Doctor Who Series 10: 7 Big Questions We're Asking After 'Smile

7. Is There A First Doctor Theme Emerging?

Gifted with a whole new regeneration cycle in The Time of the Doctor, Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor could equally be described as the First, Mark II, and it certainly seems like for his swansong series, Moffat is deliberately making connections to William Hartnell’s original. From last week’s title to the photograph of original companion Susan, the links in the series opener were explicit.

To add weight to the theory, we already know that the original Cybermen who featured in Hartnell’s last story will be back for the series finale, and speculation is mounting that the Christmas special could be a multi-Doctor affair, with David Bradley playing the First Doctor.

So does Smile continue the theme? We do have a reference to the Doctor stealing the TARDIS, but it’s very much in the context of new companion Bill finding out who the Doctor is (we also have the two hearts dialogue, a concept not introduced until 1970).

However, some fans have described Cottrell-Boyce’s story as Hartnellesque, in the way in which it opens with our adventurers exploring a seemingly deserted planet/city. More specifically Smile shares some thematic links with the 1967 story, The Ark, which is also set on a human colony. There the humans end up being subjugated by their former slaves (in this case the alien Monoids rather than their own robotic technology). In another nod to the 1960s the story ends with a lead into the next. Is it a coincidence that it happens to feature an elephant – an animal last seen in, you guessed it, The Ark?