Story 267: Smile

In which the inhabitants of a futuristic city employ badges which show their emotional state. Small robots - Emojibots - mirror these badges. When someone shows any kind of sadness, the Emojibots react negatively. Tiny creatures emerge from out of the structure of the buildings and swoop down on the unhappy individuals - and they are rapidly reduced to dust and bones...

The Doctor decides to take Bill to an alien planet in the far future, despite protests from Nardole that he is forbidden to leave present day Earth because of a commitment to the mysterious vault beneath the university. He claims to be simply moving the TARDIS from one part of his rooms to another - but tells Bill that there is all of time and space to visit between.

The TARDIS materialises in a field, close to the city. This is the planet Gliese 581d, and the gleaming white city was set up by an advance party of colonists from the planet Earth.

As they explore the settlement, however, the Doctor and Bill see no trace of any inhabitants - other than the small Emojibot robots. They issue them with the small yellow emotion badges. The robots also provide them with food - giving the Doctor two portions to Bill's one. He explains that they must be registering them by heartbeat.

Bill sees a flock of small flying creatures and the Doctor identifies them as Vardies - a form of microscopic robot. The whole city is made from Vardy, which can combine to build structure.

After their meal they continue to explore and come upon a huge greenhouse, tended by Emojibots. A fine white powder is being sprayed into the soil which they take to be bonemeal. Checking the source of this material, however, reveals the bone to be human in origin.

The Emojibots are busy working for the colony's benefit - including exploiting its dead inhabitants to make the soil more fertile.

They act as an interface with the Vardy, which must have killed the colonists. The Doctor realises that the city has become a death trap. When the main colonist group arrives, it will be in danger from the Vardy and the Emojibots.

He and Bill have to pretend to be happy, otherwise they are at risk from the Emojibots, who are clearly destroying anyone who is unhappy or showing other negative emotions. The Doctor wants Bill to stay in the TARDIS whilst he decides to destroy the city. She follows him.

They discover a stretch of damaged wall which proves to be the hull of a spacecraft - presumably the one that brought the ill-fated advance party of colonists. They enter the ship - provoking an angry response from the Emojibots. The Doctor heads for the engine room, intending to overload it to destroy the city. Exploring by herself, Bill comes upon a dead body lying as though in state. It is an elderly woman. A book nearby has images of the dying Earth which she had left.

The Doctor is attacked by an Emojibot, and is forced to destroy it. Bill encounters a boy, who asks if they have arrived at their destination.

She contacts the Doctor, having realised that the main colony ship is not on its way. It is already here.

The Doctor deduces that the death of the old woman provoked grief in her family and friends - which prompted the Emojibots and Vardy to attack them, having been programmed to ensure the happiness of the colonists. The dead were an advance party - but people who had been revived earlier than the main group, who are now beginning to wake up from suspended animation.

The Doctor worries what will happen when they learn that their friends have been killed. They will either be grief-stricken - and fall victim to the Vardies - or want to take revenge, and go to war with them.

The Doctor and Bill inform a newly revived medic named Steadfast of what has happened to the others. They try to make it clear that the Vardy have malfunctioned, and they and the Emojibots are simply fulfilling their programming to please the colonists. However, Steadfast and the others are determined to destroy the Vardy. A battle breaks out, in which the colonists destroy some Vardies and one of their number is killed. 

The Doctor realises that the Vardy have evolved and are now a life-form in their own right. He uses a damaged Emojibot to reset the entire system.

He then tells Steadfast that he and the other colonists will have to forge a new relationship with them. They will willingly help, but cannot be exploited.

The Doctor and Bill leave the colonists to their negotiations and return to Earth in the TARDIS.

However, instead of his rooms at the university, they emerge to find an icy landscape. An elephant emerges from out of the fog...

Smile was written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, and was first broadcast on Saturday 22nd April, 2017. Cottrell-Boyce had previously written In The Forest of the Night for Series 8. Smile is a more conventional story. If anything, it is quite unoriginal, being yet another entry in the artificial-intelligence-gone-wrong genre - the second such episode in a row.

This is really becoming quite boring under Moffat.

Smile just about manages to rise above the rut thanks to the arrival of Bill as a companion, and the stunning futuristic setting. The latter was due to filming overseas - at the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain.

Bill makes for a refreshing change to the clingy and annoying Clara. She asks all sort of odd questions - which are funny up to a point. She sometimes asks too many questions, and they can be nonsensical. Luckily they pull back on this aspect of her personality as the series progresses.

For his inspiration, Cottrell-Boyce has looked to the 1872 novel Erewhon, by Samuel Butler.

Erewhon - "nowhere" backwards - is the name of the colony spaceship. Inspired in turn by the writings of Charles Darwin, Butler's novel tells of the dangers of artificial intelligence, as machines begin to replicate themselves and pose a risk to the colonists of a new land. They think this new country to be a utopia, when in fact it turns out to be a dystopia. The book was perceived as a satire on Victorian society.

The main guest artist is Ralf Little (The Royle Family, Death in Paradise) who plays Steadfast. For the episode's big name, he doesn't actually appear until the last ten minutes.

In the pre-credit sequence is Mina Anwar, playing Goodthing. Anwar was a regular on The Sarah Jane Adventures as Rani's mother. Also confined to the pre-credits is Kiran Dadlani as Kezzia.

The boy - Praiseworthy - is Kaizer Akhtar.

The two main Emojibots are Kiran Shah and Craig Garner. Shah had previously featured in Listen as the "bedspread monster". He was one of the main body doubles for the Hobbits in all six of Peter Jackson's LOTR movies.

Overall, an updated version of The Happiness Patrol in many ways - in that sadness gets you killed. More AI running amok, and nods to earlier "space ark" stories. It shouldn't work, but it does - thanks to the setting and relationship between the Doctor and Bill.

Things you might like to know:

• Other than Rose Tyler, RTD tended to have his companions make their first proper TARDIS journey to the past (Martha to Elizabethan London and Donna to Pompeii). Moffat, on the other hand, has Amy, Clara and now Bill all go into the future.
• Peter Capaldi and Steven Moffat both claimed that they did not understand emoji messages.
• For all you arable farmers out there - the field is supposed to be of wheat, but is actually barley. The colonists talk about having the Vardy pollinate it - yet it is already fully grown and therefore ready for harvest.
• Steadfast is a MedTech - suggesting this might be the same society which sat out the solar flares on space station Nerva (The Ark in Space).
• The Doctor tells a story about a magic haddock, whose relevance to the situation is tenuous to say the least. The story is really just an alternative version of The Monkey's Paw - the best known "be careful what you wish for" tale.
• As in The Beast Below, another space ark story, the Doctor talks about how Scots opt for independence everywhere they go.
• Oddly, despite coming from the same colony ship, the first two people to die had a name composed of numerals, whereas everyone else has a 'proper' name.