Doctor Who: Smile

"Who needs loos? There's probably an app for that.

After the somewhat cheaply made In The Forest of the Night we get another script from the well-respected Frank Cottrell-Boyce and it's an excellent one, as well as the sort of intelligent and lightly satirical (Black Mirror satirical) script that feels as though it's written by someone who doesn't often get to write science fiction and is jumping at the chance. Wee also get more very good banter between the Doctor and Bill with a fantastic dynamic already evident between them. And it seems that Moffat is wisely following the RTD template of showing a new companion an example of both the future and the past as their travels begin.

Yes, the conceit- be happy or die- recalls The Happiness Patrol, but this time it's just machines gone wrong who, in the big reveal, are just AI that are learning and trying to be helpful. They want you to be happy, grief makes you unhappy, so why not put the grieving out of their misery? It is, as the Doctor says, grief as plague, and it's both a splendid concept and a nice little riff on both our over-dependence on technology (very much described in contemporary terms) and the forthcoming Singularity. I love the emojis.

Actually, this whole concept of what is called the "early days" of human space exploration reminds me of the Spacers on Isaac Asimov's robot novels. Except... I think this is supposed to be the same time period as The Ark in Space, which is set in the much further future?

We begin though, with more exposition about the mysterious "Vault" on present day Earth that the Doctor is supposed to be guarding- clearly a big season arc thing. Nardole seems to be mainly concerned with that- he doesn't come along traveling with the Doctor and Bill. And it's nice to see a Hartnell-style cliffhanger before the next episode. This is splendid stuff,

Great to see Ralf Little in Doctor Who, but Mina Anwar gets an oddly small role...