Smile

"You've got to keep smiling."

Writer: Frank Cottrell-Boyce
Format: TV
Broadcast: 22nd April 2017
Series: 10.02

Featuring: Twelfth Doctor, Bill

Synopsis

The Doctor takes Bill to the colony world Gliese 581 D. It's a bright, sunny world, tended to by the tiny bird-like Vardies and their user interface - the Emojibots. There's just one thing missing: the colonists. As the Doctor and Bill investigate, they discover that to keep smiling is their only hope of staying alive...

Verdict

Smile was a pretty good episode but I must admit I was hoping for a little better to follow on from last week's stunning opener. I thought it was an interesting move to announce this as being Bill's first 'proper' trip in the TARDIS and although that is probably referring to the events of The Pilot, it could also be used as an opening for comic strip stories and novels to fit in. I am looking forward to new prose with the Twelfth Doctor and Bill but I think I will have to wait until after university finishes for the summer to read them, which will hopefully still be whilst the series is on television. It was great to just have a new episode the week after the last one and I must admit that after reading the DWM preview I was a little sceptical coming into this week's viewing. I was surprised with the direction the episode went in and I think the main thing that didn't work for me was the lack of other people for the Doctor and Bill to interact with. I thought the pair were brilliant together once again and I liked that we got to see them together for quite an extended period of time but there is only so much bouncing off each other that could be done. The Emojibots were intriguing and I do like the concept of a future colony being ran and aided by robots who can speak emoji. It was very cheesy though and even though I frequently use emojis when I message on social media, I really wasn't sure how feasible it was that they would survive. I think they'll adapt significantly in the short term so I really don't know what they would be like at a time where the human race was on its last legs. Bill's reaction to seeing the traumatic events that lay ahead in her planet's history was excellent and I really did enjoy her once again. She's just very fresh and vibrant and I love how she's questioning the Doctor. She really is probing him about the TARDIS being stuck as a police box which I love and I like how she thinks she's worked out why the Doctor keeps it that way. Her comment about the chairs in the console room was also wonderful. The relationship between her and Nardole, who barely featured, seems a little frosty at the minute but I am sure that will improve given time. I'm now intrigued to see what is so important in the mysterious vault that it has the Doctor staying on Earth but I don't think we will get any answers regarding that for quite some time yet. The Doctor playing Bill along a bit was good and I really am enjoying the teacher-student dynamic that is going on between the pair. The revelation that the human setup team was being used as garden fertiliser was pretty grim but it did provide us with the necessary threat in the form of the Emojibots. The fact that they were actually alive and learning was a good revelation and I thought that the way they adapted their understanding of happiness was actually quite good. It was reminiscent of the Nanogenes in The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances in what they thought healing was so that was good. The Doctor explained things well to the future gun-happy colonists but the revelation was actually quite poor for my liking. I know a number of problems are solved by simply turning things on and off again, or simply hitting the reset button, but in a Doctor Who story? Nah, I'm not having that I'm afraid. That was quite a cheap way to make everything okay again but I did like that the story finished on a positive note with an excellent lead in for the next episode. Overall though, a bit of a mixed bag but thanks to the brilliance of Capaldi and Mackie I've probably been a tad generous with my rating.

Rating: 7/10