SPOILERS
“Smile” was another episode that seemed to hit all of the
things that make Doctor Who great: scary
monsters, a look into the future, good dynamics between Doctor and companion,
and a few comments as to how we are living our lives today. It was really good.
This episode starts with Nardole reminding the Doctor that
he is not supposed to leave Earth; he needs to guard the mysterious vault (I was reminded
a bit of Three – I hope they do not wait too long to reveal what the Doctor is
doing with the vault!). Bill is asking all the right questions about the TARDIS,
like why the chairs are so far away from the control panel. The Doctor seems
excited to be showing someone around. He gives Bill the choice of past or
future and, like Rose, she chooses future. The Doctor takes her to a near
future where the humans have evacuated Earth and they are populating other
planets.
 |
| The Doctor and Bill meet an emoji-robot. |
The Vardies right away reminded me of the Vashta Narada (another instance of bringing back similar
past monsters) and were therefore very creepy, as they tear through the humans
so quickly and leave just bones seconds later. That made some of the chase
scenes really scary; even though they were smiling, they were smiling to keep
from dying.
The coolest part was how much sense all of it made. The
robots developed their programming beyond just making the people happy: they
wanted to eliminate all sadness. When a colonist died and people became sad,
they all started being killed off because the robots thought they would be
better off. The robots created the city (they were the city) and became, in the Doctor’s eyes, a life form with
ideas and motivations. And to top off this technology-heavy episode, the day
was saved by turning them off and on again so they forgot all their new
programming. That bit made me laugh out loud.
I was expecting the commentary on our modern social media
use to be a bit more obvious, but maybe that was not the point of the episode. I
think my favorite bit was when they put on the badges and they couldn’t see
their own moods, and the badges flew to their backs. They are forced to look at
each other’s faces as they talk to each other. This is reminiscent of something
I’ve talked about in my communication classes before: texting is so blunt, and
it’s hard to figure out your tone, so we eventually created emojis to help with
that. However, emojis are no substitute for looking a person in the face and
reading all of their unspoken words.
The Doctor overshoots somehow and they end up in London in
the past. There’s an elephant on the Thames and who knows what’s going to
happen next!
9/10
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