Smile

If you are watching this episode just smile. Same if you are reading this review.

I doubt there has been a writer for Doctor Who that has written as many feature films as Frank Cottrell Boyce. The prolific Mr Boyce's debut story for Doctor Who, 'In the Forest of the Night' disappointed some as the story's reach exceeded its grasp.

In Smile the writer explores the possibility of technology going wrong as it miscommunicated. The Doctor brings Bill into the future, a new planet ready to be colonised but there are no people. It seems the robots have been on a rampage because the exiting crew were not happy. A bug in the robot's system that needs fixing.

Most of the episode was just a two hander with Bill and the Doctor talking and investigating as the mystery unravels. The robots are designed with emojis such as smiley faces however they could not contend with the devastating effects of grief that humans feel.

More impressive was the art design, this was just stunning. I thought the episode contained cool CGI but the basis of it were buildings in Valencia designed by Spanish architect Santiagao Calatrava.

The episode ends leading to next week's adventure which harks back to the early William Hartnell era. Maybe this could be a clue to a theme for this series as we had a glimpse of a picture of Susan in episode one.

This is, I think, Steven Moffatt and writer Frank Cottrell Boyce doing their take on the classic 4th Doctor serial The Ark in Space. The common elements being a futuristic setting where the remnants of human civilisation are in stasis preparing for a fresh start on another world but the first humans emerging from hibernation are attacked by something. It is also is pretty similar to other stories like The Beast Below, even sharing the aspect of robots which kill you if you don't react the way they want. The Doctor again is in a position to intervene and, along with Bill, tries to investigate and stop the oncoming catastrophe.

The story concept is therefore not very original which is a bit of a negative for me but they are pretty common science fiction ideas and logical ones with potential for plenty of interest and enjoyment. It works on basic levels as the story has a threat and a darkness as well as a proper science fiction feel that a lot of fans, including me, want from the series. I also liked that the Doctor mentions that he has met a few of the ships transporting remnants of the muman race before which makes this less of a remake and more of a sequel to earlier similar stories like The Ark in Space and The Beast Below. But these good basic ideas are not entirely successfully translated, in my opinion.

It has some good humour with a really strong and fun relationship between the Doctor and his new companion Bill. Pearl Mackie continues to act very well as Bill who is funny, strong willed, spirited and thoughtful. Peter Capaldi continues to be perfect in his role.

Another notable plus is the good level of production values. The setting looks convincing with nice location and cinematography plus good effects. The "emoji-bots' are well created and look realistic in construction.

Those emoji-bots are the first slight negative that detracts from the story for me, though, because I find the idea of making emojis a central part of a far future story pretty cheesy. Making fashionable things central to far future stories will always date them, in my opinion, and is just a bit of an obvious gimmick. Of all the fashions to focus on, emojis seems one of the least inspired too. It is used very well in the plot to be fair but it is not the most imaginitive idea for the threat. I would have preferred them to just be robots that responded to emotion in a less gimmicky way.

The main negative for me is that the ideas are a bit clunky in how they are delivered. The dark ideas of the death of colonists, and them being turned into fertilizer, is more morbid and clumsy in its presentation than scary and thrilling. The microbots forming the building are not entirely convincing to me, the building does not believably appear to be constructed of tiny robots. The humans they encounter are quite flimsy non-entities and the way the Doctor plans to destroy the site and the way it all pans out is not as good as it could have been. Also some of the dialogue is overly expositionary and a bit stilted at times, I think.

The plus points of the main character performances, bits of better dialogue, classic science fiction ideas and good level visual production counteract the negatives and keep this at an acceptable standard for an episode overall. I do not think it is a particularly impressive story in terms of development of ideas but it ends up an ok filler episode for me on a similar level to its predecessor The Beast Below.

My Rating: 6.5/10.

Series 10 Episode Ranking: 14th out of 14.

Perhaps the greatest thing about DOCTOR WHO is you never know you're getting next. The flexibility of a plot premise involving a time machine means like the Martini advert it's a case of anytime , any place any where. Whatever the other merits of RTD he did bring a strong element of variety. Even the lowly regarded season two of NuWho had a two part out and out horror story followed by a one part story involving a black romantic comedy with meta-fictional aspects. This type of variety hasn't been a Moffat strong point but he has least tried to use new writers and with a fairly regarded screenwriter in Frank Cottrell Boyce it'd be interesting to see how a non fan writes for the show

!!!! SUGGESTIVE SPOILERS !!!!

The bitter irony is that with this episode I felt I was watching something akin to DOCTOR WHO bingo. Eyes down and off we go . A location similar to the episode New Earth and tech bots gone wild like we saw in The Empty Child /The Doctor Dances which was remade as The Curse Of The Black Pearl and influenced a couple of more stories . It's almost as if there's now a rule every series must feature an adventure featuring tech-bots gone mad . Add to this the premise of constantly smiling or else and it's not all that different being told to not blink . Add to this a couple of other plot turns and ideas from the classic show including ending the narrative with an explosion and you've ironically got from a new writer a medley megamix of the show he's writing for

That said on its own merits Smile is fairly enjoyable entertainment and it could be a lot worse with Bill constantly bringing up her sexuality at every opportunity and Nardole being used for unneeded comic relief. Capaldi too is likable probably because there's no zany quirks written in to his character and it's a pity his tenure will probably be remembered as a lost opportunity but certainly so far this is starting to shape up as a consistent season

It's all painfully reminiscent, past pleasures previously spent, skating over thin ice, please take my advice, find something brand new to invent - can't be that hard.