WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!
Steven Moffat has written some of the most loved and iconic Doctor Who stories with the Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, Blink, Day of the Doctor, Heaven Sent and World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls. He had his flaws as a showrunner, but his talent as a writer and understanding of Doctor Who as a series can’t be denied. His stories during Russell T Davies' first era were clear standouts. So how did his return turn out? Let's take a look.
Boom surrounds a planet called Kastarion 3 in the middle of a deadly war with the Anglican Church against a race of Kastarions, which are nowhere to be seen with the Villengard Corporation supposedly supplying both sides of arms in the war. The Doctor and Ruby arrive as the Doctor instantly finds himself in jeopardy as he steps on a high-tech landmine. As a complex space time event he knows he will cause untold catastrophe if the landmine activates.
Boom has such a fascinating and visionary concept at the centre. It’s a terrific idea and Steven Moffat does so much with its premise. It’s not an idea that has come completely out of nowhere as there is a scene in Genesis of the Daleks involving the Doctor stepping on a landmine on Skaro. However, Steven Moffat has smartly recognised the potential in this idea and the drama if played out across a whole story. It’s a very simple idea, but it lends itself to suspense and tension very naturally. Doctor Who is very naturally concept and idea driven and is always looking for out of the box ideas to refresh the show and take it to new and inventive places for one story only. The ideas in Doctor Who make the drama and make the story. The best Doctor Who stories surround a core idea and a fascinating concept, and the best ideas are the ones that can lend themselves to drama. The ideas that create tension, danger and scariness and get the best out of the characters are the ones that tend to be beloved. You remember stories like Midnight and Heaven Sent because of how unique and memorable they are and how they push the characters to the very limit. They also have a scariness and terror that resembles Doctor Who and find a distinctive way to terrify and immerse the audience.
You can tell that Steven Moffat hasn’t lost his spark and Boom has the distinctive flare of his writing. It’s probably clear from my reviews that I have an affection and enjoyment for Russell T Davies’s writing style. However, I do think Boom offers a refreshing and different change of pace. With the same writer, you have the same voice and energy from story to story. I think Russell T Davies has done a good job so far of giving this new era loads of different kinds of stories, but the same voice is going to emerge, regardless. Therefore, it’s refreshing to have Steven Moffat emerge who has a different kind of voice. His distinctive and different outlook and writing style is obviously going to have very different results from Russell T Davies. Steven Moffat thrives on ideas and squeezing all the juice out of a concept.
The idea of the Doctor stepping on a landmine and being unable to move is simple enough, but what makes Boom such an intelligent and cleverly written story is everything which is going on around the centre of it. What creates the suspense is the heightened sense of danger which you couldn’t have without the developing stakes and all the different twists and turns that happen throughout. Those twists and revelations have to be meaningful and feel organic and deliberate for the episode. All the character relationships act as setups and their payoff hinges on a very intimate and enclosed situation. It stops the story from stagnating and feeling dull. It feels like it is always in motion, always moving, and it creates a lot of variety in the storyline. There are character relationships, themes, messages and world-building which all ties together in an emotionally satisfying and dramatic way. The recipe for success is in the way all the ingredients and individual components for the story are all wooshed together. It feels deliberate on reflection. However, you don’t see the purpose of the setups and components from the outside as you are too focused and invested in the story as a whole. There is a smartness and clever writing to the structure of Steven Moffat’s script here, which it is satisfying to see gradually unfold. The engineering that is done to draw the various pieces of the script together is very admirable.
One of the parts I love in Boom is the world-building. A good Doctor Who story would be a far lesser one without its setting as it creates the atmosphere and feel of the whole thing. A war-torn planet and environment already has this feeling of unpredictability and danger, which I adore. However, this future is given a lot of texture and reality in the way it’s baked and developed into established continuity. I always enjoy Doctor Who stories that are able to take advantage of and expand established continuity and history. It helps things to feel authentic and like a believable fleshed out future. Steven Moffat takes aspects of his previous stories' continuity and expands upon them in a way that really works. It doesn’t feel hollow or meaningless, but the backbone of the drama of the story.
