One of the habits I picked up from watching classic Doctor Who was to pay attention to who wrote each story. Certain writers elicited more interest when their names appeared. If you’ve looked at my archives, you probably know that one of these was the late, great Robert Holmes.
Over the two decades of modern Doctor Who, I’ve come to form opinions on the various contributors to the series. And there’s only one writer who makes me immediately sit up and take notice in the way Holmes does for classic Who. That writer is Steven Moffat.
So, when news broke that Moffat was returning to pen an episode for the new series, I was intrigued. The parallels between Moffat and Holmes are fascinating. And if you know your Who history, you know that Holmes took a break from writing Who for a bit only to come back with one of his best stories in “The Caves of Androzani.”
It’s probably unfair to expect Moffat to pull off a similar trick here with “Boom.” But that didn’t stop me from hoping as the episode started up. (RTD certainly helped elevate with his praise of the script).
And while I’m not sure “Boom” is in quite the same rarified air that “Caves” is, it was still a damn good episode and may have topped “Wild Blue Yonder” as my favorite episode since Moffat stepped down as showrunner.
In a season that has a bigger budget thanks to Disney and you can see every cent on our screens, “Boom” is more a character-driven, actor’s showcase – in all the right ways. I was already fascinated by Ncuti Gatwa’s version of the Doctor from his first three installments. But “Boom” really pushed him in a lot of ways and he more than stepped up to the plate. The idea of the Doctor having to stand in one spot and not able to physically move much was intriguing. Gatwa gave us a home run performance where any small physical movement is going to draw attention to itself – and the idea of the Doctor’s being emotionally moved by the circumstances worked extremely well here.
And then, there’s how this script does the Holmesian thing of picking up threads. If you’ve read any of my Robert Holmes Rewatch posts, you know that I admired the way Holmes sewed certain long-term threads about the corruption of Gallifrey and their leadership into his stories. Moffat does something similar here, giving us a thread about the Villengard corporation that has been alluded to since “The Empty Child” almost twenty years ago. It’s a thread that makes me want to go back and watch Moffat’s previous 48 installments again to look for clues that lead up to things here.
There’s also an incredibly moving emotional thread about the love between a father and daughter. I will admit that as a dad, these is an easy “tug on the heart strings” type of thing for me – but this one hit all the right feels for me.
Of course, I’m sure there are bigger things going on here and that RTD is sewing an arc that will (hopefully) deliver a solid resolution when we get to the series’ finale.
Until then, consider me completely won over by this one in every possible way. It’s one of those episodes that I’m tempted to start over again as soon as the closing credits start to roll.
Nashville Book Worm 