Boom is the third episode in the latest season of Doctor Who. It stars Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor and Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday. It also marks writing return of former showrunner, Steven Moffat.
Spoilers ahead!!
General Thoughts on Boom
The beginning of this episode reminds me a lot of Genesis of the Daleks. The Doctor sprints out of the Tardis to help, only to stand on a land mine. However, the land mine in Genesis of the Daleks was easily dealt with while in Boom, the land mine could blow up half of the planet because it’s using the Doctor himself as the fuel.
The acting from Ncuti Gatwa in this episode is yet again amazing, he portrays such a range of emotions so brilliantly and effortlessly.
Character Problems
For some reason, the characters in this episode seem to act careless. The Doctor can be forgiven for running towards help, not knowing he’s in an active war zone, but Ruby not throwing Vater’s cylinder to him was certainly a choice. They don’t know at this point that it would wipe out half of the planet if it goes wrong, so why risk it and pass it to him instead of throwing from a distance? This Doctor helped defeat the Toymaker by playing catch, so it’s not like he’ll drop it.
Splice is a child and Vater’s daughter. I have no idea how she escapes a military camp to cross a battlefield with land mines and find the Doctor and Ruby, but she does. Is no one watching this child? Is there no one monitoring who goes in and out of the camps? Splice talks like she is supposed to be a lot younger than she seems. She also doesn’t even seem to acknowledge her father’s death, which I also found strange.
Mundy and Canto have a romance thing going on that isn’t expanded on because the episode revolves around the Doctor being on a land mine. So when the characters decide to talk about it in the middle of doing something super important, it makes me think that they are stupid. Why couldn’t the conversation wait until the immediate danger has passed? The conversation distracts one of them and results in their death but I can’t bring myself to care about them. Generally, this episode doesn’t seem to make me care about it’s side characters outside of Vater.
Misc
In the last episode, Ruby said that she was in June/July but on this episode, it’s her first time being on an alien planet. Has she only been to space stations and on Earth for the last six months? Or was it a result of The Devil’s Chord being moved and someone not changing the months?
Social Commentary
This episode’s commentary seemed to revolve around capitalism, war, religion and how they all intersect. In regards to capitalism and war, I think the episode does very well in conveying the message that capitalism and war help no one. The ambulance seems specifically aimed towards the American healthcare system and organised religion. The ambulance couldn’t help Ruby because she was not ordained. It reminds me of how people in some religions claim to help everybody but choose not to help people outside of their religion.
The mention of the flashing lights on the land mine being there because it made it more attractive to buyers is grim but reflects a current attitude. How many people ignore danger or bad things just because something (or someone) is pretty?
At the end, the implied messages towards how bad religion is are contradicted a little. The messages about how pointless war is and how bad capitalism is still stand.
Overall Thoughts on Boom
Overall, I enjoyed this episode but it had a few little problems with mostly the side characters that bothered me. I want to care about side characters in a show. Still, this was an okay episode that I still enjoyed watching.
I am not sponsored or affiliated with the BBC or Disney, but watch Doctor who on bbciplayer or Disney+. Enjoy!Want to read another of my blog posts about Doctor Who? Check out my thoughts on The Devil’s Chord here.