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Spoilers for “The Robot Revolution.”

The start of any season of Doctor Who is important, doubly so when there’s a new co-star to introduce. “The Robot Revolution” has to get us to fall in love with Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu), ensnare new fans and keep existing ones hooked. Especially since it’s the second of two series that Disney paid for, meaning it’s got to do well enough to keep the money flowing.

We open “17 years ago” with Belinda Chandra staring at the stars next to her boyfriend, Alan Budd (Jonny Green). It’s an awkward teenage date, with Alan clearly trying to win the heart of his beau by buying her one of those star adoption certificates. In 2025, Belinda is now a nurse at a busy London hospital where, in the background, the Doctor is searching for her.

Belinda goes home to bed, and we see that she’s got the star ownership certificate framed on her wall. But she’s rudely awoken by a squad of retro-futuristic ‘50s robots in a Tintin rocket who have come to abduct both her and the certificate. The Doctor reaches her home just in time to see the rocket take off, and cue the opening credits.

The certificate wasn’t a gag present, and she is actually queen of the planet BelindaChandra, populated by BelindaChandrians (I’m calling them humans from now on). The Doctor gives chase in the TARDIS but both the rocket and TARDIS get caught in a vaguely-defined time fissure. When Belinda arrives, she’s greeted by the human Sasha55, who tells her the robots are in charge, having overthrown and subjugated the people in a bloody uprising a decade prior.

          “Oh, this is a bit like Jupiter Ascending,” I wrote in my notes.

Belinda is taken to a throne room where she’s told that she must merge with the planet’s evil ruling supercomputer, the AI Generator. AI Generator, all skull shapes and Tesla coils, intends to bond with Belinda. She is shown an animated demonstration of her fate, as she is wrapped in machine parts and made into an unthinking cyborg.

          “Oh, that’s like the scary bit from Superman III,” I wrote in my notes.

Who’s been lurking in the background of the scene all along? The Doctor, who has adopted the title of Planetary Historian. (Thanks to the time fissure, he arrived here six months ahead of the rocket, the Robots seized the TARDIS and he’s been working with the rebellion. He’s even got a new companion, Sasha55, who he’s promised to take to the stars when this is all over.) He tells Belinda the robots can’t, for some reason, hear every ninth word spoken, and gives her a coded message telling her he, and the rebellion, are here to rescue her. In the ensuing fight, Sasha55 is vaporized, much to the Doctor’s admittedly brief horror and grief.

The surviving rebels, along with a little Roomba bot assigned to clean Queen Belinda’s pathway…

          “Oh, like the floor-cleaning robot M-O from Wall-E,” I wrote in my notes.

… escape to a teleporter, after which the Doctor disables the Roomba to ensure the robots can’t track them down, then kisses the ‘bot by way of apology. Then comes time for the episode to stop while we see the Doctor and Belinda interact properly for the first time. The Doctor was told about Belinda’s plight by someone from their future, and he can’t say more lest he muddle the timelines.

The time fracture both vessels passed through has caused plenty of time-bending issues, like the fact the robots have their own copy of Belinda’s star certificate. But it’s not a copy, it’s the same object from another point in time, and nobody knows how or why they have it. Belinda, like Ruby Sunday before her, is trope-aware enough to know that two of the same object from different points in time cannot occupy the same space, lest it cause an explosion.

           “Oh, like in Timecop!,” I wrote in my notes.

There are wounded at the base, and Belinda instantly kicks into nurse mode, grabbing IVs and treating patients. She’s quick to take charge and has no patience for nonsense, quick to defend herself from any hint of condescension when the Doctor suggests something “timey-wimey” is going on. She refuses to allow anyone to fight her battles for her and is determined to grab the narrative and shape it her way, no matter the cost. So, she sneaks off, reactivates the Roomba and offers herself to the robots in exchange for them sparing the lives of the rebels.

Belinda and the Doctor are taken to meet the AI Generator which turns out to be… the AL Generator. When Belinda was kidnapped by the robots, she mentioned her ex Alan had bought the certificate, and so they went to kidnap him as well. But the time fracture meant Alan arrived a decade earlier, fused with the machine (becoming a creepy cyborg) and started the robot uprising.

Even so, Belinda’s happy to sacrifice herself to him until she spots Alan holding his copy of the star certificate. She opts to Timecop the two pieces of paper together, causing a big timey-wimey explosion that only the Doctor can pull her out of. Belinda is safe, but the Doctor mentions that he’s now intertwined with Belinda’s timestream. Alan, meanwhile, has been regressed to a sperm on the floor that the Roomba bot quickly mops away.

Reunited with the TARDIS, the Doctor scans Belinda and reveals he’s already met her descendant — Mundy Flynn (also Varada Sethu) from last season’s “Boom.” Belinda may be curious as to how someone that far removed from her may be identical, but she’s not embracing the mystery. She’s angry with the Doctor for scanning her without consent and that he’s treating her like a puzzle to be solved.

Having seen Sasha55 die, she knows trekking around with the Doctor is dangerous, and wants to get back to May 24, 2025. But the TARDIS won’t land on present-day Earth, and even the Cloister Bell begins ringing a warning. They open the TARDIS doors to see empty space before the Doctor decides to take her back home “the long way round.”

