Hogan Reviews

“Boom” is a fine example of Steve Moffatt just telling a great self-contained story, like he most famously did during Russell T. Davies’ original run, though he did have the odd classic as show runner. The Doctor steps on a landmine and the entire 40-odd minute story takes place around him as he tries to get out of the predicament. Simple sounding story but actually a brilliant showcase of tension as a storytelling tool. Let’s take a look!

Within the first few moments of the story The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) steps on a special kind of landmine that converts whoever has stepped on it into a bomb and it helpfully has an LED indicator of how much pressure is being placed on it before it detonates. Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) soon joins him on the battlefield and at least helps him centre his balance by giving him a mysterious fleshy tube as a counterweight, though that tube is actually an Anglican Church marine called John Francis Vater (Joe Anderson) who was killed in the pre-credits by a field ambulance AI because he was temporarily blinded and it judged his recovery time too long to be of any use to the war effort. This is a key plot point: the weapons and equipment are all created by one company called Villengard and the AI network makes sure there are enough casualties for the fighting to continue (and therefore the soldiers needing more of their wares) but not enough for one side to win, capitalism at its most extreme.

This screenshot also works as a synopsis!

Obviously the Church Marines don’t know this, and soon Mundy Flynn (Varada Sethu), a fellow Marine, finds The Doctor and Ruby thanks to Vater’s daughter Splice (Caoilinn Springall) having ran off in search of her Dad, only to find an hologram AI from the fleshy tube instead. Cue lots of tension as the landmine can also detect changes in heartbeats and such to increase its likelihood of exploding, meaning The Doctor has to keep calm as Ruby and Mundy argue and such. Soon another ambulance AI arrives and begins to judge The Doctor as unfit, but by this point its been established that due to the Doctor’s Time Lord physiology his explosion will take out half the moon so Mundy asks Ruby to shoot her in the arm to cause a minor injury and get the AI’s attention, but as our companion aims another Anglican Marine called Canterbury (Bhav Joshi) arrives and shoots Ruby down to save his fellow soldier (and love interest). As Ruby’s near-lifeless body rolls down the crater The Doctor finds it hard to control his panic…

It’s such a great story, honestly. It makes some solid points about capitalism, religious extremism and more but does it in a much more subtle and story-logical way than Mr. Davies managed in the poor series opener, and the acting managed to live up to the tight and tense script. It was a good reminder of why myself and many others were so excited to hear Moffatt was taking over the RTD years ago, his solo stories under Davies were always great, and this is no different.

The Continuity:

Holy warriors fighting for their God, funny how that fell out of fashion…. *ahem*

Not a lot, beyond the recurring theme of snow falling whenever Ruby is in trouble. The Anglican Marines were first featured in the Eleventh Doctor two parter “The Time of Angels / Flesh and Stone” and reappeared a few times during Moffatt’s time as showrunner, and I’ll also mention that at the start of Fourth Doctor classic “Genesis of the Daleks” The Doctor similarly steps on a landmine but in this case he’s free of it in a few minutes. I wouldn’t really have thought of that but Moffatt himself mentions the scene in the behind the scenes stuff!

Overall Thoughts:

A pre-shot Ruby Sunday.

“Boom” continues an old trend of Steve Moffatt-penned stories under Russell T. Davies as showrunner being great. Full of tension, fun dialogue and good acting, the 40 minutes flew by. The first classic of this latest “new era” of the show.

After Mundy gets Canterbury up to speed he tries to disable the Ambulence but gets electrocuted to death when he finally expresses his love (classic!) and things start to look hopeless. The Doctor manages to convince the Vater AI to try and head into the main Villengard network and shut everything down, including the mine, and as this happens The Doctor reveals that there aren’t any enemies on the planet and that the Anglican Marines have been shooting at thin air, the only deaths that have occurred have been by Villengard equipment following its programming to keep the war going for profit.

Mundy worried about Sunday… by which I mean the character, though is also probably worried about not living to see the next Sunday… or “Mundy” for that matter.

Eventually it looks like the mine is about to blow but at the last second the Vater AI succeeds and not only shuts everything down but revives Ruby for good measure. The Doctor, Ruby, Mundy and Splice enjoy the alien sunrise and then our dynamic duo head back to the TARDIS…