So, we’ve had The Pilot, now it’s episode 2 and Smile. The trailer gives us the emojibots, and we know this is the Doctor and Bill getting to know each other. It some ways it’s (perhaps) a bit Gridlock, a story in which everyone seemed to have vanished until the (not very convincing) secret was discovered. Will this be better? Let’s think…I’m not for one moment dubious about writer Frank Cottrell Boyce’s talents (just check his wiki page), though I have to see I did not like In the Forest of the Night. From a quick scan of his twitter feed, the robots are named in hour of a Professor Andrew Vardy of MUN and is influenced by conversations with Professor Tim o’Brien from Jodrell Bank. At least we can hope for some good science.

As to the rest, I expect sinister emojibots, something else killing people and the emojibots just collecting the skulls to tidy them up, and lots of running. Nardole is curiously absent from the first set of pictures, so I suspect he is doing a K9 and is somewhere else for the story. Beyond that I have no thoughts.

Where does that leave me? As long as there’s an actual story (and the pictures of what looks like a resistance group led by Ralf Little as Steadfast are a good sign) I’m prepared to be entertained. Let’s chat again after the show!