollhouse client whose fantasy is incredibly harmless and almost sweet, is directly compared, again and again, to the serial killer who kidnaps women, injects them with crap, and turns them into his fully poseable figures. Both men are in denial, both men are blinded by fantasies about female power that excuse their abuse of women. And when the two finally meet — it doesn't really go well for either of them.

Because, of course, the episode takes a weird left turn about two-thirds of the way through — the serial killer's been downloaded into Victor's body, and thanks to the foolishness of Saul Tigh (helping out his fellow artifiicial person) the VictorOfTheLambs character gets out and about. So Topher tries to shut down Victor/Terry — only to swap Victor's and Echo's imprints. So now Echo is imprinted with the misogynistic serial kiler, while Victor thinks he's a hot teenage girl. Cue weird woman-hating stuff from Echo, while Victor flirts with a bunch of boys and nearly gets gay-bashed. it's almost too over the top, but it works — partly because it's great to see one more weird use of the Dollhouse's brain-switching tech.

But yeah, there were a couple of major flaws in the episode that did lose it a bit of its sheen of awesomeness:

Flaw #1: The incompetence of the Dollhouse is staggering. I mean, really. This is starting to damage my suspension of disbelief. The moment where Adelle actually turns to Topher and says something along the lines of, "We've imprinted our active with the mind of a serial killer and turned him loose — and he has no GPS locator!" made me giggle. When the characters themselves comment on how incompetent they're being, it's a bad sign. I also think Professor Skankypants should get a refund.

Flaw #2: The last act was a little bit of a let down. I'm not sure where you could go with this episode, after Echo was imprinted with Terry's sick mind, but having Echo turn into the episode's monster (which sort of happened last week as well) was a bit disappointing. And then Echo gives a long speech in which she tries to convince the three captive women to kill her — why not just have them tie Echo up? The longer Echo's speech dragged on, the less concerned I was that Terry's persona was going to reassert control, and the more I felt like the episode was just spinning its wheels.

But meanwhile, the episode also packed a ton of other awesomeness:

Adelle is amazing. Her double act with Boyd was one of the major highlights of the show, especially "There is no need to continue to translate me." And then she switches, seamlessly, into an equally great double act with Ballard, where she handles the uncle and he handles the evil nephew. So great.

All of the stuff with Paul learning to be Echo's handler was terrific — this is the first time we've seen what happens to the Actives after they're programmed, and the scenes of Echo getting a makeover were a much-needed bright spot. Echo/Kiki being all bouncy and giggly while the campy costuming guy tells her she's won a free makeover were great.

And of course, Paul is totally in love with Echo — this episode pretty much broadcast it. The whole Fast Times At Ridgemont sequence where Paul watches Echo in the shower and then watches her act flirty later on, in extreme slow-mo. That's not your standard concerned handler look — that's a seriously schmoopy/lustful look. I kind of want them to have Anthony Stewart Head guest star, so he can raise one eyebrow and say, "A Handler in love with an Active? Fascinating."

Oh, and it's official: Dr. Claire Saunders is missing, both in the sense that nobody knows where she is, and in the sense that we miss her. A lot. And it's sounding like despite Boyd's amazing tallness, Adelle really will go over his head and have Claire dragged, kicking and acting her heart out, back to the Dollhouse.

Of all the companions you'd expect the BBC to pair Tom Baker with, in his new series of audio plays, probably the last one you'd think of would be retired Army Captain Mike Yates, last seen in 1974's "Planet Of The Spiders." The mixed up, conflicted Yates had to leave the paramilitary world-saving organization UNIT after he secretly joined a team of mad-scientists and fanatics who were flooding London with dinosaurs. (It's all because an evil computer brainwashed him and he got confused. But then he got into meditation, so it's okay.)

Anyway, according to writer Paul Magrs, the five stories take place after the Doctor leaves his savage hunter companion Leela and his tin dog K-9 behind on his home planet Gallifrey. He goes and settles down for a bit in an old English cottage in Sussex, and then a strange buzzing sound is following him. Magrs says Baker had no trouble settling back into the role:

He was on top form. Unbelievable. Full of charisma, bursting into the studios. Then he was at the mike with other cast members, and suddenlyI can picture the very moment he turned back into the Doctor. One minute it was introductions and actorly chat and then all of a sudden he was rehearsing lines his first being, ‘Hullo, I'm the Doctor'

It was a very shivery moment.

