DOCTOR WHO: SERIES 10 EPISODE 2 - SMILE
Smile. The Doctor takes Bill to a spectacular city on a distant planet, but where are all the colonists? A band of 'cute' robots hold the deadly answer.
So Doctor Who this week takes us into the future, as we've never quite seen it before until this point in the series. Bill decides she wants to go on a trip into the future, to see what the future holds in the store, the TARDIS lands just outside this city and in this city there are these little robots which are classed as cute, and they communicate through emojis. Emoji's being a big thing these days, they've fitted into the modern culture of our society through social media, more or less everyone uses them. But the planet is empty, where is everyone? and it brings up a mysterious mystery for the Doctor and Bill to solve as the story goes along.
Now for me, the first two episodes of a new series of Doctor Who are very important because it is Episode Two which is the episode which sets up the whole series because Episode One's got the job of the introduction.
Episode Two are sort of like the comic relief episodes which gets the audience in a cherry mood, give them a little bit of laugh because as the series later goes on, things start to get more serious.
As far as Episode Two goes for me in the past, The End of World I'm not so keen on, Tooth and Claw was really good, The Shakespeare Code - I like that, Fires of Pompeii - It's ok, Beast Below is bad, Day of the Moon which was the second half of that two part story with the Silence - I enjoyed it but it's not one of my favourites, Dinosaurs on a Spaceship was good, Into the Dalek was good, The Witch's familiar (Second half of the first two-parter with Davros) Yes that was good but again not a personal favourite of mine. So it's a mix and match of what I think of how well the series has been set up. In the case of Smile, Series Ten has got off to a steady start.
In short keeping things brief and to the point, I feel like this story had a lot of good ideas in it, but they all just didn't quite add up, the ending was particularly weak. The emoji bots were not as dramatically exciting as the trailers made them out to be, they didn't do much at all and they're not scary. I felt the pacing of it was a bit slow and boring, there just wasn't enough tension and it lacked suspense for me.
The location, I loved. It was shot in Valencia, very beautiful, efficiently exuberant and overall just interesting.
As far as The Doctor and Bill's relationship is concerned, that was a main focus point of the story because, for the majority of it, it's just the two of them. I feel like I need to see more episodes in order, to sum up, what they're relationship is about, It's still trying to do the teacher and student thing which was established last week but also trying to give Bill an identity in working out who she thinks the Doctor is. You can't sum up their what their relationship is in one story is what I'm saying. I'm still not sure whether I like Bill or not. That's something I'll later decide for myself.
I liked how events led into next week's episode which looks very interesting, especially from what I've read about it, in Doctor Who magazine.
Overall a good effort, but doesn't quite do it for me. So it's going to have to be a 5/10.
What I will add to that is the title was a lot better than "The Emoji Planet" which was what it was rumored to be.
Next week: Thin Ice.
