Who Review: "Smile" (Series 10, Episode 2)

WARNING: SPOILERS, sweetie

First, we were told not to blink. Then, we were told not to breathe. Now, Doctor Who is implementing another thing that we have to do in order to survive: Smile.

In the second episode of series 10, the Doctor takes Bill to the future to see one of humanity’s first off-planet colonies. But there’s something wrong: there’s no colonists. Only a bunch of smiley faced robots – called Vardies – who eliminate those who are unhappy. Forcibly equipped with badges that reveal their true emotions, a smile may be the only thing that can keep them alive.

So when this episode was first announced – and the Vardies were called “emojibots” – I wasn’t entirely on board. It seemed like the show as trying too hard to make emojis scary. I mean…they’re freaking emojis! Also, I was never a huge fan of emojis. Never got the appeal of them. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t need a keyboard full of faces to convey emotions through a text. Back in my day, if we wanted to tell someone we were happy, we had to manually put in a colon and an end parenthesis. And if we wanted to convey more complex emotions, we had to get creative. But I digress.

The Vardies wound up being not that bad or eye-rolling. The emoji aspect of them is greatly downplayed, with their changing faces and connection to the emotion patches reminding me more of mood rings half the time. I think they only mention the word “emoji” twice in the entire episode, and I never really felt like they were a forced attempt to appeal to a younger demographic (remember when the show tried to make wi-fi scary?). Though the thing about emoji being the only form of human communication to survive was a bit much.

Their design isn’t really scary – not even when their eyes change to skulls – but their mode of killing people is pretty creepy (hugging them while swarms of nanobots eat everything but their bones). There’s also the fact that they don’t know what their doing is wrong, that killing people that are sad is somehow helping society. That trope has always terrified me; the notion that artificial intelligence rationalizes murder as “helping” since they don’t know any better. You can program intelligence all you want, but morality is a different beast altogether.

On the Moffat Monster Scare-o-meter™, the Vardies score 2.5 Moffs out of 5.

So the Emoji movie looks good.

(This rating system is quickly becoming a misnomer since Moffat didn’t even create this things. Eh, whatever. He’s still showrunner, he gets the blame.)

The episode itself is your standard plot where the Doctor takes his newest companion to the future to show them what humanity is up to. It brought back memories of episodes like “The End of the World”, “New Earth”, and “The Beast Below.” There are a few neat concepts thrown in here, though. The idea of grief being spread like a plague – and the Vardies treating it as such – is interesting, as well as the challenge of forcing Doctor Grumpy-Brows to smile in order to survive. Also, the Doctor nearly destroying an entire settlement in order to save humanity, not knowing that humanity was there all along was a fresh twist to this classic episode formula.

Bill and the Doctor continue to have great chemistry. Bill in particular continues to amuse me as a companion with her fresh view on the Whoniverse and the types of questions she asks. In this episode: “Why are the TARDIS seats so far from the controls?” and “Does having two hearts means the Doctor has really high blood pressure?”

We also get more scarce, tantalizing details about the promise the Doctor made. Specifically, “a thing” happened. Because of this thing, he made a promise. And because of this promise, he can’t leave Earth. Of course, this being everyone’s favorite renegade Time Lord, promising are made to be broken if it makes for entertaining television.

Also, in an addendum to last week’s review, I hadn’t considered that the Doctor travelled back in time to take pictures of Bill’s mom as a present to Bill, seeing as how she never had any pictures of her. Sometimes I’m a little dense. But he could still have a history with her to be revealed later.

The ending is the only part of this episode that I have real problems with. The Doctor “presses the reset button” on the Vardies to make them not want to kill sad people anymore. Aside from this coming across as kind of deus-ex-machina-y, why did the Doctor have to wait until he learned that the Vardies had become sentient to rewrite their programming? Also, the humans show concern about living with robots who killed their friends and family, and the Doctor and Bill basically tell them to get over it. A bit insensitive, but I guess when the alternative is looking for another settlement with the possibility of humanity’s extinction…

Just wait until the episode where the monster is a sentient Instagram profile.

“Smile” is a decent episode and follow-up to a pretty good season premiere. It has some good concepts and ideas thrown into a familiar episode formula, and gives us more hints into the season’s story arc. What’s really inside that vault that the Doctor’s guarding? Could it be John Simm’s Master, who is slated to appear later in the season? Could it be the Doctor’s granddaughter Susan, whose picture had a lot of focus in the previous episode? Could it be the real Jay Garrick, trapped in an iron mask that cuts him off from the Speed Force? Wait, never mind, wrong show (also, spoilers for season 2 of The Flash).

Final verdict: 7/10.

NEXT WEEK: In Regency England, something is frozen inside the River Thames. And it’s eating people…

Who Review: "The Pilot" (Series 10, Episode 1)

WARNING: SPOILERS, sweetie

Amidst the hype over The Last Jedi’s trailer release, a new season of Doctor Who has started. What a time to be alive.

When we last left our dear Doctor number Twelve (played by Peter Capaldi in his final season on the show), he had just had his memory erased of his previous companion, he gave twenty-four years of his life to his wife for a Christmas present, and he teamed up with a superhero to stop the plots of an army of body-snatching alien brains.

So, you know, an average Tuesday.

“The Pilot” starts Series 10 with the Doctor lying low working as a lecturer at a college, where apparently he has been working for the past fifty years. We’re introduced to Bill Potts (played by newcomer Pearl Mackie), a kitchen worker at the university who gains the Doctor as a mentor. He sees something different in her, but he doesn’t necessarily want to make her a new companion. On their first adventure together, they work to solve a mystery involving a girl with a star-shaped defect in her eye and a shape-shifting puddle that is also a spaceship.

This season already has a lot to live up to, since the last season was one of my favorites in recent Who history. With nearly every story being a two-parter, each adventure felt important and bombastic. “The Pilot” doesn’t start off the season with as big of a bang as Series 9’s “The Magician’s Apprentice” did (and really, that’s hard to match, since that episode had the Doctor saving the creator of the Daleks as a child and then going back to that very moment to possibly kill him), but it still shows promise for a good final season for Capaldi and the Twelfth Doctor.

Bill already shows signs of being a great companion. She and the Doctor have a more student-teacher relationship, which is sort of how Clara started off with him before it turned romantic (though I definitely ship Clara/Twelve more than Clara/Eleven). Like many other companions, she shows unfamiliarity with the Doctor’s world. But, like the episode demonstrates, she asks questions not normally brought up by companions, like “If the Doctor is an alien, why are the words in the TARDIS acronym in English?” She even negates the show’s longest running gag by asking “Doctor What?”

This season's arc: A battle of who has the better eyebrows between the Doctor and Bill.

She also already has great banter with Capaldi. Favorite Bill line of the episode: referring to the Doctor’s running as “a penguin with his arse on fire.” Along with her humor, she also shows signs that Pearl Mackie can do emotional moments just fine, with a very touching and realistic scene of Bill crying upon discovering long-lost pictures of her deceased mother.

And as the headlines have been saying for the past week, Bill is Doctor Who’s first openly gay companion on television (if you don’t count Captain Jack). And her sexuality ends up actually being a plot point and crucial in stopping the episode’s monster. Doctor Who’s always been great with LGBT representation, but it is refreshing to see important usage of a character’s sexual preference after the debacles I went through with Beauty and the Beast and Power Rangers recently.

