Boom Town (Doctor Who)
| 171 - Boom Town | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Cast | |||
| Production | |||
| Directed by | Joe Ahearne | ||
| Written by | Russell T Davies | ||
| Script editor | Elwen Rowlands | ||
| Produced by | Phil Collinson | ||
| Executive producer(s) | Russell T. Davies Julie Gardner Mal Young | ||
| Production code | Series 1, Episode 11 | ||
| Series | Series 1 (2005) | ||
| Running time | 1 episode, 45 mins | ||
| First broadcast | June 4, 2005 | ||
| Chronology | |||
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Boom Town is an episode in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast on June 4, 2005.
Synopsis
The Ninth 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 rip apart the planet to ensure her freedom.
Plot
Six months after Aliens of London and World War Three, an anxious scientist, Mr Cleaver, makes a case to the Lord Mayor of Cardiff that the design for a proposed nuclear power plant is not safe, and could lead to untold destruction and the death of millions. It is almost as if someone wanted the project to go wrong and for Cardiff to be wiped off the map. He begs her to stop the project, and the Mayor calmly promises that she will, but asks if he has revealed his findings and fears to anyone else. When Cleaver confirms he has not, the Mayor — the Slitheen disguised as Margaret Blaine — removes her skin-suit and kills him.
Later, Mickey arrives at Cardiff Central station. He makes his way through the city and finds the TARDIS parked in the middle of the square leading to the Wales Millennium Centre. When he knocks on the door of the police box, he is confronted by Jack, whom he pushes past to enter. Inside, Rose greets him happily — Mickey has travelled all the way from London to pass Rose her passport, as requested. The TARDIS is here for another reason, however. The ship needs refuelling, and the Doctor has piloted it here to Cardiff to draw power from the scar left when the rift used by the Gelth was closed in 1869.
Jack asks why the TARDIS looks like a police box and the Doctor explains about how the chameleon circuit was stuck in that shape when it landed in 1960s England. He has not fixed it because he likes it that way. Mickey wonders whether, since police boxes are no longer common, it will be noticed, and the Doctor simply says that the humans do not notice such things. As the process of absorbing the radiation from the scar will take another twenty-four hours, they decide to take in the sights of 21st century Cardiff.
Meanwhile, Blaine is holding a press conference announcing the building of the Blaidd Drwg nuclear plant in the heart of the city (complete with a model of the plant), which will mean jobs for all. When a photographer takes her picture, she shies away from the camera. She assures her audience that as long as she walks upon the Earth, no harm will come to any of her citizens. A reporter, Cathy Salt, from the Cardiff Gazette, approaches Blaine and questions her about the mysterious deaths associated with the project, the latest being Cleaver, who was decapitated after apparently slipping on ice.
Blaine brushes the stories off as "small town thinking," but Salt informs her that before he died, Cleaver published some of his findings on the Internet, including his concerns that the design of the reactor would lead to a nuclear meltdown. Blaine invites Salt to follow her to the ladies' room. Blaine enters a cubicle, talking to Salt through the door, and unzips her skin-suit in preparation to kill the reporter. She hesitates, however, when she hears that Salt has a fiancé, and is three months pregnant. Blaine becomes depressed when she thinks about her lost family (killed at the end of World War Three) and allows Salt to leave unmolested and never knowing how close she came to death.
In a restaurant, the Doctor, Rose, Jack and Mickey are laughing and sharing an anecdote from Jack's life. The Doctor then notices, to his dismay, the front page of The Western Mail, with the headline "New Mayor, New Cardiff" and a picture of Blaine. The four march off to City Hall, where Jack outlines a plan of attack against Blaine, giving everyone instructions on which exit to cover. The Doctor takes umbrage, asking who is in charge, and Jack defers to him. The Doctor grins and tells them to go with Jack's plan.
Blaine is having tea, but the Doctor tells Blaine's secretary to inform Blaine that "the Doctor" would like to see her. From inside the room comes the sound of a cup crashing to the floor. Blaine's secretary tries to delay the Doctor, but the Doctor knows she is trying to escape through the window and pushes past the secretary in pursuit of her. Blaine finds two of her exits blocked by Rose and Jack, but Mickey stumbles and before he can cut off her last avenue of escape, she is running towards the back gate. Blaine activates a matter transporter and teleports away, but the Doctor simply brings her back with his sonic screwdriver, and after a few fruitless attempts to teleport away again, she surrenders.
