8 Deleted Scenes That Explain Confusing Doctor Who Moments

4. The Sheriff's Secret (Robot Of Sherwood)

Doctor Who Robot of Sherwood The Sheriff
BBC Studios

The Mystery

The main bad guy in Twelfth Doctor adventure Robot of Sherwood is the Sheriff of Nottingham. He's as evil and creepy as you'd expect, but something that the episode doesn't make clear is that there's a lot more to him than meets the eye.

During the climactic sword fight against Robin Hood, the Sheriff says that he's "half man, half engine", but this line is really easy to miss, and it even sounds like it's been cut off a little at the end. It also comes out of nowhere, so a lot of viewers didn't even register it. After the fight, the Sheriff then manages to partially climb out of a vat of molten gold, which would obviously be impossible for a normal human to do.

So... what exactly is going on with the Sheriff?

The Deleted Scene

Quite a major cut from the episode, this one. Originally, the sword fight was going to be a bit longer, and halfway through it, Robin was going to chop off the Sheriff's head, assuming that this would defeat him.

But it doesn't, because we then learn that the Sheriff is actually a robot: his body clicks his severed head back into place, and the fight continues.

Not only does this scene make it crystal-clear that the Sheriff isn't human - as opposed to the vagueness of the final cut - but it also explains why the title of the episode is "Robot" of Sherwood, and not "Robots": that single robot is the Sheriff.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!