Boom Town

I feel slightly guilty about slating Russell T. Davies as he's the man responsible for bringing the series back. An easy question for detractors to be asked is "would you rather the show didn't come back at all?" While I am duly grateful to him and all concerned, that doesn't mean I'm going to pretend to like what I don't.

Therefore, I now apologise to Davies for the roasting I'm about to give him.

The Davies backlash really started with Aliens Of London; we were all excited at Rose and optimistic for The End Of The World, but Aliens Of London, despite a loyal core of followers (fair enough), has had a lot of venom directed its way. I contributed to this, as I spent forty-five minutes in a permanent state of cringe, and now Davies proves that the ability to catch lightning in a bottle is not necessarily a good thing as he gives us Boom Town, one of the biggest piles of tripe I've ever seen shamefully tramp out bearing the name of Doctor Who.

Eleven episodes in and I believed myself to have a much more realistic idea of what to expect from a Russell T. Davies episode. I was predicting a characterisation-thick and plot-light episode, and that's what I got. I was also expecting an OK runabout that would kill time before the finale. I was naive.

Davies's flair for characterisation is his main weakness when writing Doctor Who; the programme has always been about plot, which in turn produces characterisation. When Davies has made his own show from scratch, like Queer As Folk, he can tailor it to meet his strengths and have it fully character-led. What he's trying to do though with Doctor Who is to impose his own style on an incompatible format, the effect of which is like watching a child stick a fish in a bucket of water and expecting it to thrive. Without plot characterisation is worthless as it has nothing to derive from: it is simply a bunch of actors blabbering to each other. It is through a solid plot that episodes like Father's Day can work as character pieces, as people have a good (and, more to the point, interesting) reason to be talking to each other. Unfortunately Boom Town has no such thing, with a hackneyed and clichéd tale of world destruction that could have come from an episode of 1960's Batman - not to mention that the central idea owes more to Mark Gatiss's imagination rather than Davies's own. The lack of plot is even less excusable since the episode features almost exclusively established characters, negating the requirement for time-consuming introductions. I know this has been discussed before, but hey, he keeps doing it, I'll keep saying it.

Another problem with leaving so little room for plot in a very limited episode length is that what plot there is seems to be condensed and force-fed to us in a couple of scenes. As such Boom Town gets off to a truly dreadful (and self-consciously camp) start with a wooden actor ranting about not building this dangerous nuclear power plant, which if nothing else is a rip-off of Chinatown. He then proudly gives us "it's almost like somebody wanted it to go wrong", which would have seemed clumsy twenty years ago. This is followed after the titles by some of the most horrendously crude exposition since The Space Pirates, with the Doctor explaining to those who've had a serious brain injury since the series started about the rift over Cardiff and what the TARDIS looks like a police box. Fair enough really, I mean it is three decades since The Unquiet Dead aired, and there's no chance of a DVD release in the near future. Oh, wait...

Things settle down a bit once our heroes meet Margaret Slitheen, but not for long. I was quite proud that I spotted the bad wolf reference all on my own (I lived with three Welsh people at university and I couldn't help but pick something up) but was then let down by having it ground into my face like half a grapefruit, possibly because it's all coming to a head next week. Once she's caught the whole thing shudders to a halt: Mickey is crowbarred into the narrative and sent off with Rose, allowing her to tell him about all the amazing alien planets we don't get to see. Meanwhile the Doctor has an intimate soiree with the Slitheen, were Davies wows us with finger darts when he should be advancing the story. All this time Captain Jack is sidelined in the TARDIS, the paper-thin episode having no room for him.

What next? The Doctor orders the cheque, perhaps because he's realised that nothing's happened yet and there's only five minutes left to tie everything up. We get to see what Jack's been doing - actually we don't, we just get to see the effect since the idea of a nuclear power station has ended up going nowhere. Then, all of a sudden, it transpires that the alien wasn't actually helpless and pitiable but was in fact bad to the bone all along (now what other episode have I seen that in?). This I hold as a big mistake as it negates the earlier fleshing-out of her character (Davies resorting to his base strategy), which at least served to make World War Three less annoying (it was never as annoying as this though). The final nail in the coffin comes as Davies resorts to the most shameless contrivance imaginable, which I wouldn't have thought was possible after The End Of The World. Yes folks, the TARDIS is alive! Well, as long as it's convenient anyway! Then the baddie looks into a bright light and disappears. That's it. That's a major spoiler, but since it's such a damp squib I don't suppose anyone who hasn't seen it would care.

There are, I should say, a few good points about the episode: the farting is cut down (if they'd left it at stomach-rumbling to begin with I might have been more forgiving towards Aliens Of London); Joe Ahearne's direction is as dependable as ever and the scene where Mickey cuts dead Rose's story of an alien world by telling her of his new girlfriend is an effective contrast between the human centre and wild spirit that makes up the show. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near enough to save the episode. As my Mum said, if she was a teacher this episode would have had "see me" written on it in red ink.

All in all then, Boom Town feels like a cheap stop-gap. With no new monsters or extravagant locations shoots it is simply a way to fill a gap in the schedule; so sad that Davies has run out of ideas after less than one series. This leads to one final question: can the Daleks save his credibility? The Daleks can be very good or painfully bad, it just depends on the writer. Oops, just answered my own question...