THE CROOKED Smile

Frank Cottrell-Boyce, writer of Smile, tells DWM why his episode is set on a Utopian world, and explains how Dystopian fiction has morphed into reality…

INTERVIEW BY MARK WRIGHT

“Did you like it?” asks Frank Cottrell-Boyce in a softly spoken, relaxed Liverpool accent that suggests he’s anything but worried. “I’m so nervous about it.”

DWM is catching up with Frank just over a week before the broadcast of Smile, the second episode of the 2017 series of Doctor Who – and Frank’s second script for the series, following on from 2014’s In the Forest of the Night. Considering a lengthy CV that stretches back 30 years and takes in TV, film, books and critically acclaimed Olympic opening ceremonies, are nerves just a part of the job for a ‘first night’?

“Only for Doctor Who,” admits Frank. “You feel really nervous about Doctor Who because you grew up with it and there’s a vocal fan base out there, but you’ve got to just forget about that, come off Twitter and not think about it.”

It’s the Easter holidays, which means Frank is in the thick of domestic activity during our phone conversation. “Everybody’s coming home for Easter, so I’m picking things up, dropping things off,” he says apologetically while preparing lunch. As a father of seven, it makes for a lively home life. “I live in a noisy, chaotic house, and I think it maybe makes you value silence more.”

In a contrast to Frank’s domestic reality (which he clearly thrives on), the first half of Smile is punctuated with moments of silence, centring on the Doctor and Bill investigating the empty walkways of the futuristic buildings found on colony world Gliese 581 D.

“The brief was to write Bill’s first big adventure in space,” explains Frank, “so I wanted it to be a two-hander, and part of that two-hander is just them sharing quiet together and letting her work out who the Doctor is, for us, again.”

It’s a remarkably traditional opening…

“Yeah, it feels like a 1960s episode of Doctor Who, and there was a lot more of that in the script. There was a lot more walking around and I wanted that 60s thing. If you think about William Hartnell’s Doctor, the current Doctor is now a teacher, and back then they had that sage old man who knew stuff; the Gandalf figure, that wise old chap.

“This is an episode to explore, for Bill to explore, what the Doctor is. Who he is, and what he is. He’s not just a teacher. And Bill’s got a moment where she realises this is a police box. Her question is, ‘Why can’t we just walk away from this?’ That’s because he’s the Doctor. What’s been fun about writing Bill, and I’m sure everybody else will say the same thing, is that it’s making you look right back at the core of Doctor Who to see what it is, because you’ve got a new, very, very inquisitive companion who wants to know the answers. You get to ask all those questions again – and answer them – in a fresh way. You go back to the core. She asks those questions that you might think about, then realise that nobody has asked them before. ‘Where’s the toilet?’ – that’s a great moment! And Pearl Mackie is fantastic. I remember watching her first try-out tapes, and thinking, ‘Wow, this is a new way of writing the companion.’ She’s not just an actress, she’s a new way of writing the show because she gives you a whole range of questions that you normally wouldn’t ask. When she realises it’s dangerous on this planet, and asks ‘Can’t you ring the helpline?’; it’s a new, special relationship.”