War is business, and business is booming!
The Fifteenth Doctor
This review contains spoilers for Boom. If you have not yet seen this episode, my spoiler-free review can be found here.
Synopsis
Caught in the middle of a devastating war on Kastarion 3, the Doctor is trapped when he steps on a landmine. Can he save himself and Ruby, plus the entire planet… without moving?
Review
Steven Moffat’s return to Doctor Who is something that I personally never thought that I would see happen but am over the moon that it has. Boom is another episode that shows how flexible and different Doctor Who can be from week to week and how, as a show, it is easy to fall in love with.
One wrong move and I go all food-mixer.
The Fifteenth Doctor
Boom has a relatively simple premise of confining the Doctor to one place and keeping him there for the majority of the story, but Moffat manages to keep this tense throughout and ratchets up the tension at every opportunity when the audience’s attention might start to wain. Despite knowing that the Doctor must get out of this situation somehow, it is hard to see the solution until it is brought up in the story. The story has those who profit from war firmly in its sights and Moffat reserves a great deal of rage and ire towards the Villengard algorithm and this comes through mainly in the Doctor. The twist that the planet of Kastarion 3 is in fact deserted is cleverly seeded through the story, as we hear mention that the Clerics’ foes are in the mud or in the mist, hinting that there is more than meets the eye about this battlefield. This is an army being held hostage by its own hardware, believing that there is a foe through artificial means by a haywire algorithm. This brings into line with the show’s pacifist message and the futility of war, whilst also having some moments of black humour, like the fact that the Doctor needs to hold onto the remains of Vater in order to keep him alive, and the ambulances using the hollowest of sympathies ‘thoughts and prayers’. I really fell in love with the idea here and think that this is one of the strongest stories of this era thus far. The direction is strong here and Julie Anne Robinson ensures that this story works really well, through use of good sets and digital technology, and keeps the energy up throughout. This story is really well-paced, putting the Doctor in peril in the cold open and then it doesn’t really let up until its concluding few moments, throwing further obstacles in the path of the Doctor and Ruby.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Steven Moffat script with references back to other things he has written. The most prominent of these is the fact that the Anglican marines are using Villengard weapons technology, the factory for which was destroyed by the Doctor and turned into a banana plantation (The Doctor Dances) and later visited by the Twelfth and First Doctors in Twice Upon a Time. The Doctor also mentions to Splice that his favourite food is fish fingers and custard, the food that the Eleventh Doctor and Amelia Pond ate together in The Eleventh Hour. Then we get to a slightly more obscure one; the Doctor tells himself that “there’s more to life than the moon and the President’s wife’, which calls back to a story that Missy tells Clara about the Doctor in The Witch’s Familiar, in which the Doctor apparently stole both. For the new viewer, these references likely flew over their heads, however, I was there lapping them up like the fan service they were. I think it works organically enough, but by this far down the rabbit hole, I’m not sure whether or not I am the best person to judge!
That’s not to say that I was so blinded not to see problems in the story though. I found the character of Splice a bit difficult and was unable to work out whether it was due to the acting of Caoillinn Springall or the writing and direction. Child actors have always been a bit of a mixed bag for Doctor Who, and this story does put a lot of the emotional weight on Splice, which I think does not entirely work. A factor that I entirely owe to my wife is the fact that she did not feel as though she was written as the actress’ age, which I think did her no favours. The performance seems flat though, which is a shame and it is more irritating that she spends most of the episode asking what has happened to her father when it is readily apparent to everyone else in the story. Another aspect of the story that did not work so well was the romance story between Mundy and Canto, which felt like a last minute inclusion and as good a performance as both Varada Sethu and Bhav Joshi put in, it does feel a bit rushed. That being said, the sudden nature of Canto’s death did shock me, and it felt as though this was something that the show has not done for a little while. It is nice to be reminded that there are stakes.
I think that the guest cast do a good job on the whole and would be remiss to not mention the surprise appearance of Varada Sethu in this story. I really liked her performance as Mundy in this, someone who clearly does have a great deal of compassion and empathy towards characters in this story, despite being a soldier. Despite my misgivings about the plotline, both she and Bhav Joshi do well with what they’re given and make the ultimate fate of Canto and their ill-fated romance heartbreaking. Time will tell whether or not this is the last we see of Mundy Flynn, as Russell T Davies’ comments seem to imply that Sethu will be playing a different character a la Freema Agyeman when she returns in Series 15. Her performance is one of the standouts, along with Joe Anderson as the unfortunate Vater, who spends most of this story as a holographic AI. It is telling that Anderson makes you care about what happens to him despite only featuring briefly in the cold open.