And here are the descriptions of the audio plays, going on sale soon:

Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest - The Stuff of Nightmares
‘Wanted: retired army Captain for light household duties and fireside companionship. Must tolerate mild eccentricity and strong scientific advice. Knowledge of Giant Maggots, Super Intelligent Spiders and Prehistoric Monsters a positive boon.' Responding to an advert apparently worded for him alone, Captain Mike Yates (retired) is reunited with a ghost from the past. But why has the Doctor, that mysterious traveller in Time and Space, sent for his former UNIT acquaintance? Trapped by a horde of vicious creatures in an apparently innocuous English country cottage, the two old friends are on the brink of an enormous adventure. As the Doctor relates his recent escapades, it becomes clear to Mike that they - and the Earth at large - are facing an enemy of unimaginable power and horrific intent. The nightmare is only just beginning… With Tom Baker as the Doctor, Richard Franklin as Mike Yates, Susan Jameson as Mrs Wibbsey and Daniel Hill as Percy Noggins, The Stuff of Nightmares is the first of five linked stories written by the acclaimed Paul Magrs.
Release Date: September 3, 2009

Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest - The Dead Shoes
What is so special about a pair of ballet shoes on display in Cromer's Palace of Curios? When the Doctor meets Ernestina Scott there in 1932, they discover the horrific truth together. The second of five linked stories written by the acclaimed Paul Magrs, The Dead Shoes also features Susan Jameson, Clare Corbett and Christian Rodska.
Release Date: October 8, 2009

Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest - The Circus of Doom
In Blandford, 1832, ringmaster Antonio exerts a strange influence on the townsfolk. When the Doctor steps into the ring, he discovers that Antonio has some familiar demons of his own… The third of five linked stories written by the acclaimed Paul Magrs, The Circus of Doom also features Michael Maloney, Jilly Bond, Susie Riddell and Stephen Thorne.
Release Date: November 5, 2009

Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest - A Sting in the Tale
In a bleak midwinter, an order of nuns protect their Mother Superior from ravaging dogs. But something is very wrong here indeed - and the Doctor is about to get badly stung. The fourth of five linked stories written by the acclaimed Paul Magrs, A Sting in the Tale also features Clare Corbett, Susie Riddell and Rula Lenska.
Release Date: December 3, 2009

Doctor Who: Hornets' Nest - Hive of Horror
The Doctor and Mike must face their enemy in a final battle. They have an unwilling accomplice - and loyalties are about to be tested to the limit. The fifth of five linked stories written by the acclaimed Paul Magrs, Hive of Horror also features Susan Jameson and Rula Lenska.
Release Date: December 3, 2009

[Once Upon A Geek]

The Doctor Who story "Robots Of Death" is a murder mystery, even though it's obvious right away who's killing tons of people on board a claustrophobic mining vessel picking its away across the ore-rich sands of the planet Kaldor. The identity of the murderer is right there in the story's title. The whodunnit aspect is much more about what's making these robots kill people, and what does it mean for a society that's utterly dependent on robots? The first question has an utterly, delightfully demented answer. The second one, you'll be pondering for hours after you watch it.

Let's take the second question first. Kaldor's relationship to its robot workforce is akin to our society's relationship to the automobile. Over the course of the 90-minute story, we learn a lot about Kaldor's culture and history, without anyone ever pausing to lecture us - the worldbuilding in "Robots Of Death" is so rich and clever, writer Chris Boucher felt the need to return to it in a sequel novel, Corpse Marker. And there's been a whole series of audiodramas based in the capital, Kaldor City. (The novel's underwhelming, and I tried to get into the audios, but couldn't.)

In any case, we learn that Kaldor was colonized by humans within fairly recent memory, and there's a lingering class system that puts the earliest settlers (the "founding families") at the top. (The sandminer's captain, Uvanov, is lower class and deeply resents his upper class crewmember, Zilda, who he thinks looks down on him. She, in turn, blames him for the death of her brother on a previous tour. More on that later.) A good deal (possibly all) of the planet's surface is covered with ugly, windswept desert, prone to horrible sandstorms which can cut you to shreds in seconds. (As the Doctor nearly learns first-hand.) And those sandstorms stir things up enough to bring precious ores (yes, even lucanol!) to the surface, where a squat, lumbering sandminer can suck them in and refine them. The work is grindingly awful and stressful, because you have to jump on sandstorms the moment you find them, if you want to meet your quota. So you need the robots to help you manage.

But Kaldor doesn't just depend on the robots for the sandmining that (apparently) fuels its economy. Every aspect of life back in Kaldor City is robot-centric: they're the masseurs, the nannies, even the cops in some cases. Perhaps in a reflection of the rigid class system among Kaldor's humans, the robots are divided into three classes as well: the Dums (who can't speak), the Vocs (who can), and the rarer Super-Vocs (who are intelligent.)

