The Unquiet Dead Aliens of London World War Three AoL/WW3 |
BBC Boom Town |
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| Story No. | 171 |  |
| Production Code | Series One Episode Eleven | |
| Dates | June 4, 2005 |
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With Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper,
Noel Clarke, John Barrowman Written by Russell T. Davies Directed by Joe Ahearne Executive Producers: Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner, Mal Young. |
| Synopsis: The Doctor encounters an enemy he thought was dead. |
A Review by Jamie Beckwith 14/6/05
The worst episode of the new series so far, I'd go as far as to call it a real dud.
But having said that we can take that as a compliment of the series as a whole, of the 11 episodes screened so far this is the only real clanger. Oh sure there have been some episodes not up to scratch, but even the poorest episodes (Aliens of London/World War Three) are rewatchable and above all else entertaining.
Boom Town is instantly forgetable. The tone of the piece is all wrong, endless pinky plunky piano music and endless silly technobabble of the type that chokes episodes of Star Trek: Voyager. It sees the return of a not so old enemy, and said old enemy is using a plot device from yet another episode... I've nothing against a coherant season with interlocking continuity but Boom Town seemed entirely like a filler, and one with a dearth of originality in its villain and motivation at that.
Even the ending was silly and just plain stinks. The Doctor didn't even do anything! He might has well have zapped the baddie with the sonic screwdriver. (Indeed it wouldn't have been out of place in this episode where it's whipped out for a pointless "comedy" scene.)
Lazy, lazy, lazy. On the whole, the new series has been of a consitently high standard, it's been must-see television. To have such drivel especially towards the end leaves a slightly sour taste in the mouth and that isn't helped by a rather poor trailer for the next episode. (But more on that later.)
If you thought the ending to the 1996 Paul McGann movie was a cop-out then be sure to skip this episode.
To further confound the lack of plot, Eccleston and Piper are missing their usual sparkle, seemingly sleepwalking through this episode, and the addition of Captain Jack to the TARDIS crew is redundant as he too does nothing. It's certainly saying something when Rose's drippy ex-boyfriend Mickey is the only good thing in the episode.
And so the trailer for the next episode and perhaps it was my general dislike of this episode extending past the end credits, but this made me cringe. The Doctor in the Big Brother House. An android version of Anne Robinson (And one that fit the wobbly prop cliche of 70s Doctor Who). It's only redeemed in the last few seconds when we see... well I won't spoil it for you but there's a nit even in the last second of the trailer too. From the Doctor's point of view this revelation will be a shocking twist. It seems a shame that we the viewer have had the secret blown a week earlier than him.
A massive disappointment.
Everything's that's bad about Doctor Who in 45 minutes... by Antony Tomlinson 15/6/05
Wow. This was a truly dire episode. In fact it was an incredible demonstration, in one handy 45-minute package, of everything that has ever been wrong with both the old and the new series of Doctor Who. I will now list some of the numerous elements that made this such a prime slice of embarrassingly cack Who...
NEXT WEEK: The return of yet another old enemy, and a story that parodies modern television in a rather camp way. Hmm, is it just me, or is it starting to feel a bit like the mid-1980s...?
Wrong Turn by Mike Morris 20/6/05
Hmm. Well, I can really see what they tried to do.
Boom Town is not without its positive attributes, but it's really the first failure of this wonderful new series. I watched it and shrugged my shoulders - I mean, it isn't offensively awful or anything - but thinking about it now, it's bothering me a lot more. There's a serious intent here, but in my own resolutely humble opinion Boom Town is fundamentally mistaken about what Doctor Who is designed for.
Character-driven is the old debate here. This is supposed to be a "character drama". And while that may be a popular buzz-word, character-drama is something that Doctor Who isn't really cut out for. It's a plot-based show; I've gone over all this in my review of Emergency Landing (that's what I'm calling Aliens of London/World War Three now), so I'll try not to repeat myself here. But the major error that Boom Town makes is this - it presumes that the entire world getting torn apart and everybody dying, just because one alien is getting a bit of cabin fever, is less important than having a bit of a chat about how the Doctor does things. And it presumes in turn that the questioning of the Doctor is less important than showing us that travelling through time and space can lead to you having a tiff with your boyfriend.
And that's wrong. I mean, it's absolutely, totally wrong, as wrong as thinking that the finale of Big Brother is more important than the invasion of Iraq. The only argument I can see anyone making to the contrary is that boyfriend tiffs are, y'know, real-life, and hence more meritorious, whereas space-time rifts and planets getting torn apart are just silly science fiction. Bluntly, if you think that way, then I'm not sure why you watch science fiction at all, because it means by definition that you think it's silly.
It's an error that would be objectionable even if the plot of Boom Town wasn't such nonsense. It asks us to believe that a Slitheen survivor - who was previously supposed to be in MI5 - has become mayor of Cardiff (or something along those lines) and proposed, commissioned, designed, approved and partially constructed a nuclear power plant in the city centre, as well as killing off the entire design team with nobody even noticing... in six months. Now that's just ridiculous. It works initially for the rather marvellous pre-credit sequence (and oh look, it's that undertaker guy from Remembrance of the Daleks), but it quickly becomes totally implausible. The unfeasibly short timescale is one problem, and the "publicity-shy" mayor is another; it's implied that she tries not to be photographed, but you just don't become a politician without being photographed. And nor do you conceal your crucial piece of equipment in a model that's free to be viewed by the public, when you could keep it in your flat! Oh, and wouldn't a character from Emergency Landing, most notably the Prime Minister-in-waiting Harriet Brown, have noticed that such an important public figure was the nasty alien who wanted to turn the earth into radioactive waste?
