12.29: Smile
In which grief kills.
Broadcast: April 2017
Watched: April 202
“Grief as plague!”
I’d remembered this as not that good, because the ending annoyed me so much. It is still annoying – an incredibly rushed deus ex machina… but for much of the run time this is really, properly lovely. As with Forest, [writer Frank Cottrell-Boyce]’s stuff has a sort of magical quality to it (the computerised book of remembrance, flashing up images of earth’s history etc.), even when he’s doing sci-fi.
The set up, another “oooh the danger of AI” story, is genuinely terrifying. The walls made of tiny robots are great; so is the vaguely early ‘80s incidental music. The flocks of vardies remind me of the Vashta Nerada, only with a sinister empty colony instead of a library. (That was nine years ago by this point, so might genuinely have been a case of a “classic” influencing the new stuff). The design work, with the sinister robots, vaguely reminds me of Girl Who Waited. Also, while we’re doing references: “Grief as plague” brings to mind Dr Constantine’s “physical injuries as plague” from the Empty Child.
Also, a big shift from the previous season – possibly the previous five years: this is the second episode running in which the Doctor drives the action, but his inner life isn’t the important thing. We all talk about how Chibnall seems to have deliberately decentred the Doctor – well, Moffat had already done it, without wrecking the show.
Other things:
Mina Anwar is absolutely brilliant in her cameo, smiling her way to death (“Mum’s dead!”).
Bill makes yet more sci-fi references, which is a convenient plot shortcut.
The Doctor’s not allowed to go off-world. Honestly, they could have got years out of this new set up, a whole new UNIT era sort of thing.
Ahistory corner: this is one of earliest colonies, yet the Doctor implies it’s thousands of years since Bill’s time? I call bullshit. Then it turns out it’s one of many ships that evacuated earth, so probably that wave that goes around the year 3000? (You think you hate this stuff? Imagine having to live with it in your brain.)
You can tell Moffat has gone back to basics as the first three episodes of the season run into each other, just like they did in 2005 and 2010.