Speaking of companions, Nardole is back. Yes, Matt Lucas (who first appeared in 2015’s “The Husbands of River Song” and showed back up in last years “The Return of Doctor Mysterio") returns as another one of the Doctor’s companions. Though, considering how long he’s spent by the Doctor’s side, he may as well just be called his assistant at this point. And although he’s been on the show for a while now (despite the scarcity of episodes), I’m still not sure if I like Nardole or not. I was disappointed by how little we saw of him in his first episode – considering Matt Lucas is the kind of person you don’t want to waste in a one-off – but now that we have more of him, I still don’t know if I find him funny or not. I do appreciate how the Doctor has decided to keep a familiar element by his side after losing both Clara and River Song, and you can definitely feel that these characters have a long history together. But I still can’t get a read on who Nardole is supposed to be as a character. Is he the Doctor’s exasperated assistant? Is he the only person who knows him well enough to snark back? Is he supposed to be cowardly, yet charming? He flip-flops between these characteristics so much it’s hard to tell. Though it is nice to have a team of companions in the TARDIS again, harkening back to the old days where the Doctor would sometimes travel with three or four companions at once, and even more recent TARDIS teams like Nine’s and Eleven’s. And this way they don’t have to introduce two new companions in one season, so I can’t really complain.

So let’s talk about this episode’s monster: a puddle. Once again, head writer Steven Moffat (also in his final season in the TARDIS) manages to make something in every day life terrifying. Nothing is safe: statues, shadows, that feeling when you walk into a room and forget why you walked in there to begin with. And now add collections of water to the list. Aside from the paranoia that staring into your reflection in a puddle could get you possessed by aliens, the monster is scary itself, especially when it posses Bill’s crush Heather. The dripping water and reflection motifs bring back nightmares of past threats like the Flood from “The Waters of Mars” and the mimicking entity from “Midnight” (one of the scariest episodes in my opinion because WE STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT THE HELL THAT THING WAS). 

On the Moffat Monster Scare-o-meter™, the Heather-puddle scores 3.5 Moffs out of 5.

So the new Aquaman movie looks dark.

Oh, speaking of monsters, the Daleks are here. And, as rarely seen on this show, they are not the main attraction for the episode. In fact, the Doctor uses them as a weapon to try and rid himself of the Heather-puddle. Granted, they don’t really have an impact on the episode, and I’m pretty sure they were just included to meet that “We have to use the Daleks once per season or we lose the rights to them” thing.

The episode itself plays with the dynamic of the Doctor meeting a new companion. She’s not just suddenly thrown into this world after her first meeting with the Time Lord. She actually gets to know the Doctor for a while before she learns of the TARDIS and encounters her first monster. In addition to scary and funny moments, the episode also has some damn good dramatic moments. Aside from the aforementioned scene with Bill and her mother’s pictures, the ending also has Bill forced to release the Heather-puddle from an unknowingly binding verbal contract, despite the fact that the two could have actually become a cute couple. There’s also an emotional whammy at the end (at least for me) when the Doctor is about to wipe Bill’s mind of their adventure (something that he has apparently taken to doing quite a lot now), but then Bill tells him to imagine what it would be like if someone did this to him. Cue Clara’s theme music. Damn it. That soft piano gets me every time.

And, though it’s a minor thing in the grand scheme of the episode, I love how the Doctor has a picture of his granddaughter Susan on his desk. He even tells it to shut up after he dismisses Bill as a companion. It’s always glad to see that no matter what changes over the years, the show still hasn’t forgotten where it came from.

“The Pilot” also sets up many unanswered questions that will most likely tie into the season’s overall arc and, in typical Doctor Who fashion, will be built up for a while until answered in a hopefully-not-too-disappointing fashion. Why have the Doctor and Nardole been at the university for 50 years? What is that vault underneath the campus that they’re so concerned about? What is the “promise” that the Doctor made to someone, and why is it making him reluctant to take on new companions? How does the Doctor know Bill’s mom, and why did she allow him to take her picture? Are we going to see more of the Dalek’s past war with the Movellans, or was that just a callback to classic Who? Will we ever find out what Missy’s “clever idea” was, and who is the Minister of War? I know those last two were things from last season, but THEY NEVER ANSWERED THEM AND I’M GETTING IMPATIENT.

