Doctor Who Series 14, Episode 3
“Boom”
Posted by Sage
It’s Ruby Sunday’s first trip to another planet, and none other than former showunner Steven Moffat has logged on to ensure that the visit is well and truly traumatizing for both her and the Doctor. I mean, the man just can’t resist killing off the companion, even if she’s magic-ed back to life by evil, war-mongering tech 20 minutes later. And would we want it any other way?
“Boom” is a seismic tone shift from the first two episodes of the series (as well as the Christmas special), grounding the Doctor quite literally and stripping him of all his usual tricks. Placing him on an active landmine in the middle of a battlefield is a juicy conundrum, and one that Moffat would so obviously relish writing. It also allows him to bring in a host of his favorite recurring themes: the military industrial complex writ large, “dad skills,” unspoken love, and – as previously mentioned – dead!companions. To Kastarion 3!
Why the Doctor and Ruby have landed where they do is not explained, though it feels very much like the TARDIS once again taking her Time Lord where he needed to go. An unnecessary conflict has been raging for six months (shades of “The Doctor’s Daughter” here), extended indefinitely by our old friends at Villengard, first mentioned in “The Doctor Dances.” This Moffat creation is a massively influential weapons manufacturer, creating conflict out of the most innocuous of circumstances and manipulating (and killing!) its clients so that it’ll never be out of a job. We see it first in action in this episode in the form of a quantum landmine, and then an “ambulance,” dispatched to evaluate wounded soldiers and determine whether or not they’re worth patching up. Its by-the-numbers ruthlessness is evident in the quick dispatching of John Francis Vater, an Anglican Marine who it analyzes as “blind” because his eyesight has been temporarily damaged, presumably by another Villengard-made weapon.
The Doctor ends up balanced on his own landmine running in the direction of Vater’s screams, too late to save him. But in classic Moffat fashion, it’s Vater – or the AI approximation of his traits and values – who ends up saving almost everyone. Does Testimony know about this little copy/save project? We might have a copyright issue on our hands.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. This episode not only paralyzes the Doctor, it also takes out Ruby for a decent chunk of the runtime. Before it does, however, she gets to directly and unflinchingly defy the Doctor’s orders. Given that the Doctor can detect the weight of Vater’s “casket” to several decimal points just by watching her toss it in her own hand, I’d put some money on him being able to catch the poor bastard’s smelted remains and shift his weight at the same time. But Ruby refuses to let him take the additional risk. (She’s dead anyway if they miss, given a Time Lord’s apparent blast radius.) The scene in which they go (again, literally) toe-to-toe about this is a banger, hinting that we should expect much more from this Doctor/companion duo than just being gallivanting space besties with incredible fashion sense. Not for nothing, Ruby has the stubbornness of a Clara Oswald in her, and we all know how that turned out. (“I can’t think unless I’m talking, and I can only talk to you” is such a Whouffaldi line, god bless.)
I haven’t gone searching for it, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there’s discourse happening about Ruby being sidelined by Canto’s blaster. And to any of those hypothetical complaints I would say: This is drama! The mechanics of this episode are very specific and very narrow. Taking out Ruby ensures that she can’t sprint back to the TARDIS to get something helpful or be otherwise of further assistance. It also gives rise to an emotional response within the Doctor, which deepens the tension because we know that his physiological responses are affecting the landmine’s readings. If he blows, they all blow.
Taking Ruby momentarily off the board heightens everything about their predicament. Unfortunately, it also allows for more clumsy references to the unknown circumstances of her birth. The glitching of the ambulance and Ruby’s reaction to it frame her as a girl without a family, and of course that’s not true. On top of the handling of her story being a sensitivity issue, it’s also a all over place. We know that Ruby thinks of Carla as her “real” mom, and wouldn’t she be thinking about the people she loves the most on the occasion of her imminent death, not worrying about who her closest blood relative may be?
Meanwhile, the Doctor has nothing to think about but the half the planet he’ll pulverize if the landmine goes off. And this facilitates the finest acting Ncuti has done so far on this show. We’ve seen Fifteen be flirty, confident, nurturing (SPACE BABIES), musical, mischievous, and even frightened. But Moffat’s plot prolongs the fear, drawing it out and hyper-focusing it. While the Doctor’s fear of Maestro is a little wild and almost hysterical, there’s no question of what the consequences would be of him losing his standoff with the Villengard tech, and that’s clear on his face.
