15.4: Boom
In which the Doctor steps on it.
Broadcast: May 2024.
Watched: November 2024
“I’m a much bigger bang than you bargained for.”
Actually, this being Moffat’s first Who script in over six years, there are loads of great lines.
“Death by salesman.”
“Give it time. Everywhere’s a beach eventually”
“I am a higher-dimensional lifeform, I am a complex space time event.” “I’m Anglican.”
“Vacuum drones, hoovering up the smoke so that nobody can choke to death before they are safely shot.” The way Ncuti spits that out is amazing, even if the Doctor is now getting a letter from the trademark protection guy at hoover.
Anyway: this one’s a bit of a Moffat megamix. It combines the “healthcare systems are scary!” theme we’ve had from Empty Child to Girl Who Waited to World Enough and Time with an ending when the machines protect the kid, like a cross between the endings of Closing Time and Death in Heaven. The AI holograms are the latest in a long line of creepy memorials including flesh aspects and weepy angels. The anti-capitalist fury is like that in Oxygen.
And this story, as suggested by the last line I quoted above, is so angry, in a way that feels striking from both Moffat and Who. You might have got stories about a company that creates a war to give itself a market, and employs an algorithm to work out whether it’d be more profitable to kill the sick than heal them, a decade earlier. But both the Doctor’s furious attacks on the nature of faith and the repeated refrain of “Thoughts and prayers” feels a lot more political than, to pick a random example, “oooh wifi’s new and scary isn’t it?”
I was going to put the ambulance murdering Canto immediately after declaring his love into this box, but that sort of happened with Danny ten years before. At least that time it was an accident, though. This time, capitalists do it on purpose.
It’s so obviously the cheap one - the two settings, the cast of six, the way it looks a bit crap in places - that I wonder if the whole “the Doctor can’t move!” thing was actually retrofitted to justify it. But it does give Ncuti a chance to shine. I love the contrast between the energy with which he runs into the story and everything that follows.
I’ve also written down, “How many stories does the Doctor cry in?” which is actually a bit mad because it’s “most of the rest of the season”.
Actually, this is kind of my criticism, really: the whole thing gets a bit histrionic. The music suggests the moment where Canto shoots Ruby as she’s about to shoot Munday in the foot to distract the ambulance is meant to read as tragic… but it’s also blackly funny, and the director hasn’t noticed. At the end, the reuse of the music from Ruby Road suggests we’ve reached the end of a movie-length journey, but we haven’t had a movie worth of material. (There’s a whole five minutes left when the Doctor finally gets off the landmine. It weirdly doesn’t feel like he’s on it that long.)
And the joyous tone of the ending fits poorly with the fact the kid’s dad is still actually dead. She ends up smiling, because the shape of the story demands it and [checks notes] not literally everyone she’s ever met is dead now. But she’s an orphan. It doesn’t work.
Actually, the kid’s my biggest problem, really. The child actor is too old for the role she’s playing: surely a girl that old wouldn’t still believe a lot of nonsense about what happened to her mother, and would recognise that a hologram isn’t her dad. She should understand death. And why is she wandering around a battlefield anyway? Or maybe this is just my own personal situation affecting my judgement of stuff involving children again? I dunno.
It’s good. The political stuff is great. But remixes are never quite as good as the original, are they? I’m not sure whether Ncuti’s “right, that’s enough of that” is an attempt to undercut the melodrama or an acknowledgement that the tone is off.
***A BRIEF COMMERCIAL MESSAGE***
My book A History of the World in 47 Borders makes an excellent Christmas present. (Bill Bryson says it’s good! The actual Bill Bryson!)
Also you can currently get 25% off subscriptions to my proper newsletter.
***AND NOW, BACK TO THE SHOW***
Other things:
Having spent Disney’s money on creating the world’s longest corridor, Doctor Who now uses it to build its own quarry.
The title is close enough to Boom Town to be annoying. It’s Rose/Rosa all over again.
Talking of names, “Splice” isn’t one, though it is quite a good joke
This week Susan twist is an ambulance. Ncuti wears some clothes that did not especially stick in the memory.
That’s 14 years now we’ve been running into the space vicars - Moff is building his own mini 51st century continuity in a manner that suggests an awareness of Lance Parkin’s Ahistory. I love the use of ranks and lines like “I don’t have the divinity!” Also the fact they’re Anglican, pretty much the least militant religion available.
Other references: Villangard first got a mention in The Empty Child, “fishfingers and custard” comes from The Eleventh Hour, the whole thing is basically that scene in Genesis of the Daleks part 1.
If Ruby’s been travelling with the Doctor for six months, then why is this her first planet? Again feels like the episode order got swapped.
“He probably needs changing.” The second joke this season about that. Also: again, we are reminded that the Doctor has kids.
A failsafe system that involves blowing up regardless is not a very good failsafe system. (This might also be a joke.)
Okay, something else that really annoys me: why do they bother with the singing the Skye Boat Song so they know the exact beat for Ruby to hand the Doctor the weird smelted body thing, only to slow down at the end of the line? It’s nonsense. FFS. Again, I blame the director.
“Varada Sethu is SO hot” I’ve written here. So there you go. I wonder if she’s back next year as this character or a different one.
“He’s not gone. He’s just dead.” Yeah, about that.