Doctor Who – Smile

By: Sharon Kurack

Following a big introduction back into the world of time traveling and aliens, episode two proves to be the foundation of what Season Ten will bring us. Not only will it test the dynamic between The Twelfth Doctor (Peter Capaldi) and his new companion, Bill (Pearl Mackie), but it will also test Bill as a person and Twelve’s purpose in traveling once again. How will they work together as a team and, most importantly, can they trust not only each other but also themselves?

The first of hopefully many of Bill and Twelve’s misadventures opens in the TARDIS, with Bill asking a plethora of questions about the Doctor and the TARDIS. (ie: “Where’s the steering wheel?”) Nardole (Matt Lucas) literally knocks at the doors as though he is the Doctor’s mum catching him up to no good and reminds Twelve of his “oath.” Said oath is basically Twelve not going “off-world” unless there’s an emergency. (Which, by the way, he’s already broken in the first episode.) There’s a lot of mystery still to Nardole, but it’s clear he’s there to keep Twelve in line as well as take care of any emotional goings-on.

So, Bill decides on going to the future as her first “official” trip to see if it’s happy. Before the new team arrives, we see a futuristic colony in the middle of what looks like wheat fields. There’s one woman in said fields working, while another is in the colony, contacting the other (who would appear to be her sister). In an alarming scene, they meet up to find that everyone they know is dead. Enter robots that kind of resemble the Lego spacemen with emojis as faces. They start out , but as the two women process the fact that everyone they know has died, we watch one robot go from to to the same face with two tears and finally to ☠️ type of a face. Apparently, this means the robots need to kill you for being unhappy, which is exactly what happens to the two women. Small flying robots (similar to what we had seen on this week’s Supergirl, so I think there’s an homage being paid somewhere) come out from the walls and reduce them to bones and dust, save for a locket. Yikes! Not a fun future at all!

Twelve and Bill arrive at this future colony, which seems to be one of Earth’s first colonies. One of the first signs of inhabitants they see is the flock of tiny robots that seem to be buzzing with work. After a few more steps in the city, both realize their voices are amplified into their ears as an automatic Bluetooth upgrade. Enter one of the “Lego droids” with an emoji-like interface, which by the way uses emojis (the language that has survived over 1000 years) to communicate. It hands both Bill and Twelve a mood indicator badge, which attaches itself on their backs. This draws the following question: Who is collecting the data of their moods? Also, where are the other humans? It’s clear that everything in the city, including cutlery, is made for human inhabitants, but where are they? Such questions definitely remain on Twelve’s mind while Bill continues to be amazed at the concept of the future itself. (And the fact that the Doctor has two hearts.)

As they continue exploring, they enter a greenhouse of crops being fertilized by some calcium dust. (Oh…ashes to ashes…) The question of where the setup team is becomes more urgent as the Doctor not only finds a locket in a pile of dust, but also finds the source of the fertilizer: a huge container filed with bones of those not long dead (a/k/a the setup crew). This realization, of course, causes both Bill and the Doctor to worry, which then causes a nearby droid to go from super content to murder intent. The two run and when it seems like they’ve lost the droids, Bill and Twelve are surrounded. These robots are designed to make people happy and cannot process anything other than said emotion, therefore, finding the need to destroy it like a cancer. Twelve tells Bill to smile, to say everything with a smile as they sneak past in the hopes of not becoming dust.

In order to be safe from the murderous emojis, Bill and Twelve leave the city to regroup. To keep his new companion safe, the Doctor decides to leave Bill in the TARDIS while he returns to the city to blow it up, protecting the incoming colonists from being killed by the “emoticons.” Similar to Clara and all companions, Bill doesn’t listen and follows. She catches up and claims she wouldn’t leave him since he didn’t leave her serving chips. (Sometimes the helpline needs to be helped.) Accepting her assistance Twelve looks for the ship that brought the setup team, as it turns out the city itself is made of the interlocking microbots. A door would give the ship away, which one does. They enter, setting off the droids as well as life support systems. Continuing to an end of a corridor, Twelve finds a map in which he tells Bill to “guide” him to the engine room (essentially being his eyes) to blow it up. Two things: 1) The Doctor had already memorized it, so he was just keeping Bill safe; 2) Bill and Twelve seemed to have woken up the ship. Realizing the Doctor was trying to keep her safe, Bill snaps a picture of the map and makes her way to him exploring and stumbling upon an elderly, very dead woman on a dais with a virtual book of human history. (Also, we know she’s dead from the emoji on her forehead.) Curiosity getting the better of her, Bill looks through the book and sees not a very happy future for Earth. Was Earth evacuated? Why?

While the Doctor struggles to create an explosion in the engine boom (er, room), Bill finds a young boy (the same boy pictured in the locket that Twelve found). She brings him along to meet up with the Doctor, who has thrown a literal monkey wrench in the system. Twelve questions the boy, who leads them to a massive amount of pods with humans in them, cryogenically frozen, now waking up. Realizing that the colonists were already there this whole time, the Doctor rushes (like a penguin with its arse on fire again) to stop the explosion that would wipe out the human race. (oops!) Of course, the colonists waking up will create another problem: their loved ones who came before them were vaporized and made fertilizer because they were not happy. As soon as they are not happy, the Vardy (the droids they definitely are not looking for) will wipe them out, too. Talk about out of the fryer and into the dust pan…

What makes the Vardy react to what essentially is grief? Their purpose was not an evil one. Using the fable of the Magic Haddock, the Doctor explains. The robots’ role is to maintain happiness, including its many definitions. They had never heard of grief before the humans came and, therefore, could not deal correctly with it. As a result, grief (along with anything not related to happy) was identified as a plague and enemy of happiness that needed to be destroyed. The Vardy are neither evil nor good; they just need to be reset and reprogrammed. With this information, Twelve goes to the colonists now awake and tells them, which they respond how most do with the unknown and fear: violence and guns. This results in an inevitable standoff with the Lego droids. One gets shot in front of the other, who recognizes and responds with a rage/revenge emoji. Twelve realizes that the Vardy are not just robots, but alive as they have conscious recognition. He stops the attack from going further, pressing the “reset button” on the droids and wiping their memory, essentially. Instead of robots with one purpose, they are now considered indigenous life forms. As such, the Doctor serves as an ambassador to negotiate peacefully and beneficially to both them and the colonists. It seems that both life forms will be able to coexist peacefully and hopefully without any more deaths by vaporizing.

Twelve and Bill return to the TARDIS to low-key sneak back to the university before Nardole suspects them being gone. (Does anyone still wonder why the Doctor made that oath and what exactly he is guarding in the vault?) While traveling, Bill makes a few realizations regarding how the Doctor chose a police call box as the cloak for the TARDIS; he does indeed fly around time and sort things out for people who need it, like an intergalactic policeman. Before he can come up with a snarky rebuttal, they arrive home-ish. The doors open to reveal snow (No, not Jon Snow…) in London, on the Thames River, with a random elephant chilling () in the 1800s. It’s the cliffhanger for the next episode and next adventure.

Clara did once say that the navigation system was a bit “knackered,” but they’d have more fun.