Boom - Complete analysis

The two soldiers are afraid of the fog because the “Kostarians” are supposedly hiding in it OR are made of mist—they are not entirely sure. A bit silly not to know, really. And then an ambulance shaped like an old 1950s kitchen appliance robot arrives, with the face of the elderly woman we have seen on a screen since the start of the season. So far, the atmosphere is pretty well established.

We then cut to Mundy, a soldier, in the Anglican soldiers’ camp, talking with Canto, another soldier, who is clearly in love with her. The actors are good, the dialogue is well handled, and within seconds we know who these people are and feel empathy for them straight away. Mundy does that thing where she tells Canto that if he helps her, she will show him her hidden tattoo because apparently representing women manipulating men with their bodies is acceptable… Then she jokes about the romantic tension between them and it is awkward…

We then return to the soldier dad, who is subtly called Vater (father in German), and his mate falls flat on his face into a big hole, lands on a mine, and poof—vanishes instantly! The ambulance shows up because it has detected “combat” (basically if you make a slightly loud noise it detects combat, which is a bit silly during wartime because if there is fighting in the camp for instance… I hope they do not drop saucepans too often or those ambulances will be arriving rather quickly). It attacks Vater, shooting spikes into his body, and because he is blind, he is no longer useful for combat, so it asks him to leave a message because it is going to kill him. He says “Kiss Kiss” for his daughter, and it is sad. The tension is built really well at that moment!

But enough sadness, because now the TARDIS has arrived on the planet and, instead of standing still in front of a green screen, for once—FINALLY—the Doctor runs into the green screen! Yes, he heard the commotion that had just happened and wants to help. We discover he is dressed incredibly well (I love his look in this episode), he runs, runs, and oops—steps on an invisible mine. Too bad! Goodbye Doctor, it was nice knowing you. Regeneration?

Nope, opening credits! Then Ruby comes out of the TARDIS, locks it (yes, she has the keys now, finally someone responsible), and wonders where her mad friend has gone. She hears him singing the Outlander theme, would like to remind him that it is the wrong streaming platform, but says nothing because that would ruin the atmosphere. And that battlefield atmosphere of flames everywhere does not faze her one bit: we assume she is starting to get used to it (I will come back to that). From a distance, the Doctor tells her he is fine and that she just has to follow his voice while being careful where she walks (which is funny because the mines are invisible, so she can be careful all she wants, it will not change much). She then discovers the Doctor in a crater, one foot on a mine, the other suspended in mid-air. He asks her to describe the mine precisely, and he says this rather striking line: “one wrong move and boom, I go all food mixer.” So we were this close to getting an episode called Food Mixer instead of Boom, and honestly that would have been fantastic.

She tells him they were supposed to go to the beach, and he says “everywhere’s a beach eventually,” which may be true and, if so, is both incredible and terrifying. It is that kind of little zinger that can really give this Doctor a distinct style, showing with elegance and cheerfulness in just a few words that he has seen more or less everything and that things generally end up going badly. In short, he has to remain still (though apparently he can still talk). Modern warfare, death by salesman, capitalism: and therefore, an old Moffat enemy, Villengard! The big not-very-nice weapons industry known in the Whoniverse since Eccleston! At that moment, the Doctor launches into one of those anecdotal asides worthy of Moffat dialogue, but Gatwa plays it rather differently and we can see him making the role his own more and more, even if clearly the writing is not giving him a style of his own and he has to create it himself.

I love his now slightly iconic line “It’s gonna be a moment yeah!” which will remain one of this Doctor’s quotes I could most easily reuse. He asks Ruby for something so he can set his foot down, because his thighs are beginning to burn (honestly, I try a similar pose in sport for a few seconds and it burns badly, so the Doctor must be at full thigh-magma stage). But he has to plant his foot down at the exact moment she puts something in his hand to compensate for the lost weight on the mine. It is the Raiders of the Lost Ark scene (which, incidentally, is not titled Indiana Jones, fact-check that), and we know how it ends: badly.

