Warning: Spoilers ahead for Doctor Who season 14, episode 3, “Boom.”
Steven Moffat returns to write Doctor Who season 14, episode 3, “Boom,” with his first story since his departure as showrunner in 2017 showcasing some of his biggest strengths and weaknesses. Moffat took over showrunning duties from Russell T Davies when David Tennant’s times as the Tenth Doctor came to an end. During Moffat’s time in charge of Doctor Who, he oversaw Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor as well as Peter Capaldi’s Eleventh. Under his care, Doctor Who adopted a progressively darker tone – especially during Capaldi’s era.
While there was plenty to enjoy about the Moffat years, “Boom” brings with it the ups and downs of the writer’s style. Moffat’s episodes became known for their high-concept storylines and quotable dialogue. While Moffat did write some of the greatest Doctor Who stories of all time, his formula wasn’t without its downsides at times. However, his return during the early stages of Doctor Who‘s Disney era has still been welcomed by large portions of the fan base, as he creates a narrative for the new cast to bring to life.
Steven Moffat has written almost 100 episodes of Doctor Who through the years, and “Boom” means his work with the franchise takes place before, during, and now after his spell as showrunner. Of his immense catalog of Doctor Who episodes, some of his best focus on a specific concept rather than a broader storyline. For example, Doctor Who season 2, episode 4, “The Girl in the Fireplace,” followed the Tenth Doctor witnessing a condensed version of Madame de Pompadour’s entire timeline. Additionally, Doctor Who season 3, episode 10, “Blink,” was also especially conceptual, even for Doctor Who.
Despite Moffat’s penchant for highly cerebral arcs, he is very good at concept episodes, and “Boom” proves it. The concept of “What if the Doctor stood on a landmine?” seems like a difficult thing to pull off effectively, but Moffat’s writing talents enable him to create a thoroughly compelling episode of Doctor Who. The result is essentially a bottle episode, with almost all the story’s events confined entirely to one spot.
Due to the limited roster of characters in “Boom,” and the nature of the script, the performances that are pulled out of Ncuti Gatwa as the Doctor and Millie Gibson as Ruby Sunday are even stronger than usual. There is far less running around dramatically and dodging scary monsters, so there is much more pressure on the leaders of the Doctor Who season 14 cast to make the episode as effective as it is.
This story being sparsely populated by design is something that Moffat has done before within the franchise. In Doctor Who season 9, episode 11, “Heaven Sent,” Moffat penned an episode that essentially had Peter Capaldi’s Twelfth Doctor as the only member of the cast. All the dialogue is aimed at no one in particular. Instead, the Doctor is speaking to a recently deceased Clara Oswald, with even the episode’s villain being mute and faceless. “Boom” doesn’t use a format quite so extreme, but it’s still recognizable as a Moffat concept.
Doctor Who is arguably at its best when it tugs at the audience’s heartstrings. While various eras of the show have achieved this to varying degrees, Moffat is especially prolific for his heartfelt/upsetting moments, even before he took over as the show’s leader. “Boom” maintains Moffat’s trend of brilliantly instilling all the right emotions – both good and bad. The Doctor’s situation in “Boom “elicits a strong sense of hopelessness, and yet the posthumous hologram of Joe Anderson’s John Francis Vader saving the day in the name of love counteracts the despair with literary precision.
The Doctor is a character often in the middle of what should be unwinnable scenarios and other Doctor Who writers can tend to be caught up in the thrill and excitement of it all. Moffat always takes the time to dwell on the emotions a real person would experience during these moments. As a result, his episodes often boast emotional depth, and “Boom” is a prime example of how the writer achieves this.
For all of Moffat’s writing strengths, the dialogue in his episodes isn’t always the most natural-sounding. The characters he writes for, including the Doctor, tend to communicate in dramatic platitudes and often quote from famous philosophies and other narrative works. While this can be very effective if used sparingly, it can also make certain moments come off as a little over the top. Moffat’s soundbite approach to scriptwriting is well-balanced in “Boom,” but it’s still easy to notice.
The Doctor’s Philip Larkin quote at the end of “Boom” is a perfect example of this Moffat writing choice. Speaking with Ruby, Gatwa’s Doctor says, “A sad, old man once told me, ‘What survives of us is love.’” The quote is from a poem called “The Arundel Tomb,” and while the message it contains does encapsulate the episode’s themes well, it’s also a little on the nose. It’s not that the Doctor wouldn’t quote poetry, it’s just a little redundant at that particular moment.
Steven Moffat has written some brilliant episodes where the big reveal is nothing short of gasp-worthy. For example, the simulation twist in Doctor Who season 10, episode 6, “Extremis,” is incredibly well-executed. However, some Moffat episodes telegraph the story’s biggest moment far too early. In “Boom,” the twist is that the Church’s supposed enemy, “The Kastarions,” don’t exist. Instead, the Church’s only opponents are its own weapons.
The lack of visible enemies throughout the episode is a huge signifier that they don’t exist at all. When Varada Sethu’s Mundy Flynn starts to mention the Kastarions lurking in the mud and in the fog, it just confirms what is already relatively obvious. However, it could be argued that perhaps the reveal is intentionally easy to work out ahead of time, as it could be a clever reference to the Church’s blind faith in what they can’t see.
During Steven Moffat’s time in charge of Doctor Who, he made it seem very possible that certain main characters had just met their end. For instance, Arthur Darvill’s Rory Williams has an arc where it very much seems as though he is dead, only to return in Roman form further down the line. Moffat even wrote a story that almost convinced viewers that Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor perished. So, when Ruby Sunday is shot in “Boom,” Moffat’s past writing tricks give away the fact that she’ll survive the incident.
Doctor Who has killed off companions before, and some of those deaths even happened during the Steven Moffat era, but such events are often reserved for season finales or one-off specials. So, Ruby appearing to die so soon into the run of Doctor Who season 14 makes the outcome of the sequence a little too easy to predict. In addition, while Millie Gibson has been confirmed to cease being a member of the main cast at the end of the season, Russell T Davies has also confirmed she will appear in Doctor Who season 15.