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Description
UPDATE: Changed the main file to one where the K-1 robot is a lot clearer. Hopefully you can still tell that's Tom in the foreground.

I couldn't not do an anniversary picture, because today does indeed properly mark the 40th anniversary of the transmission of this story's first episode, as well as being Tom Baker's first full story as the Doctor proper.

The first one, and probably the important one, that determined whether or not Tom Baker would successfully succeed Jon Pertwee as the Doctor or return to being a laborer with small acting jobs here and there. Obviously he did, with Tom morphing quite easily into THE Doctor.

In hindsight, "Robot" is often caught between the styles of the outgoing Barry Letts in that it has many of the ideas that dominated throughout his tenure as producer (an Earth-based, present day story that also features UNIT quite heavily...even Bessie, the Third Doctor's beloved roadster, puts in one final appearance) and incoming Philip Hinchcliffe, who was just waiting in the wings to begin his own run. But one of the problems with the story is that it is an example of the story of Doctor Who as a whole, in that the ideas were quite ambitious but the budgets just weren't there and the primitive green screen effects to show the K-1 Robot's growth and rampage look downright hokey when compared to today's CGI behemoths (although to be quite fair, it still looked better on a smaller budget than the Seventies remake of "King Kong" afforded to its monster). But the story itself still holds up forty years later and even stands out when picking apart the Fourth Doctor stories that aren't as well regarded when compared to say "Pyramids of Mars" or "The Ark in Space".

Description
UPDATE: Changed the main file to one where the K-1 robot is a lot clearer. Hopefully you can still tell that's Tom in the foreground.

I couldn't not do an anniversary picture, because today does indeed properly mark the 40th anniversary of the transmission of this story's first episode, as well as being Tom Baker's first full story as the Doctor proper.

The first one, and probably the important one, that determined whether or not Tom Baker would successfully succeed Jon Pertwee as the Doctor or return to being a laborer with small acting jobs here and there. Obviously he did, with Tom morphing quite easily into THE Doctor.

In hindsight, "Robot" is often caught between the styles of the outgoing Barry Letts in that it has many of the ideas that dominated throughout his tenure as producer (an Earth-based, present day story that also features UNIT quite heavily...even Bessie, the Third Doctor's beloved roadster, puts in one final appearance) and incoming Philip Hinchcliffe, who was just waiting in the wings to begin his own run. But one of the problems with the story is that it is an example of the story of Doctor Who as a whole, in that the ideas were quite ambitious but the budgets just weren't there and the primitive green screen effects to show the K-1 Robot's growth and rampage look downright hokey when compared to today's CGI behemoths (although to be quite fair, it still looked better on a smaller budget than the Seventies remake of "King Kong" afforded to its monster). But the story itself still holds up forty years later and even stands out when picking apart the Fourth Doctor stories that aren't as well regarded when compared to say "Pyramids of Mars" or "The Ark in Space".