Boom Town (Doctor Who)

165 – "Boom Town"
Doctor Who episode
The Doctor dines with an old enemy.
Cast
Doctor Christopher Eccleston (Ninth Doctor)
Companions Billie Piper (Rose Tyler) John Barrowman (Jack Harkness)
Others Noel Clarke – Mickey Smith Annette Badland – Margaret William Thomas – Mr Cleaver Mali Harries – Cathy Aled Pedrick – Idris Hopper Alan Ruscoe – Slitheen
Production
Writer	Russell T Davies
Director	Joe Ahearne
Script editor	Elwen Rowlands
Producer	Phil Collinson
Executive producer(s)	Russell T Davies Julie Gardner Mal Young
Production code	1.11
Series	Series 1
Length	45 mins
Originally broadcast	4 June 2005
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → "The Doctor Dances" "Bad Wolf"

"Boom Town" is the eleventh episode of the first series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on 4 June 2005. The Doctor, Rose and Jack travel to modern-day Cardiff and meet up with Rose's boyfriend, Mickey. There, they discover that a recent enemy is very much alive, and is willing to destroy the planet to ensure her freedom.

Plot

The Doctor has landed the TARDIS in Cardiff, using the energy of the Rift to recharge the time machine. He, Rose, and Jack, along with Rose's boyfriend, Mickey who has met them there, spend the afternoon relaxing, until the Doctor recognises the photo of Margaret Blaine, a Slitheen in her human suit, who has become the new mayor of Cardiff. The four track and capture Margaret, suspecting her of nefarious deeds after escaping the destruction of the other Slitheen ("Aliens of London"/"World War Three"). The Doctor observes her scale model plans for a new nuclear power plant, but identifies it is purposely flawed to cause a meltdown that would open the Rift and destroy the Earth. He also discovers the model contains a functioning tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator that Margaret would have used to flee the Earth. The Doctor decides to take Margaret back to her home planet Raxacoricofallapatorius, but Margaret laments that she is considered a criminal there and will be executed. The Doctor agrees to her final request, to accompany her to a dinner meal. Though Margaret attempts to kill the Doctor at the dinner several times, the Doctor easily evades each time. Margaret then tries to play on the Doctor's sympathy, requesting him to take her to another planet. During this, Jack sees the potential to use the extrapolator to speed up the recharging of the TARDIS, and returns there to integrate it into the console. Meanwhile, Mickey explains to Rose that he is starting to date someone else as Rose has been absent for him.

The Cardiff area is soon struck by a large earthquake. The Doctor, Margaret, Rose and Jack regroup to find that the extrapolator was a trap, meant to lock onto the nearest alien power source when used — in this case, the TARDIS — and sending that energy to open the Rift. They enter the TARDIS to try to help Jack disable the unit to no avail. Margaret takes Rose hostage and demands the extrapolator, but the heart of the TARDIS opens and Margaret looks into its light. The Doctor and Jack use the opportunity to close the Rift and disable the extrapolator. When the light vanishes, Margaret's human suit is empty except for a Slitheen egg; the Doctor surmises that the TARDIS' telepathy sensed that Margaret wanted a second chance at life and gave it to her. As the TARDIS crew prepares to return the egg to Raxacoricofallapatorius, Rose realises Mickey has left without saying goodbye. Though the Doctor offers to wait for him to return, Rose declines, believing she should have a second chance.

Continuity

• Continuing the Bad Wolf theme, the nuclear power station is named "Blaidd Drwg", which means "bad wolf" in the Welsh language. This was the first reference to be explicitly addressed. (See Story arcs in Doctor Who.)
• The plot features a device called a "tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator". Tribophysics was first mentioned in The Pyramids of Mars, and also features in Davies' Virgin New Adventures novel Damaged Goods, where it is described as the result of two realities rubbing against one another, leading to variances and breakdowns in the laws of physics. In the novel a creature called an N-form is able to slip between dimensions, presumably in the same way Margaret intends.
• Rose mentions that she and the Doctor have been to the Glass Pyramid of Sancleen, and to Justicia, which is the star system that they visit in the New Series Adventures novel The Monsters Inside by Stephen Cole (where they encounter other members of the Slitheen family, as well as other members of the same race, the Blathereen). This is the first time any of the spin-off novels have been referenced on-screen.
• Margaret refers to being threatened with being fed to the venom grubs in her childhood. Similar creatures appeared in the First Doctor serial The Web Planet (1965).
• Mickey calls the Doctor "Big-Ears", a continuation of the running joke regarding the Doctor's ears started in "Rose".
• In "Utopia", when the Tenth Doctor and Martha Jones stop on the Cardiff Rift to fuel up the TARDIS, the Doctor refers to the events of this episode.
• There are at least two, if not three, selves of Jack in Cardiff during this episode: the youngest is depicted working with the Doctor. Unbeknownst to him, his older future self is running Torchwood Three from the hub under the rift in Roald Dahl Plass, but may or may not actually be present in the city. Both are unaware that a still older future self is frozen in the corpse vault in the hub.
• A segment of the Torchwood spin-off novel The Twilight Streets deals with how Jack stopped Torchwood's involvement with this event- due to his desire to avoid causing a temporal paradox by accidentally making contact with his younger self-, and expands upon the character of Idris Hopper.
• Margaret tells the Doctor that he is "always looking on because you dare not look back". Davros echoes those words almost exactly three years later.