“Faith”! The magic word that keeps you never having to think for yourself! Just surrender, Mundy. Just stop… and it’s all over.
Prove it.
What, seriously? Now you need proof, faith girl?
The Fifteenth Doctor and Mundy Flynn
I think that’s a point that brings us on to the theme of faith. Faith is something that the Doctor is reliant on – the Doctor and their companions have to have faith in each other to be able to get through adventures like this one. The show has always had a rather cynical view towards faith. Both Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat are atheists, but Moffat turns the idea of the Church being an army starting with The Time of Angels. As he rightly points out here, the history of the Church is far more bloody and violent than we’d think in the 21st Century and it is not beyond imagining that it could return to that again. Whilst Moffat is scathing about faith in this story, it is definitely more to do with blind faith rather than faith more generally. Flynn and the rest of the Clerics have put their faith in a war that has been artificially generated and Moffat wants the audience to seek out evidence and hard facts and place weight on them
This all leads me on to one very important member of the guest cast in the form of one Susan Twist. Twist has featured in five of the last six stories, only missing out on The Giggle since she first featured in Wild Blue Yonder. Boom brings her most substantive role to date as the face of the Ambulances which stalk the battlefield and fulfill the Villengard algorithm and brings a villainous coolness to this role. It remains to be seen how Twist and her various roles tie into the mystery around Ruby, but I did wonder whether or not we might be getting some answers next week in 73 Yards based on the next time trailer.
After having two episodes in which the Doctor has ran away from danger, it was nice to have one where we saw this relatively new Doctor run towards it, albeit without carrying out his basic checks before leaving the TARDIS to confirm that he has his TARDIS key. It is unclear whether or not he has his sonic screwdriver but it does not appear that reaching for it would have done him much good in this story. Ncuti Gatwa seems to relish in the challenge of Steven Moffat’s writing and rises to that challenge admirably. I mentioned above about Moffat’s anger, and this bleeds through most clearly in the Doctor, whose righteous indignation about the cleric’s faith, war and the manufacturers of this technology all gives him a chance to do something that we’ve not seen this Doctor do before. It sounds clinical to suggest that there is a checklist, but it is important for the audience to see the many facets of the Doctor, and that he has depths beyond his cheery exterior. This story poses a very different threat to the Doctor and the nature of the smart landmine means that the Doctor can be quite passive, meaning that once the threat has been removed, the Doctor becomes quite manic, which Gatwa also delivers with applomb.
The story also allows us to see more of Ruby and, whilst it sidelines her for a bit of the plot, it feels as though it does move her plot forward a little, especially with the Doctor acknowledging this reoccuring element of snow around her. This, along with The Devil’s Chord show both her and the audience that travels with the Doctor won’t always be safe and that there is always a risk. You can’t have that reveal come too early in a new companion’s time with the Doctor, as then he’d constantly be looking for new companions, so it is an important milestone. It also allows Millie Gibson to do something different and take the more active role with the Doctor stuck on a landmine and I think that she is especially good when she insists on handing the remains of Vater to the Doctor to allow him to put his foot down, rather than throwing them to him as the Doctor insists.
Verdict: Boom is my favourite episode of this series so far. It is well-written and paced and has great performances, with some minor flaws. 9/10
Cast: Ncuti Gatwa (The Doctor), Millie Gibson (Ruby Sunday), Joe Anderson (John Francis Vater), Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy (Carson), Caoillinn Springall (Splice Alison Vater), Varada Sethu (Mundy Flynn), Bhav Joshi (Canterbury James Olliphant) & Susan Twist (Ambulance).
Writer: Steven Moffat
Director: Julie Anne Robinson
Producer: Vicki Dellow
Composer: Murray Gold
Original UK Broadcast Date: 18th May 2024
Behind the Scenes
- This story marks the first script written for the programme by former showrunner Steven Moffat. Moffat wrote for the show from 2005 until 2017, and was showrunner between 2010 and 2017, overseeing the Eleventh and Twelfth Doctors. As a result, he is added as an Executive Producer for this story.
Cast Notes
- Varada Sethu has been cast as a new companion appearing in the next series of Doctor Who alongside Gatwa and Gibson.
Best Moment
I really like the look we get after the vacuum drones fly overhead and Ruby gets her first glimpse of the sky on her first alien planet.
Best Quote
I’m a much bigger bang than you bargained for. I’m a lot more explosive than I look, and, honey, I know how I look. Put a quantum chain reaction through me, and I will shatter this silly little battlefield of yours into dust. All of it, in a heartbeat, into dust.
The Fifteenth Doctor
Previous Fifteenth Doctor review: The Devil’s Chord
For more Fifteenth Doctor reviews, click here.
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