Smile

Dear Gary— 

Smile is The Happiness Patrol all over again, except without any soul. Helen A gives The Happiness Patrol a human face that is sorely missing in this modern retelling of the tale. Smile is a stripped down, nuts and bolts, bare bones story for the Snapchat age.

Bill chooses a trip to the future because (“why do you think?”) she wants to see if it is a happy future. (OK.) Now the word happy could have a multitude of interpretations, and it is never good when some one person (or in the present case a machine brain) determines what constitutes happy (just ask Helen A’s subjects). Yet the Doctor blithely states of the future he has chosen to show Bill, “They say the settlers have cracked the secret of human happiness.” The Doctor should know better, if nothing else based upon his Happiness Patrol experience.

Based upon my Happiness Patrol experience, and now my Smile experience, I wish I was back in that earlier (dare I say happier?) time.

Smile starts out promising enough with Bill in the TARDIS delivering rapid fire questions that make even the Doctor scratch his head. Then Nardole enters to put a brief damper on things before the Doctor and Bill sneak off for a quick adventure into the future on what has become a rarity in New Who—another planet. It is, of course, an Earth colony, but still it is off world.

I do love the Doctor’s explanation of travel in the TARDIS: “You don’t steer the TARDIS, you negotiate with it. The still point between where you want to go and where you need to be, that’s where she takes you.”

The still point that the TARDIS brings the Doctor and Bill to is in the middle of a gorgeous wheat field and the two proceed to the sterile white city they see in the distance. The city is more or less one giant structure of blank walls and endless corridors with hardly a living quarter, much less a room, visible. It renders laughable Bill’s observation when she first enters the spaceship: “Whoever did the interior decoration in here needs to take lessons from whoever did it out there.” The only furniture seen in this ‘out there’ city is one small set of cafeteria type table and chairs with some unappetizing blue cubes on two plates set out for them to eat. At this point Bill remarks, “Two portions. One portion. Is there going to be food sexism even in the future?” Here I have to point out the obvious that Bill should have figured out (Bill who is usually the one asking all of the hidden in plain sight questions).  Bill is the one who chose to sit down by the plate with only one portion. If anyone is being food sexist (I guess that is a thing?) it is she.

Besides lacking décor, this barren city is also bereft of people. The Doctor is puzzled by this fact; however the audience is let in on the secret early on.  It is a delightful little scene; not stupid at all. A terrified citizen within the city (Goodthing) calls a contented citizen (Kezzia) joyfully walking in the idyllic wheat fields. Goodthing warns Kezzia to stay out of the city without explaining why. Kezzia ignores this advice and returns to the city where Goodthing informs her that everyone she knows is dead, but for goodness’ sake smile. No explanation, just ‘people are dead so smile.’ Naturally enough, Kezzia does not smile; she weeps, or at least her emoji mood badge weeps for her and that is enough to make the robots kill her. (And yes, Doctor, they are robots. Interface or not, they are robots. Those other tiny flying things might also be robots—I’ll have to take the Doctor’s word on that—but so are the killer Emojibots robots.) The Doctor works out this deadly reality and confirms his suspicions when he opens a hopper to discover a stash of human skulls that for some convenient reason have been rejected by the machine that is turning all the corpses into fertilizer.

It is entertaining enough to watch these events unfold. The Doctor and Bill are turning into a companionable team, somewhat on a par with the Seventh Doctor and Ace. Their first encounter with the Vardy is amusing, and watching the Doctor work out what is going on is interesting.

I have to say, though, that these Vardy Emojibots are rubbish. It’s not that they go about killing people; it is that as an interface their primary function is to communicate, yet they can only communicate in an extremely limited emoji vocabulary. Really? Who thought up that light bulb? Ah, yes . . . the show runners and/or author of the piece. Someone said, let’s make a story about the ubiquitous emoji. We’ll use some cute little robots (yes robots) and see how wrong things can go from there. At this point begins my own germ of an idea—the creators of Doctor Who aren’t trying to make Doctor Who at all anymore. They are going for Black Mirror. To which I say, if you want to make an episode of Black Mirror, go work for Black Mirror.

Talking about rubbish—let’s think about these tiny flying robots making up the construct of the city. Whose bright idea was that? At any time the structure around you, your house, your home, the floor you are standing on, the roof over your head, the walls that surround you can suddenly decide to fly away. You can only hope it is not raining; you’re not on the 30^th floor; you aren’t taking a shower; the mosquitoes aren’t swarming outside. And you can only hope that these tiny flying robots that were moments ago providing you shelter aren’t now bent on destroying you. Oh, and now I suddenly realize why there is no artwork hanging on the walls.

And don’t get me started on these mood badges and magic ears that everyone is fitted with. Apparently there is no privacy or peace and quiet in the future. Anyone can listen in on any conversation; and how distracting would all of that extraneous noise be? And anyone can see exactly what you are thinking—except for you. You wouldn’t want to influence your own mood after all.

These humans of whatever far out century we are in are basically idiots. It must be the effect of their narrow emoji minds. The Vardy are also mentally challenged with their mechanical emoji brains. They can’t even figure out that killing people makes the survivors sad. The Vardy are tasked with making people happy, and they logically assume, therefore, that grieving people are the enemy and kill them. That makes perfect sense. Grief is the enemy so kill the person. Don’t try to cheer up the mourners. Don’t tickle them or tell them a joke or bring them a flower or give them a hug. Kill them. Makes perfect, logical, mechanical sense.

Maybe there is something in the air of this planet limiting the thought process, because the Doctor also seems infected. When trying to explain to the awakening colonists what is going on, all he succeeds at is inciting panic, and then all he can do is run around throwing up his hands and telling them to wait a minute while he clarifies. He is about as effective as Goodthing had been with Kezzia.

The Doctor finally brings everything to a crashing halt when he—TA DA!—reboots the system with a wave of his magic sonic. Now everybody is happy (smile!). The Vardy can’t remember anything, even that they are supposed to make people happy. The colonists are no longer being killed, but now they have to bargain for their home. (By the way, of what use is money to robots?) The Doctor and Bill leave these two races (the Vardy are no longer merely robots but now “identify as a species” whatever that means) to try and negotiate some sort of living arrangement. Apparently the Vardy can understand human speech, they just can’t mimic it, so the humans will have to try and guess what the Vardy mean based on some smiley face/thumbs up/skull and cross bones symbolism. Perhaps the Doctor and Bill should return someday to find out what kinds of wacky hijinks have ensued.

I’m sorry, Gary, but I’ll take Helen A, the Kandy Man, and The Happiness Patrol over the Vardy, Emojibots and Smile any day. And with that I will leave you, Gary, hopefully in your own still point of happiness  . . .