"Say 'Love & Monsters' was a good episode again and I swear to Gallifrey I WILL DROP YOU."

So, to summarize, “The Pilot” is a good first episode for Bill. It shows off her character well, plays with the typical Doctor-companion first meeting formula, and delivers a monster that’ll leave puddles in your pants.  It sets up a ton of things to come, and I couldn’t be more excited for Capaldi’s (and Moffat’s) last season.

Final verdict: 8/10

NEXT WEEK: A utopian future, and emoji-bots. Yaaay…

Matt Reviews: Rogue One - A Star Wars Story

WARNING: I am one with the SPOILERS, the SPOILERS are with me.

A long time ago, in a galaxy where people went crazy because there wasn’t an opening crawl in a Star Wars movie…

Set before Episode IV, Rogue One tells the story of how Disney retconned Kyle Katarn out of Star Wars canon. Jyn Erso (played by Felicity Jones) has been on the run ever since her father Galen (Mads Mikkelsen) was kidnapped by the Empire into working on some super secret project. But she is drafted into the Rebel Alliance when it turns out that her father has actually been working on the Death Star. Joined by a rag-tag group of Rebels and misfits, they embark on a journey to steal the Death Star’s plans in order to find a weakness in the Empire’s ultimate weapon, and show an oppressed galaxy that they have a new hope to believe in.

This is definitely a different type of Star Wars movie. Whereas the other ones were glitzy and heroic, with good always triumphing over evil, this one shows that such wars do have major casualties. Sometimes the good guys don’t always win, and sometimes the good guys do some not-so-good things. Sometimes this works in the movie’s favor, while other times it doesn’t, but more on that later.

The characters, unfortunately, are not as interesting or memorable as ones from other Star Wars films. K-2SO is the best of the new bunch: a new droid with all the sass of C-3PO, but could totally kick your ass if he wanted to. Chirruit Îmwe – the blind, Force-worshipping monk played by Donny Yen – and his sidekick Baze Malbus are also interesting characters, though their full potential isn’t really shown. They’re the “Guardians of the Whils” and protectors of the Khyber crystals on the planet Jedha. One has a strong devotion to the Force, the other is a gun-toting mercenary who thinks such beliefs are nonsense. It just feels like a lot of these traits and their Odd Couple dynamic weren’t fully explored over the course of the film. But there is enough there that I think a book or comic series starring these two set before Rogue One would be interesting.

But can he see why kids love the taste of Cinnamon Toast Crunch?

The rest of the characters are meh. Jyn isn’t a terribly interesting protagonist. Bodhi spends half the film as a plot device. Saw Garerra – a character they brought over from the Clone Wars cartoon – barely has an impact on the plot and could have easily have been switched out for a new character without an existing canon background. Mads Mikkelsen’s potential is wasted here more than it was in Doctor Strange. Cassian shows some sign of being interesting early on in the film, with him being the audience’s way of seeing the darker and more ruthless ways the Rebels fight for the greater good. But this is pretty much dropped at the halfway point. These characters aren’t unlikeable per say, they’re just on the bland side of characterization.

More infuriating is how weak the main villain – Director Orson Krennic – is. He’s the person in charge of the Death Star project, has a personal history with the Erso family, and not only forced Galen to work for him, but also kills him later on, and yet his final confrontation with Jyn still feels hollow where it should feel exciting. Star Wars has always had compelling and threatening villains like Darth Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin, but here…no, wait, those guys are here too! The mere presence of Vader and CGI Tarkin (who I didn’t think looked that bad) manages to completely overshadow Krennic’s role in the plot, to the point where I question why these two weren’t just made the primary antagonists instead.