Ruby finds a Vater in a tube (and no, it is not a miniature toilet despite how similar the words sound), and ooooh she sees the horizon with the beautiful planets! You have to admit, it looks really good and it is classy. Less well done than the VFX in Flux, since once again we are basically just looking at a green screen without any real depth, but still. In fact, it is the first time she has come to a new planet! So… they have not been travelling together that long! Anyway, she realises she is holding a man in a tube, finds it disgusting, and feels like she is going to be sick—which is fair. The dialogue at that point is brilliant: Moffat really captures the Doctor well and Gatwa takes hold of him perfectly. Ruby moves closer, the direction is genuinely tense, she decides to put herself in danger (that is Doctor Who!) and insists with the Doctor. He speaks down to her (“I forgive you for being stupid”) (which is also very Doctor Who), but he also finds her brave. She calls him “babes” and in this episode you can really see how well they act together: the chemistry between the performers truly clicks at this precise moment.

They sing to keep time, she hands him the tube, he lowers his foot, it works, he cries because he is vaguely on edge and has to calm his adrenaline, which might set the mine off. And then, just when you think we are going to be allowed a breather—BAM! Vater’s hologram activates and we discover what happened. Life is not worth much, but patients are, so Villengard’s AI algorithm optimises people according to their ability to fight. And then disaster: Vater’s daughter comes running because she heard daddy talking!! She is going to ruin everything and turn Gatwa into a tube!

We understand that, like everyone in her religious society, she thinks her mother is an angel in the company of God (she is dead, so… that’s unlucky, and now her father is too), and the Doctor and Ruby are shocked to see that she believes in heaven. By accident, she triggers the hologram at exactly the right moment for the script and runs toward the Doctor. Ruby holds her back, the Doctor holds himself still: mamma mia, the tension is at its peak, and it is very well acted! Fortunately, she notices the mine (remember, she has just run through a field of invisible mines and had monstrously good luck), calms down, sees the explosive energy starting to spread across the Doctor’s face (very stylish), and realises that he himself is the explosive. Then Mundy arrives and points her gun: the episode never stops increasing the pressure, and that absolutely deserves credit.

The Doctor even finds time for a joke: if Mundy married Ruby, she would be called Mundy Sunday (Monday Sunday, very funny), whereas Ruby might actually be called Ruby Flynn, which is not funny at all. Mundy explains that they have never seen the Kostarians, so very clearly this is a war between the Dimwits and the Kostarians at this point. The Doctor makes a reference to a cool Thirteenth Doctor episode (the one with the mud monsters), but Mundy does not care, she just wants him to let go of the urn. He says he is a Time Lord and is about to blow up half the planet, but she says that she is Anglican, which is entirely beside the point. Once she scans him, she drops her argument—which was not really an argument to begin with.

Meanwhile, the girl has become completely vacant and is looking at hologram photos without caring about what is happening around her. I really struggle with that… Anyway, since Mundy has shot at the Doctor (yes, he moves quite a lot for someone who is not supposed to move, hush), an ambulance arrives and fires spikes at the Doctor without that apparently affecting the weight on the mine (really?), and Ruby reacts by snatching Mundy’s gun to attract the ambulance. Once again, it is tension piled upon tension, which is quite a feat. Especially because Canto arrives just as Mundy asks Ruby to shoot her in the shoulder to attract the ambulance, and so he shoots Ruby instead. Although frankly, if the ambulances stop doing their job the moment they hear another gunshot, on a battlefield, what are they even for? They would just keep changing direction constantly, wouldn’t they? I am nitpicking because I do not think it matters that much, but I did ask myself the question.