Like our cars, those robots are beautiful: shiny, sleek, stylized. The design in "Robots Of Death" is totally stunning, with lots of weird art deco elements everywhere, and it's all pointed at telling us something about the relationship between the humans and the robots. All the humans have makeup on their faces that resembles the stark lines of the robots' faces, and we're never sure if the humans are deliberately trying to look like the robots, or vice versa. And yet, as beautiful as the robots are, they're also disturbing and just wrong. "Creepy mechanical men," the Doctor's companion Leela calls them. They sit squarely in the middle of the uncanny valley — too human to be a mere appliance, too robotic to be people.

So the humans of Kaldor are terrified of their robot servants, deep down, even though they depend on them. (Or maybe partly because they depend on them so much.) This affects everyone, to some extent — there's a great scene early on, where someone is getting a massage from a robot, while a guy sitting nearby talks about how a robot masseur once went wrong and ripped a client's arm off. But some people suffer from it most keenly than others — one guy, Poul, suffers from "robo-phobia," an unnatural (but understandable, it turns out) fear of robots. When he finds a robot with human blood dripping down its sleeve, Poul starts to lose his marbles. Too bad he's the guy sent to investigate the murders in the first place. We also learn that Zilda's brother didn't die due to Uvanov's negligence — he suffered an attack of robophobia and ran outside the sandminer to escape the robots, dying instantly.

Really, there's an undercurrent of robophobia running through this entire society, which desperately needs robots to survive but can't trust them. In one fantastic scene, Leela asks the Doctor what will happen if it does turn out that robots are murdering people. In his wonderfully casual/brutal way, the Doctor says "I should think it's the end of this civilization." Ooh, snap!

Of course, the robots have all the usual Asimov-ian safeguards, about obeying humans and never harming them. It just turns out that if you're smart enough — and willing to jam a laser probe into a robot's brain — you can overcome those.

Which brings us to the answer to our first question: Who is making the robots kill? It turns out that one of the people on the Sandminer is secretly Taren Capel, a weird robot supremacist who believes that robots should be free of humans (and humans should be dead.) A major robotics genius, Capel lost his parents when he was very young, and he was raised entirely by robots. Ever since then, Capel has been robot-identified, and regards the oppressed robots as his "brothers." Towards the end of the story, he even paints his face to look more like a robot. (All the humans have makeup that sort of resembles the robots, but Capel takes it a step further.)

As Fiona Moore points out, the robophobic Poul and the robot-loving Capel are just two sides of the same coin:

Both Poul and Capel (who are interestingly both named after science-fiction writers) are outsiders in disguise; their true "identities" are also both tied up with a secret held by one or more of the robots on the Mine. Visually, Capel's death echoes Poul's descent into madness an episode earlier; like Poul, Capel falls to his knees before a robot, screaming senseless phrases in his terror. Poul's quick denial that a robot could be responsible for Chub's death also finds a parallel later in Capel's quick denial that robots are dependent on humans for their existence. The two characters thus have more in common than simple madness.

Taren Capel? Never heard of him.

Capel's madness, like Poul's, is therefore not innate, but imposed from the outside. In the scene in which Leela finds Poul hiding in the robot morgue, Poul in his terrified delirium attempts to betray her to the robots, believing that if he lets her help him the robots will view him as an enemy. Poul also implies that he believes himself to be immune from attack by the robots as long as he keeps still and hidden. Similarly, Capel's behaviour could almost be seen as an attempt to ingratiate himself with the robots; he dresses himself like them, repeatedly calls them "my brothers" and offers them a help they do not request. At the end of the story, as a robot's hands close on his throat, he cries out, not "I am your brother," but "I am the master," again implying a terrified attempt to assert control over an unstoppable force. His murder at the hands of a robot parroting the phrase "kill the humans" must be for Capel the most frightening and humiliating death imaginable. One of the few things we know about Capel is that he was raised by robots; for most people, our images of strength and control are drawn from our early experiences with the people who raised us (again, the Doctor's remark about Dask not being half the robot his father was recalls this). By drawing parallels between Poul and his quarry, Boucher has thus hidden the key to Capel's madness in plain sight: it is not Capel's megalomania, but his robophobia, which causes the unfolding of the events on Storm Mine Four.

I hadn't actually thought about the idea that Capel, the robot supremacist, is actually just displacing his own internalized robophobia, but it does make a kind of sense. Especially in his disguise as Dask, the sandminer's robot expert, Capel is so keen to argue that robots can't kill — while he's actually proving they can.

But to me, the really interesting thing about Capel's robot revolution is that it's doomed from the start. Capel wants to see robots break free from their human masters, but he never asks the robots what they want. In fact, the robots in the story never seem to express any particular desires — even the hyper-intelligent ones like Super-Voc 7 and the undercover robot agent D-84. They want to do a good job, and they want to fulfill their function, but there's never any hint that the robots are cherishing unfulfilled desires.

