Cast your minds back a couple of months to when we were still counting down the final days of that long, sixteen year wait; remember the trailers, the press bash and - of course - that Radio Times cover advertising the first episode.
Inside was a pull-out section, on the back of which was a brief synopsis of the thirteen episodes. For me, one episode stood out simply because it didn’t: ‘Boom Town’. Now, we knew the Daleks were back - not once, but twice - we knew about Simon Pegg’s episode, about the one set in the Blitz and the one with Rose’s father. We even knew there was one purporting to be some kind of Big Brother satire.
But about ‘Boom Town’ we knew very little, except for one tantalising sentence: ‘The Doctor comes across someone he thought was long dead…’
Now, I have to admit that the fan-boy in me took that one sentence on board, and ran. It’s got to be the Master, I thought (all this talk of the Doctor being the ‘last’ of the Time Lords is all a smokescreen, surely). And even in the weeks after - as still little came out about this story - I hoped and prayed that something major was on the horizon come week eleven.
And then Outpost Gallifrey printed some spoiler or other, shattering my hopes like a pane of sugared glass: it wasn’t the Master - it wasn’t even Mark Benton’s Clive from ‘Rose’ - but the Slitheen.
The bloody Slitheen, I have you!
Regular readers of my musings will recall how I didn’t think a great deal about Russell T Davies’ debut offering of the flatulent, chubby-cheeked creatures of Raxicoricofalipatorius (apologies in advance if I haven’t got the spelling quite right…) A classic case of a nice idea, poorly executed (and any race that announce their intentions by farting a great deal is never gonna cut the world-domination mustard with me). So the thought of having to endure the third part of what was already an over-stretched two-parter was about as welcome as sharing a Jacuzzi with one of their number.
This all sounds as though I’m building up to some confession; some revelatory re-evaluation that has made me re-think my opinion, both on the Slitheen and their opus of episodes this year, doesn’t it?
Well, no. But then it would have taken some episode to achieve that.
What it did do was remind me what a varied, flexible show we have, folks. One week it’s emotional angst, with post-9/11 allegory; then it’s domestic, human drama with a tear-jerking analysis of human relationships; then we’ve got scary school-kids who turn out to be far from scary at all.
And this week we’ve got a knockabout run-around which suddenly becomes a thesis on the ethics of capital punishment and the nurture versus nature debate. You don’t get this in Holby City, do you?
I wasn’t expecting a lot from ‘Boom Town’ and largely I got no more than I expected. After a run of five, almost faultless, episodes it was inevitable that somewhere along the line someone was going to drop the baton. That this was once more the show’s chief architect and the man most responsible for us all being sat here, tapping away week-after-week, is as disappointing as it is now unsurprising. Because when the final reckoning comes, if you ask me what was the one, fundamental disappointment with this otherwise fabulous series, my answer would be the scripts by Russell T Davies. And if you’d told me that before March 26th, then I’d have laughed in your face.
Yes, it’s witty in places. Yes, it’s very clever - a little too clever for its own good at times - and yes, it does find time to be serious about some very serious matters. So why do I feel as if I was watching a cross between Children’s BBC and an Italian Job-style caper movie? And given RTD’s undoubted love for the show - and his seemingly limitless capacity for relevance in his scripts - then why do his episodes feel less like Doctor Who than anybody else’s?
I can’t face going off on another diatribe about light-hearted, knockabout humour undermining the drama that there evidently is in his scripts. Rather, I’ll point out how make-do ‘Boom Town’ is, both in concept and execution. First, we’ve got Cardiff standing in as - er - Cardiff, for no apparently good reason (yes, the rift. But can you tell me that any other city couldn’t have stood in for what was, at best, a threadbare plot device. And let’s not even mention RTD’s desire to put Cardiff on the Who map, as with all due respect this is a case of cost-cutting no matter which way you look at it). Episode 11 was the only episode not story-lined as cameras began to roll last July - a fact which this under-scripted, budget-conscious episode sorely underlines.
And why - given this series’ admirable standpoint on minimal continuity and techno-babble - do we have that painfully viewer-friendly scene where the regulars discuss the TARDIS’ unlikely disguise as a Police Box? I thought I was back watching the TV Movie all over again (and not for the last time this week!) And shouldn’t Rose also be looking up her pensive Mother - if for no other reason than to mention how she finally met her dead Dad - as well as stringing along love-struck Mickey once again? There’s a laziness to ‘Boom Town’ - as with most of his episodes - which is unbecoming of RTD’s writing stature. And is all the more regrettable given the sheer volume of episodes - both this year and next - which come under his immediate control.
Like I say, when RTD does witty, he does it very well. But somehow it always has to be balanced by the sort of light-hearted buffoonery that has characterised far too many of his episodes this year (Case in point: Margaret Slitheen being made to run back-and-forth, ad nauseam, as a way to elicit laughs is as overcooked as Adam’s ‘finger-clicking’ brain-port from ‘The Long Game’). It’s as though Davies is not too sure the audience will get the joke, so relentless is he in telling it until he’s convinced that we’ll all laugh. Elsewhere, the humour is much more refined - Margaret realising how she’s starting to sound like a Welshman was appreciated by this particular Welshman - and the Doctor’s po-faced comment to her aid that she was ‘climbing out of the window’ rather than doing paperwork, nearly (only nearly, mind) made me laugh.