There's actually something workable at the core of this story. I had suspicions about Harriet Brown in any case - Made in Britain, indeed - and had this been set further in the future, the story might have made use of that. It would also have made more sense from Margaret's point of view, as she seems to be going absolutely bananas when she hasn't been stuck on earth for very long. And many of the plot problems wouldn't have seemed like such a problem - the timescale wouldn't seem so ludicrous, and it might just be plausible that a nuclear power plant in the heart of Cardiff wouldn't lead to mass protests on every street corner. But then... well, we wouldn't have been able to bring Mickey back.
Oh dear. Dear oh dear.
Mickey is actually really, really well played in this story and Noel Clarke is emerging as a wonderful, modest actor who's not afraid to play someone who's faintly ridiculous. He is written as a character who isn't intelligent, or particularly brave, and is clumsy; but at heart he's smarter than he looks, and he'll put his life on the line for Rose. He is, essentially, a good man, and his ragging of Jack is as hilarious as his shy, awkward propositioning of Rose is touching.
But look; dude, I don't care. This is Doctor Who. This is a programme that can tell vast, epic stories of civilisations rising and falling, of regimes toppling, of good and evil battling throughout time and space. It's a huge programme. And in that climate, I can't pretend that I give too much of a toss about Mickey's relationship problems. Now, I'm not in a relationship myself, largely because I tend to ask everyone if they like Doctor Who after five minutes, and if they don't I'll spend an hour telling them why they have to watch it, and apparently that's more of A Third Date Conversation. But here's the bottom line, and wait for this; relationships are boring. Relationships are not special. I mean, okay all you oh-so-in-love people out there, I know they're special to you. But in the grand scheme of things, they're just not. People get together and break up all the time, usually for the same stupid boring reasons.
This isn't me saying that Doctor Who shouldn't touch that character stuff with a bargepole. Of course it should. It already has. It does it most overtly and least successfully in Emergency Landing, but more notably in Dalek and Shell Shock (that's the gas mask one, remember). In those two stories we see drama that's essentially based around two characters, but they're clearly charged with meaning and come to represent far more than themselves. Whereas Rose and Mickey are just any old couple, really, and dammit, I'll even start to care about any old couple in some programmes... but not like this, because their argument is a "you-don't-spend-time-with-me-and-you-fancy-that-bloke" quarrel that's not remotely interesting, and because I can't empathise with someone getting arsey because their girlfriend goes off time travelling with alien. The premise of Doctor Who is fantastically, ridiculously far-fetched; it's not one that bears this sort of examination. One thing or the other comes across as plain daft; actually, the daft moment to me is when Micky throws a hissy fit just because Rose has run off to the Doctor when Cardiff starts falling apart. Because where else is she going to go? Who else is going to be responsible? Jesus mate, have some perspective!
The examination of the Doctor's motives is more interesting, mainly because it's clearly been much better thought out. The point has already been made about Emergency Landing that all the characters in it, at some point, evaded responsibility for their decisions - including the Doctor. In The Long Game he notes that he "doesn't like cleaning up," which is something that's always been true, but it's pretty much the first time he actually comes out and says it. In many other stories, it's actually been other protagonists who have doled out natural justice. So here, it's good to see the Doctor being forced to face up to his responsibilities; and while the comedy scenes lead to more stupid plotting (why is Margaret trying to kill the Doctor when the bracelets mean it wouldn't do her any good?), the performances are excellent and the concept is clever. The discussion about Margaret sparing the reporter is particularly good.
However, it's not related to the plot in any way, and it goes nowhere; at the end, the problem for the Doctor gets sorted out in the same way as before. So we're getting no growth, no movement. And the TARDIS-based finale is bizarre, a technobabble conclusion giving way to a Deus Ex Machina ending that's beautifully filmed and acted, but remains risible in terms of how everything is magically sorted out.
By means of comparison: recently, I bought Blake's 7 Series 2 on DVD. It's an uneven season, not as good as Series 1, but what sustains it is the wonderful interaction between Blake and Avon. Over the course of the thirteen episodes, we see Blake becoming more fanatical and unreasonable, while Avon grows in stature and edges closer and closer to taking over the ship. There's only one episode that might be called a character piece - Trial - but even that's debatable. Anyway, the backbiting happens as background to the disparate plots, until the final episode when an injured Blake hands over power to Avon and says "For what it's worth, I have always trusted you. Right from the very beginning." And instantly, the viewer realises - yes, he always did. Because he had to, and because he could. You could always rely on Avon; he never lied, he never misled anyone, he never got anyone killed and he was always honest about his motives. And you realise that the only person you couldn't trust was Blake. You realise that, for the whole series, Avon's been tightening the rope, he's been getting closer and closer to taking command, and that it's the right thing to do because he's a better bloody leader - and even Blake knows it, deep down. You realise that the entire series has been about these two people, and suddenly you know them both, you know what they represent, and you know whose morality is superior - against all appearances and assumptions.
That's real character drama. And it doesn't need plodding storylines with badly-executed plots to happen.
Anyway, one bad episode isn't too much to get worked up about in this marvellous, marvellous television series, but feels like filler and badly-conceived filler at that. This kind of toss is usually perpetrated by SF series that think they're more than just a silly old SF series. But I've rarely seen it work then and it doesn't work now.
And so, Boom Town marks the first big mistake this series has made. It had to happen eventually.
A Review by James Taylor /6/05
After the real horror of The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances, the light-hearted opening to Boom Town feels strange. The overall tone is inconsequential for most of the episode; banter flies back and forth between the five main characters (including the villain) in a trivial way which belies the potential deadliness of the surviving Slitheen and her plans.