It makes the story itself feel very believable and human. Faith and the military being intertwined was an aspect of multiple Steven Moffat stories during the Matt Smith era and it feels logical to work that into this story. However, the inclusion of the Villengard Corporation links back to a reference in the Empty Child/The Doctor Dances. This together forms a world which has a feeling of authenticity. The familiarity of the future in question has its benefits. Tying into other stories means the story doesn’t feel isolated, but has a sense of scope and scale. It makes the story part of a grander image. Tying things into a consistent history of human development gives the story more baked and familiar stakes. The mystery and vague history only makes the story and the world the Doctor lands in much more interesting. Having a sense of conflict and history amongst the world the Doctor has landed in creates a backbone to the drama that is very beneficial.
It’s also used to explore interesting and very complex themes. There was potential in the religion fuelled military idea and especially the capitalist concept of Villengard that hadn’t been utilised. Steven Moffat in this story gets the best out of both ideas. I love the twist that comes that the Church have been fighting their own hardware. The implications are there in the story that there are no Kastarions, but the revelation is still a surprising one. There is a meaningful anti-capitalist message to the story. The Villengard Corporation hardware works to an algorithm for the benefits of profitability. The cold mechanical objective of this cuts to the truth of the horrors of war being used for capitalist profit. It means the reasons and objectives of war mean nothing in the face of the capitalist reach and objective, which balances and ensures casualty, death and profitability. When you think about it, it means that war is designed to go on forever from a purely algorithmic standpoint if profit is being made. The story exposes the horrid ruthlessness of people’s lives being thrown away for a capitalist objective, which makes a powerful statement. With there being no enemy and the Church fighting their own hardware, there is a real pointlessness to the war and their actions. The message is something that emotionally resonates and is relatable to all of us. We all understand and have been on the receiving end of money grabbing capitalists who don’t value human rights and values. Therefore, we can understand the threat and can believe in the algorithm in the episode, as it’s not dissimilar to our own history and experiences.
The story also has a very blatant statement to make about religion. The military and church relationship didn’t have that much depth in the Matt Smith era. Therefore, this gave Boom the opportunity to do something interesting with religion involved in a conflict. It makes sense why the Church wouldn’t work out the situation they are in because of their own sense of faith. It presents the pitfalls of religion in that belief stops you critically thinking for yourself. It’s a story that is similar to Gridlock, exposing the complacency of faith in an intelligently thought-out manner.
I thought I would tackle the guest cast at this point, given how they tie into the themes and storyline. Joe Anderson plays John Francis Vater, a central character, man in the military and father to Splice. He is killed very early on in the story, but his AI reconstruction remains. His relationship with his daughter is established early on and gives the story its heart and soul. His fatherly skills, humour and sense of care is a very natural part of his character. He cares primarily about his daughter and her safety and wants to be there for her, which makes him very admirable. I really like the way the Doctor influences John’s AI to do what’s right for his daughter. In the end, it is John who saves the day, showcasing the lengths of fatherly love. The persistence of a father’s care for their child outlasting death and taking out a capitalist system and war has a lot of relatable moral meaning to it. You can see Steven Moffat’s experiences as a father coming through in the moral messaging. However, the ending also shows the importance of human values to make a difference against cold capitalist interests. It’s very insightful, thought out and emotional.
Splice is played by Caoilinn Springall and is a very natural actor. Child actors can have mixed results on Doctor Who, but I think Splice works rather well. Splice has a very believable relationship with her father and a naivety to her, but it’s clear her religious upbringing and being thrown into conflict has altered her development. I think the unsurprised under-reactions of Caoilinn Springall’s performance and how easily she adjusts to her father’s death personifies this in a very natural way. Mundy Flynn is a key character played by Varada Sethu who has been cast to play a new companion in next year's series. Mundy has a natural cheekiness and humour to her, an affection and warmth towards Splice which is very lovely and feels like a believable and relatable person. Mundy is a solidly prepared individual with a lot of precision and grounded reality in her. I enjoy her strength but also emotional vulnerability.
The weak point of the story is Bhav Joshi as James Olliphant. There is nothing wrong with the acting and performance, but the actor has very little to work with in character. The only thing to his character is that he is in love with and has feelings for Mundy. He has a purpose in the story, but I didn’t feel for or have much care for his character or his relationship with Mundy. He felt more like a function who exists for a purpose rather than a person and individual with much depth or nuance. If he was going to be a part of things, there needed to be more dimension to see things from his perspective.
