Doctor Who and the Robots of Death

Terrance Dicks

Book 53 of Doctor Who Target Novelizations

url

Doctor Who Library - Science Fiction and Fantasy Novel Science-Fiction:Doctor Who _isfdb novelization

Publisher: Target / W. H. Allen

Published: May 2, 1979

Magazine: Doctor Who and The Robots of Death
Quality: 4

Description:

On a distant, barren planet, Storm Mine 4 trawls across bleak deserts and through fierce duststorms in search of rare and valuable metals. On board the Sandminer is a small skeleton crew, who alternate between indulgent relaxation and skilled mining work. The mundane, day-to-day duties of the mine are attended to by a much larger complement of servile robots.

This is a society that is dependant on robots for all areas of life, the people comforted by the knowledge that the strictest safeguards are built into each and every robot's programming. So when one of the miner crew is murdered, suspicion falls on two new arrivals...

The Doctor and Leela arrive on board, and are immediately accused of being the prime murder suspects. But the Doctor soon realises that perhaps the killer isn’t human. More deaths occur — can he persuade the remaining crewmembers that the killer may be a robot?