The main point of the episode is a test of the Doctor’s moral consistency. He’ll kill his enemies (often indirectly) in the heat of the moment, but can he cold-bloodedly transport his prisoner back to her home planet, certain torture and death?
We remember that the Fifth Doctor baulked at the chance to execute Davros; but this Doctor has a much more rigid worldview. I see this Doctor as Time’s Vigilante; isolated and scarred, he regards his moral code as the highest authority available. He will (thankfully) still show compassion, but he will not hesitate to carry out a sentence if an adversary is beyond redemption – acting with cold certainty (remember Cassandra's preventable demise in The End of the World?). In contrast, there’s some absolutely superb dialogue between the Doctor and Margaret as he shows that her mercy towards the occasional victim signifies nothing; even that indulgence is a selfish act. This Doctor will not be fooled; he acts with absolute self-confidence and passes judgement with a certainty that permits his enemies no escape.
The challenge to the viewer is – where do we stand? Most would expect others to do the ‘right’ thing (in this case, shipping Margaret off to her doom), but would we be willing to see it through, faced with her pleas and human appearance? I think that many of us would dodge the issue; showing mercy not from a deep moral centre but from personal weakness. The Doctor no longer has this weakness - his experiences have seared it out of him - but his moral certainty is frightening in turn.
The rest of the episode is fairly forgettable; but the restaurant sequence alluded to above is worth the episode on its own.
A winner! by Joe Ford 3/7/05
WHAT IS RUSSELL T DAVIES DOING TO OUR BELOVED SERIES? WHEN DID DOCTOR WHO BECOME A SOAP? WHY ARE THERE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS WHEN THERE ARE MONSTERS TO BE FOUGHT? MODERN DAY CARDIFF... WHAT IS THAT FOR A SETTING? WHEN WILL BE SEEING SOME REAL DOCTOR WHO WITH WOBBLY SETS AND GAMMY ACTING AND PLOT, PLOT, PLOT...
...and so on and so on.
I had my lovely friend Matt over last week and being a fellow Doctor Who nut we decided to watch every single episode of the new series over two days. Boy did we argue. It's part of the fun of being a fan really, you all love different stories and it can be an incredibly rich experience to find a friend who you can debate the merits and demerits of such a diverse forty year old show. We walked away from the visit with very different opinions, he loved Dalek, Father's Day and The Long Game and I loved The End of the World, World War Three and now I can add Boom Town to that list. Matt despised the gratuitous bodily functions RTD is determined to put in his scripts and the overdone humour ("The telephone is actually red!") and I got a headache watching Father's Day. The Long Game aside, I have thoroughly enjoyed RTD's scripts for the series. Whilst The Unquiet Dead, Dalek and Father's Day were all brilliantly dramatic, not one of them is half as entertaining as Davies' work. The only writer who has come close to capturing the sense of whimsy and fun that comes with travelling with the Doctor and still keeps the deeper, emotional material is Steven Moffat. RTD understands television, he knows how to make a series a success and more importantly he recognises that Doctor needs a good sense of humour for it to appeal to the masses. I'm sure Doctor Who fans adored Father's Day but I reckon the mainstream audience would rather watch World War Three... I know which ones my boyfriend, his mother and my mummy preferred.
Considering he has already written six aired episodes of the series it is astonishing that RTD is still producing fresh, entertaining material as it would be so easy to fall into the "I'm writing every episode even if it does go stale" (ala JMS over on Babylon 5 and Terry Nation on Blake's Seven) where they start off well and end up running out of ideas and eventually running out of steam. Whilst The Long Game suggested RTD was losing it, he has bounced right back to form with Boom Town, a triumphant 45 minutes of character drama boosted by some great jokes.
Doctor Who is clearly still finding its feet in series one and one of the joys of that transition is to try out new things and see what works. Much like the first few years of sixties Doctor Who, this means it is a period of imaginative experimentation with something for everyone but everything for no one. Some people will hate Boom Town, in fact I'm certain many people will consider it the worst of the season but rather than bury it for exploring new ground I will have to take the opposite reaction and praise it for exactly that reason. This is unlike anything in Doctor Who, before and since and as such it stands a unique little tale.
It's all about consequences. Both the Doctor and Rose have to deal with the consequences of their travels and neither of them are particularly comfortable with the idea. It's probably why Captain Jack feels a bit superfluous this week, being new to the team he has very little baggage yet and nothing to regret. It is RTD asking questions again that nobody ever bothered to before, just like dealing with Rose returning home in Aliens of London. Cleverly, Boom Town picks up two plot threads from World War Three, Rose's relationship with Mickey and the Doctor's plan which wiped out all but one of the Slitheen family and shows there are repercussions to these adventures of his. Does Rose have the right keep poor Mickey hanging on like a lost puppy? Is he a victim of their happy-go-lucky travels or a beggar to his own demise? Does the Doctor have the right to step into people's lives, make a mess and walk away and leave them deal with it? Does he make a quick exit because he scared to look back and see what he caused? Can he look somebody in the eye and take them to their death?
It was almost as if RTD was answering all of Matt's worst fears. The Slitheen are back and in the first scene Margaret is farting and acting a bit OTT. Looks set to be Aliens of London part two. It only takes RTD two or three scenes to subvert viewer expectations with a wonderfully touching and silly scene in a bathroom between Margaret and a journalist. It is faintly ridiculous for a huge, slimy, green alien to be sitting on a toilet and at the point of lurching forwards to kill a woman who threatens her plans but backs down and has a heart to heart instead, discovering the woman is getting married and having a baby. But that is beauty of RTD's writing, he actually manages to make something this absurd work, he writes the scene so well that you are soon feeling sorry for Margaret and the fact that she is the last of her family on Earth. When she lets the journalist leave alive it is hard not to feel something for her, despite her icky, muscley visage.
