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Tag: Bill Potts

Solid Footing

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Review of Thin Ice
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

While Bill thinks she may be “low-key in love with [the TARDIS]” (which I thought was both a beautifully subtle nod to Bill’s sexual orientation and a lovely statement of sentiment), I’m definitely low-key in love with writer Sarah Dollard’s work.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

Dollard, who penned last series’s Face the Raven, hit another one out of the park with Thin Ice, keeping Series Ten on solid footing. Bill is fast becoming my favorite post-Hiatus Companion, and the developments in her relationship with the Doctor under Dollard’s guidance are my favorite yet.

Following the Series One formula of modern-day introduction followed by a future adventure and then a past one, the Doctor (or, more accurately, the TARDIS) takes Bill to Regency-era London. I knew I’d love this episode the instant I saw Bill’s initial reaction to the time: reminding the Doctor that as a person with melanin-rich skin, she’s likely to have a different experience out there than he is. Better yet, Twelve actually considers her words before acknowledging the (general) danger and sending her off to choose a frock (in stark contrast to Ten’s complete dismissal of Martha’s similar anxiety at the beginning of The Shakespeare Code).

Throughout the episode, the chemistry between these two continued to fill me with joy. (I’m so crushed at the thought that we’ll have no more of Capaldi after this series, and likely no more of Mackie, either—which is nigh criminal, as she’s so bloody brilliant.) The Doctor yanks Bill’s chain at least twice about her interaction with time travel—the imaginary disappearance of “Pete” and seeing the lights under the ice—and proves himself both particularly admirable and particularly problematic in her eyes.

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Something to Smile About

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Review of Smile
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

[Note: It should be “Something to smiley About,” but my site doesn’t cope well with emoji. Clearly.]

For Bill’s first “proper” trip in the TARDIS, she chooses to go to the future, “to see if it’s happy.” I would have chosen similarly myself (though my reasoning would’ve been more along the lines of, “to see how long it takes for things to become relatively ‘happy’ again”), and it’s always a pleasure to see another writer’s vision of how human history will progress.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

This is one of those visions in which the future is smooth and shiny, things neatly ordered and designed to be aesthetically pleasing. Of course, even when everything is shiny on the surface (as it certainly is in “one of Earth’s [carefully unnamed] first colonies”), nothing is ever completely happy. Similarly, although there is plenty to love about Smile, there are a few problems, too.

At first glance, the episode is full of lovely things. There’s Bill’s refreshing perspective, seeing the Doctor and his way of life through unjaundiced eyes. There’s the Doctor being a bit on the naughty side, shirking a duty of unknown-to-us magnitude. There’s the perfect amount of Nardole (read: hardly any). There’s Bill’s glorious joy in all the weird (“You’re an awesome tutor”). There’s the fact that the advance team appears to have been primarily (if not exclusively) of Asian Indian descent (we don’t see our first white-person-who-isn’t-the-Doctor until more than 2/3 of the way through the episode). There’s Bill calling out the possibility of “food sexism” still existing (“Is this bloke utopia?”), and then immediately wondering—upon learning the Doctor has two hearts (why would they read him as two people but put both portions on one plate?)—if he has really high blood pressure. Then there’s Bill. And more Bill…

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Time And Relative Ease Of Entry

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Review of The Pilot
Warning: This review contains episode-specific spoilers and wild speculation about future episodes.

The opening episode of Series Ten is aptly named. The Pilot nominally takes its name from the role a particular character plays, but it could just as easily refer to the introductory nature of the episode. It is, in effect, a “pilot episode” for a new era (the Twelve/Bill era) of the show.


Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

As such, The Pilot is designed as one of those ideal “jumping on” points. While I firmly believe (as I’ve stated on panels at conventions before) that a good place to start watching Doctor Who is “whichever episode you happen to see,” there are a few spots in the show that are designed as easy entry points for new viewers. This is certainly one of them, and I find that to be a feature rather than a flaw.

In particular, I’ve already seen a few complaints that the episode was boring or simplistic—not at all the whizz-bang kind of opener (or closer) we’re used to seeing, especially from Moffat. Terms like “character heavy” appear in these comments as if it were a Bad Thing™ to have stories driven by who people are instead of by what happens to or because of them. I couldn’t disagree more with those assessments. Writers know that readers/viewers will follow characters they care about (even if they’re antagonists or anti-heroes, as long as we are engaged with them) through hell and back because we want to know what happens to them. All sorts of goofy shit can go on in a plot (even if it makes little/imperfect sense) and retain the audience, as long as the audience cares. (I believe this phenomenon explains both the strengths and the weaknesses of the Moffat era…)

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