Now it’s time to look at Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor. He is pushed to his best in Boom in what is essentially a character piece for the Doctor. This is common for Steven Moffat, whose stories are often centred around the Doctor as a character and their actions. There is a distinctive way in which Steven Moffat writes the Doctor and that comes through in Boom, and Ncuti Gatwa runs with it effortlessly. There is a wittiness to the Doctor and a humour but also a sense of age and weight that lies on his shoulders. The story surrounds the Doctor and his conflict and decision-making and from that you get a lot of vulnerability in Ncuti Gatwa’s performance. You can see the strain and the difficulty with the plates which he is juggling. There is an intellect and authority in the Doctor. He is in a very limited position but is gathering slowly the pieces he needs to figure the situation out and resolve it. The story still displays the Doctor as a clever mastermind who is one step ahead of everyone else and his limitations come in his inability to move. The cocky confidence of Ncuti Gatwa’s Doctor and the way he uses humour to distract himself and try to comfort his companion is very in character for his Doctor but very consistent with how Steven Moffat writes the Doctor.
What I love about the situation the Doctor is put in across the episode is the balancing of both emotion and stress. The Fifteenth Doctor is a very openly emotional character. You can see what he is feeling openly on his face as he does not try to suppress and hide his feelings like some other Doctors would. However, Boom pushes him to the limit with stress able to trigger the landmine device. This puts the Doctor in a situation where he has to maintain a level of calm tranquillity, which is very difficult for him. The story pushes his stress with everything going on around him as he has to maintain a level head. The story strips him of the excitable nature and leaves the gravity of Ncuti Gatwa’s acting, which pushes him to new places. It plays on the range of his emotion and ability, which is very wise. The story deals with the nuances, biases and motivations of the Doctor in a way that makes the character fascinating and flawed.
Millie Gibson, as Ruby Sunday, is also taken to new and interesting places as the Doctor is reliant upon her and her actions in order to survive. Ruby seems adept and natural at thinking on her feet and making decisions, which shows how good she is for the role of the companion. I really like Ruby’s stubborn energy and the way she stands her ground on handing the Doctor John’s sacred remains. It gives Ruby a bravery and a confidence that feels natural to her as a person. Seeing Ruby conflict with the Doctor is very interesting and gives her a guts and a decisiveness in her ability to challenge the Doctor, which is reflective of some of the best companions. Her joy at seeing another planet for the first time also presents Ruby in a way that feels very authentic and human. It’s only natural to be taken back and struck by another planet and feels very relatable. I also admire how Boom thrusts Ruby into drama and chaos. Seeing Ruby struck by a gun puts her into a vulnerable place with her life at threat. It brings a reality to the adventures and a sense of consequences.
Boom is directed by Julie Anne Robinson, who also directed Space Babies at the start of the season. The zooming shot towards the Tardis as the Doctor opens the door is very immersive and puts you right into the atmosphere of the story with a great feeling of danger and stakes. It’s a great way to introduce the Doctor. Julie Anne Robinson does a terrific job of giving the story a confined and tense feeling but a lot of variety to make the story visually interesting to watch. The closeups of the Doctor and the inter-cutting between characters and moments elevates the stakes of the story. The story is shot with a lot of variety in a way to give things a lot of movement and pace, but the characters still have a sense of stillness. The scenes are largely filmed from the perspective of the central characters which gives the story a personal tension which I admire.
So overall, what did I think of Boom? I think it’s an excellent story and clearly the best of the Ncuti Gatwa era so far. It’s clear Steven Moffat hasn’t lost his spark as a writer with a very confined, concept driven bottle episode that focuses on drama and tension. It takes a very simple concept and, through cleverly engineered writing and setups, smartly elevates the drama and stakes by utilising the suspense of the situation. You have immense and terrific world-building, relevant themes and messaging detailing the consequences of the capitalist mindset and pitfalls of faith with an emotionally focused story about parent power. Best of all, it pushes Ncuti Gatwa to the limit with an emotionally strained and difficult situation for the Doctor and a proper character piece for the Fifteenth Doctor giving Ncuti Gatwa what he deserves.
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