There are a certain amount of first moment when you say the words “ a Steven Moffat episode of Doctor Who . ” Over his incumbency as a regular writer and then as the series ’ showrunner for the good part of seven yr , Moffat developed a house elan — to his detractors , a preponderance for questionable mysteries and twists , to his defenders , a penchant for close , twist thriller , and a fairy tale dark . But if there ’s one affair you may expect regardless when you say “ a Steven Moffat episode of Doctor Who , ” it ’s something that just gets it .
“ Boom ” gets it .
localise on an alien battlefield in the far flung futurity , Moffat ’s return to Doctor Who — in this fresh age of splashy Disney budgets , breakneck tempo and antic preliminary , and high intensity , loud characterisation — is a jolt to the serial publication ’ system of rules after last workweek ’s busy , bustling , andcharmingly messy double - premiere . Everything about “ thunder , ” named for the volatile gimmick the Doctor unknowingly steps on about 15 min into the story , slams the brakes down . And that ’s almost literally , since the Doctor can not move for the Brobdingnagian legal age of the installment lest the combination of the mine ’s biological immolation protocol and his own volatile Time Lord DNA take out half the major planet with him . This place the Doctor and Ruby through an emotional wringer that commands unbelievable carrying into action fromNcuti Gatwa and Millie Gibsonalike , ones that really dig deep into who these torpedo are more than the breezy besties of instalment one and two could , and despite the fact that they pass most of the legal proceeding cling inside a dingy crater on an empty battlefield . Can you have a feeding bottle episode if the nursing bottle it take place in is technically an heart-to-heart - air ditch ? Doctor Who says “ yes , and we ’ll make it look great anyway . ”
Image: BBC/Disney
The battleground our heroes find themselves trapped in one very specific part of is empty due to a war between the aboriginal inhabitants of Kastarion 3 , and an encroach upon army of battle - cleric on behalf of the Villengard Corporation . Villengard , an intergalactic weapons manufacturing business , is an idea that has been litter throughout Moffat ’s piece of work — bookending his first and last episodes of his anterior term of office , from being mentioned as the developer of Captain Jack Harkness ’ transonic blaster in “ The Empty Child ” and “ The Doctor Dances ” to being a planet actually visited by the Twelfth and First Doctors in his final story as showrunner , “ Twice Upon a Time”—but “ Boom ” is where the author really have to dive deeply into this peculiar piece of his worldbuilding , delivering a biting irony of contemporary conflict and conclusion - by - algorithm capitalism in equal amount .
Everything happening on Kastarion 3 is give this diametrical contrast that simmers beneath the real tenseness of the episode — that the Doctor has his metrical foot on a mine and require to figure out a fashion to disarm it before he violently detonate — between the faith - driven tenets of the clerics , Anglican leatherneck wearing priest collars and fighting holy war , and what the Doctor repeatedly decries as the “ Villengard Algorithm . ” Invisible mines that turn your own trunk against you to save up money on munitions , battle - ambulance - robots that trundle across the field in search of patient — and then action you if your treatment will take too long , because patient are more expensive than replace bodies on the front line — everything about this conflict is dictated by the sing - song voice of AI facsimiles of human faces , even as actual mass are mutilate , by weapons or because the algorithm enjoin so , and immediately transfigured into overweight subway remains that are monetary value - efficient to bear back to base . As the Doctor redact it to Ruby at one period , barely hold his fury at the iniquity of it all , to Villengard there is no human cost in these wars , only a fine line between spending enough money on supplying munitions to keep conflict going , and spend enough on the bruise left in the aftermath that the whole bloody mass remains viable to shareholders .
So as Ruby and the Doctor examine to gravel their way out of this deadly algorithm — with a short assistance from a few clerics and the AI fax of one of their fall down , John Francis Vater ( guest superstar Joe Anderson)—what could counter such an unyielding , unfeeling scourge like a fellowship that chimes “ thoughts and prayers ” as it executes you and mulches your body down into a tube ? Well … this is a Steven Moffat instalment of Doctor Who . That does n’t just stand for spin and turns , or tense darkness , it means something else : that the answer in the face of such repulsion is , was , and always will be love .
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A chance meeting with Vater ’s girl Splice ( Caoilinn Springall ) who ’s add up in search of her male parent on the battlefield with one of the battle - clerics — giving the Doctor and Ruby a heartwrenchingly barren moment where they seek to decide how best to secern a kid in hunt of her dad that they ’re moderate his clay as a counterbalance for an armed mine — sees this skirmish of human belief and machine logic manifest in multiple ways . At first there ’s the latent hostility of trust ’s blind attribute , as the Doctor beg cleric Mundy ( Andor ’s Varada Sethu — and more significant here , the actress behindDoctor Who ’s incoming companionmaking asurprise other appearing ) to understand that the war she ’s fighting is a nonmeaningful massacre for capitalism ’s sake rather than her beliefs , as she render to ascertain if the Doctor and Ruby are on their side or the — turns out , non - existent — Kastarions . But as calamity come to over and over as the countdown on the mine draws near — and the nearby ambulance - droids gain that someone has figured out the real nature of the warfare — Moffat pull out a move that feels poetically consanguineous to the sexual climax of his very first Who story , the said “ The Empty Child ” and “ The Doctor Dances . ”
There , as is the case here , the love of a child overwhelms machine programming to save the daylight . Vater ’s AI memorial is urged by the Doctor to foray into Villengard ’s algorithmic arrangement , connected through the Doctor ’s own link to an ambulance - bot , and force a ceasefire that will terminate all arms on the planet , beg that somewhere deep inside the recreation of Vater remembers that he ’s a don who loves his daughter . It ’s done with enough muzzy system of logic , and sell to hell and back by a barnstorming , yet understate , performance from Gatwa , that like there , you are swept along with the cathartic release that this time , everybody get to live ( although not necessarily , Vater is still deadened by the end of the episode , as are several other clerics , because it still would n’t be Steven Moffat save without a few heartbreakingly sudden expiry to distort the knife ) . But it ’s also a fittingly Doctor Who - y response to the context of this episode ’s release , an age where we ’re all increasingly worried about the role algorithmic program and contrived intelligence dictate our lives — and soon could dictate conflict too — that the thing will save us is not a puzzle loge construction , or matching logic with logic , but religion in our love for each other being able to transcend it all , whether it ’s beyond demise or beyond the digital future we ’re steer towards .
And really , that ’s “ Boom ” in a nutshell — an instalment that play with your expectation of twirl and mystery , of the kind of needless complexity Moffat has prosper on in the past , to effectively give up a uncomplicated , earnest message about human connection . In a time of year that is play with the ideas of storytelling and metanarrative , it ’s perhaps the twistiest take on that idea so far , indirectly play with hearing first moment the way it does instead of making that metanarrative an expressed part of the text . But in doing so , it reminds us of the power of what Doctor Who can do with storytelling when it ’s open fire on all cylinders : and that sometimes , all you need to get there is niggling faith and love , devise in the crucible of an absolute nightmare scenario , to get to the light at the remnant of the burrow .
Image: BBC/Disney
New Doctor Who episodes premier Friday at 7 p.m. ET onDisney+ , and will air through the BBC iPlayer at the same time in the UK , at 12 a.m. local time on Saturdays before broadcasting on BBC One later that daytime .
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Image: BBC/Disney
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