So Capel doesn't empower the robots to kill — he programs them to. They have as little choice about that instruction as they do about any other. And he's only able to get them to do this (as I mentioned) by jamming a laser probe into their heads, thus committing violence on them in the name of getting them to commit violence.

And the robots, the ones who have joined Capel's little uprising, have no particular loyalty to him, as the Doctor proves at the end of the story. The way the Doctor defeats Capel is especially clever — he gets his companion, Leela, to hide and open a tank of helium. As Capel's voice gets higher and higher, the robots stop recognizing his voiceprint, and he becomes just another one of the humans they're programmed to kill. His ultimate goal may have been to become one of the robots, but they never recognize him as such — and he maintains the master/slave relationship by ordering them to kill.

Is "Robots Of Death" really the greatest killer-robot story of all time, as I cheekily claimed in the headline? Actually, it really is possible — it does what the greatest killer-robot stories do, which is to tell us something new about our codependent relationship with technology. All of the humans in the story are painted to look like robots, like Capel, just in a lesser way. And they're all terrified of robots, like Poul, just in a lesser way. In the end, "Robots Of Death" tells us that the more powerful our technology becomes, the more we'll fear it — and the more we'll shape ourselves to become like it.

Luckily, "Robots Of Death" was one of the first Who stories to come out on DVD, and I'm pretty sure you can find a used copy cheap. Enjoy!

The stories available in their entirety (Stories lasted multiple episodes before the relaunch, and the iTunes store offers each story episode by episode) are suspiciously Jon Pertwee-heavy, but also include offerings from the Patrick Troughton, Tom Baker and Colin Baker eras. While we could understand skipping the William Hartnell (too old and rare) and Sylvester McCoy (let's face it, too crap, even with Sophie Aldred's Ace) Doctors, what's going on with the complete lack of Peter Davison?

Don't let that scare you away from looking at what's available, though; in addition to relative rarities like Terror Of The Autons and The Krotons, stories like The Ark In Space and especially The Three Doctors are well worth investigating.

(While you're there, why not pick up the free first episode of Primeval, in case you missed it last week?)

Doctor Who: The Classic Series [iTunes] (Via)

The press release reads:

Fans of all eras of Doctor Who can look forward to an incredible range of classic Doctor Who figures and monsters being launched in the UK by Character Options later this year.
 
Recreate scenes from the classic series of Doctor Who with the poseable action figures. Each figure pack comes with a different collectable part of the giant K-1 robot from the fourth Doctor's first story in 1974.  When all eight packs are collected, the giant robot will be complete.  
 
Classic figures include Tom Baker, Peter Davison and Colin Baker.  Other figures and monsters include a Sea Devil (1972), Zygon (1975), Magnus Greel & Mr Sin (1977), SV7 and D84 (1977).
 
Also being launched is a Doctor Who 5 inch Classic Dalek Set - this set of three poseable Classic Daleks includes Daleks from The Dead Planet, (1963), The Planet of the Daleks, (1973) and Genesis of the Daleks (1975).

(No, toymakers. That's not a good idea.)

Character Options - Classic Series Action Figures [Doctor Who Online] (Thanks, Martin!)

Baker, who's definitely "my" Doctor (Even now, I find myself wondering how David Tennant would look in a lengthy scarf, so strong was the impression Baker made on my childhood self), told UK newspaper Kent News that he'd be willing to pretend to be thirty years younger, should the invitation be polite enough:

Perhaps I might make a guest appearance - perhaps. Providing they ask me nicely, of course.

Tom Baker ponders 'Doctor Who' return [Digital Spy]

Famous names: Tom Baker, Peter Davison, Peter Purves, William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, Colin Baker, Jon Pertwee, Sylvester McCoy, Terrance Dicks, Robert Holmes, Nicholas Courtney, Sophie Aldred.

Crunchy goodness: 5

Memorable product tie-in: The Daleks, mutant nazis in personal super-tanks, spawned a zillion types of crap, from a plastic zip-up playsuit to remote control wheelie Daleks to Dalek Sky-Ray ice lollies. (An ice lolly is like an ice-cicle.) Embarrassingly, a shitload of toy Daleks actually appear in longshot in the story Planet of the Daleks, as an army of super Daleks preparing to conquer the galaxy.

Design breakthrough: Doctor Who pioneered the art of filming in front of a greenscreen — but didn't exactly perfect it. More successful were John Friedlander's latex masks (Davros, the Ogrons, the Draconians) and Delia Derbyshire's pioneering all-electronic arrangement of the theme music.

Life lesson: It's not murder if you trick the bad guys into blowing themselves up (in, like, every episode.)

Outpost Gallifrey