How many past episodes did they reference? So far I've thought of The Daleks, The Robots of Death, The Happiness Patrol, The End of the World and Gridlock. The general feel may also have been a homage to Nineteen Eighty-Four.
for the poll options and for the episode itself. This was better than what anyone had reason to expect. The emoji badges were ingenious, the sets and/or backgrounds were amazing, the dialogue was effervescent and everything just rolled along on all cylinders. Just top-notch Who, a vast improvement. on the writer's first effort. Bill is shaping up to be a wonderful companion, once again asking the incisive questions (I kind of concur with her on the reason for the police box). Really liking the Doctor/Bill relationship, which may be the healthiest Doctor / primary companion one we've seen in NuWho.
The story itself was nothing special but as a showcase for the fantastic Mackie/Capaldi pairing it was very entertaining. I'm starting to think that Moffat has had some sort of weird brain transplant with RTD though, as both episodes (and the Christmas Special before it) have been far more like the early days of New Who than the smug self-satisfied style of more recent years.
I liked it. The Doctor / Bill-relationsship is shaping up to be a lot of fun. A decent plot with the robots, as well. I thought the end of the human race was a little overdramatic, though.
Liked it a lot, thought it was a better ep overall than last week. Does anyone know the location? Surely couldn't all be CGI. Humans - very slavey. The Dr/Bill chemistry is good, MUCH better than Clara. To repeat, I don't blame the actress, just the way the part was written.
Bonnie was so much hotter than Clara. By the way, the bloke at the end doing all the talking, if that's humanities best and brightest, we should have stayed on earth. Fighting nanites and software with a rifle? #### off. I don't expect that level of dumb from even Sergeant Benton.
Good up until the end. Stupid moral. Not a very good analog of slavery. The exocomps weren't the "indigenous" species. They were brought with humans, whom they killed. Two options, they're not really people, in which case they're not to blame for their actions, and thus they get their minds completely wiped or they're destroyed. The other option is that they are people, in which case they are not justified in their actions . The final couple minutes were grating. "Hey, folks, your machines turned on you and killed your family. Now they have greater rights than you because the writer wanted to say something about slavery."
Remember Invasion of Time? The TARDIS innards looked like a 19th century hospital, a garden and a factory. maybe one of those locals were the original seed from which the rest of the TARDIS grew outward from?
When the Doctor and Bill were in the corridor with the robots at each for some reason I got a strong Tom Baker vibe and heard the doctor's first lines as started to go forward in his voice.
Gliese 581d - the name of the planet in this episode - is an unconfirmed planet in the Gliese 581 system. The shooting location is the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia, Spain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_581 https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/apr/22/doctor-who-series-36-episode-two-smile-recap
Pretty good episode until the end. The Doctor/Bill relationship is great. Most of the story was entertaining. The actual end was stupid and came completely out of nowhere, but the rest of the episode was good enough that I can pretty much ignore that. So, it was a pretty good episode with a bad ending, which isn't the worst thing. I'd rate it a bit below the first episode, but not bad. Considering the fact that its by the same writer of In the Forest of The Night, the fact that only the ending sucked I consider a definite win. I like how they started the next adventure at the end of this one, its a nice callback. the next episode looks like it will be another entertaining one.
The Doctor/Bill relationship continues to be very enjoyable and the highlight of the season so far. I was enjoying the overall plot of the story until the ending, which I found to be cheap, rushed and half baked. It was nice to see the story transition at the end to next week's episode. Also when the Doctor was talking about Earth being abandoned and bumping into some of those ships in the past, was he referencing the episode "The Beast Below" when solar flares caused a mass evacuation until the Earth recovered.
For the first time since Husband's of River Song I saw an episode of Doctor Who I really liked. The story was interesting with the emoji robots and jump-starting a civilization but it was the Bill/Doctor relationship I really liked. They are starting to show great chemistry and the best thing is this actually is a companion/doctor relationship like Doctor and Donna or Amy and Rory. Much better episode than last week. One BBC America criticism though. I don't like them saying watch Class to get a sneak peak of the next episode. I am watching Who on DVR. Small thing I know but is this going to happen when orphan black starts?
Don't forget the Sontaran Experiement, and the Ark in Space. The Mutants talked about Earth getting pretty bad by the 3oth century, but I'm not certain that that completely gelled.