I’m not going to bury the lede. Boom, the third episode of this Doctor Who season, didn’t impress me. I don’t know, man. I just wasn’t feeling it, and I’ve been trying to work out why.

This is Steven Moffat’s return, back steering the ship as the writer, and it left me confused more than anything. Normally I’d say it takes three episodes for me to understand a show’s swing, and I felt like I had that after the first two. Then this one shows up feeling diametrically different, and the only thing that changed is who wrote it.

Moffat Is Still Writing for Matt Smith

For those of you playing at home, Steven Moffat was the showrunner and head writer for the Matt Smith era. He wrote some of the episodes we like. He wrote the original Weeping Angels stories, and he gave us the entire River Song saga during Matt Smith’s run. So I guess I expected more, especially because his writing has been better than this.

I’m not trying to be dismissive or reductive, but my first thought was that this felt like a Chris Chibnall episode. Then I chewed on it some more, and what it really felt like is a guy who hasn’t written Doctor Who in a while and sort of forgot he wasn’t writing for Matt Smith anymore. You could take any scene from this thing, put it in Matt Smith’s mouth, and it would work.

That’s why the episode feels like a misfire to me.

A War Planet With Nobody to Fight

The premise is pretty simple. This is the Doctor Who equivalent of a bottle episode: one location, a very limited cast. You’d think the bottle would be the TARDIS. It’s not.

There were times this one felt preachy, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not a big fan of having my shows preach at me. It’s one thing to tell good allegorical stories and work a theme. This felt a little preachy. They land on a war planet, and that’s obviously a dig at the industrial military complex and all of it.

The soldiers are the Anglican Marines, by the way. That’s right, from way back in the day. We’ve seen these Marines before. They arrived on this world and I guess they just started fighting, and they think somebody’s out there resisting. There’s nobody on this planet. The Doctor has to tell them there’s nobody here, so what in the world are you actually fighting? “Do you get it? There’s nobody else here. You declared war on an empty planet. There are no Kastarions in the mud. They’re not in the fog. There are no Kastarions.”

The Ambulances and the Red Line

They have these things called ambulances, and they made me think of a character from the Demons Run episode. The actress plays La’an on Star Trek: Strange New Worlds now, but back then she was one of the Marines, one of the forest people from the Gamma Forests, and she was looking for the Doctor. Where she’s from, the word doctor means warrior.

That’s immediately the vibe I got here. The ambulances are field robots. They show up, and based on how severe your injuries are, they determine against predetermined budgets whether you should be peacefully put down or whether they should spend the money to revive you. What the Doctor uncovers is that they do just enough to keep you right above the red line, because the war’s too expensive otherwise. And again, they’re not fighting anyone. They’re not fighting anyone.

So there’s a soldier at the very beginning who’s blind, and they determine he’s too much. “Villengard Corporation would like to extend its deepest condolences on your upcoming loss. Thoughts and prayers.” They kill him by compressing him. He looks like somebody took a body and smooshed it down into a tube, with a little metal thing at the top that’s got his name on it. When the Doctor says his name, a little hologram comes out. Now we’ve got this AI with some of his memory engrams in it, so there’s a little bit of his personality in there, and that little bit is apparently enough to do some fantastical nonsense later.

I don’t know. Again, I’m not a fan of this episode. I’m not going to trash it, though.

Ruby, the Snow, and the Lone Single Tear

The acting’s fine, by the way. Ruby once again does the snow thing, and I guess we’re supposed to glean more about her past from it. I feel like Ruby’s becoming an amalgamation of Clara Oswald and Rose. Rose after she got the Bad Wolf stuff in her, so Rose from, what, season two or whatever, and Clara because she’s the mystery girl. I’m seeing some closeness in how those stories are being told.

The Doctor, man. The Doctor cries a lot, and by crying a lot I mean he does these lone single tears. I’m telling you, if they ever do a reboot of Sliders, they need to have Ncuti Gatwa play Crying Man, because that brother can cry at the drop of a hat.

The soldier’s got a little girl, too. Apparently he brought his daughter with him because he’s the only one who takes care of her. There’s a friend of the family named Mundy, and the Doctor goes, “Great name. Mundy Flynn. You should marry Ruby, then it’d be Mundy Sunday. Go on, get married. I’d laugh every day.” Ruby Mundy, Mundy Sunday, whatever. The humor didn’t really work for me this episode.

A Roomba Landmine That Changes Its Own Rules

There isn’t a lot of action to speak of, because the Doctor is literally standing on a Roomba landmine the whole time. That’s what it looks like. It looks like a Roomba.

The bad part is the bomb isn’t consistent. At the very beginning the guy just stands on it, whatever. Later they make it out like the Doctor has to balance on it and can’t lose that balance, because the thing’s trying to determine if there’s actually a target there. So I don’t know.

Not my favorite episode. I don’t really beat things up or belabor stuff I don’t like, but I’m committed to doing these reviews, because I do love Doctor Who and I do want to see more of what they’ve got coming. This episode wasn’t it. It wasn’t a win for me.

The Verdict

Doctor Who “Boom” lands at a 6.5 out of 10 on the Know-It-All Index.

It started at a 7. Because of all my disappointment, I think it’s slid down to a 6 and a half, so 6 and a half is where it sits for me.

I don’t know how I feel about it, and I’m looking forward to next week’s episode anyway.

What did you think of the episode? Was there anything you were looking for and didn’t get? Was the writing good for you, or was the writing on the wall? Let me know if I’m wrong. The conversation lives in the comments on the video above.