Doctor Who Review - Robot of Sherwood (S8, E3)

So in past episodes of the revival, the majority of famous figures that the Doctor and his companions have met, are all real. Charles Dickens (Series 1, The Unquiet Dead), Queen Victoria (Series 2, Tooth and Claw), William Shakespeare (Series 3, The Shakespeare Code), Agatha Christie (Series 4, The Unicorn and the Wasp), Vincent van Gogh (Series 5, Vincent and the Doctor) and even President Richard Nixon (Series 6, The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon) among many others too. So in what I would consider a Doctor Who first (though I might be wrong seeing as I haven't seen much of the classic series), we get to meet what is normally considered a fictional character, but may very well be a true but forgotten legend, Robin Hood. So let's see how this plays out:

So like with companions before her, Clara asks the Doctor to go and see one of her all time idols as it were, Robin Hood. Despite the Doctor's claims that he is nothing more than just a legend, he sends the Tardis to medieval England where to our surprise, we meet a man claiming himself to be known as Robin Hood (played by Tom Riley). The Doctor decides to do all he can to try and prove that everything he and Clara are seeing isn't real, but to no avail. That is until they meet the Sheriff of Nottingham (played by the great Ben Miller) and as the name implies, its discovered that his soldiers are robots and its now down to the Doctor to further try and see if this is fake or not with some surprising results and forming an unlikely alliance with Robin Hood (legend or not).

Now I will say that the day after this episode was broadcast, I got to meet Ben Miller at a convention called Nor Con (more info on that here) and he was a very nice man who just so happened to help one of my friends (who was cosplaying as Doctor 11) get his bow tie sorted so that was nice. It was my first convention too and I enjoyed it a lot. Back to the episode at hand, I wasn't really that hyped for this episode as I was with Deep Breath and Into the Dalek and for all the right reasons, there isn't really that much going on here. Its one of those episodes that's just there for the comic relief and I think after two really strong and action packed episodes, that's really what we needed. Also I'm glad that Ben Miller finally got himself in Doctor Who and I hope it isn't the last we see of big name stars appearing in Doctor Who. 8/10