Doctor Who – Smile Review

The new series of Doctor Who is continuing to make me smile.

The future human colony where something has gone wrong. It’s a classic story line that has appeared countless times in the sci-fi genre. It’s a story that Doctor Who has frequently used before (from 1977’s The Face of Evil to 2008’s The Doctor’s Daughter). However even though we’ve seen this type of story done before it’s a story archetype that can still work if it’s done well, Smile manages to do it well.

The real strength of this episode was watching the relationship and friendship between Bill and the Doctor develop. The Doctor is pushing Bill and she’s pushing him back. I love how Bill keeps asking questions and is very curious about all the new situations that she’s encountering each week. The way Bill reacts to stuff with enthusiasm and curiosity is really interesting to watch, because let’s be honest going to a city in the future on another planet would be cool! Peter Capaldi’s 12^th Doctor and Pearl Mackie’s Bill Potts are just such a good companion/Doctor team, in the same sort of way that it was always a joy to watch David Tennant and Catherine Tate sparking off each other.

I think one of the weakest aspects of this story were the aliens/monsters. The Vardy were an interesting concept though I feel that they would have been even stronger if they’d had chance to be a little bit more developed. And whilst moral ambiguity is interesting to play with, this is Doctor Who and sometimes you just want a big bad monster. When I first saw the Emojibots I thought that they were designed to sell toys, I definitely think that is the case after having seen the episode! However cool robots are a staple of Doctor Who – from K1 to K9 – so I’m not complaining too much about them!

In terms of the ongoing story arc I’m pretty happy with the level that they’re setting it at so far. There was another reference to the vault that the Doctor is protecting and another mention of the Doctor making an oath but otherwise it wasn’t touched on to heavily. Enough to tease but not enough to dominate the plot of this episode.

This episode was always going to be defined as the ‘Bill Potts takes her first proper trip in the TARDIS’ episode. To that end it works well in helping us get to know Bill more. This episode certainly had a few tonal similarities with The End of The World and The Beast Below, the first proper trips in the TARDIS for Rose Tyler and Amy Pond. There was even a brief allusion to Starship UK which featured in The Beast Bellow! I suspect that Smile much like those episodes won’t come to be an all-time favourite but it was an episode that epitomised much of what makes Doctor Who great.

Basically, it’s not an all-time classic episode but there’s a lot to like in Smile.

Also, I am definitely going to be reviewing the episodes of this series of Doctor Who each week. But I promise that I am going to be getting out some more non-Doctor Who blog posts soon!