Doctor Who Recap: Pray Son or Thought Daughter
Nothing challenges one’s beliefs and faith quite like facing the military-industrial complex.
Doctor Who wants to drop the MIC … the military-industrial complex, that is. This week, former showrunner Steven Moffat has returned to write an episode. He told the BBC that he started working on the script about two and a half years ago, but this story about the arms industry being the real winner of a conflict still feels incredibly timely. Weapons manufacturers have said that Israel’s ongoing military operations in Gaza are good for business, and college students on both sides of the pond made headlines this spring with divestment demands. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is reportedly planning a new $1 billion arms sale to Israel. When the Doctor tears up asking why a little kid like Splice is out in such a nasty war, it’s hard not to think of all the children who have died this year. “Boom” delivers a scathing, not-so-subtle critique of people who don’t try to stop violence, from those who offer only thoughts and prayers to those who actively fund and profit off of bloodshed.
The episode title is used in three different ways. First, there’s the boom of explosive combat: The Doctor is trapped on a landmine for most of the action. Then, there’s the booming business of the Villengard Corporation, the weapons manufacturer that made Captain Jack Harkness’s sonic blaster (see Moffat’s 2005 episode, “The Doctor Dances”) and is still going strong as the equal-opportunity supplier of all sides of the conflict. Finally, Doctor Who loves an optimistic ending, so we do eventually get to hear the Doctor say “boom” during a celebratory yay-we-survived fist bump. It takes a few deaths before we get there, though.
The first person we meet is the widowed father, John Francis Vater, who is blindly following a fellow Anglican soldier back to base camp. John’s comrade-in-arms is blown up by a landmine, only living long enough to tell us that the Anglicans are fighting Kastarions they’ve never actually seen. John is then “humanely” killed by an automated Villengard ambulance that deems the expected four-week recovery from his eye injury to be unacceptably long. (The Doctor later explains that Villengard’s algorithm maintains a fighting force at just above the acceptable number of casualties, treating only enough people to keep the dying and buying going.) Side note: I’m not great with faces, so it’s taken me embarrassingly long to realize that we’ve seen the woman on the ambulance’s interface in several episodes already. The Bad Wolf of this season, if you will. She’s played by Susan Twist and listed last in the credits, which adds another layer to that fourth-wall-breaking “there’s always a twist at the end” moment in “The Devil’s Chord.”
The ambulance offers its condolences, displays the type of bland graphic that a Republican politician might post after a mass shooting, and then compresses John’s body into a small cylinder. Eugh. Hearing a scream, the Doctor rushes out of the TARDIS and accidentally steps on a landmine, which doesn’t go off because it can’t figure out if he’s a live target. It’s hilarious that tears and multiple monologues somehow still don’t give it away.
Ruby disobeys a direct order from the Doctor when she decides to give him John’s body/casket as a counterweight so that he can put his leg down. The Doctor is so worried that he says good-bye, but they end up perfectly timing the handoff by singing “The Skye Boat Song,” a Scottish tune that the Doctor has been using to calm himself down. Sadly, all this music does not summon my new personal icon, Maestro, a.k.a. Jinkx Monspoon.
Because flashy weapons apparently sell better, the landmine is providing a visual countdown. Vacuum drones are sucking up smoke so that soldiers don’t choke before they can be shot, so we’ve also got a clear view when John’s “approximate AI reconstruction” pops up to tell the Doctor and Ruby about his death. John’s daughter, Splice, hears his voice and comes to investigate. She’s followed shortly by an ordained Anglican Marine named Mundy, who shoots the Doctor to try to get him to drop John’s body. Sure, the landmine would go off, but there’s a fail-safe that means it will eventually blow the Doctor’s body up via a DNA chain reaction anyway. The Doctor helpfully informs Mundy that as a Time Lord, he’s a bigger bang than she bargained for. Her scanner confirms that he could take half the planet with him.
A Villengard ambulance latches on to the Doctor and immediately starts glitching. Ruby grabs Mundy’s gun and shoots at the sky to try to distract the combat-activated bot. But there needs to be another injury, so Mundy puts her gun on the lowest setting and asks Ruby to “shoot me a little bit.” Unfortunately, fellow soldier Casto, who has an obvious crush on Mundy, shows up just in time to misread the situation and blasts Ruby with his weapon. The Doctor can only sob as his companion rolls down the ground.
