NuWho Rewatch: Boom Town

[purplecat]

Boom Town is not a Doctor/Companion lite episode but it feels very much like them as they were to appear in later seasons. It certainly feels like a cheap episode (in a good way), requiring few special effects, no new costumes, a small cast and only small scale action sequences.

I'm not sure what NLSS Child made of it. She was not much interested in the way the episode was centred around the dinner between Margaret and the Doctor. Or at least, she enjoyed all Margaret's foiled attempts to kill the Doctor but the the central point about the Doctor's right to act as a judge and executioner by proxy passed her by rather. She had also missed most of the nuances of the development of Rose and her relationships with the Doctor and Mickey and so was shocked and annoyed at Mickey's revelation that he was seeing someone else.

I'm not sure the episode really lives up to its ambition. Margaret is too clearly dangerous and there are no real alternatives on offer for the Doctor, but it is far from a failure and its very low-key nature at least gives the characters of the Tardis crew a bit of a chance to breath.

Comments

[daniel-saunders.livejournal.com]

I have never much liked Boom Town. The Rose-Mickey plot sidelined the moral dilemma Margaret posed. As you said regarding Kill the Moon, the Doctor isn't going to kill someone in cold blood, not even by proxy (and not even this most dangerous of Doctors), so the episode is really killing time waiting for the latest deus ex machina to appear. The restaurant scene was good, though.

I have my own version of this episode in my head where Margaret takes Rose hostage in the TARDIS and the moral dilemma discussion takes up the bulk of the episode, as she tries to get the Doctor to release her and he tries to free Rose.

[purplecat]

I think I may just have believed this possible - I mean handing villains over to the authorities without necessarily asking too many questions is fairly Who-ish - but, you are right, the moment an issue is made of it, it becomes a false dilemma we know is going to be resolved without the Doctor having to both make a choice and face its consequences.

Wikipedia says the original outline of the episode is about how the Doctor constructed Rose in advance as his perfect companion. On the whole I'm glad we got Boom Town instead.

A hoot! A hoot, I say!

[ed-rex.livejournal.com]

I always found Boom Town a delightful, if lo-cal, confection. For Captain Jack's cheezy innuendo to (again) the fart jokes, to the Four Heroes setting off in search of a monster armed only with their (synchronized) cellphones, it struck a lovely balance between nudge-nudge, wink-wink for the grown-ups and legitimate menace for the young'uns.

I'm pleased to learn that NLSS Child at least enjoyed some of it and didn't contradict my thesis too much.

Definitely not a classic story, but a nice low-key adventure with a bit of moral complexity and a lot of relatively subtle character-development for the seasonal arc going on.

Once I find the chance to catch my breath after this year's attrocity, I just might follow your lead and take another look at the early editions of NuWho. (Or maybe I should just go right back to the beginning? That would keep me busy for quite some time, wouldn't it?)

Re: A hoot! A hoot, I say!

[purplecat]

The chase was fun, yes, particularly the interactions between the regulars.