“Emoji. It speaks emoji,” no really, tell me how this series is great, youthful, and not predominantly written by white men who are now at least over 40 years old. Frank Cottrell-Boyce and I don’t get along for several reasons. Mostly due to the fact that he has written very little that’s worth watching and absolutely nothing that is worth watching twice. “Smile,” while another basic sci-fi concept of “robots are killing humans because of programming” story is good in theory, the way it is taken is something I just don’t care about.

Are we also going to address the fact that the Doctor, with the concept of the word Doctor meaning healer, kills a sentient creature? During “In The Forest of the Night,” the idea was that kids shouldn’t take medication to stay healthy, and orphans should commit suicide, as was stated by someone to an orphan in front of her orphan boyfriend! Calm. The writer for this is a moron that should never have been handed one episode of Doctor Who, never mind two of them. I think the only redeeming factor from the whole episode was Ralf Little, well, at least for two minutes.

“Smile” is one of those episodes from Series 10 you remember because of the emoji robots. Back in my day, they’d be called emoticon robots. I’ll admit it is not the worst episode of Series 10. Next time we’ve got to battle Sarah Dollard’s “Thin Ice.” If you think I’m angry at Frank for his nonsense, just wait until I’m shouting at Peter. For this story, robots that have grown sentient in a way that’s never explained, are programmed to keep the human colonists happy on their new world, but grief is rife throughout the set-up crew.

I’ve said it already, I think the concept on its own is solid and had legs, but it is the practice that’s nosediving into Springfield gorge after Homer. Bill has her moments, but I don’t think anything that happens stays with her for the next suspenseful reveal of X or Y happening around or to her. For example, moments after it is revealed that the garden for this new colony is using a calcium-based fertilizer, the Doctor has said “stay in the TARDIS, it is safe.” What’s that followed up by? The two of them are wandering about the massive structure made of nano-bots that were trying to kill them minutes before with no immediate threat. Meanwhile, Bill is as happy as can be.

I know it is jumping ahead quite a bit and I’ll get to Ralf Little in a minute, but can we speak about the end? The Doctor bumbles about and tells everyone what to do (as is usual) while Bill is blindly backing him up, or at least it seems that way. Quite literally, the scene goes: The Doctor is trying to defuse a threat and fear, a flash of white happens because the Doctor does a thing with metaphors, and suddenly Bill knows everything with no explanation. I like Bill in a moment-to-moment situation, but we’ve already established she’s hungry for knowledge but she’s “stupid” enough to be impressionable.

Throughout the episode, we see that she’s stubborn, always asking questions, and willing to jump into the fray. However, she isn’t on Clara’s level of “I know X space fact because of off-screen logic.” That’s a phrase best used to describe two things, Clara’s entire existence, and Chibnall’s Doctor Who: off-screen logic connecting puzzle pieces that we’re supposed to be able to use to get to the conclusion. Oddly enough, those are also the two worst periods of New-Who. “Smile” doesn’t stray entirely into that level of craptitude, it is let down by simply rushing the end so it is the Doctor and Bill that save the day.

I know it is a bit passé to review something by re-writing it, but the obvious solution was right there. In the end, the Doctor wipes the minds of the robots and makes everyone pass out (off-screen logic as to why), and when Ralf Little and the small crew wake up they hold their guns up to the robots that were trying to kill them. In that, the Doctor explains that he’s reprogrammed them and hit the reset button. It is a fresh start but most importantly, the humans and Vardy (the robots) must learn to coexist. In the episode’s own logic, the humans attempted to found this utopian colony because of all the wars and gutter sniping that led to death and destruction on Earth.

90% of that I wouldn’t touch, it is the regular plotting to get to the solution. The trouble I have is that the Doctor plays an emissary for the whole thing, and does so one-sidedly. It is established that the Vardy are now the native inhabitants of the planet (and are sentient now), they have the right to control what happens to their planet and defend themselves. We don’t get the moment when the guns are dropped. In fact, one line about all that war and human history we see early on could have been used. Instead, we get a cheap joke about rent that is followed up by the Vardy using the British Pound as the currency far off into the future.

I know his stock has gone down quite a bit from the early to mid-00s when he was in The Royle Family and Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, but surely Ralf Little could have been so much more in the episode. Both he and Kris Marshall worked on hugely popular 2000s shows, then disappeared into something called Death in Paradise, never to be seen by a human being ever again. In any other episode or series, he’d be the lead episode companion in a working-class allegory. Here he is just “idiot action-man 4-Delta” on page 67 of the Doctor Who story bible. He has nothing to work with, just a few standard lines that anyone outside the Salford arts theatre could have said.

That’s what the episode was overall, a standard episode made for anyone you need to properly settle into the role you’ve established in their introductory episode. What did Bill actually bring to the table here? An understanding of a smiley face? Acting shocked when she saw humanity destroys itself, and comforted the kid before backing up the Doctor blindly. At least, that’s all I think anyone is supposed to glean from her words and actions. As I said, I don’t think Frank’s work is something worth watching more than once, and this is a testament to that.

Ultimately, “Smile” is a nothing episode that fails to accomplish all that it is aiming to do. If this was supposed to change Bill’s character to tell her, “Yes, humanity has been horrible to those things we don’t understand, we are always going to do that,” great job, that’s what I really want from an uplifting family show about a fun alien. If the sarcasm wasn’t thick enough for you, that’s exactly why I hate Peter’s Doctor. The best bits of Doctor Who and the best bits of Peter’s run are those moments when it says humanity can change and we can improve. Just look at the speech from “The Zygon Inversion,” and ignore how stupid UNIT are in that church scene with Rebecca Front.

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Doctor Who "Smile"

4

Score

4.0/10

Pros

• Rani's mum survived.
• Scotland demanding independence everywhere.
• Peter being rather naughty.

Cons

• Frank Cottrell-Boyce's awfully dull writing.
• Where is the moment where they put the guns down?