The TARDIS

• The sealing of the Cardiff rift in 1869 left a scar, similar to the way the events of the 1996 Doctor Who television movie left a "dimensional scar" in San Francisco in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel Unnatural History by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman; the fact that the TARDIS needs to "refuel" from energy from the scar suggests that it is no longer being powered by the Eye of Harmony. What connection the "soul" of the TARDIS has with the Eye is not mentioned.
• The place where the TARDIS lands in Roald Dahl Plass develops unusual properties, as seen in "Everything Changes", the first episode of the spin-off series Torchwood.
• Rose attributes the TARDIS's disguise to a "cloaking device" (the term used in the Doctor Who television movie) and the Doctor clarifies that it is called the chameleon circuit.
• The Doctor's retort to Mickey that humans do not notice odd things like the TARDIS echoes a similar sentiment expressed by the Seventh Doctor in Remembrance of the Daleks: that humans have an "amazing capacity for self-deception."
• The movements of the Earth due to the rift's energies cause cracks to appear on the plaza where the TARDIS sits. However the slabs are not split and tilted — they just have gaps through them. Coincidentally, a year after the episode's broadcast, in September 2006 (the time the story is set), the decking on the real plaza was replaced by tarmac.
• The idea that the TARDIS console directly harnesses the energies which drive the ship, and is at least in some sense "alive" and self-aware, dates back to the 1964 serial The Edge of Destruction.
• Although the TARDIS has never regressed a person to infancy as it did with Blaine, it has helped with the Doctor's regenerations (The Tenth Planet (1966), The Power of the Daleks (1966) and Castrovalva (1982)). In the television movie, the Master tries to harness the TARDIS's Eye of Harmony to give himself a new set of regenerations; later, the TARDIS somehow brings Grace and Chang Lee back to life. Time travel technology that could turn a chicken back into an egg was seen in City of Death (1979). Nyssa and Tegan suffered both age progression and regression during the events of Mawdryn Undead due to travelling in the TARDIS, but this was the result of an external infection that rendered them susceptible to that effect while travelling.

Production

• In the accompanying Doctor Who Confidential episode, Russell T Davies stated that he originally intended to call this episode "Dining with Monsters". He joked that a much better name for this episode would be "What should we do with Margaret?" In the French language version of the show, this episode has the title L'Explosion de Cardiff ("The Explosion of Cardiff"); in the German language dubbing, it is called Der Spalt (The Fissure, a reference both to the time rift in Cardiff and to the earthquake seen in this episode).
• According to an interview with Russell T Davies in issue #360 of Doctor Who Magazine (August 2005), this episode was originally offered to his friend and former colleague, the critically acclaimed and award-winning scriptwriter Paul Abbott. Abbott accepted and submitted a storyline (titled "The Void", according to Doctor Who: The Legend Continues by Justin Richards), revealing that Rose had been bred by the Doctor as an experiment in creating a perfect companion. However, his commitments to his own series Shameless and State of Play meant that Abbott was unable to develop the episode further and had to leave the project.

Cast notes

The actor playing Mr Cleaver, William Thomas, had previously appeared as Martin the undertaker in the 1988 classic series story Remembrance of the Daleks. This made him the first performer to appear in both the classic and new series of Doctor Who. He later went on to play Geraint Cooper, the father of Gwen Cooper, in the 2008 Torchwood episode "Something Borrowed" and 2011 series Torchwood: Miracle Day. He is the first actor to appear in all three series.

External links

• Boom Town on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki
• "Boom Town" at the BBC Doctor Who homepage
• "Boom Town" at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• "Boom Town" at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• "Boom Town" at Outpost Gallifrey
• "Boom Town" at TV.com
• UNIT Press Statement - "Cardiff Earthquake"
• Doctor Who Confidential — Episode 11: Unsung Heroes and Violent Death
• "And I was having such a nice day..." — Episode trailer for "Boom Town"
• "Boom Town" at the Internet Movie Database

Reviews

• "Boom Town" reviews at Outpost Gallifrey
• "Boom Town" reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide