Doctor Who Season 14 Episode 3 Review – “Boom” – An Explosion Of Mixed Meanings

It’s hard to believe that we’re already at Doctor Who Season 14 Episode 3, but that’s what happens when you do a two-part premiere on Disney+. This episode, titled “Boom,” was important not solely because of the stories or characters but because of who wrote the episode. Stephen Moffat was the showrunner for Doctor Who during the Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi eras, and fans were curious about what he would bring back to the table upon his return. Well, the answer is a lot of familiar things…and a tendency to get a bit overelaborate in the messaging.

To be clear, I loved most of Moffat’s run with Smith and Capaldi, and Capaldi is my favorite Doctor. But just like much of what’s going on with Ncuti Gatwa’s run, things are relying too much on the past instead of pushing into the future. Case in point, the point of “Boom” was that The Doctor and Ruby Sunday end up on a war-torn planet and our dear Doctor accidentally ends up stepping on a landmine that he has to be very careful on, or else it will explode. Oops.

That premise in and out itself is perfectly Moffat. He puts The Doctor in a unique scenario where none of the “standard rules” of Doctor Who apply. He can’t get out on his own, he can’t wander around trying to get answers, he’s stuck trying to figure things out on the fly. The early parts of this episode were fantastic in that regard.

From the opening with the two soldiers dying, setting up the grim-themed episode to come. The Doctor ends up on the landmine and tries to get Ruby to back off so she won’t get killed…only for her to refuse. One of the soldier’s daughters coming to find her lost parent, only to get caught up in the mess they were all in, it was gripping! Until it wasn’t…

You see, with all past showrunners of NuWho (and likely classic Doctor Who), the show tends to get a bit heavy-handed in its messaging, even beating people over the head with a stick with it. The difference between “Boom” and “Space Babies” was that the latter dropped their very real-world appropriate message and then moved on. With “Boom,” they kept bringing it up, and it got annoying when they tried to do more “heart-wrenching” moments only for them to fall flat for me.

In this case, the messaging was about war and business and how “business is booming” because a future corporation has created a system in which war is always happening—even if there’s no one to actually fight. Then, they “manage costs” by creating an “acceptable casualty rate” and kill soldiers who “take too long to get better.” Not only that, but the church and military branches are fused together, and that creates more conflicts of interest.

In theory, Moffat could’ve told this tale in a simple yet provocative way. Instead, we kept hearing The Doctor and others bring it up, and then when “faith” was brought into it, The Doctor almost went postal…only to do a 180 later on and say “just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean I don’t need it.” Which is very contradictory in more ways than one.

In short, they were trying to do too much here. The best example of this is with a love story they tried to throw in at the end and it was basically ignored in the final scenes after everyone was saved. We barely saw the two characters together, and then one of them dies in an honestly dumb way, and then I’m supposed to be sad because they “never said how they really feel to one another?” No, I don’t think I will.

Arguably, my biggest problem with Doctor Who Season 14 Episode 3 is that they tried to make the audience think that both The Doctor and Ruby were going to die…and we all knew that wouldn’t happen. It’s a classic story problem that can only be handled with misdirection and such, but I felt no such dread of “uncertainty” here. Especially when, once again, the Deus Ex Machina that is Ruby Sunday showed up via her “snowstorm” with no explanation as to why it was happening. They weren’t going to kill her before things got wrapped up storyline-wise.

Also, the current season really seems to be “going back to the history books” for some of its storylines. Ruby is basically Clara Oswald via the “impossible girl” storyline, then there’s the fact we just met a future companion via Mundy Flynn, which even Moffat admitted was a nod to Clara. Add to that, the “Susan Twist” woman who has appeared in multiple episodes now, which is basically a reference to the 9th Doctor’s “Bad Wolf” phrase that appeared everywhere. Can we please do some more original stuff? Sure, not everyone will have watched those series, but they are out there, and those who have been around a while might be mad at the rehashed storylines with an all-new Doctor and companion.

That’s not to say everything in “Boom” was bad. As I noted, the opening segments were fun, and I liked The Doctor connecting with the late soldier’s AI to get him to help “Dad-to-Dad,” as that showed off a rare side of The Doctor. While I don’t like how the Ruby storyline is going, it’s undeniable the chemistry and friendship between Ruby and The Doctor, and it’s always fun to see what these two do next when they’re together.

Also, did you notice they didn’t mention the Sonic Screwdriver ONCE? Wouldn’t that be the thing that The Doctor used to get out of his jam? Exactly.

In the end, “Boom” just didn’t hit the mark. It tried to do something deep and meaningful, but things got muddied because it was doing too much. We’ll have to see where things go from here.

Doctor Who Season 14 is currently airing on Disney +.