Apr 26, 2017
266 | 2 | "Smile" | Lawrence Gough | Frank Cottrell-Boyce | 22 April 2017 | TBD | 83 |
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The Doctor and Bill arrive on one of Earth's first colonised planets, Gliese 581d. They are greeted only by two different types of robots: swarm robots (Vardies) and slow but sentient emojibots. An emojibot gives the Doctor and Bill discs that communicate their true emotions. The Doctor theorizes that the planet is awaiting the colonists but soon realizes that the skeletons of a set-up crew have been crushed to feed the plants. Determined to blow up the city, he finds the main ship within it and its engine room, but Bill runs into a child who has awoken from a pod. The colonists were cryogenically frozen, with a few "shepherds" woken early to work. After one shepherd died, the emojibots could not recognise grief and killed all in mourning in an onslaught against sadness. The awakened colonists decide to fight back, but the Doctor wipes the memory of the robots and reboots everything... only humans must now learn to live with the Vardies, the planet's indigenous species. Then, after the TARDIS returns them to London, the Doctor and Bill discover themselves on a frozen Thames River, an elephant walking towards them on the ice. |