Back in City Hall, the Doctor realises that the teleporter is how Blaine managed to escape the conflagration that killed the rest of the Slitheen six months before. Looking at the model of the plant, he outlines Blaine's plan. The plant is built on top of the rift, and if it goes into meltdown, the entire planet will be sucked into the rift. However, Blaine plans to use that. The Doctor finds hidden beneath the model a tribophysical waveform macrokinetic extrapolator — a pan-dimensional surfboard that Jack explains will ride the wave of the explosion right out of the solar system.
The Doctor notices that the name of the project is Blaidd Drwg, and questions Blaine as to how she came up with the name, she claims that she just picked it at random. "Blaidd Drwg" means "Bad Wolf" in Welsh. Both Rose and the Doctor note that the phrase has been following them around. The Doctor looks worried for a moment, then dismisses it as coincidence. He tells the others that they will be taking Blaine back to her home planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius. Blaine informs them that the Slitheen are convicted criminals on their home planet, and she will be executed when she returns. The Doctor replies that it is not his problem.
The travellers take Blaine back into the TARDIS to hold her there until they can return her to her planet. Blaine is extremely impressed by the TARDIS, enthusiastically proclaiming it to be the technology of the gods. Jack hooks the extrapolator into the TARDIS console; the power systems are not wholly compatible, but it should reduce the refuelling process by about twelve hours. Blaine calls them her executioners; daring them to look her in the eye, making the others uneasy as they settle down for the night.
Rose and Mickey step outside to talk, and Rose admits that she really did not need the passport, but just wanted to see Mickey. The two decide to go and have a drink and perhaps find a hotel for the night. Meanwhile, in the TARDIS, Blaine asks, as a last request, that she be allowed a meal at her favourite restaurant. Jack produces a pair of bracelets that the Doctor and Blaine will wear — if Blaine moves more than ten feet away, she will be electrocuted by ten thousand volts of electricity. With this precaution, the Doctor agrees to escort Blaine out for the requested meal. Jack stays behind to work on the extrapolator and the TARDIS console.
During the meal, Blaine reveals her true name: Blon Fel-Fotch Pasameer-Day Slitheen. She tries to first poison the Doctor's drink, then shoot a poisoned barb at him, and as a last resort, breathe poison gas in his face, but the Doctor casually blocks all these attempts. Along the waterfront in Cardiff, Rose is telling Mickey about her travels to other worlds when he confesses to her that, as Rose has been away from so long, he is now seeing Trisha Delaney. Rose is slightly taken aback, but tries to be supportive.
Blaine, in the meantime, describes to the Doctor in graphic detail the execution process on Raxacoricofallapatorius. The condemned is lowered into a vat of boiling acetic acid, which eats away the outer skin and allows the internal organs to leak into the solution, all while the condemned is still alive and screaming. She pleads with the Doctor to take her to a planet where there are other Slitheen, that she be given another chance, but the Doctor does not believe that she has reformed.
Rose and Mickey's night has grown awkward, and Rose gets an admission from Mickey that the only reason he is seeing Trisha is because she is there and Rose is not. Mickey is upset that Rose left him without a second thought, and he still comes running when she calls. He tells her that he does not mind if she continues to travel with the Doctor, but he wants her to promise that when she stops, she will come back to him. Before Rose can answer, she hears a rumbling sound, like low thunder.
Blaine continues to plead her case, describing how she spared Cathy Salt, but the Doctor reminds her that she is wearing the skin of a person whom she killed, and that she is speaking through a dead woman's lips. The Doctor adds that occasionally she may let one person go, but it means nothing — it is just so that she can live with herself. Blaine coldly retorts that only a killer would know that; the Doctor is the same. She explains that she was brought up to kill, that she had no choice. Then, the Doctor hears the rumbling as well, and suddenly Cardiff is being shaken by an earth tremor.
As the streets fill with panicked people, the Doctor and Blaine rush back to the TARDIS. Rose leaves to head for the ship, which angers Mickey again. In the square, a coruscating column of light is shooting up into the sky from the TARDIS — the rift is opening on top of it. The console room's lights are flashing, and Jack says that everything "just went crazy." The Doctor says that time and space are ripping apart and will take the planet with it. The cause is the extrapolator, but it is still feeding off the TARDIS engine even though Jack has disconnected it.
