Boom Town

🙏🏼63% = Fine! =Skippable!

Thworping through time and space, one adventure at a time!

DATING A SLITHEEN: A COMMENTARY

With Boom Town, Russell T. Davies gives us a bit of a breather before the big finale and brings back his new favourite monsters as well.

The opening scene with Margaret immediately helps to remind us what we are up against and already proves that Annette Badland is one of the best guest actors in this season of Doctor Who.

The Cardiff setting also provides a beneficial change of pace. We return to the Doctor's bullying of Mickey, and this time, Jack is also involved.

So the Cardiff rift mentioned here harks back to The Unquiet Dead and also plays a pivotal role in the founding of modern-day Torchwood later on. It also serves as the primary cause of conflict in Boom Town.

The Blaidd Drwg mention, which is, of course, Bad Wolf hiding in plain sight (and mentioned later in the episode), is yet another example of RTD's wordplay.

I really like Badland here, and I'm glad RTD gives her a lot of space to shine. Knowing who she really is makes all her attempts at keeping a straight face all the better. And once she meets the Doctor again, she becomes wonderfully manipulative. She also effortlessly switches from soft to evil, then back again.

The Slitheen costume looks slightly more polished to me. Or perhaps it's Badland making the character much easier to accept (they've toned down the farting as well). And to be fair, we mostly see Margaret in her human form.

This one carries surprising emotional poignancy, proving to us that aliens and monsters do also have feelings.

The constant banter between Jack and Nine continues as both men try to take charge. Mickey is the comic relief, as per usual. This one has some good lighthearted humor (as demonstrated by the rather silly chase scene between the TARDIS crew and Margaret).

RTD has a knack for nonsensical terms, and the extrapolator surfboard thingy is one of his better ones.

Another Doctor Who?-joke! They are always fun!

The Doctor shows his darker side again, as he doesn't care whether or not he sends the last Slitheen to her death. Chris Eccleston balances a Doctor swinging between guilt and fury very well.

The narrative is very character-centred, and there isn't a whole lot of tension or excitement here, which makes this a slower episode.

I appreciate that Rose and Mickey finally took the time to catch up, because she's treated him pretty poorly up to this point. It's no wonder he's seeing a new girl!

Margaret is also used to further explore some areas of the Doctor's personality, particularly post-Time War.

The dinner and bondage scene in the restaurant is a modern classic, and another one shows what the Slitheen is capable of and what this Doctor is made of.

You could say that this episode is about consequences, following the Doctor's previous actions with the Slitheen and Rose's choices in her life and relationship.

The last 10 minutes suddenly make everything go boom, because a Doctor Who episode needs real danger, right?

I love how the Doctor silently waits for his moment at the climax and then calmly but surely fires back to defeat Margaret. This scene also establishes the heart of the TARDIS, which is an important plot point in the finale.

Now I don't know how that resolution is supposed to work, and I don't particularly enjoy it. I do feel sorry for Mickey, though, for being left behind again.

RANDOM OBSERVATIONS:

• William Thomas, who plays Mr. Cleaver at the start of the episode, previously appeared in Remembrance of the Daleks. He's the first actor to appear in both Classic and New Who.
• We hear Rose talk about an off-screen adventure with the Slitheen in Justicia. This references the second NSA novel, The Monsters Inside, and marks the first time the TV show has referenced EU material.

Boom Town isn't *that* bad. It definitely goes a long way in refining the Slitheen a bit, and is a far better depiction of the alien race as much more complex than their original, more simplified and cartoonish appearance.

I like how these aliens are humanized a bit even while they are still not necessarily good. It challenges the Doctor a bit. Boom Town is also almost invaluable as one of only a small handful of stories with the Doctor, Jack, and Rose. I wish this period were a little long in the original series, because the dynamic of this trio is really something. Throw in Mickey and we have a pretty great full blown TARDIS crew in this episode, and I think all four characters are used fairly well in this regard. They did a good job slowly introducing us to these characters and letting us get invested in each of them, to the extent that even a more mediocre story like this is heavily elevated by our characters.

THIS REVIEW WAS WRITTEN PRE-BARROWMAN SCANDAL, COPIED OVER FROM THE OTHER SITE

There is probably a fascinating discourse on the nature of justice at the heart of this dull, unfunny exercise in padding, but you'd be hard pressed to find it.

All of my friends say I'm crazy for hating this episode but I just don't get the love surrounding this travesty. You may call me crazy but I would rather rewatch Orphan 55 over this. To me it would seem that the actors don't seem at all interested in this episode and that reflects through their wooden performances, although to his credit John Barrowman alone is worth a rewatch as he at least tries to inject a bit of humour in the part of the episode when he states his plan only to be brought back down to earth by the Doctor. That part of the episode notwithstanding i find myself in no great hurry to rewatch the story and always skip it when i do a rewatch of Series 1.

Whilst it was nice to see the Slitheen reused, I feel as if they were reduced to some comedic monster of the week trope with no real character development given to Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen other than the fact she wanted revenge on the Doctor for killing her family in Aliens of London/World War Three. The scene where she's running away makes me cringe every time I see it and when's she's on the 'date' with the Doctor I want to pull my hair out at all the stilted, unfunny dialogue between the usually brilliant Christopher Eccleston and Annette Badland.

Overall, I personally find this to be one of the worst stories from the RTD Era and New Who in general, I would like to forget this episode ever existed as it drags down what is a fantastic season full of spectacular high points but this is the lowest of low points and spoils my enjoyment of Series 1

This feels like a coda. The only low key moment of pause across series 1. A chance to catch our breath. Having lived in Cardiff for 7 years, it’s quite strange seeing it captured so faithfully on screen. Although, Mickey arrives at Cardiff Central only to immediately then find himself in a very different area of town.

This is our one chance to see The Doctor, Rose, Captain Jack and Mickey in a regular adventure together. And it’s fine. RTD leans into the love triangle (/love square?) very hard, it would have been nice if they’d been given some more action to do together, to make them more of a team.

Bon Fel Fotch is played beautifully by Annette Badland and plays off our leads nicely, with a lot of quippy dialogue, but it all feels a bit slight, like the show is buffering in advance of next week. An alien returning (a first for the new series) and Cardiff’s rift from Gatiss’ script ties it in to the rest of the series nicely.

The most beautiful moments are when you see the flickers of humanity from the monster of the week. The worst moments are when the humor doesn’t land. Overall I’d say my biggest complaint of Boom Town is it’s uneven tone.