Series 10, episode 2: Smile

The best colony of the future is the one created by the robots you send ahead, the robots build whatever the need to build (buildings, streets, green houses full with plants, the cultivated fields, etc), and later, when the ship with colonists arrives, it awaks all from their sleep in order to live into a city build especially for them. It sounds great, right? And more, if the robots are monitorizing your state of mind and try to make everything find for you is even better. Isn’t it?

This sounds good, but in really it isn’t very often when the action take place accordingly to the plans. Especially when the Earth had to be left behind and the new coloines of humens (not so many!) are the only way for the human specie to survive. That make even more necessary Doctor’s intervetion, help by his new companion, Bill Pots. Remember this: if you don’t smile during the entire episode you will die! The robots will get you and they will eat you!

The relation between the Doctor and his companion is very dynamic (Bill set herself confortable into the TARDIS after her first trip and she wants to continue) and very personal. The characters are set to stay (at least for this season). Bill had to choose between the past and the future as destination of the trip, and she chose the future. They arrived to the human colony Gliese 581 D (filming set is located in Valencia, Spain), into a city built entirely by robots: the colonies of microbots were parts of the walls, with the emojibots as interface with the human colonies. But things are starting to go wrong: the human emotions trigered a chain reaction and the robots tried to eliminate everything wrong. Starting with the humans.

Watch the episode, find out how the unusual problem was solved (it’s a rather simple answer), and the next time you are trying to win a chess game don’t turn over the table.

The writer for this story is Frank Cottrell-Boyce, the one who has writen the story for In the forest of the night (in 2014).

The next episode is Thin ice: a killing monster hunts under the frozen Thames in London, 1814 AD.