And then there’s the rich, quotable dialogue which bubbles to the surface when the episode’s not trying too hard to show how clever it is. After twenty minutes, ‘Boom Town’ seems to realise it wants to tell a very different story to the knockabout run-around it has been depicting thus far; with the ethical debates between the Doctor and Margaret (particularly those in the restaurant) at last seeing the script sing (such gems as the Doctor’s ‘You’re pleading for mercy out of a dead woman’s lips’ really should be in a better episode). And, as in ‘Dalek’, it’s refreshing to see an episode in which the Doctor and his nemesis are revealed to be not so different as he would like to think.
But such sojourns are brief in what is ultimately a filler between the grandstanding show-pieces of the season’s big two-parters. While there’s a neat balance between the Doctor and Margaret’s ethical combating and Rose and Mickey’s rather more emotional differences (in which Mickey, finally, elicits some sympathy from this particular viewer), it all comes crashing down during that incomprehensible, techno-babble-heavy final act. The TARDIS being the nexus of an environmental catastrophe again brought back memories of the TV Movie of some nine years ago, while its (Eye of Harmony?) resolution was just a touch reminiscent of the vanquishing of that same film’s Master.
But never mind. If the price we have to pay for the likes of ‘Dalek’, ‘Father’s Day’ and the Steven Moffat two-parter is such below-par fare as this, then I can learn to live with it. It’s just a shame that, to a man, each of these under-whelming efforts have had the name ‘Russell T Davies’ in the credits after them. There’s a lot beneath the surface of ‘Boom Town’ to suggest that some deeper, darker scheme is going on (such as how the Doctor seems to be something of a voyeuristic stalker of Rose now, or how Mickey’s Doctor-obsession is yielding a very nasty side to his otherwise comic-relief character). And Annette Badland does at least give a performance showing a level of nuance undreamt of in the earlier Slitheen episodes.
Oh, before I forget - Margaret does mention venom grubs at one point, doesn’t she? And that bloke in the opening scene is the same bloke who faints dead away at the funeral parlour in ‘Remembrance’? Making him the first performer to appear in old and new Who alike.
Whaddaya mean, you knew that already?!?
As the camera pans across the Cardiff Bay development it reveals a large phallic object, which is either plunging, penetrating deep into the moist earth or standing, proudly erect with liquid flowing down it. Yes, this must be yet another RTD scripted episode of Who as the innuendo flows thick and fast. Perhaps it's the constant stream of sauce-induced conversations they must have had, since being joined by Capt'n Jack, that's turned the TARDIS team into a bunch of temporal dicks straight out of an Enid Blyton novel.
And what's this? Margaret legs it out of a window and pegs along the terrace to the scaffolding, using the metal structure to effect a descent. Jack clears a tea trolley in the corridor, Mickey doesn't clear a cleaning trolley and the Doctor follows Margaret down the scaffolding. Could it be that the world of Parkour has finally met the world of Doctor Who? Well, perhaps not. Don't suppose that much of that's classed as everyday obstacles and I'm sure that you could hardly call Madge's running graceful. By the way, is calling Parkour, Free Running, like calling Trekkers, Trekkies? Or is it the other way round? Who knows. And, more to the point, who cares.
So, in conclusion (like what followed was a piece of incisive critical analysis), I couldn't shake the 3rd Doctor feeling that I got from this episode. It's a good enough story, if you leave out the all the innuendo, with some very, very funny lines and one stand-out scene in the restaurant. The tension sparking between Eccleston and Badland was superb. And it did exorcise some of the concerns I've had with Annette Badland as an actor. All that stuff about consequences kinda made me think that the good Doctor is almost the temporal equivalent of successive American administrations foreign policy initiatives. 
There's a wonderful moment in Boom Town where Margaret the Slitheen begs the Doctor to spare her life. It's a bit like that old debate about killing Hitler, only this time you get to take him to a Bistro for steak and chips first. It's a tense scene, beautifully directed and acted with complete conviction. Margaret looks the Doctor in the eye and pleads with him to "let one go."
The plot - surf-boarding aliens riding time rifts with the aid of unexplained (so far) alien technology - is simply window dressing that doesn't really hold together. It's really just an excuse to get the Doctor to dine with his enemy. Any questions about whether Margaret can change her spots or not is completely undercut by the fact that she tries to kill the Doctor three times in as many minutes, but the real debate is 'what should we do with the evil monsters?' Short of blowing them up, of course.
Which brings me to Mickey. Mickey the victim. Boo-bloody-hoo. He was invited to come with Rose and the Doctor and he declined! My heart bleeds! What is he whinging about? OK, so he saved the world by following a really simplified list of technical support-line instructions and by pressing a big red button labelled FIRE. Big deal. At least Adric tried to fit in.
Oh yes, the ending. What the hell was that about? It had a ring of the 1996 movie about it (captivated by the light of the TARDIS). Was it the Eye of Harmony? The "regression" was just as unexplained as the fairy light fiasco in McGann's outing and almost as unwelcome. Is the Master still hiding down there and did he manage to put himself in the egg by some nefarious means? Now, isn't that the most fanwanky thing you've ever read?