Almost as if replying to fan reaction to the childishness of the Slitheen RTD instead takes the creatures on an entirely different path, using Margaret to power a moral dilemma plot that puts the Doctor under the microscope. Maybe she was just using words to bide her time but some of what she says really strikes home, especially in the uncomfortable moment where she defies the Doctor, Mickey, Rose and Jack to look her in the eye knowing they will escort her to her death. Annette Badland has such an expressive face and she pulls off these scenes with great aplomb, convincing as the moral judge of the time travellers. It helps that Margaret seems genuinely scared of the Doctor and as such is literally talking her way out of a death sentence. This is edgy stuff and throws a harsh light over the Doctor who seems determined to put an end to her menace.
During the marvellous dinner date sequences the two characters knock dialogue back and forth like weapons and I was agreeing with each of them, pretty much all of the time. Is the Doctor the sort of person to condemn the death sentence? Isn't that what he has always done to the monsters he fights? The Slitheen is talking through a dead woman's lips, does she have a right to survive when so many others have died? Are the two characters much more alike than we thought, both sparing people from defeat to make themselves feel better? There are no easy answers and it is probably wise that the huge earthquake ruins their date and Margaret reverts to villainous form because I fear there would be no right and wrong here. Just grey. Just how I like it. And just when you think RTD has taken the easy way out by proving the Doctor right about Margaret she thanks him for the chance to go back and do it all again. There was a spark of regret in there, a trace of humanity. Oh is that Slitheenity? Whatever, it's wonderful stuff, RTD wrong-footing us at every step.
Far more soap opera-ish but no less interesting is Rose's reunion with Mickey. She contrives an excuse for him to visit her in Cardiff and like an obedient puppy he rushes up to see her. He tries to make her jealous by telling her he is seeing somebody else and she takes the bait. All the small talk and pretence drops away and the two lovers are left to face what is really eating away at them. In the most emotional sequence of the series yet (for me anyway... I genuinely had tears in my eyes) Mickey breaks down and tells Rose how useless she made him feel when she dumped him for her life with the Doctor and how pathetic he is clinging on to the hope that she will come home to him. It sounds awful doesn't it? But Noel Clarke has come a long way since Rose and delivers a fantastic performance, packed with emotion and the look on Rose's face when she realises how much she has hurt the man she loves is heartbreaking. Clearly there is a lot of emotional mileage in this "what you leave behind" stuff, so score one to RTD for successfully introducing a spanking new element to Doctor Who, one which allows us to look at the show in a brand new way, forty years on. Clearly there is still much more to learn about the series. Even more brilliant is the lack of a solution to this problem; Rose dashes back to help solve the latest crisis leaving Mickey rejected once again but rushes out to find him immediately afterwards. He spots her but she doesn't spot him and he walks off, making his decision to walk away this time and move on with his life. Despite all the wonders she has seen and the fun she has with the Doctor and Jack, she is still lacking something that Mickey can give her, her tear-streaked face at the climax proves that. Fascinating stuff.
Increasing the entertainment of the episode tenfold is the marvellous comedy which had me and Simon roaring. The sequence chasing Margaret out of the Mayor's office and into the grounds is hilarious, with the Doctor, Mickey, Rose and Jack all working wonderfully together. The sight of Annette Badland waddling away only to be zapped back right in front of them is like something out of a Woody Allen movie only very funny. The dialogue is fizzy too with RTD regaining his wit after a brief detour in The Long Game with some lines that had me in tears ("What have I ever done to you?" "Apart from trying to kill me and blow up this planet?" "Apart from that!") which some excellent quick fire scenes between the Doctor, Jack and Rose that marks the enjoyable chemistry between them. I love it when a writer gets the balance of drama and comedy perfect and scenes such as Margaret begging for her life whilst hilariously trying to kill the Doctor through various means shows potential writers how to get it just right. You're laughing but you're not quite sure if you should be laughing. I like that.
Joe Ahearne proves just as adept at comedy as he was at drama (especially Dalek) and balances the SF, soapy drama and humour just right. What's more, he convincingly stages an end of the world atmosphere on a TV budget with lots of glass smashing, lights exploding and ground cracking. It reminded me of the TV Movie somewhat, lightning streaking through a gorgeous location, the TARDIS central to the end of the world action and lots of shouting!
Boom Town surprised me a lot. It really didn't seem to have a lot going for it one paper (even the DWM preview wasn't as OTT complimentary as usual); modern day Cardiff and the Slitheen back but it proved to be far more thoughtful than I expected. Even with the deux ex machina ending it was a skilfully crafted piece of writing and beautifully executed and performed. It was a far more contemplative piece of television than I am used to, especially from Doctor Who and it worked as a drama far more effectively than some earlier attempts this year. And by God it was funny!
Oh and RTD had canonised the books! I could kiss you!
A Review by Michael Hickerson 9/9/05
Having an entire season of your television show filmed and in post-production before the first original episode airs can be a duel edged sword. It can be a good thing to have the entire season arc locked, set and complete and thus free from interference from outside forces such as a network or fans. But then again, there are times when maybe having a bit of feedback might help you avoid certain pitfalls a second time around.
Certainly it would be interesting to speculate that had Russell T. Davies known the fan reaction to the Slitheen would be so lackluster would he have wasted yet another hour on an episode entirely focused on them?
Because I think the fan reaction to the Slitheen cropping up yet again here was probably the same reaction fans had back in the early 80s when the Master showed up again in season 19 in Time Flight - "Oh no, not again."
