C+Q - Smile (2017)
Overall I do like Smile, despite having some problems with it. This episode is Doctor Who operating on default settings; just the Doctor and a companion wandering around a strange new world together for 45 minutes. Luckily, Doctor Who boiled down to its most basic form is still better than most things on TV, which is why the basic format has remained the same since 1963. That being said, there is a sense that this episode was made for other people; specifically, people who've never seen Doctor Who before. As far as opening episodes go, I'd take The Magician's Apprentice and The Witch's Familiar over The Pilot and Smile any day because those were Doctor Who episodes made for people who watch Doctor Who episodes. It didn't feel the need to explain who Davros or Missy or the Daleks or Clara were; it just hit the road running. Smile feels like Doctor Who consciously holding back so casual viewers can catch up. On the one hand, I can see why this is necessary. New viewers need somewhere to jump on, especially now that previous jumping-on points like Rose or The Eleventh Hour are pretty outdated. On the other hand, The Pilot managed to provide a good starting point for new fans without boring old timers like me. With Smile, I'm left wondering how long I have to wait before Doctor Who gets good again. The promise of a multi-Master story is the only thing keeping me going. THAT is going to be the story for Doctor Who fans. Smile is the series padding we need to endure to get there.
But even as a stripped-back boring version of Doctor Who for the new fans to get on board with, it isn't as good as it could've been. Don't misunderstand me: I'm not opposed to new fans. I'm not some ridiculous fandom gatekeeper who draws a hard line between 'hardcore' and 'casual' audiences. Anyone who thinks their love of a TV show makes them any more or less 'hardcore' in any aspect of their life likely needs to get one. I understand the necessity of bringing the show back to basics once in a while, especially when introducing a new cast member. The problem is that Bill is completely underserved here because the episode is more concerned with introducing us to the show than with introducing us to the show's new lead. For the most part, this episode is the Doctor and Bill exploring a stunning alien city together, but Bill is given no depth. With Clara's second episode, The Rings of Akhaten, the whole thing revolves around her backstory, her emotions, the loss of her mother, and her reactions to the new world she finds herself in. Here, all Bill gets to do is reiterate stuff about the mythology that anyone who's read the wikipedia summary would know. When the Doctor is rambling about the city and Bill is trying to get him to stop and clarify his comment about having two hearts, I related far more to the Doctor in that moment than I did to Bill. I wanted to reach through the screen and shout "Yes, Bill, we know! 'Dr Who has two hearts' is basic stuff! Shut up and let him exposit, please!" I absolutely adore Bill Potts and I absolutely adore Pearl Mackie as Bill Potts but this episode just gave her nothing. And for a new companion's second episode, that's sort of inexcusable. We're going into the third episode next week just as unfamiliar with her as we were at the end of The Pilot.
Let's talk about some good things for a while. Seeings as I mentioned it, I guess a good place to start would be that cliffhanger taking us into the third episode, which felt like something straight out of Hartnell's era. I feel bad for mentioning it now because it sounds like I'm ripping off Elizabeth Sandifer's review, but the appearance of the elephant really did put me in mind of The Ark. If there's one thing Smile does well by boiling down Doctor Who to its most basic form, it's that it manages to find something approaching an all-encompassing Doctor Who aesthetic that the show doesn't really have. Or at least not in the way other long-running franchises do, like Star Wars or James Bond. The style of Doctor Who changes so often that it's hard to look at something and say definitively that it feels more or less 'Doctor Whoy' than anything else, whereas James Bond practically has its own genre of music. That being said, Smile is the most Doctor Whoy episode of Doctor Who we've had in a while. Murray Gold's synth score, Peter Capaldi's note-perfect performance that captures Hartnell and Pertwee and the two Bakers, Bill's slightly retro outfit, everything about this adventure just felt timelessly Whoy to me, which is ironic considering that the use of emojis will date beautifully (though probably not as beautifully as the use of Toxic in The End of the World or the use of a police box as Dr Who's time machine).
The most obviously good thing about this episode is the amazing location work used to realise the alien city. It's a shame that every episode can't look like this considering we haven't had a world that looked this good since Akhaten. The other amazing thing this episode has going for it is Capaldi and Mackie. Despite the fact that the script gives Bill very little to work with on what's only her second appearance, she's still an incredibly likeable presence on screen who suits the Twelfth Doctor very well. Honestly, this is the sort of episode I wish Clara had in Series 9. Clara spent so much of her final series separated from the Doctor for one reason or another which was frustrating considering one of the best things about Clara was the way she changed the Doctor and the Doctor changed her. With such a nuanced and constantly-evolving relationship as theirs, I would have loved to see an episode where Twelve and Clara were just left alone to riff off each other for 45 minutes. So in that regard, I understand how important it is for this sort of two-hander to take place so early in a Doctor/companion relationship. The problem is, the script needed to give more detail to Bill in order to make that work. While we're talking about companions, Nardole was in this episode for all of 20 seconds. I understand that I'm in the minority in that I actually kinda like Nardole, but even I have to admit that positioning him as the strict parent figure who tells the hero off for going on fun adventures isn't exactly a good way to get audiences to like him.
The actual plot of the episode has some inventive ideas, most notably a bereavement acting as the catalyst for a grief plague, but the ending feels way too rushed. The idea that the Vardies (a wonderfully Hartnellian alien name by the way) are really alive comes out of nowhere with no attempt made to foreshadow it whatsoever. Even worse, once it's been revealed, nothing comes of it. All these interesting ideas are just thrown in at the very end and before any of it can be unpacked properly, we see the TARDIS spinning its way through space, leaving the colonists and the interesting ideas far behind.
So yeah, Smile. I understand that it's good for a series of Doctor Who to have episodes like this to make the events feel more eventful, and it's good for a Doctor/companion pairing to have episodes like this to let their relationship take form, and it's good for the show as a whole to have episodes like this to let new viewers catch up, but honestly, while I ultimately do like it, it feels a bit like a necessary evil that I have to sit through in order to get to the good stuff. Speaking of which, Sarah Dollard's episode is next week.
Next: Thin Ice