The Doctor is devastated to see Ruby dying, and Gatwa plays it so, so well. I love his acting—he is really very talented. The ambulance cannot find any descendants or ancestors for Ruby, snow starts to fall, and the whole sequence is absolutely grand. The Doctor lifts his head (yes, he moves, hush). The snow stops in mid-air (incredibly cool, very mysterious). Mundy convinces Canto not to do anything stupid, and then she asks the Doctor what she can do. He first wants to know how Ruby is doing, but the AI does not treat non-believers (not nice, but fairly realistic), and then the Doctor realises: the only way is to surrender, to lose, to abandon the war, because then the mine will stop as it belongs to them (it is rather silly to buy something so technologically advanced if it is not calibrated to recognise you and avoid killing you). But Mundy does not understand (though, to be fair, she thought “I’m Anglican” was an argument in a conversation…).

The Doctor has understood everything, and so he explains: the Anglicans came to this planet like fools, fired at nothing, the algorithm activated, they declared war on no one, and so the algorithm simply maintains a correct death quota. Because they have faith, they did not think things through (I am really not pro-religion, quite the opposite, but I suppose people with faith might say it is not quite so black and white). The Doctor asks Vater’s hologram to enter the algorithm and destroy everything: in concrete terms - and I know nothing about computers - but that seems to make no sense at all. But it does not matter, because it works narratively. The Doctor makes another reference to the fact that he is a father: “dad to dad,” he says. Mundy takes about two thousand years to realise that Canto is in love with her. And too late—the ambulance tears Canto apart: it is an incredibly violent scene and deeply unsettling. The staging and editing are excellent at that point. Mundy retrieves Canto in a tube and finds his message, in which he says it is alright that she does not love him back. I am not quite sure what to make of that thread in the episode—it does add emotion, certainly, but it does not really have time to be fully explored.

Anyway, a whole herd of ambulances arrives, Vater fails to destroy everything because there is a firewall the Doctor had not thought of (he has not read Computers for Dummies, poor thing). Honestly, that bit is so flimsy I could have written it myself—that is how silly it feels. I know absolutely nothing about computers, I am a total fool on the subject, and yet even I can tell it sounds like me pretending I know what I am talking about. “Ah yes, of course, it’s the Trojan horse firewall, a virus written in spam USB.”

Fortunately, the hologram remembers having seen an antelope with his daughter (so random, I love it), but disappears while taking on the appearance of the old nurse (the ambulance’s AI). The mine turns red and the Doctor almost soils his beautiful fashionable trousers. The countdown begins: in a few seconds, everyone will die. But then we hear “kiss kiss.” Yoohoo, the power of fatherhood! The season’s theme, and this Doctor’s theme, is saved! Being a father works miracles! Vater has managed to destroy the most powerful algorithm this side of the galaxy (even though he is literally just a creation of that algorithm, so I do not understand how that works). Ruby is treated, the Doctor goes to see her, and there he acts so well: he starts dancing and playing the drums in the air, he is incredibly cool, it is really his own Doctor style!!

He does a mic drop at Villengard and CUT, we find everyone standing on the horizon against a green screen (you do not change a winning team: every episode has to have its moment of people standing in front of nothing). But here it is almost meta: the Doctor has had enough and wants to leave. He is sorry for the little girl, but for her, her father has not gone anywhere, he is simply dead (okaaaaay). The Doctor says he does not like the concept of faith (even though that is more or less what he asks of all his companions in practice), but adds that sometimes he needs it. He makes a reference to fish fingers and custard (Moffat referencing Moffat), and off they go! Arrivederci! Ruby begins a little epilogue on the subject of belief: is Vater really dead? The Doctor then tells her that dying is what defines us. Snow is not snow until it falls (another very beautiful line). And he says that one day an old sad man told him that what survives the longest is love. Who is this mysterious old man???? I remain very intrigued by that line.

Then they go back into the TARDIS and dematerialise, leaving us to discover one final snowflake… So much mystery! So many beautiful lines! So much somewhat muddled discourse around religion! But it is an episode driven entirely by tension, and it really works on that level. You almost forget that, for once, the Doctor does not move an inch.

One final snowflake tells us that the mystery remains unsolved... So this was a fairly conceptual episode, rather successful in many respects, but one that also raises certain questions about editorial choices: once again it seems as though the Doctor bothers the writer, and that a solution has to be found to make him original. That is something we will probably see again later on—we shall see!