Doctor Who: Boom

 "Keeps you dying. Keeps you buying."

Phew, I've finally seen this, after twenty-four hours of feeling like I'm in that episode of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? that everybody remembers. This may happen a few more timnes this series but, well, let's just say that Doctor Who may be vastly important, of course it is... but some things matter musch, much, more.

Anyway, Steven Moffat is back and this episode is a thing of wonder. It's very high concept- the Doctor saves himself, Ruby, the Anglican Priests around them and indeed much of the planet- all whuile standing on a landmine and incredibly close to death- and, incidentally, Ncuti Gatwa's performance here, the right, Doctorish type of fear, is acting perfection. Yet, by Disney standards- there's a lot of CGI- this episode, with its small cast and small stakes, feels like it was the season cheapie. But then so was Blink, and, well.

This is Moffat at his very best- not spread thinly as showrunner but able to focus all his Moffaty goodness into forty-four minutes. As we expect, the plot works like clockwork and has a highly satisfying resolution. Yet, in other respects, this is different, and perhaps deeper. And everybody does not live.

It's 3,082 years after Ruby's birth (Late 51st century? Time agents, Boeshane Peninsula and Magnus Greel?) , a timeframe Moffat likes to play with.The Anglican priests are back... but this time there's an attempt to almost explain them with the line that priests not being soldiers isan unusual "blip". There's an ambiguity about religious faith- on the one hand, it can dull sceptical thinking, yet on the other it can comfort- which doubtless reflect's Moffat's own thoughts, an atheist, but certainly not a "New" one.

Yet the central conceit here (SPOILER KLAXON!!!) is deliciously and unashamedly political: an arms corporation that keeps casualties at the most proftable level, and a war against a phantom enemy purely so that said corporations can supply weapons. The ultimate end result of unregulated corporate greed run amok. 

There's not much arc stuff here- Villengard and the Anglican soldier priests aside, both Moffat creations of old- but we get that snow with Ruby again: all very "Bad Wolf". And it's good to see Varada Sethu from Andor. But sometimes a good standalone episode, or indeed a great one such as this, is just what the Doctor ordered.

Doctor Who: Space Babies

 "Is vthat, like, a matter transporter, like in Star Trek?"

Here we are, at last, at the start of a proper full run of episodes with RTD at the helm and Ncuti Gatwa's new Doctor. So we begin, with the iconography of the new era in the shape of the Whoniverse logo and a nice little reprise for the new viewers.

This shows just how bloody good RTD is at the nuts and bolts of storytelling. After all, this is Ruby's introduction to the TARDIS and what it does, so why not use this as a pretext for a bit of exposition for viewers jumping on right here? So we get a nice, concise little precis of the premise of the show, but framed in a fascinating way: the Doctor, like Ruby, is a foundling, adopted by "posh people" on a fancy planet that is now gone because of "a genocide"- surely not an accidental choice of words to be spoken by an actor of Rwandan birth. There are non-diegetic hostorical echoes here.

The Timeless Child stuff is reframed here. It's not presented as a puzzle, but as part of the Doctor's background andhis depth of a character: he's alone, yet free, far more than just a Time Lord, and Gatwa plays the depth of the character superbly. I love the way he does comedy, too. Only RTD can give us a hugely expensive scene with CGI dinosaurs (thanks for the budget, Disney) just to make a fourth wall-brreaking little joke about the butterfly effect, but both actors play it superbly. And the joke is a statement of intent: that isn't how time travel works in Doctor Who. 

So we reach the main story, with space babies, a nanny, capitalism causing child abandonment and, er, a literal bogeyman. There's lots of nice, subtle political commentary here, not least with the fact that refugees can claim asylum, but only if they can find a legal route in, which they can't, because none has been providefd, Catch-22 by design. Quite. Small boats, anyone?

It's a delightfully weird, awfull clever story and, although RTD was criticised of old for his plots not quite working, this is like clockwork. The chemistry between the Doctor and Ruby is joyous. There are echoes of the Ninth Doctor and Rose, of coiurse. Instead of farting bins we get a snot monster and a space station which is lierally powered to move across space by baby poo. And the Doctor rejigs Ruby's phone to call her mum... and says "Tell your mum not to slap me".

This is all just there as a jumping on point, to introduce the show to new viewers, which it does superbly. But there's a deep orphan vibe here. The Doctor, Ruby and the space babies are all orphans. This is certainly pointiong somewhere... aspecially as the Doctor warns Ruby that they can't visit the time of her birt and do a Back to the Future, Part II, lest they cause a paradox.

In short, quite wonderful. I expected no less.