Ncuti delivers this performance glued to the spot, all of the Doctor’s glorious physicality inaccessible to him. One thing he can do in this moment? CRY. And cry beautifully he does. Fifteen cries angry, he cries scared, he cries sad – and Ncuti doesn’t have to scrunch up his face to get them going. I love that when this Doctor is overstimulated, big, fat tears just start rolling down his face. And with him not being able to lift an arm up to wipe them on his sleeve, he ends up a teary, snotty mess – zero vanity and so, so affecting.
I don’t find him particularly angry in this episode, though I am seeing that some fans think he pulled a personality u-turn and was perhaps a little too Capaldi in this episode. (Impossible. The limit does not exist!) No, we’re told pretty explicitly that the Doctor is modulating the anger he’s feeling so his blood pressure won’t rise to a code-red level. So it’s a dirty little trick to put him in the path of his least favorite people: soldiers who are also clergy.
For “Boom,” Moffat brings back the Anglican Marines from “A Good Man Goes to War.” We learn a little bit more about them here, including that “divinity” is their version of rank. The Doctor has compassion for Mundy, Canto, Vater, and Splice individually, though he scoffs at their faith. (“The magic word that keeps you never having to think for yourself.”) It’s possible to take the Doctor’s run-ins with the armored faithful and his disdain for the practice as straightforward criticism of the weaponization of religion, and in the context of those of us watching from home, it probably is. But let’s not forget that Moffat has written an overstepping, overly judgmental, straight-up hypocritical Doctor in similar circumstances before. Just look at how Twelve treated Danny. That wasn’t something we were meant to blindly agree with. The Doctor may have left a version of himself at Donna’s house to handle the healing process, but he’s still got more baggage than anyone else in the universe. And he has his biases.
Anyway, the Anglicans aren’t the bad guys here. (Or they’re the bad guys and the good guys without knowing it? Confusing stuff.) This episode comes much more for the culture of war and the automation and de-personalization of it by companies that are lining their pockets with blood money while staying well clear of the fray. In this world of wish fulfillment however, the fading echo of a real person with real emotions can be a virus in the system, dismantling the whole thing with a few “dad skills.” (And you can count me among the viewers whose antennas have gone up with all the references to the Doctor being a parent so far this season. Could Carole Ann Ford really be Andrew-Garfield-ing us??)
To be nitpicky, the resolution here has the effect of humanizing AI, which I’m not super thrilled about. But it’s not Doctor Who‘s fault that the world is such a hellscape. And the Doctor’s reflections after all’s been corrected justify it. This is what “gone,” or at least “dead” looks like in the far future, and there’s reassurance in the fact that even a merciless algorithm can’t wipe out not just everything a person was but also everything they held dear and would have done. Another one of this series’ fourth-wall breaks happens when Ruby and the Doctor are standing in the doorway of the TARDIS, and he’s looking right down the barrel of the camera when he says that “dying defines us.” But it’s not a threat – it’s actually a comfort. And nobody does this kind of hopeful secularism as well as Steven Moffat.
Timey Wimey Observations:
- Varada Sethu! Everyone is being predictably cagey about this, but all signs are pointing to her coming back to the show as a different character. And if so, good on her for impressing the producers so much that they asked her back!
- It took me two viewings to recognize Vater as Joe Anderson, who I know best as Max from Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe. Stop drafting this man into unnecessary wars!
- I’m not going to open a federal case about it, but enough with the side plots about male guest characters who die before they can scrounge up the courage to share their feelings with their crush. Canto is an ADULT MAN at WAR. Get it together! Now Mundy has to live with the guilt of this the rest of her life even though she did nothing wrong. If we keep feeling sorry for these people, the patriarchy wins.
- Did they age Splice up when they cast her? Because the math is not mathing between her appearance and her behavior. I would think that a tween living how she does would be wiser and more mature than we’re used to, not less.
- Glorious use of Fifteen’s theme when he runs out of the TARDIS in the direction of the screams.
- Shout out to Bonnie Prince Charlie.
- Related, I love that music is in this Doctor’s heart! It’s a source of joy and of comfort, and I love that for him.
- “It’s gonna be a moment, yeah!”
- All of Ncuti’s ensemble, as usual, but especially those boots.
- “I’ve met sentient mud. Lovely girls.”
- Cheap shots perhaps, but you are LYING if you say you didn’t crack a smile at “fish fingers and custard” and the poem about the president’s wife.
- “Do you get-get-get it?” and a little mic drop, who says this man is acting out of character??
Were you wowed by “Boom”? Let us know in the comments!
Featured Image Source: Disney+
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