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

One of the hallmarks of the Moffat era is Companions who (try to) live their own lives outside the TARDIS, traveling with the Doctor at their pleasure. Having fully engaged in travel through time and space, Bill is now attempting to slip back into a sense of normalcy at home. Needless to say, she gets no relief from her new life, and nor do her five new roommates.

Source – bbc.co.uk – © 2017 BBC

To be fair, they’re not exactly careful about what they’re getting into, so desperate are they for an affordable place to live. Even Bill only briefly questions the low price of the expansive building that almost literally finds them rather than the other way around. Still, it’s something of a harsh lesson for Bill that there really is no “part of [her] life [the Doctor’s] not in.”

And while it’s clear that the Doctor has mellowed since this regeneration began, and he “gets” humans much more readily than he did during his time with Clara, he still has serious trouble respecting others’ boundaries. Sometimes it’s merely idiosyncratic (like inviting himself to share the housemates’ Chinese food), but at other times he still really oversteps (as with his co-option of Bill’s phone to share her Spotify playlist with everyone without asking).

It is, however, early days yet for them, and Bill is still learning about the Doctor. He tells her his species is called the Time Lords, and drops the word “regenerated” with an expression (hidden from her) that makes me wonder what’s going through his mind. Does he sense he is nearing the end of this incarnation, or is there something else troubling him?

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

[Note: It should be “Something to  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…