Boom Town

"You know, Doctor, we're not so different, you and I... except that you fly around the universe saving people's lives and I blow up populated planets to make a cheap buck."

So goes "Boom Town," Russell Davies's experiment in "deep" moral drama. The concept here is that the Doctor runs into the aftermath of one of his previous interventions, and is forced to confront the repercussions and question the morality of his actions. Not a bad idea. The success of the execution, however, hinges on how much sympathy we can have for an alien mass-murderer who tried to eradicate the human race for personal profit and will try to do so again - twice - before the hour is up. It doesn't go well.

Davies decides to pick a reunion with the Slitheen, his rather uninspiring fart monsters from the "Aliens of London" two-parter. While regrettable in and of themselves, the Slitheen don't necessarily make or break this story; there's no reason Davies can't give his Slitheen survivor a makeover to add a touch of depth, something to make us identify and sympathize with the character. Instead, Davies simply leaves us with what he assumes is a moral dilemma and leaves us - and the Doctor - to work it out on our own: Margaret Slitheen, whose family was - sob! - killed by the Doctor, will be executed if returned to her home planet. If the Doctor returns her there, as he insists, he is her de facto executioner. How, oh how, is he any better than she?

Even if this were all that Davies left us with, it really wouldn't be enough to work. We've seen "Aliens of London"; the Slitheen family were cold-blooded killers who slaughtered innocents in a plot to nuke Earth and sell off its radiated crust for fuel, and it's hard to see how their deaths are any more regrettable than the deaths of any number of Daleks guilty of similar crimes who at least had the honesty to never pretend to be anything more than hateful murderers. If the deaths of the other Slitheen were acceptable, how is Margaret Slitheen's execution any less so? But Davies doesn't even leave us with the hollow pretense of a moral dilemma: by episode's end we will see that Margaret isn't reformed in the least, that she will attempt to blow up the Earth yet again, that she has no compunction against taking and killing hostages whenever it suits her, that she would no doubt do the same to other worlds in time if she had the chance. As drama, this episode works only if I can see the Doctor's plan to hand over the Slitheen as morally dubious; if I see the Slitheen as a foul, two-faced mass-murderer who needs to die to preserve the lives of innocents - which is how Davies's script ultimately portrays her, her protests of innocence reading as nothing more than a ploy for self-preservation - then I have nothing invested in her continued existence, and the moral ambiguity on which the episode is built collapses.

It doesn't help that the actual resolution to this faux-moral quandry is a deus ex machina which allows the Doctor to do precisely what the episode is accusing him of doing: avoid the repercussions of his actions. Whereas before he would have to personally deliver the Slitheen to serve her death sentence, a heretofore unrevealed wish-granting property of the Tardis regresses her to infancy, allowing the Doctor to dodge the messy business of being a second-hand executioner. All the questions raised by the episode, weak as they are, are dropped by way of a convenient magic trick; the Doctor doesn't have to make the critical decision, and doesn't have to resolve the issue at all.

The Slitheen's actual plot to destroy the world is little more than an afterthought, and so the highlight of the story becomes the Mickey/Rose sequence. Admirably acted and ably scripted, the scenes allow Mickey to grow beyond his two-dimensional role as the jealous ex, and show Rose showing some regret for what she's left behind in embracing the Doctor's lifestyle. It's rather sad, then, that the best use of the Mickey character - and his best send-off - appears after the series has already said goodbye to him twice before, and before yet another "final" appearance in "Parting of the Ways." You can't actually miss someone - or take seriously the prospect of missing someone - if they won't go away.

As a final note: Rose happens to tell Mickey about a number of fantastic alien worlds she and the Doctor have been popping off to between broadcast episodes. Given that every episode of this series so far has taken place in London, a space station, Cardiff, London, London, a bunker, a space station, London, London, London, and now Cardiff - to be followed by a closing two-parter on a space station - it's a bit of a kick in the head to be told that all this time our heroes have been bopping off to exotic locales and rubbing elbows with strange and alien creatures we'll never get to see. An open message to Russell T. Davies: I do not care what the planet looks like. I do not care if you shoot it in a quarry, I do not care if the aliens are stagehands wearing rolled-up carpet. Doctor Who travels in time and SPACE. AND SPACE. One more romp through a diner in present-day Wales with Rose's ex-boyfriend and I will send large men in ape suits to beat you with plastic plunger-guns.