(It was a little tough to find a picture from this episode - when I did a Google Image search for "Doctor Who Smile," it mostly gave me adorable shots of various Doctors grinning. Thanks, Google - I needed that.)
Emoji
robots! Yep, what a long, strange trip
it’s been from 1963. Plotwise, this episode
has some hitches, more so than “The Pilot,” but it still hits home where it
counts, so my tentative optimism for the season continues.
For her
first official, intentional TARDIS adventure, the Doctor takes Bill to an early
off-world human colony. The landscape is
exquisite, the city is sleek and gleaming, and everything about it seems
designed for perfection. The only
problem? No humans. As our heroes investigate why the paradise colony
is deserted, they learn that the aforementioned emoji robots who keep things
humming are hiding something behind their smiley faces.
That description
sounds a little dorky, and seeing the emoji robots out of context in the
previews, I thought it sounded a little dorky, too. However, within the episode, there’s more
logic and less gimmick to it, and the story takes the conceit to some interesting
places. A monster that’s drawn to your
negative emotions is interesting, and the idea of having to feign happiness in
order to stay alive is pretty neat nightmare fuel (plus, it gives us Twelve
making these really awkward grins in moments of great peril, which is totally
fun to watch.) And really, the set-up of
the colony itself and the robots’ place within it is decently cool.
Where the
story falls down, for me, is in the resolution.
I like pretty much everything before maybe the last ten minutes, and
then it gets unfortunately slapdash, like the show painted itself into a corner
and realized there was no time left to come up with anything beyond a rather
hapzhazard deus ex machina to get out
of it. I thought writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce
had a similar issue with “In the Forest of the Night” back in series 8 – strong
concept, but in the end, the execution doesn’t quite pull it through.
That
said, I’m not bothered as much by it just because Twelve and Bill are so much
fun together. I like Bill’s boundless
curiosity, her genuine love for new experiences, the way she puts things together,
and the realistic way the things she’s seeing on her travels affect her. It’s a delight to see the world of this
episode through her amazed eyes, and while I wouldn’t say she gets any huge
victories here, she’s great support throughout.
She’s smart and observant and has a talent for asking the right
questions at the right moments, all good things to have in a companion.
Having
Twelve going up against baddies that need you to be happy, “cranky Doctor” against
emoji robots, is going to be an obvious winner, although this episode is also a
good reminder that “cranky Doctor” isn’t a very complete description of
Twelve. In truth, he’s always been one
to show a range of emotions, and I think getting a new companion has
reinvigorated him further – he and Bill play off of each other beautifully
here. However, he does spend good chunks of this episode puzzled, troubled,
horrified, angry, and so on, and Peter Capaldi’s expressive face gives the
emoji robots plenty to dislike.
Also? He has a really lovely bit
towards the beginning that I loved, explaining how the TARDIS works to Bill.
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