“BOOM TOWN” – Series 1, Episode 11, Story 166 – Written by Russell T Davies; Directed by Joe Ahearne – The Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Jack head to modern day Cardiff, where they meet up with Rose’s boyfriend or ex-boyfriend, Mickey. It’s hard to say because the show never really addresses it. She leaves him but comes back and then leaves him again, and she never gives him a legitimate answer, and he’s so hopelessly desperate for her that he’s almost as pathetic as that dude in 500 Days of Summer. They refuel the TARDIS on the Cardiff Rift, which is a wormhole or something left over from THE UNQUIET DEAD that leaks radiation and allows Torchwood to never run out of plots. They discover that the Slitheen living in Margaret Blaine’s skin is still around and she wants to build a big power facility that will blow up the planet and send her hurtling across space to … wow, that’s dumb. She gets captured, goes on a date with the Doctor, challenges him on bringing her home, where a death sentence is awaiting, and all the while Rose is going on a date with Mickey and thinking of getting some. Because It’s Doctor Who Date Night.
BOOM TOWN is not a bad episode. It is an excellent change of pace episode with an absolute nutkicker of an ending.
Let’s play that analogy out. Have you ever gone out on a date, had a pretty good time, and then when you lean in for the goodnight kiss your date hauls back and drills her foot right into your nuts? (Ladies, flip analogy accordingly.) That’s what BOOM TOWN does to you.
This really is an enjoyable story for the first 35 minutes, but that last 10 minutes … in a display of totally gutless writing, Davies lets the Doctor out of the moral corner he spends the episode panting him in, and in doing so forgoes characterization for a neat visual trick.
Let’s back up.
The TARDIS lands in Cardiff and Mickey comes a calling, and he and Jack get along about as well as Mickey and the Doctor. They’re refueling the TARDIS on that rift left over from the Gelth invasion in THE UNQUIET DEAD, but it’ll take all day so they go exploring.
There’s a nice bit with Mickey wondering about leaving the TARDIS in the middle of a public area but the Doctor tells him not to worry because humans won’t notice odd things like an outdated police box. As a character, Mickey has come a long way from where he was in ROSE, where he was a total loser/nuisance. Noel Clarke played him as a silly man child, but now he’s cranked down the ego and played up the hurt. He’s gotten used to the TARDIS and the Doctor, if not with Rose being gone, but now when you add Jack in, Mickey is so hopelessly overmatched that you feel sorry for the guy.
The four of them end up realizing that the Slitheen living inside Margaret Blaine’s skin is now Lord Mayor of Cardiff and so they go to stop her. (Seriously, Lord Mayor? British titles are the best. I want to move to England and live there long enough to get a cool sounding job title and then come back and take over whatever town I live in. “What did you do in the UK, Mark?” “Nothing much. Oh sure, I worked as the Lord Cashier for a bit.”) There’s a whole bit in there about a power plant she’s building in order to explode and blah blah silly Russell Davies’ narrative gibberish blah blah … it gets stopped, so it doesn’t matter. She’s captured by the TARDIS 4 and the Doctor tells her he’s bringing her back to the Planet That Starts With R and Has a Ridiculously Long Name. (It’s Raxacoricofallapatorius. Thank you, Wikipedia.)
This is where things get good as Margaret spends her TARDIS time chirping away at the Doctor, attempting to weaken his resolve for bringing her home, where she awaits the death penalty. She expertly plays on his sympathies and regrets, and convinces him to take her out to dinner for a last meal.
There’s a bit of silliness at dinner as she keeps trying to kill him and he easily knocks the attempts aside, but the conversation is real enough. She says he’s serving as his executioner. He cavalierly tells her it’s not his problem, even though you know it’s eating at him a bit.
It’s a real question and should force the Doctor into an uncomfortable position. It’s easy to say, “Not my problem,” but it’s harder to bring someone to their death. Blaine argues she’s changed but the Doctor isn’t buying it, telling her that she might spare the occasional soul but she’s doing it from inside the skin of a woman she murdered. It’s a good line and a good argument.
Blaine and the Doctor have a solid philosophical chemistry. She’s a much better prosecutor than the Valeyard, and it raises the question that if she has really changed, is it better to bring her to her death, or to bring her somewhere else where she can make a difference atoning for her sins?
The whole episode hinges on this question; it is far more interesting that wondering if Rose and Mickey will actually get a hotel room, or why she’s jealous at Mickey seeing someone else when she’s clearly not interested in him anymore except for every once around the galaxy, maybe, but the episode craps all over it’s own questions.
1. Rose – she’s just that kind of girl that always wants to be the center of any guy’s world, so long as she’s remotely interested in him. She doesn’t really want Mickey anymore, but she doesn’t want Mickey to be with anyone else, either.
(These are the girls, inevitably, we should run away from. These are the girls, also inevitably, that we seem unable to run away from. Or maybe that’s just me. And I can say this, because I know none of the three of them are reading this. Thhhppttttt.)
2. Blaine – An earthquake interrupts her dinner with the Doctor and we find out it’s her back-up plan, and she’s been just buying time, and she’s still evil, no matter that she didn’t kill a reporter back at the start of the episode after killing someone else. She programmed her special techno board thingie to lock onto an alien power source, which happens to be the TARDIS, to blow up everything anyway.
It’s a total copout. How about actually having her change? How about that? How about you answer the question you raise instead of raising it and then tossing it aside merely as a contrivance of some villainous plot to blow up the world? How about I go eat a Twinkie?
If she’s still willing to blow up the world, or the city, or anyone, really, then the Doctor has no real guilt in bringing her back to the R planet. But just to make sure the Doctor only has trouble sleeping because of the Daleks and the Time War, Davies … sigh … Davies has Blaine look into the Heart of the TARDIS and it … give me a second … the Heart of the TARDIS turns Blaine into an egg.
Yes.
An egg.
The Heart gives her a second chance at life because the Doctor says that must be what she wanted, but that’s not what she really wanted (at least not in some redemptive chance), or else she wouldn’t have done all these horrible things to BLOW UP THE PLANET. She doesn’t want a second chance. Or maybe she does, but not because she wants to live a better life – Blaine wants a second chance so she doesn’t get killed.
But …
But isn’t reverting her to an egg the same thing as killing her? Maybe not her body but it’s killing her personality, isn’t it? The Doctor certainly thinks so as he says they’ll give her to a good family and let them raise her right.
So the Doctor didn’t kill her but the Heart of the TARDIS effectively does, and everyone’s happy?
Stupid, stupid ending.