Honestly, I'm not sure what point there was to bringing the Slitheen back. Davies' script seems to want to humanize them a bit, to make us feel a bit more sympathy for them and their plight as characters. But since Dalek did this earlier and better this season (add in that we've had 40 plus years of development and backstory to the Daleks), I can't help but wonder just what the point of Boom Town was.
Maybe it was to tease the fans a bit. I mean, we do have Jack, Rose and the Doctor sitting around telling Mickey about all these fantastic adventures on other planets they've had. And sitting there watching it, I honestly wished we'd skipped this adventure with the TARDIS refueling for an episode and seen some of those adventures on ice planets and dangerous worlds as opposed to large chunks of screen time devoted to the female Slitheen sitting about debating the Doctor's morality.
As I've said before, it's more shocking to hear a Dalek debate morality with the Doctor than it is a Slitheen . For one thing, we've known the Daleks for over 40 years, thus giving us some sense of history and understanding of just where each side is coming from. Also, it's a bit more chilling for a Dalek to tell the Doctor that his morality has become skewed based on what we know about them as killing machines than it is an alien who runs about with faulty gas regulators that make it sound flatulent.
Or maybe the point of the episode was to show just how far Rose has grown apart from her old life in her travels. Or just how left out Mickey really is from Rose's life now. Again, these are things the series has dealt with before and in a much better way in previous installments. I'm not sure why we had to bring Mickey back on screen again, other than to remind fans that he is slowly becoming the Adric of the new series. I guess we do learn that Mickey wants to move on but can't because he still has strong feelings for Rose (which you have to wonder if this is becoming a one-way street and a bit pathetic for Mickey really since Rose seems to flirt with a new guy in every episode and we get the feeling she's only been away from Mickey a few weeks or months in her timeline as opposed to years for Mickey). Maybe this is setting something up for the final two episodes where Mickey becomes the Master or some such other plot twist. But I honestly doubt that is going to happen.
Instead of feeling like an episode in which season-long continuities were brought together, this one felt like a primer in case you'd missed any of the episodes leading up to it. The phrase "bad wolf" is following the Doctor about... check! Rose left Mickey and he's mad about it... check! We faced an alien race called the Slitheen who are not the nicest aliens about... check! There is a rift in time and space in Cardiff... check! But instead of doing anything interesting, new or different with these season-long elements, Boom Town is more content to tread water. Indeed, my great fear from last week - that Boom Town would be little more than a space holder until the big season finale came to pass here.
I have to admit the preview for next week's Bad Wolf did more to excite me and have me on the edge of my seat than all of Boom Town did in 40 plus minutes.
Indeed, there is no "boom" in Boom Town. I kept waiting for something to blow up, explode or do something. Instead, we got a lot of sitting around and talking, ending up with the nature vs. nurture debate for the Slitheen. Can Bonn be redeemed now? The TARDIS has aged her backward to before she hatched and she'll be dropped off with a different family. She gets a second-chance, but will it make her a better Slitheen?
But here's a note for season 28 for Davies - I don't care. Please do not have an entire story that takes place on the Slitheen homeworld in which find out if Blonn turned out for the better this time. I think we've driven the character and the Slitheen into the ground about as much as we can and, honestly, I can't imagine spending another 40-plus minutes with her.
Overall, my reaction to this one wasn't that it was especially good or that it was especially bad. It was just sort of there. Interesting how the last couple of Davies stories when surrounded by stories by other writers, have just been sort of OK. He started off well but with The Long Game and Boom Town his writing has been a bit off. The stories aren't necessarily the weakest of the series (I mean, let's face it, this is still light years better than Web Planet will ever be), but they aren't exactly thrilling me down to the very last fiber of my being like Empty Child/The Doctor Dances and Dalek did. Instead, these stories seem content to fill time and take up space while big, exciting events happen in the stories around them.
In the end, Boom Town lack the "boom" I'd hoped for. It was widely different than what the preview made it out to be which may be part of my disappointment. I was expecting a good old "Doctor takes on an evil alien with a megalomaniac plan" story and instead got a debate about the death penalty and the Doctor's morality. It might have worked better as a novel, quite frankly. Indeed, looking at the story, I wished this one had been a novel and we'd got to see rather than hear about one of the TARDIS crew's fantastic adventures on a strange, alien planet instead.
A Review by Ron Mallett 26/9/05
Russell T. Davies once again took the scriptwriting reigns on Doctor Who tonight... and it showed. Once again the annoying distractions of interpersonal conflicts became the entire show. What was an attempt at a more psychological episode of course turned out to be anti-Who wank entitled Boom Town.
Did you take the opportunity to catch up on relationship between Rose and boyfriend Mickey? Yes, "Whoenders" has just so much to offer the emotionally stunted. This really is just a program called Doctor Who... I'm sad to say Doctor Who died in 1989 and this proves it.
There was so little story, the entire episode was virtually plotless. The "story" was based on reheating a very questionable concept called the Slitheen (which in Davies little world he probably thinks are the greatest creation in the history of Who), and resulted in the serving up of an emaciated version of The Green Death. Annette Badland put in another good performance as Margaret but the dialogue was so undeliverable, her performance came across as stilted.
It must go down as the worst new Who episode yet and there have been some clunkers. How exactly would Margaret surf her way out of the solar system? How could Jack know how to tinker with the TARDIS? Wouldn't trousers have been a better choice for Rose than a miniskirt and legwarmers? All these problems could have been overlooked if there had been a bit more quality to the script. As for the idea that two words are following the Doctor around in time, it's just ludicrous! Thumbs down for what amounted to nothing more than a bit of season padding!
"Have you seen yourselves? You all think your so clever don't you?" by Steve Cassidy 1/10/05
So exactly what is the plot of Boom Town?
