TL;DR – An episode that was both profound and frustrating in almost equal measures

Disclosure – I paid for the Disney+ service that viewed this series.

Doctor Who Review –

Oh, okay, I think today’s review is going to need a little bit of a preface going in. I honestly think the best work the renewed series of Doctor Who has ever done was when Steven Moffat was writing during the first Russell T Davies era. That is not to say I didn’t like Russell T Davies’ work. The recent Space Babies & The Devil’s Chord were a blast, and what Steven Moffat did when he was showrunner wasn’t terrible. Rory and Amy are my favourite companions that had ever been in the show. But the combination of the two was always fire, so I came into this episode with very high expectations and left it with some pause.

So to set the scene, we open on a battlefield as two soldiers are trying to get back to base, concerned about the landmines, understandably, and the ambulances, more concerningly. However, as John Francis Vater (Joe Anderson) is captured by the ambulance, we understand his fear. The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) arrives just in time to hear a scream and runs to the call, only to step down and see a landmine under his foot. Now, from here, we will be looking at the episode as a whole, so there will be some [SPOILERS] ahead. 

Overall, I think there was half of an episode here that I really connected with. Beyond some odd digital creations and moments that made it clear that they were filming on a soundstage rather than some quarry somewhere with a fog machine going at full-tilt. There was a core story about how The Doctor and Ruby (Millie Gibson) had to work when one of them was stuck, for the slightest move might set them off. I liked this because there was no sonic-screwdriver, and no psychic paper. It removes all these easyouts to give the episode more weight. Indeed, those moments when Ruby had to pass The Doctor that ‘baton’ were some of the tensest moments I have seen in a while. I completely lost the suspension of disbelief that usually would have reminded me that ‘come on, they are not killing off The Doctor or the companion this early in the season’. What this episode showed was how amazing Ncuti Gatwa & Millie Gibson’s chemistry is. I loved that she could call him on his crap, and it lands. Seriously, could you give me more of that?

Then there was the theme of ‘modern warfare’, which takes what is happening with the modern military-industrial complex and escalates it to the extreme, or maybe not so much the extreme, when we look at the world today. Ambulances that will kill a soldier because four weeks is not a good enough recovery time is bleak, but it is not so far removed from what we have seen happen in this modern surge of unregulated AI, etc. Nor is it beyond the realm of possibility for a company to be funding both sides of the same war; there is a cold Ferengi calculus to it, and all that you can see happens. Add to this Easter Eggs galore to a lot of Steven Moffat’s stories, and then you have the groundwork for an excellent episode.  

However, there is a point where things start falling apart for me, and unfortunately, that coincides with Splice’s (Caoilinn Springall) arrival on the scene. Unfortunately, they cast an actor who was much older than what the character was written, making most of her actions with her dead-father-hologram-AI-thingy feel narratively forced instead of coming from a natural place. Then, the suspension of disbelief was shredded by one of the most convoluted setups for a companion to go down that I have ever seen. Stripping the episode of any tension it could have had. It is at this point that I think my engagement with the episode differed from that of a lot of my other friends who I talked to today.

Many of the issues that I had with the show came from the themes that they were exploring, and frankly, I don’t think there was enough runtime to give them all justice. There are military armed forces fighting themselves, which is an interesting story just by itself. There is healthcare by algorithm, which is a significant issue, bar the fact that training soldiers is the most expensive thing about them, so this scenario makes no sense. Then, the exploration of religion and war gets distilled down into two sentences. So instead of some profound work, we get handwaved nothings. Sorry, the random soldier that just professed your love; it looks like The Doctor forgot about firewalls, and then the episode forgot you existed. Then there is the handwave way they disarm the landmines, turning something that does incredible carnage into a gimmick with no impact.       

In the end, do we recommend Doctor Who: Boom? Look, I feel bad when I say that; no, I don’t. But I think I am in the minority here. I believe this is an episode that needs you to hold on and run with it from start to finish, and if that happens, you will get completely drawn into the emotions of it all. However, if you stumble just once, you will end up bouncing off it, which is what happened to me today.  

By Brian MacNamara: You can follow Brian on Twitter Here, when he’s not chatting about Movies and TV, he’ll be talking about International Relations, or the Solar System.

Have you seen Doctor Who yet ?, let us know what you thought in the comments below, feel free to share this review on any of the social medias and you can follow us Here. Check out all our past reviews and articles Here, and have a happy day. 
  
Credits – All images were created by the cast, crew, and production companies of Doctor Who
Directed by – Julie Anne Robinson
Written by – Steven Moffat
Production/Distribution Companies – BBC Studios, Badwolf & Disney+
Starring – Ncuti Gatwa & Millie Gibson with Joe Anderson, Caoilinn Springall & Varada Sethu and Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy, Bhav Joshi & Susan Twist