An Hour of Who a Day: August 9: "Smile"

August 9: "Smile"

Promo pic for "Smile" (from BBC One - Doctor Who, Series 10, Smile)
©BBC

"Smile" sees the return of writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce, who was last responsible for series 8's rather underwhelming "In the Forest of the Night". I'm happy to report that "Smile" is definitely better than that, although it's not a perfect episode.

For one thing, there's an actual proper threat here, rather than the abstract solar flare one we got in "In the Forest of the Night". The opening of the story establishes that there are killer robots all over this colony world being set up, as one of the colonists tries to convince another to remain happy or else the flying robot swarms will kill them. (And yes, it's The Sarah Jane Adventures' own Mina Anwar as one of the colonists -- maybe this means that Rani's descendants survive into the future...) This is the environment that the Doctor takes Bill to on her first proper TARDIS trip.

The best part of the episode is the first half, with just Bill and the Doctor wandering around the empty city (filmed on location in Valencia, Spain, at the City of Arts and Sciences -- and it looks gorgeous), talking to each other. If you weren't sure about Pearl Mackie last episode (which I suppose is a remote possibility), then this one cements her as absolutely delightful, as she spends her time being frightened by the killer robots but also delighted by all the futuristic things around her. Mackie walks the line between the two perfectly, and so Bill's conversations with the Doctor about his two hearts and his Scottish accent, smelling rosemary twenty light years away from Earth, and pointing out that the Doctor is the help line are pitch perfect. In some ways it's a shame that the actual storyline has to interfere and start introducing additional characters.

Not convinced by the idea of the Emojibots, though. It's admittedly a cute idea, but it seems like the sort of thing that will age rather badly in ten years or so, reduced to cultural debris alongside such things as the misguided Emoji Movie. Which is a problem not because they shouldn't be making episodes that aren't current (because they should be), but because it's really hard to believe that a human culture in the distant future would still know and care about emojis. Maybe I'm wrong -- feel free to throw this in my face in 2027 -- but I suspect I'm not. But emojis aside, making the robots look a bit sad and dumpy (much like Marvin the Paranoid Android in the movie version of Hitchhiker's) but also a threatening presence is the sort of bizarre disconnect that Doctor Who lives for, and on that level they work quite well.

But like I said, the episode sags a bit once it has to introduce the rest of the plot. I'm not sure if it's because the concept is so abstract or because they just don't pull it off, but the idea of grief-as-plague doesn't really land. It's certainly a hard idea to get across, and the explanation they give isn't as clear as it should be. When they see that people are unhappy, the reaction of the Vardy isn't to do things until they're happy again but to kill the unhappy people? We're supposed to think this Happiness Patrol-esque result is a consequence of poor programming (so kind of like the nanobots in "The Empty Child"/"The Doctor Dances"), but it seems like a really weird logical jump to me. And of course it doesn't help that the first adult awake seems to be a bit of a pig-headed fool, immediately jumping to get the guns to use against a cloud of tiny robots that their entire city is made from. There's dumb and then there's that guy. (Also, pro tip: maybe don't your name your colony ship Erehwon, after a Samuel Butler story about a happy colony that is revealed to be not as idyllic as it first appears? That's just tempting fate right there.)

So yeah, the ending bit is something of a letdown (although it's only annoying rather than terrible), but the first half, with the Doctor and Bill exploring and poking around, more than makes up for it, and the goodwill that engenders is enough to carry it through the weaker second half. I'm glad we got such a great showcase for the two of them, and I would happily watch loads more of the Doctor and Bill hanging out together. They, more than anything else, make "Smile" work.