Speaking of everyone’s favorite asthmatic cyborg, Vader is damn good in this movie. He has limited screen time compared to Krennic and the Computer-Generated Ghost of Peter Cushing, but he makes every second on screen count. That fight scene at the end alone was worth the price of admission, and singlehandedly undid all the wimpification damage done to Anakin Skywalker by the prequels. The Rebels cartoon has been working very hard to remind us how much of a terrifying powerhouse Vader is, and Rogue One manages to accentuate that to a nightmare-inducing degree.

(Speaking of the Rebels cartoon, did you guys catch that little easter egg about a “General Syndulla”? Congratulations, Hera!)

"I'm here to kill Rebels and hate sand. And I'm all out of sand."

And honestly, I didn’t think Vader’s little pun to Krennic was too bad. He’s always had kind of a dark, snarky sense of humor about him, like during the dinner scene in Episode V, wherein, after deflecting blaster fire from Han Solo, remarks, “We would be honored if you would join us.” Granted, pun-throwing may be too much an extension of his funny bone, but I think Vader’s in a position of authority that he can Force-strangle the life out of someone while telling him not to “choke on his aspirations” and get away with it. Who’s gonna tell him to knock it off?

So let’s talk about the ending, a.k.a. the part of the story where the narrator closed the book and said, “And then everyone died. The end!” There are parts of it I like, such as how it shows how much of an uphill battle the Rebels have against the Empire. They couldn’t very well completely win against the bad guys in the end, since the Empire is still a nigh-unstoppable force at the beginning of Episode IV. And it does make sense for all the main characters to die since none of them are seen or talked about in the other Star Wars movies, despite the huge part they played in the eventual destruction of the Death Star.

However, all of the deaths feel so sudden and dropped upon us with the intention that this is something they had to put in the movie. A lot of the deaths feel kind of random too. While, yes, this does help with the realistic war movie feel of the film, I would have preferred more build-up and more emotion. Take this hypothetical example of Chirrut’s death: Somehow, Vader becomes more integral to the plot and finds himself in the Battle of Scarif. Chirrut, thinking his abilities in the Force are much stronger than what they actually are, goes to fight him. Vader, predictably, curb-stomps him. Deaths like these are what I wanted; meaningful, memorable deaths, not just “Character X gets shot/blown up by another Stormtrooper.”

There’s also plenty of call-backs and references to previous Star Wars movies. Some of these do feel like excessive fanservice, like the gratuitous cameo from C-3PO and R2-D2, and the even more mind-boggling appearance from the two guys from the “He doesn’t like you” scene from Episode IV (seriously, how the hell did these guys manage to get off Jedha before it was destroyed AND make it to Tatooine a few days later???). But I couldn’t help but let out a fangirlish squee when Tarkin showed up, or when the ending of the movie turned into the beginning of Episode IV.

I was trying to think of a funny caption but I can't get over the
LIFELESS EYES OF K2 BURNING INTO MY SOUL

 But I enjoyed Rogue One just fine. It’s not the best Star Wars movie, and it’s certainly not better than The Force Awakens. I appreciate how they tried to go for something different and give us a movie that was grittier and exemplified the “war” aspect of the franchise’s title, but sometimes I felt that they were a bit inconsistent in this field. Maybe the movie would have been better had they actually kept ALL THE STUFF FROM THE TRAILERS THAT WAS MISSING IN THE FINAL CUT OF THE MOVIE. Seriously, Hollywood, please go back to giving us complete moves in theaters.

It was also interesting to see a Star Wars movie where the focus wasn’t on the Jedi and/or the screw-ups of the Skywalker family. It really served to build the world of Star Wars even more, and it was kind of like seeing a story from the expanded universe unfurl on the big screen for the first time. If Disney learns from their mistakes in this movie, then I have a lot of hope for future Star Wars anthology movies to show new sides of the universe. Fingers crossed for the Han Solo movie!

Final verdict: 7/10

So you guys ready for this fresh, new Star Wars theory? Snoke is Jyn. Mind blown, right?