Doctor Who: Familiar faces will return in upcoming spin-off The Robots!

Details of upcoming Doctor Who audio spin-off series The Robots have been revealed – including who’s returning from the original story!

Let me make something very clear: like many fans of Tom Baker’s Doctor Who episodes, I love The Robots of Death. It’s a wonderfully claustrophobic and terrifying story, filled with distinctive and memorable characters, and it still stands out as one of the all-time greats.

So it’s unsurprising that it’s had quite an influence on the expanded media over the years. We’ve had the audio spin-off Kaldor City from Magic Bullet Productions, and even original writer Chris Boucher wrote a sequel to the original story with his Fourth Doctor novel Corpse Marker.

Perhaps even more unsurprising is that Big Finish have also explored this particular world themselves, with stories such as The Sons of Kaldor, Robophobia and Escape from Kaldor from Ravenous 2.

These last two stories have proven to be particularly significant to Big Finish’s canon. In 2011, Robophobia introduced Liv Chenka, a native of Kaldor who later became a companion to the Eighth Doctor in Dark Eyes. She’s stayed with him ever since.

Nicola Walker and Claire Rushbrook star in the upcoming new spin-off, The Robots. (Image credit: The Robots/Doctor Who/Big Finish Productions. Image Courtesy: Big Finish Productions.)

The missing year

Well, almost. During the events of Escape from Kaldor, Liv was reunited with her sister Tula. There was initially some bad blood between the two of them, but by the end of the story, there was also hope that they could truly reconcile.

Liv knew that she couldn’t miss the opportunity to repair things with her family. But she also didn’t want to leave her friends the Doctor and Helen, not completely, at least. So she decided to take a gap year. While she left the TARDIS for a whole year, for the Doctor and Helen, she was gone only seconds as they jumped ahead to pick her up.

We never found out exactly what happened to Liv during that year. Until now.

Familiar faces

The Robots was announced earlier this year as a series of four box sets, exploring a key year in Liv’s life. Starring Nicola Walker as Liv and Claire Rushbrook as Tula, The Robots will explore some major changes on the world of Kaldor through their eyes.

But if that wasn’t exciting enough, then Volume Two will bring in even more mythology from The Robots of Death itself, as two major characters return: Lish Toos and Ander Poul, played by Pamela Salem and David Collings. Gregory de Poulnay will also be reprising his old role of robot D84 later in the series.

All of these characters were fantastic, and it’s exciting to know that their original actors will be playing them once more. Not just for us, but for the actors themselves too, as Pamela Salem reveals.

"More from Winter is ComingFor All Mankind finally gives us information in Episode 405, “Goldilocks”Watch a stunning VFX breakdown of The Wheel of Time season 2Of course Steve Toussaint (Corlys Velaryon) thinks Eve Best (Rhaenys Targaryen) should rule WesterosConfirmed: The Last of Us season 2 will air in 2025Final season of Star Trek: Discovery will have “a lot of action, a lot of adventure, a lot of fun”I’m so much a part of this character now I don’t feel like I’m coming back! It’s like doing a wonderful serial that goes on for a long time, you have the opportunity to expand the character and it’s so much more fun to do it over many episodes rather than just in a one off. There are facets to this character I never knew I had, and there are several sides in this series that are surprising – I hope the audience will be as surprised as I am!"

This isn’t the first time that Salem has reprised an earlier Doctor Who character in a spin-off series – since 2012, she’s also starred in Counter-Measures as Professor Rachel Jensen, whom she had originally played in the classic Seventh Doctor story Remembrance of the Daleks. Toos is another great character, so it’s great to see her being explored in more depth, as well.

With clear links to the past, a world of change being explored and a focus on a great companion, The Robots looks set to be an extremely exciting series. Volume One will be released on CD and download in December, and can be pre-ordered from Big Finish Productions on its own or as part of a bundle for the entire series.

Are you a fan of The Robots of Death? Are you excited about this new spin-off? Are you a fan of Eighth Doctor companion Liv Chenka? Let us know in the comments below.