The Doctor docks in Cardiff for repairs and meets an old enemy, captures her, and imprisons her aboard the TARDIS awaiting justice. She escapes and holds Rose unconvincingly prisoner and it's all tied up with a very forced deus e machina?
Next week - The Doctor and Rose discuss the paper bill while Captain Jack washes his socks.
Ladies and Gentleman, welcome to cut-price Who! Welcome to the pre-climax budget saver and what budget there is is financed by the Welsh tourist board and the Consortium of Cardiff architects. Actually, it's not that bad but a little painfully obvious. It's sort of a filler story. An indrawing of breathe before the end of season spectacular of Bad Wolf/Parting of the Ways. However, it is so uneven - it veers from uniformly excellent (and without doubt the funniest scene in 13 episodes of new Who) to the truly dire. This schizophenic episode is just so uneven I really don't know where to start.
Huan Quayle did an excellent review on Outpost Gallifrey. In it he satirised Mr Russell T Davies waking up in his Cardiff harbour apartment (one of which features in the story, Quelle surprise!) wraps himself in his "Buffy" dressing gown settles down with a cup of coffee and then realises, blimey O'Riley, the BBC wants a new episode of Who by three o'clock. So he rattles off an episode incorporating lots of forced team bonhomie, a plot device of a previous episode, a production team favourite monster, and of course lots of emotional dialogue between Rose Tyler and her favourite puppy dog Mickey Smith. Oops still got a few minutes to fill so let's debate the nature of killers in a posh Cardiff restaurant. And throw in a CGI earthquake as well, that will fill a few minutes.
It was a very cruel review but also very funny and unfortunately rather accurate. This is the least imaginative episode of the series - it almost borders on lazy. I have no problem with this. Filling up an episode is a difficult business. I always thought Black Orchid, The King's Demons and the marvelous Sontaran Experiment were there to bridge a few gaps. But sometimes it's an idea to give someone else a go. Maybe someone else could come up with better ideas then this. But the executive producer is hanging onto the reigns. This could almost be a template RTD episode - all the jigsaw pieces are there. But is it really Doctor Who?
OK, OK, time for a abit of slack. I've mentioned before it does have a couple of excellent scenes as well as some real stinkers. The first fifteen minutes are very entertaining (once you've fast forwarded past the high fiving "adventures in time and SPACE..."). The Doctor's realisation that one of the Slitheen has escaped and is masquerading as the mayor of Cardiff is a wonderful moment. Eccleston's face as he delivers the lines is a classic. And even the "Gunfight at OK Corral" marching of Eccles, Piper, Barrowman and Clarke as they shoulder their way into Cardiff Town Hall is very enjoyable. The pursuit of Margaret Blaine/Slitheen is great fun accompanied by jolly music and culminates in a very good joke. If the recall of Annette Badland via teleport device had been in a French film by Jacques Tati it would be called "comedy genius". There is something very funny about fat people running and the fact that she runs into nothing is chucklingly good. But that's it, that's the episode highlight - you might as well switch off from here.
I really must commend Annette Badland. Probabaly the most memorable of the Slitheen from Aliens of London/WWIII. Certainly memorable enough in the production team's eyes for a return visit. Annette Badland is a veteran theatre/TV/Film actress. She knows her craft inside out and so produces a superb performance. The playing of sympathy is easy enough but we are not meant to trust her. The audience must grasp this without the character descending into a boo hiss villainess. Also there is a little bit of comedy there - only an experienced actress, which Miss Badland is, could pull it off. It seems strange to see Miss Badland middleaged - I still think of her as being in her twenties in Jabberwockey and several sitcoms of the early eighties. Her appearance in this could be called a success though having her return to her alien cocoon childhood is a bit of a copout. But mustn't frighten the kids too much I suppose.
Eccles doesn't put a foot wrong as usual. I like in particular his jocular greeting to Mickey when he enters the TARDIS. He is genuinely pleased to see him. And if the eyes are windows into the soul of actors then Eccleston is highly skilled in showing what he is thinking in the restaurant scenes and he has a nice rapport with Captain Jack as well. John Barrowman should be savoured as Captain Jack Harkness because he only had two more episodes to run before disappearing from our screens for a while. He has a good relationship with the Doctor even warning him "Don't answer her back. It's what she wants" as the two are policing their prisoner in the TARDIS. But this isn't really a Captain Jack story. There is no derring-do to be done here. In fact it is hard to pin down what kind of story this is.
It does veer into soap territory. RTD loves domestics and can write relationship dialogue very well.Thats why a huge chunk of this episode is given over to the Mickey/Rose relationship. Something which should have been dead and buried at the end of WWIII. But we have scene after scene of relationship discussion. And then suddenly, just as we are all nodding off, Cardiff starts to rock as the rift opens. I say rock but it really means a couple of extras screaming, a window smashes and the CGI boys go to work on the central square. Then we get lots of resentful acting from Noel Clarke and the audience swings behind him instead of his flighty girlfriend Rose Tyler. No wonder the poor boy is so messed up he now goes for fat birds at his Sainsburys' Local.
By the time of the deux a machina ending I had ceased to care. Something which has not happened to me during the new season (I usually reserve that emotion for Peter Davison episodes). Boom Town isn't bad television, it isn't even bad Who - it's just lazy and unimaginative. Who by numbers, Who without any effort, endorsed by the executive producer and the Welsh tourist board. There are places where it really works but these are countermanded by some shockers. Trying to blow up the planet so she can "space surf" back to her own people. I call that a really cruddy storyline - but worse was the come the next week with the Daleks/reality show combination. A plotline so bad that I am reaching for the bottle just thinking about it.