Once the ship disappears, a series of objects start to float in front of the camera: A smashed up black cab, the twisted wreckage of the Eiffel Tower, Belinda’s star adoption certificate and a calendar with all the days in May but the 25th ticked off. Uh-oh.

It’s a lot to get through in such a short episode

Like a lot of Disney-era Who, “The Robot Revolution” feels overstuffed to the point of bursting. On one hand, nothing overstays its welcome. On the other, it feels like the show is burning through a movie’s worth of plot on fast-forward. It’s hard to get a tangible sense of the stakes given how rushed everything is, and there’s a lot of telling, rather than showing. We’re told the planet is under the brutal thumb of an evil overlord but it plays out as little red ships firing at buildings in the digital matte paintings. We’re told Alan is a creep but we never really get any sense of that until after he’s revealed as the villain. We’re told the Doctor is operating on instructions from a figure from his own future, but it’d be nice if some of this was depicted.

Davies was pivotal in reviving Doctor Who and building the cultural juggernaut it became under his leadership. His role in the show’s history is secure but, even so, his Disney-era series seem to be in thrall to the work of his own successor, Steven Moffat. “The Robot Revolution” features a macguffin found inside a mundane trinket, a split narrative and time-bending shenanigans. It’s not that Moffat owns these ideas but you can almost feel Davies trying to bend his less formal, more character-driven style into something else. A cynic might suggest Davies is reacting to the slight of not having a single credited episode in Doctor Who Magazine’s most recent poll of the series’ greatest, while Moffat has five.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if the slightly frantic, gappy nature of this script is a deliberate ploy to lay the framework for the rest of the season. But, even so, you can feel a degree of straining for a storytelling model that doesn’t quite work.

If the script is the weakest part of the episode, then the production design has to take the crown for strongest. The retro-futuristic robots call to mind a bright red Ford Thunderbird or Chevy Bel Air while the cleaning robot is clearly styled on a VW Beetle. It’s a rather humanistic design I wish the robovac makers of today would emulate.

Behind the scenes

Doctor Who is a regular source of gossip, especially given the permanently tenuous nature of the star role. It’s easy to say the lead is about to quit and for that to sound true, given they leave after three or four years in the role anyway. There are a number of recent reports suggesting Ncuti Gatwa has already quit the show, or is about to. Many of them also suggest the BBC and Disney are refusing to greenlight new episodes until they see how successful this season is. In addition, the BBC says funding cuts and inflation has seen its budget fall by £1 billion (around $1.3 billion) in real terms since 2010. It doesn’t help that, when asked directly about the future of the series in an interview with (the BBC’s youth-orientated news show) Newsround, Russell T. Davies opted to equivocate in a way that suggests the show is about to back on ice.

I mention this because of the sequence where Belinda defeats Alan with the certificate, and the Doctor pulls her out. He says she needed a Time Lord to absorb the enormous amount of energy kicked out when she touched the paper together. The Doctor then clutched at his back as if he was in a lot of pain, but shrugged it off and was fine for the rest of the episode. Fans with long memories, however, know that absorbing a lot of energy from the time vortex is what killed Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor back in 2005. Well, that and Eccleston’s decision to leave.

Mrs. Flood Corner

It seems Mrs. Flood enjoys moving in next door to whoever is winding up as this year’s companion. While being abducted, she calls to her neighbor to call the police and tell her parents she loves them. As the rocket lifts off, she tells the audience that we haven’t seen her, and goes back indoors to avoid encountering the Doctor, who sprints out in pursuit.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/entertainment/tv-movies/doctor-who-the-robot-revolution-review-meet-belinda-chandra-190054697.html?src=rss 

Apple’s new Passwords app (introduced with iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and macOS Sequoia) is a big leap forward in making password management simple and user-friendly for Apple users, even if it’s not as robust as other password managers. If you’ve ever fumbled through Safari settings to find a saved login or toggled through iCloud Keychain menus to edit credentials, the Passwords app is for you. It’s designed to give you a dedicated home for all your saved login credentials, passkeys, Wi-Fi passwords and two-factor authentication codes, all in one secure, easy-to-navigate interface.

What is the Apple Passwords app?

The Passwords app is Apple’s standalone password manager. While Apple users have long been able to save passwords using iCloud Keychain, the actual management experience was buried within Settings or Safari. With the Passwords app, Apple has turned what was once a tucked-away feature into a full-fledged application that works across iPhone, iPad and Mac.

The app holds all your saved login credentials, plus passkeys, verification codes and Wi-Fi passwords. Everything is securely stored, synced via iCloud and protected by Face ID, Touch ID or your device passcode. With it, you can more easily search for logins, get security recommendations, share credentials with family members and store two-factor authentication codes all in one place.

How to access the Passwords app on iPhone

To access the Passwords app on your iPhone:

Make sure your device is updated to iOS 18 or later.

Find the Passwords app using Spotlight Search, the App Library or your Home Screen.

Tap the app icon and authenticate using Face ID, Touch ID or your device passcode.

