This episode was so difficult for me to get a handle on every time I watched it that I put off writing an analysis of it for a long while. It is a delicate episode because it sits completely outside the usual boundaries of Doctor Who. It chooses to bring to the foreground, and even into explicit view, something that the series has always, at best, relegated to metaphor or to the background.

Here is the episode whose line of dialogue will become the title of a spin-off. Does that have anything to do with it? No. Is that a problem? No. First of all because we are dealing with an episode built on a very strong, genuinely original concept (apart from one element that is fairly familiar but treated in an original way). Also because it is the first episode of this new version of the series that is truly, fully political. After a critique of the Christian church that is not really much of a critique, we move on here to a frontal treatment of fascism that crawls, walks, then runs, in the form of an angry folk-horror fable. But the real question this episode raises is that of an alternative universe that seems to have been quietly at work since the beginning of this new era of Doctor Who.

Moffat’s return to writing, the return of the soldier-priests, the return of Villengard, the return of fish fingers and custard. Boom is, in many ways, the episode of the returns. It is also the return to an alien planet after six episodes and two regenerations. Granted, the planet is covered in smoke and utterly devastated, but it is a planet! When the episode came out, I did not know that Moffat had written it, but his style is so distinctive that I recognised it immediately. So how does this episode of so many returns hold up? Does it suffer from the same problems as the previous Fifteenth Doctor episodes, and does it offer the same strengths?

Not an easy task to analyse this rather well-liked episode from the first season of the Fifteenth Doctor, because my opinion of it has changed a great deal since I first watched it as it aired, and unfortunately much of that change has been for the worse. Still, this rewatch made me realise that it shares a common problem with the previous episodes, and probably with the ones that follow as well. This line of analysis confronted me with the reason why something feels off in this new universe we have been shown over the past few episodes. It is something that, had it been developed and properly used, could have been absolutely amazing, but was probably never intentional and therefore becomes a major flaw. That problem can be summed up in one word: emptiness. Not emptiness of meaning or substance, but emptiness in form and aesthetics.

This episode is relatively painful for me to watch. There are some good elements in it, but the general humor reminds me too much of the style surrounding the Slitheens: it’s all about toilet jokes, meant to make little kids laugh but all the while treating them like idiots, and the whole aesthetic focused on snot and poop... it’s just not my thing. There, I said it. So, this episode will require some self-control on my part to analyze it without falling into easy criticism. Officially, this is the third episode featuring the Fifteenth Doctor, but it’s the first episode of his first season. It’s also his first trip in the TARDIS with Ruby. So, it’s the first time we see this Doctor traveling, and the show needs to showcase the fantastic potential of the concept to launch this new era. Is it up to the task?

The Pop Star is coming!