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| Jack, Rose, the Doctor, and Mickey stop Margaret Blaine from escaping. ("Boom Town") ©BBC |
But then Russell T Davies decides to give us a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, with a returning villain who may not actually be as bad as we thought -- it's certainly hard not to draw parallels with TNG's fifth season episode "I, Borg" (in which the Enterprise finds a lone Borg and decides after talking to him that maybe they're not so bad after all). To Davies' credit, though, he never goes full bore with the "she's just misunderstood" aspect, and in fact the moments where Margaret claims just that sound more like a desperate plea to avoid being executed than genuine remorse. Nevertheless, it's hard to shake the idea that Davies really wants this to be an examination of both Margaret and the Doctor. In this light, it looks like it wants to be the counterpart of stories like "Dalek", taking a hard look at the character of the Doctor. Unfortunately, it runs into two problems: first, unlike "Dalek", this character examination is the main plot of the episode, rather than a sidelight, and so it does feel a bit lightweight; and second, the Doctor's analysis of Margaret feels a lot more compelling than her probing questions to him (even if he doesn't seem to have ready answers for all of them). "You've been in that skin suit too long," the Doctor tells Margaret. "You've forgotten. There used to be a real Margaret Blaine. You killed her and stripped her and used the skin. You're pleading for mercy out of a dead woman's lips." We're supposed to be thoughtful about the Doctor's lifestyle and motives, but Margaret's questions don't hold as much weight as that moment from the Doctor. It also doesn't help that she turns out to be selfish anyway, willing to destroy the whole planet in order to surf her way out of there -- which makes it even harder for us to take her points seriously.
The other, more minor quibble is regarding Rose and Mickey's scenes. The exploration of their relationship is actually rather good, and Mickey's decision at the end to ignore Rose is a striking one (even if it'll be completely ignored in the next story). There is, however, something rather frustrating about listening to Rose describe to Mickey all the cool planets she's been to without having experienced any of them ourselves.168 After all, so far we've been to Earth, two space stations orbiting Earth, and, er, that's it. This is in part because of a calculated move on Russell T Davies' part, to ensure that the younger, more mainstream viewers aren't scared away by anything that looks too much like a "cult" show that they therefore wouldn't be interested in -- remember, for a large part of the audience, this show isn't about "an adventure in space and time" (as the Radio Times once put it) but instead is about Rose's relationship with the Doctor. But it's still a bit perverse to hear about these places without seeing them ourselves.
So "Boom Town" is ultimately a really uneven episode -- the good moments are really good, but the weak moments almost cause the whole episode to collapse under the weight of the surrounding scenes. This is worth watching for the performances and the interaction between some of the characters, but not much else.
Oh, and one additional note: we finally see the Doctor notice how the words "Bad Wolf" have been following him around for the past few episodes (the clue meant to keep longer-term viewers interested and guessing), even if he ultimately dismisses it as coincidence. Except that the next episode is called "Bad Wolf"... (And the trailer at the end of this episode appears to spoil the big cliffhanger at the end of that one.)
168 Well, unless you're the sort of person who reads the tie-in books -- Justicia, the setting of the second Ninth Doctor Adventure The Monsters Within, gets a name-check here. In that book Justicia's explicitly Rose's first alien planet -- a moment you'd think we might have been allowed to see, rather than just read about.