I only just watched the aired episode (and then the above link to the original scene) but I have to ask...was the shot where he falls to his death changed too? It cuts away at an odd moment so I wondered if maybe we saw his "true nature" revealed originally?
What Samurai8472 posted below kind of flies in the face of your comments about nobody being upset by this. We live in a day and age where people are looking for reasons to be outraged. I think the Beeb is censoring "Robots of Sherwood" because of this, personally.
BTW, did anyone notice that the Doctor was again pulling out someone's hair? This time one of the Merry Men's. Now it's like trolling that woman who complained about that 2 weeks ago and yes, i realize this was filmed months before teh scandal. but how dare they cut the chopped off head and leave the hair pulling in! Edit: Ninja'd.
The scene was cut in the states. Of course, I use the word "scene" with hesitation because most of the scene is still there. But that sequence is gone (so only out of context dialog establishes his mechanical nature). Fortunately, it doesn't dramatically affect the pacing or context of the episode since it's a moment that quickly reverts back to status quo. It helps explain the title, which means it is probably worth keeping it (the title is really the mystery of which character is the robot, in a way), but cutting it didn't leave the audience confused.
I kept reading the title as Robots(plural) of Sherwood so I thought it was OK but yeah the title is a headscratcher with the new edit.
^ Yeah, with the edit, "Robots of Sherwood" would have worked better, but I think the episode works just fine as is. The head-chopping scene looked a bit silly to me, though may have looked better with the final FX and colour. I wonder if the box set version will have the shots restored, or they'll just add it as an "extended scene" as a bonus.
^ I agree about the head-chopping scene, I mentioned before I thought the scene actually flowed better with its removal.
Agreed. It didn't have to be in there. The removal of an arm meant that gears were facing the camera, instead of the sky.
After watching the scene with the beheading, I'm glad it was removed. It actually seems to get in the way of the scene and serves no purpose to the overall story of the episode. What I don't get is the ones earlier in this thread who claimed it would be impossible to simply lift this scene and continue the episode as if nothing happened. That's exactly what they did and the end result was fine, even better perhaps.
So is it implied in the final version that he's human when he falls into the furnace? I've not seen the finished version yet.
So for ep2 they cut out the suicide Dalek. Ep3 the beheading. What will they chop from ep4? With luck, the entire romantic storyline.
The suicide Dalek was left out before the final cut, presumably so they could bring him back later if they feel like it. (Just having him take out one ship would be a bit anticlimactic, when they may feel someday like bringing him back as a sort of Dalek equivalent of Hugh Borg from TNG.)
^ Yeah, it wasn't censored, it was just cut. There's a difference. No. The dialog where he says he's half man, half engine is still there. It's just inadvertently more subtle and less explicit.
So an evil robotic villain losing his head briefly is cut because it might traumatize people. Yet burning that same character to death in a vat of molten metal after showing him murdering an old man whos trying to prevent his daughter from being drug off into slavery is just peachy. Makes perfect sense.
It was cut because of recent beheadings of westerners in the news. If any westerners had burned to death in a vat of molten gold, then that might have been cut too. I'll point out flippant dialog about beheadings were left in, though, which makes the whole thing a bit odd.
It still seems like oversensitivity to me. People are shot and stabbed every day all over the world, yet people continue to die in droves on TV programs. I could understand if it had been an execution scene, or an innocent person being beheaded that had been cut.