Story 307: Boom

In which the TARDIS arrives on a war-torn planet - and the Doctor almost immediately puts his foot in it. Or rather on it, as he steps on a landmine...

This is the planet Kastarion 3 and the year is 5087. The army of the Anglican Church has been engaged in combat here for many months. A Marine named John Francis Vater has been blinded, and is being escorted back to base by his orderly, Carson. Vater has a daughter named Splice waiting for him there. 

They are confronted by an armoured mobile Ambulance, which has an Artificial Intelligence interface. Vater wishes to avoid it as it may deem him unfit for active service due to his sight loss - and this proves to be the case. The Ambulances terminate anyone unfit to fight as a way of reducing pressure on supplies. Carson treads on a mine and is killed.

Vater is unable to hide his blindness and so trick the Ambulance into ignoring him. He is killed by it, his body compressed to be handed over to his next of kin.

It was on hearing his cry that the Doctor rushed from the TARDIS and stood on the mine. He recognises the device as being a product of the Villengard Corporation.

Ruby looks for a heavy rock which might be used to take his weight from the trigger mechanism. 

She finds instead the container bearing Vater's remains and a hologram is activated - a pre-recorded message asking for this to be returned to his next of kin. It is also able to tell them how he died.

Splice has been making her way to meet her father and arrives at the crater where the Doctor and Ruby are located. On hearing her give her name, the hologram is reactivated. 

Another Anglican Marine named Mundy Flynn appears. Thinking he is an enemy, holding a weapon, she orders the Doctor to drop the compression cannister - then shoots him in the arm when he declines to do so.

The Doctor points out that his Time Lord biology will result in the mine producing a much greater explosion. Mundy scans him and finds this to be the case.

The Doctor's wound draws an Ambulance towards the crater. It must be distracted from the Doctor to prevent the explosion, so Mundy asks Ruby to give her a slight wound - her gun on its lowest setting.

However, a Marine named Canterbury has been searching for Splice and when he sees Ruby pointing a gun at Mundy he shoots her.

The Ambulance is diverted to her but is unable to take any action as it cannot identify her. As she isn't Clergy it cannot treat her, and she cannot be destroyed as there is no next of kin to give the remains to.

Mundy and Canterbury must save Ruby.

It transpires that the Marines are not fighting any enemy. This is all just an elaborate scheme by Villengard to supply weapons and the Ambulances to the Church, making them money as the combat is artificially prolonged.

Mundy asks for proof, so the Doctor has Vater's hologram hack into the Ambulance's systems. Every Church casualty has been a victim of their side's own weapons.

The Ambulance's defences are triggered and it kills Canterbury. More Ambulances arrive to prevent the data breach, but Vater has been successful. They are reprogrammed, and one of them heals Ruby.

Soon after, the conflict has ended and the Marines are preparing to leave the planet. Mundy will look after Splice, who is still accompanied by her father's hologram.

Boom was written by Steven Moffat - his first episode since he handed over the showrunner role to Chris Chibnall in 2018. It was first broadcast on Saturday 18th May 2024.

The story was inspired by a short scene from the opening instalment of 1975's Genesis of the Daleks. Exploring the barren landscape of Skaro after being diverted there to fulfil a mission for the Time Lords, the Doctor steps on a landmine. Harry Sullivan is able to move a rock into position so that the Doctor can step away.

As well as looking to a classic Tom Baker story, Moffat elects to raid his own writing history to provide other story elements as the Genesis scene can hardly provide sufficient material to fill 45 minutes.

We first of all have the return of the faceless Villengard Corporation, first mentioned in The Doctor Dances and at the time most recently seen in Moffat's final episode as showrunner - Twice Upon A Time, in which the Dalek "Rusty" presides over its ruins.

We also have the return of the Clerics, first introduced in The Time of Angels, and a 51st Century setting.

Then we see another example of supposedly beneficial AI causing more harm than good. We saw this with the Siren (The Curse of the Black Spot) and the Handbots (The Girl Who Waited) amongst many others.

We also have yet another instance of the dead /  dying companion being brought back to life. Moffat does this so often that it completely destroys the drama of the situation. You just know there's going to be a cop-out so you really don't care.

And love is an emotion capable of interfering with technology, just like with Craig in Closing Time.

Moffat also takes a swipe at the futility of war, and the greed and immorality of the arms industry, which would rather see conflicts prolonged than cease due to the effects of peace on their profits.

Something else Moffat throws in is a bit of emotional manipulation. There's absolutely no reason for Splice to feature in this episode. (Why would a Marine have their child with them in a war zone?). She's there just to be cute and get the heartstrings tugged as she interacts with the "ghost" of her father.

For "cute" read "annoying" in my book.

This episode is also significant for giving us our first look at Varada Sethu in the series. Here she plays Marine Mundy Flynn, but she will be invited back a few months later to play the Doctor's new companion Belinda Chandra. 

Sethu had featured as Peaseblossom in RTD's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream in 2016, but is probably best known for her role as Rebel Alliance operative Cinta Kaz in Andor.

Marine John Francis Vater is played by Joe Anderson.

Though English he has worked a great deal in the USA, appearing in the series Hannibal, one of the Twilight films, and the 2010 remake of cult horror movie The Crazies. He played bassist Peter Hook in the Joy Division biopic Control (2007) and is a musician as well as an actor.

Canterbury is played by Scots actor Bhav Joshi, who is a regular in crime drama Granite Harbour, which is set in Aberdeen, and appeared with David Tennant in Deadwater Fell.

Splice is Caoilinn Springall. She featured in the 2024 horror film The Beast Within, which starred Game of Thrones' Kit Harington. She also features in the Amazon TV series Citadel.

Portraying the Ambulance's AI interface provides Susan Twist with her latest appearance in the series.

Other than the Twist appearance, the other story arc element this week is a reappearance of the incongruous snow - which begins to fall as Ruby lies dying.

Overall, one of the better episodes of this series, frequently voted favourite story of the season, but it has its weaknesses - such as the inclusion of the child and the back-to-life companion business. By the very nature of the episode, the Doctor is pretty much stuck in a hole for the duration and can only offer advice, and Ruby gets shot halfway through - so Munday Flynn actually comes across as the strongest character in the drama.

Things you might like to know:

• Canterbury clearly gets his name from the cathedral city in Kent, which is the see of the Archbishop of Canterbury - leader of the Anglican Church.
• Vater's name derives from the German word for "father" (in the same way that the Star Wars villain got his name for the same word in Dutch). You just know that his relationship with his child is going to be significant.
• Mundy can mean "protector or guardian", so she's obviously going to be left looking after the kid at the end. In fiction it has also been used to describe an ordinary, non-magical person - as in "mundane".
• When he first steps on the mine, the Doctor sings The Skye Boat Song to keep his mind off his predicament. This was occasionally played on his recorder by the Second Doctor - and the Master played it in The Power of the Doctor.
• The business with the explosion being much greater because his biology is Time Lord makes no sense whatsoever, so is just there to give people a reason not to simply let him be blown up. The Doctor has been involved in many, many potentially explosive situations and this has never been an issue.
• The Doctor quotes a line from a poem - "What survives of us, is love", attributing it to a "sad little man". It's Philip Larkin (1922 - 1985) he's referring to - from his 1956 poem The Arundel Tomb.
• RTD2 didn't give Moffat any information about Ruby, other than her first name and that she was just an ordinary young woman exploring with the Doctor.
• Gatwa claimed this as his own favourite episode of this series.