Doctor Who: Boom

Boom sees Steven Moffat return to Doctor Who with an explosively tense episode as the Doctor lands himself on a mine for the episode’s runtime.

Arriving on the planet Kastarion 3, the Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) steps on a land mine, locking him to one position for the whole episode. However, as a war rages around him, he and his companion Ruby Sunday (Millie Gibson) must save the warring factions and each other.

The premise of spending the whole episode stationary is fascinating, allowing the episode to become a character study of its cast. However, despite this, the tone never strikes balances; instead, it finds comfort in writing devices associated with Steven Moffat.

The writer, who had previously worked alongside Russell T Davies to write standalone episodes, is considered to be the originator of some of the best episodes to date, including but not wholly limited to The Empty Child (2005), Blink (2007), and Heaven Sent (2015).

Taking over the helm as showrunner from 2010 until 2017, Moffat has accrued shy of 50 episodes under his writing belt for the show, with the upcoming 2024 Christmas special, Joy to the World, becoming the episode to mark that milestone.

To write so many episodes over twenty years, Moffat, much like Davies, has undoubtedly developed and grown as a writer, increasing strength to strength with complexities and interests in his writing across all the shows he penned. However, as evident in Boom, his reliance on storytelling devices and themes feels familiar, such as thematic messaging on capitalism and the relationship between war and religion. Neither are necessarily new concepts from the former showrunner, who introduced the Anglican militia in The Time of Angels (2010) and who ran the show when Oxygen (2017) aired, with the episode focusing on paying for bare life essentials.

Instead, what should have been an episode showcasing the dynamic weight of Gatwa’s performance in real-time becomes a doubling down on Moffat’s writing flares and quirks, which bombastically overwhelms the lingering afterthought of the episode. That isn’t to say that Gatwa’s performance was anything other than extraordinary. The dialled-back, minimalist expressions become narratively restricted under the simple landmine premise, reiterating the talents we’ve seen from across the series, even if the dialogue resorts to Moffat’s passion for a poetic flare, such as, “I’m a much bigger bang than you bargained for. I will shatter this silly little battlefield into dust. In a heartbeat, into dust.”

Unfortunately, aside from Gatwa’s triumphant, albeit scaled-back, performance, the remaining episode is underwhelming. The subplots involving a child looking for their father and two army members with a will-they, won’t-they love interest are underdeveloped and crassly annoying, unaided by a disappointing performance from Caoilinn Springall as Splice Alison Vater.

Director Julie Anne Robinson struggles to get its supporting cast to match the levels put in by its leads, again highlighting issues from her previous episode, Space Babies (2024). For instance, the episode invites audiences to invest in Varada Sethu’s maternal Mundy Flynn. Still, her hidden reveal feels more like an afterthought of her announcement as the next companion than because of her character’s complexities and nuances.

Instead, as John Francis Vater, Joe Anderson does the best job of reaching the heights of Gatwa during the episode’s cold open. It’s a deafening alarm of the episode’s quality when the best character is murdered before the opening credits. It is a shame, too, that post-humorously, Vater returns to the episode as a hologram as though belonging to Star Wars, with all his interest disregarded to push for the message on artificial intelligence.

In fairness, Boom does a lot to create tension, knowing that any heightened emotion could set off the landmine. This is no clearer when Ruby Sunday is mistakenly shot and dies as a result. However, as this is Steven Moffat, a fake-out death sequence is second nature to him, having killed off and resurrected every companion under his show-running tenure.

There was a lot for Boom that could have worked flawlessly, and for the most part, it all went off swimmingly. But when it falters, it’s jarringly noticeable. Moffat was one of the show’s best writers and was responsible for some of the greatest threats and stories to date, but Boom blew a fuse as it struggled to reach a satisfying conclusion.

Doctor Who: Boom is available on BBC iPlayer, with new episodes released weekly on Saturday at midnight on the streaming platform, or broadcast later in the day on BBC One. Outside the UK the show can be watched exclusively on Disney+.