With Boom Town Russell T Davies proved that while most of the time he has the 'midas touch', occasionally, just occasionally, he has the average touch. There is something nonsensical about this one. There isn't much menace there and at no time do we believe any of them are in danger. Perhaps this was just a breather episode. A rest before the season climax. But, oh, it could have been so much better... given to someone else...
Boom Town? Nah. Pathetic squibtown more like...
...But With A Whimper by Daniel Saunders 19/3/06
Watching the new series for the second time I was pleasantly surprised to see that several stories I found weak when I first saw them seemed to benefit from a repeat viewing. The opening episodes did not have the disorientating culture shock of seeing Doctor Who updated so thoroughly.
I originally found Boom Town weak and frustrating, doubly so because even before transmission this seemed to scream "filler before the big finale." In retrospect, however, I can see that it was setting up several thematic and plot points for Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways. In some ways the season can even be seen as a thirteen episode epic. It was therefore with some trepidation that I took the DVD out of its cumbersome TARDIS case and put it in the player. Would I find hidden delights obscured the first time, especially if I watched it as New Series Part 11? Alas, no. Not only does this remain my least favourite story of the season and, indeed, one of my least favourite TV stories (the only new series story to gain that dubious distinction), but I found more problems than before.
There are huge lapses of logic and improbable plot devices. Would the people of Cardiff really let a nuclear power station be built in the town centre? Why kill all the people who could oppose the power station in a way that would just draw attention to what happened? Would "Margaret" have really made it obvious that she killed someone herself, even if she did pass it off as manslaughter? Did she expect people to believe someone slipped on ice and decapitated himself? Assuming she needed to keep the extrapolator in the town hall, wasn't there anywhere better than the model of the power station? Is there anything the sonic screwdriver can't do now? The real problem is many of these could have been plugged easily. Take the biggest plot hole, the deus ex machina ending. The scene where we find out that the TARDIS is being "recharged" could easily have gained a couple of lines. These could explain that the TARDIS needs charging from the rift because it isn't an ordinary ship, but uses the strange space-time-distorting power of things like black holes and time rifts and that the recharging process leaves the power source more exposed than normal, perhaps with strange, unexpected consequences. The ending would still depend on magical pseudo-science, but at least it would flow more naturally from the earlier stages of the narrative.
The biggest problems are with the story itself. If my recent article was an attempt to show how Doctor Who could work as a strange sort of soap opera, then this a clear example of how not to do it. The Mickey and Rose scenes fail in almost every way. They are desperately dull and cliched. Boy loses girl; boy gets new girl out of spite and loneliness; old girl gets angry; boy gets angry and confused - not the most original idea ever. Not only is it hackneyed, it is also unsubtle. Compare it with the complex relationship between Lamia and Grendel or the ambiguous one between Marriner and Tegan, both of which are more understated, but also more complicated and therefore more interesting and, frankly, more realistic and emotionally mature than anything in the new series. This sub-plot also has the unfortunate side-effect of making Rose (set up from the opening seconds of the season as the audience identification/wish-fulfilment figure, remember) appear tremendously selfish and uncaring. She leaves Mickey for more than a year to go travelling and flirting with the Doctor and Jack, but does not seem to realise that Mickey might feel upset by this! Worse, she seems feel betrayed when he says he has started dating Trisha Delaney, even though she knows he's waited a year for her between Rose and Aliens of London. Tired and boring, this might just be acceptable as a sub-plot if the main plot was exciting and groundbreaking.
Unfortunately, it has more problems here. Most obviously, the audience has seen it done, better, a month previously in Dalek. There is a slight progression in the Doctor's moral dilemmas across the season (in Dalek he is tempted to kill a murderous enemy; here it is an enemy who claims to have reformed; in The Parting of the Ways he has to decide if he can kill innocents for the greater good), but not really enough to make it look like like a developing theme rather than one that merely continues repetitively. Secondly, the moral discussions were just shoved in the middle of the episode, with some running around at the start and a standard technobabble world-in-peril bit at the end. The really frustrating part is that this is potentially a fantastic, original idea (original for TV Doctor Who anyway): the Doctor has to confront the consequences of his role as judge, jury and executioner. It would not matter that Davies is better at writing emotional, dialogue-based scenes than more typical Doctor Who stories, because that is what this should have been. So why did he seem to think he needed so many cliches of old and new Doctor Who? Imagine the story this way: the Doctor locks "Margaret" in the TARDIS about ten minutes into the story and rigs the door so that it will kill her if she tries to escape, but she takes Rose and/or Jack hostage. There then follows a tense psychological thriller as they each try and get the other to meet their demands, using force, ruses and eventually psychological pressure. This involves trying to get the other to admit to being murderous and in no position to judge others or complain about his/her lot. This would allow for the moral discussions we got on screen, as well as some action, but with more tension and without the need for so much running around, technobabble and Mickey. The contrived ending might still remain, but that is really the result of setting a problem which cannot be solved within the parameters of what is acceptable on a family show; the Doctor can not be seen to be responsible for death except in direct self-defence, but he cannot be indirectly responsible for it by letting killers go unchallenged.
Boom Town is not a complete write-off. There are some very funny jokes. The direction is good. The acting is excellent. But these can't save it. Ultimately, as with The Space Museum, this is destined to be remembered more for previewing the return of an old enemy in the cliffhanger/trailer for next week than for anything in the story itself.
A Review by Finn Clark 29/5/06
Boom Town's great, but it's easy to see how it wouldn't appeal to, for instance, small children or anyone else with a psychotically black-and-white worldview. The Doctor fights the least threatening villain of all time and unsurprisingly takes precisely three and a half minutes to capture her. I suppose in fairness there is a surprising aspect to this. The Doctor Who format means that traditionally bad guys: (a) keep fighting until just before the closing credits, and then (b) die. The Doctor may not carry a gun, but his foes don't have a good life expectancy. However here after capturing the villain, the TARDIS crew dilly-dally all night and nearly let her escape again. A deus ex machina saves them. The end.