Once you’ve opened the app, you’ll see your saved accounts organized alphabetically. A search bar at the top makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. Logins are grouped by category, including:

Passkeys (passwordless login credentials)

Codes (verification codes for methods like two-factor authentication)

Wi-Fi

Security (compromised or reused passwords)

Tapping any item shows detailed information, including login URLs, usernames, passwords and any associated notes.

How to add and edit passwords manually

Most passwords are saved automatically when you use Safari to log in to websites, but you can also add entries manually, including verification codes and passkeys. To manually add a login:

Open the Passwords app.

Tap the + icon in the bottom-right corner.

Choose New Password.

Enter the site or service name, username and password.

Add any optional notes using the Notes field.

Tap Save to finish.

To edit a saved password:

Open the relevant entry.

Tap Edit.

Update any details as needed.

Select Set up code (if required), where you will be prompted to enter a setup key or scan a QR code with the camera.

Tap Save to save your changes.

How to enable and use Autofill with the Passwords app

Autofill makes logging in fast and seamless. Instead of typing out usernames and passwords, your iPhone can automatically suggest saved credentials when you visit a login page.

To enable Autofill:

Go to Settings > Apps > Passwords.

View Autofill Settings.

Make sure Autofill Passwords and Passkeys are turned on.

Choose Passwords as your default autofill provider.

Once Autofill is enabled, Safari and many third-party apps will offer login suggestions from the Passwords app when you tap into a username or password field. If there are multiple logins for a site, you’ll be prompted to select the right one.

When creating a new login in Safari, you’ll also be asked to save the new password to the Passwords app. This ensures it’s available across all your Apple devices.

How to sync passwords to your devices with iCloud Keychain

The Passwords app uses iCloud Keychain to sync your saved credentials across your Apple devices. If you use multiple devices like an iPhone, iPad and Mac, enabling Keychain ensures your logins stay consistent everywhere. To enable iCloud Keychain:

Open Settings.

Tap your Apple ID at the top of the screen.

Tap iCloud > Passwords and Keychain.

Turn on Sync this iPhone (or iPad).

You may be prompted to authenticate or confirm your identity with a verification code. Once it’s set up, all your saved credentials will be securely synced via iCloud. This also allows the Passwords app to work in harmony with macOS and iPadOS, meaning you can view and edit your saved data from any of your Apple devices.

How to use passkeys and verification codes

The Passwords app supports two newer authentication features that improve both security and convenience: passkeys and verification codes.

Passkeys

Passkeys are a new way to sign in without using a traditional password. Instead, they use Face ID, Touch ID or a device passcode to confirm your identity. They are intended to be more phishing-resistant since they can’t be reused or copied across services.

If a website or app supports passkeys, Safari will prompt you to create one when signing in or registering. Once saved, the passkey is stored in the Passwords app.

To view and manage passkeys:

Open the Passwords app.

Tap Passkeys.

You’ll see a Passkey section if one has been saved.

Passkeys work across Apple devices and can even be used on non-Apple platforms by scanning a QR code when prompted.

Verification codes

Verification codes are used in two-factor authentication (2FA) systems. The Passwords app can now generate these codes automatically.

To set up a verification code:

Open the Passwords app.

Tap the login entry you want to edit.

Tap Edit > Set Up Code.

Scan a QR code provided by the website, or enter the code manually.

The app will generate a six-digit code that refreshes every 30 seconds. The code will also autofill when you log into a compatible website or app, saving you the hassle of switching to a separate authenticator app.

How to share passwords securely

You can share saved credentials with others using iMessage. This is helpful for families or teams who need access to shared accounts. The passwords are sent via end-to-end encrypted messages, ensuring privacy and security. To share a password:

Open the Passwords app.

Tap the entry you want to share.

Tap the Share button (a square with an arrow).

Choose a recipient in Messages.

How to check for weak or compromised passwords

Apple includes built-in security checks for your saved credentials.

To view security recommendations:

Open the Passwords app.

Tap Security.

You’ll see a list of passwords that are:

Reused across multiple accounts

Easily guessable

Involved in known data breaches

You can tap any entry to update the password directly. This feature helps improve your overall security hygiene with minimal effort.

How secure is the Passwords app?

Apple uses end-to-end encryption for everything in the Passwords app. That means your data is encrypted on your device and can only be decrypted by your device. Even Apple doesn’t have access to your credentials.

Accessing the app requires authentication via Face ID, Touch ID or your passcode. And if someone steals your device, your saved passwords remain locked behind biometric security.

Additionally, Apple participates in the FIDO Alliance, promoting secure, passwordless logins and helping drive adoption of technologies like passkeys.

Using the Passwords app on iPad and Mac

The Passwords app is also available on:

iPad tablets running iPadOS 18 or later

Mac laptops and desktops running macOS Sequoia or later

On iPad, the app works the same way as on iPhone, offering full management of your saved credentials. On Mac, you can find Passwords in System Settings or by using Spotlight Search.

Syncing is handled automatically through iCloud Keychain. If you’re logged into the same Apple ID on all your devices, your passwords will stay in sync.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/apps/how-to-use-the-apple-passwords-app-120026715.html?src=rss