Boom Town

Its 18:55 on Saturday the 4th June 2005 and there are three episodes to go........

It still feels odd watching Doctor Who on a Saturday night, suddenly it's 1979, Tom Bakers penultimate season and I'm 3 years old hiding from the Daleks behind my grandparent's sofa. That was the last time I properly remember seeing Doctor Who on a Saturday, seeing it again after all those years has been a joy. The show I care about has come back and it's great, it's not badly written, has no awful production values and the majority of the episodes have been of a higher quality than most the episodes in the eighties / early nineties.

Boom town opens in quite a novel way, and gets better from there. It doesn't have huge alien ships or classic aliens but what it does have and what Russell T Davies excels at is interpersonal dialogue and character driven plots.

It's your standard plot line involving a nuclear power plant and potential world disaster however once again it's just a mask for some character driven development and how wonderful it is. I won't bother recounting the plot here as no doubt other reviewers will but needless to say it involves the last Slitheen from Aliens of London who's alive and well and still up to diabolical schemes in Wales.

The performances were quite outstanding, with Annette Badland in particular putting in a wonderful performance of somebody who quite literally just can't be good. We saw a vulnerable and soft side that was quite literally playing the Doctor for a fool.

Noel Clarke as Mickey was on form, the scenes between him and Rose were excellent and for the first time you really saw what he could do acting wise. Playing the jilted and hurt boyfriend arguing with Rose and earlier communicating with the Doctor and not just trading insults you felt it was more friendly banter with no animosity between them. If this how the character of Mickey is going to progress then he should come back next season.

There's no point talking about Chris or Billie as once again they chewed through the script with effortless ease. Tragically John Barrowman had very little to do, although with Billie verbally sparring as Rose with Mickey and the Doctor having a final meal with the Slitheen (who's name was revealed but I'm not even going to attempt to type it) there was not much for him to do. However some nice banter with the Doctor at the beginning of the episode and a nice scene with everybody having a meal helped cement him in as a permanent member of the TARDIS crew.

Throw in a more obvious and explicitly mentioned bad wolf reference (not to mention the link appearing on the Doctor Who website and the bad wolf website going on-line) and you had a nice little story arc.

There was one problem with the episode though, the three main cast work well together, very well in fact almost like a family. Having the realisation that there are now only two episodes left does leave me wanting so many more episodes from them, and yet knowing that at least one of the cast are leaving only leaves a twinge of sadness for the last two episodes.

It's 19:45 on Saturday the 4th June 2005 and there are now only two episodes to go........