That's a terrible plot, but fortunately Boom Town isn't about its plot. I even quite like the ending's elegance in wrapping up an ugly mess of pseudoscience. The script doesn't blind us with technobabble, but instead keeps things simple. The TARDIS is alive. It has a soul. That's its heart. No one could misunderstand that. The ending of Boom Town is at once harking back to the 1996 TVM and providing important set-up for The Parting of the Ways.
It's well played. I particularly enjoy watching Annette Badland, who even does well with the cheesy line "surf's up". The episode also holds up impressively to rewatching thanks to all that wit and byplay between the characters. We get to see them off-duty, simply relaxing for ten minutes until the Doctor sees that newspaper. Captain Jack doesn't get much to do, but it's not that kind of story. He can't be Flash Gordon since it's not an action-based episode, but he can't be Flesh Gordon since the only available characters are already paired off (Rose and Mickey, the Doctor and Margaret Blaine).
It's also very funny, with some of the season's best jokes. I laughed at Mickey getting territorial when he sees Jack, and also at "I sound like a Welshman" and "She's climbing out the window, isn't she?"
Again it's emphasised that Mickey's unsuited to adventuring. (At this point, anyway.) They make a joke of that, but once he's alone with Rose eventually his scenes almost feel as if they've been shipped in from a different episode. They're sombre, while ironically the "do we have the right to execute murderers" debate ends up offering plenty of laughs. One doesn't care what happens to Margaret, although the character is entertaining, but Mickey's story is sad.
As for Margaret Blaine, she's stranded, alone and short of resources. She can't build a spaceship and possibly can't even make a new skin suit. Of course the real reason for the latter is that Russell T. Davies wrote the episode around a good actress, but having a back-up identity might have been useful. She clearly likes being Margaret and has no reason to think that anyone's on to her, but nevertheless she's still dodging the cameras. The big question of course is whether she's changed. The Doctor claims she hasn't, but there are counter-indications. The biggest is letting Cathy Salt live. Margaret doesn't deny the Doctor's dismissal of that one, but at the time she did respond emotionally to the girl's story. More frivolously I could also cite one of the story's best jokes. "I sound like a Welshman. God help me, I've gone native." It's funny, but it's also at the heart of the story's themes.
Indications that Margaret hasn't changed are, well, everything else. She's planning to nuke Cardiff [1] and at the end she nearly destroys the world again. Nevertheless she's a sentient being. She at least has the capacity for change.
[1] - insert your "she's a good guy after all" jokes here.
Regarding the main dilemma, I have sympathy for the Doctor's position. It's clear and defensible. "Not my problem" is a straightforward moral position and quite an interesting one from the Damaged Doctor. Significantly "send her home" was also his plan before they learned about Raxacoricofallapatorius's death sentence, at which point everyone complained that the Doctor was letting her off lightly. There are parallels to be drawn with The Long Game. Both Adam and Margaret nearly destroyed the Earth through greed and in both cases the Doctor's reaction was simply to take them home. What happened thereafter was their own problem. Adam's iris-valve forehead or Margaret's death sentence... that's up to them. They brought it on themselves. Their choice.
It's only fair to note that Boom Town was always going to be a cheap fill-in episode, tying up loose ends and giving the audience a breather between Steven Moffat's wartime epic and the Dalek-ridden climactic two-parter. That's partly why they reused the Slitheen, although it's interesting that this is the first season since the 1960s to use a monster twice in one year (both Slitheen and Daleks). Boom Town also picks up on some of the season's previously established themes, counterpointing Dalek, for instance. Both stories ask what you should do with a killer, but Margaret can change while the Dalek couldn't and chose death.
Incidentally if you bought the vanilla Eccleston DVDs, the second and fourth discs have all the ongoing monster episodes. Disc two has the Slitheen two-parter and Dalek, then disc four has Boom Town and the Dalek two-parter.
There are parallels with the TVM. I'm not the person who noticed these, but I like them so much that I think they're worth steali... er, repeating. The TARDIS becomes the focus of the end of the world but then saves everyone with its mystical powers of turning back time, as represented by a glowing swirly light. There's a theme of rebirth, albeit not in the TVM's literal sense of death and resurrection. The Doctor confronts an old enemy and chats up a girl, although here they're one and the same. More frivolously, Cardiff is shot to look like Vancouver and the TARDIS lands in its Millennium Plaza. Oh, and Rose says "cloaking device". The previous points may or may not be coincidence, but you can't tell me that's not deliberate.
It's easy to see how a writer might want to address the ending of the TVM, incidentally. It's the last story before Rose, but it ends with a huge cheat as the Doctor uses the TARDIS to turn back time, unhappen Earth's destruction and resurrect the dead. If he could do that on a regular basis, nothing would ever have any consequences. This is why Letts and Dicks invented Blinovitch. On a simple nuts-and-bolts level, the last three Eccleston episodes are basically about showing that when the Doctor tries that trick again, it kills him.
There's plenty to love about Boom Town, if you can forgive it for only having three and a half minutes of old-school Doctor Who. Because of that, I can even understand the "heart of TARDIS" ending. If you must (re)introduce a dirty great deus ex machina concept, then it makes sense to do so in an episode that's been deliberately constructed to be plotless. We even get the Doctor noticing "Bad Wolf" for the first time, which is cool. Boom Town is warm, witty and most importantly doing something that the old series never even thought to do. What's more, those aforementioned small children and psychotics have now watched an episode of an action-adventure TV series that asks whether it's right to kill your enemies. I think that was worthwhile.