When Rose enters, Blaine rips the sleeve of her skin-suit to reveal her monstrous Slitheen claw. She grabs Rose and threatens to kill her unless Jack places the extrapolator at her feet, which he does after a nod from the Doctor. She explains that this was Plan B: if she was discovered, it would only be by someone who had access to advanced technology, and would therefore be intrigued by the extrapolator. The extrapolator was programmed to lock on to the nearest alien power source, in this case the TARDIS, and open the rift. As the planet rips apart, she will ride the extrapolator to freedom, as planned.
However, the turmoil caused by the rift opens up the TARDIS console as well, and a blinding glow from within washes over Blaine. The Doctor explains it is the living heart of the TARDIS — its soul. Blaine stares into the glow, transfixed, and releases Rose. The Doctor urges Blaine to continue looking into the light. Blaine eventually smiles and thanks the Doctor before the glow envelopes her completely, and the seemingly empty skin-suit collapses to the floor. The console closes, and the Doctor, Jack and Rose shut down the TARDIS console together, closing the rift once more.
Rose asks what happened to Blaine, and the Doctor replies that even he does not know how powerful the heart of the TARDIS is. The ship is telepathic, and can translate alien languages for its passengers; perhaps it can translate thoughts as well. He reaches inside the skin-suit and removes a Slitheen egg, the form into which Blaine has regressed. Blaine can now live her life again with her own choice of good or evil. Rose remembers Mickey, and rushes out to find him. On the streets, Rose asks the police about Mickey. However, Mickey is watching her from a distance and bitterly turns away without making his presence known to her.
Rose returns to the TARDIS, which, thanks to the rift, is ready to depart. The Doctor offers to wait for her to find Mickey, but Rose says that Mickey deserves better. They prepare to take Blaine's egg back to Raxacoricofallapatorius, where she can get her second chance. Rose looks at the egg, murmuring that a second chance must be nice.
Cast
- Doctor Who - Christopher Eccleston
- Rose Tyler - Billie Piper
- Mr Cleaver - William Thomas
- Margaret - Annette Badland
- Captain Jack - John Barrowman
- Mickey - Noel Clarke
- Cathy - Mali Harries
- Idris Hopper - Aled Pedrick
- Slitheen - Alan Ruscoe
Notes
- Rose mentions that she and the Doctor have been to Justicia, which is the star system that they visit in the Ninth Doctor Adventures novel The Monsters Inside by Stephen Cole (where they encounter other members of the Slitheen family). This is the first time any of the spin-off novels have been explicitly referenced on-screen.
- 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." 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.
- Continuing the "Bad Wolf" theme, the nuclear power station is named "Blaidd Drwg", which means "bad wolf" in Welsh. This was the first reference to be explicitly addressed. See Bad Wolf references in Doctor Who.
- The plot features a device called a "tribophysical waveform macrokinetic extrapolator". Tribophysics features in Davies' Virgin New Adventures novel Damaged Goods — in that story a creature called an N-form is able to slip between dimensions, presumably in the same way Margaret intends.
- "Tribophysics" was first mentioned off-handedly by Sarah Jane Smith in Pyramids of Mars to describe Osirian technology. What Sarah meant, or what she actually said, is a matter of minor debate in fandom (some have suggested "tribiophysics" or "tribal physics"). Tribophysics may or may not have anything to do with the real science of tribology (also sometimes known as tribophysics), which deals with friction.
- During his dinner with Blaine, the Doctor eats steak — evidently, he has given up his vegetarianism, which he began to practice at the end of The Two Doctors.
- 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.
- The fact that the TARDIS needs to "refuel" from energy from the scar left by the Gelth rift 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.
- Blaine characterises the technology of the TARDIS as that of the "gods", and accuses the Doctor of playing god. Blaine's ultimate defeat is arguably a literal deus ex machina, the "god" (soul) from the (TARDIS) machine.
- Although the TARDIS has never regressed a person as it did with Blaine, it has helped with the Doctor's regenerations (The Tenth Planet, The Power of the Daleks, Castrovalva). In The Deadly Assassin and the television movie, the Master tries to harness the Eye of Harmony to give himself a new set of regenerations, and in the television movie the TARDIS 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. 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.
- Two newspapers are featured in the episode: the Cardiff Gazette and The Western Mail. While the former is fictitious, the latter is a real publication.
- The Doctor faced a similar moral dilemma regarding capital punishment in Resurrection of the Daleks — when given the opportunity to execute Davros, the Doctor found himself unable to kill him.
- 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 Inside the Spaceship.
- 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.
- 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 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.
External links
- Episode trailer
- Doctor Who Confidential - Episode 11: Unsung Heroes and Violent Death