And now, a reminder of Ruby’s mysteries. The ambulance identifies her as 3,082 years old but can’t name her next of kin. Ruby starts crying and, as we’ve now seen happen several times with her, it begins to snow. Just as the Doctor says it’s a good sign that the snow is falling, all the flakes freeze in place. According to the ambulance, she’s only got about seven minutes left to live — but it won’t treat her since she’s a non-believer. Canto starts trying to bypass the medical protocol to revive her, having adjusted remarkably quickly given that no one has bothered to explain that Ruby is not actually a murderer.
With no solution in sight five minutes before he is due to go boom, the Doctor tells Mundy to surrender, explaining that the landmine would deactivate because the Anglicans are actually only fighting the casualty algorithm of their own Villengard hardware. The Doctor disdainfully suggests that the army never noticed there aren’t any Kastarions because they have faith: “The magic word that keeps you never having to think for yourself.” Mundy says the bishop is the only one authorized to make that call but won’t do it without evidence (“Now you need proof, faith girl,” the Doctor scoffs). The Doctor appeals to John’s fatherhood as Splice looks on. “Dad to dad, you never let them down, right? Ever. To the end, right?” he says. That’s apparently enough to get AI John to break his digital protocol and hop into the Villengard network looking for proof.
The ambulance’s firewall resists, killing Canto with a defensive blast. His hologram designates Mundy as his favorite person and says it’s okay that she doesn’t love him back. It is tragic, though if I’m being honest, the dialogue of this love story was a little too middle school for my taste. Mundy might as well have passed Canto a “Do you like me? Check yes or no” note. To be fair, maybe the ordained don’t have too many chances to hone their dating skills. At least he got to see her tattoo work before he died?
The ambulance calls for backup, with dozens of other robots rolling up and chanting “thoughts and prayers” while Villengard tries to delete John. At the literal last second, he and his “kiss kiss” catchphrase successfully gain control, reviving Ruby and disabling the Doctor’s landmine. The Doctor is so delighted by this show of “parent power” that he tries to speak in drum beats and does a literal mic drop.
To Splice, her dad’s not gone, just dead. It’s a perspective that makes the Doctor grin, and he admits to Mundy that just because he doesn’t like faith doesn’t mean he doesn’t need it. After a round of hugs, the Doctor is eager to leave, insisting that there’s too much to do for Ruby to just keep gazing at the skyline on her first alien planet. Ruby hands him the TARDIS keys, and they muse about death. “Snow isn’t snow until it falls,” the Doctor says, which … sure. It mostly feels like another way to hammer home that Ruby can somehow summon chilly weather, which is emphasized by the closing shot of a snowflake coming toward the camera.
Cut for Time (Lord)
• The Doctor controls his nerves by reciting a rhyme that mentions the moon and the president’s wife, both of which he has vaguely been accused of stealing before. The rhyme also mentions going to the beach where “she” is waiting. The Doctor also brings up the fact that everywhere eventually becomes a beach twice in this episode, and we seem to be near the coast in next week’s preview … I get the feeling that all of this is not leading up to a fun beach day :(
• I’ve been informed that Jinkx Monsoon became the first person to say the word “lesbian” out loud in Doctor Who history last week, which is bonkers considering that Twelve had a lesbian companion. Anyway, Fifteen ups the tally by mentioning a bet to deactivate a landmine underwater at a lesbian gymkhana. That’s gotta be Thirteen, yeah? Maybe she met the lovely sentient mud girls there.
• In a fun li’l nod to Eleven’s post-regeneration cravings, Fifteen tells Splice that fish fingers and custard is his favorite dish. Now, bi-generation was cool, but I still feel like we were a little robbed of getting to see Ncuti Gatwa stumble around in Jodie Whittaker’s clothes while figuring out how to use his body and brain again.
• Finally, who do we think Susan Twist is? I’ve seen some theories online that she’s his granddaughter, Susan, whom he mentioned in “The Devil’s Chord.” Family has definitely been a huge theme of the season, and the “dad to dad” monologue this week definitely contributes to that. But is the return of the Doctor’s granddaughter really enough of a twist for RTD?