‘Doctor Who’ Episode 4 Recap: Scenes of Destruction

Season 1, Episode 4: ‘Boom’

After an opening double episode featuring talking babies and a jazzy villain, the latest “Doctor Who” installment is a clear attempt by Russell T Davies, the showrunner, to convey a more serious side.

To write the show’s latest installment “Boom,” Davies recruited Steven Moffat, a former “Doctor Who” showrunner, who is best remembered for a dramatic 2007 episode called “Blink” that fans revered.

With that episode, Moffat struck fear in a generation of British kids (myself included) by inventing the Weeping Angels, terrifying stone statues that only move when you look away. Seventeen years later, the episode remains a master class in small-screen tension building.

Moffat evokes the same simmering tension with “Boom,” right down to the onomatopoeic episode title. Here, though, it’s a land mine, activated when the 15th Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) steps on it and ticking closer to detonation, that causes the stress.

It’s a compelling setup that gives Gatwa the chance to show new emotional depths for the Doctor. But the script and effects are bombastic, and I found myself wishing for something to be stripped back. In this first season with Disney dollars, “Doctor Who” is clearly not doing anything by halves, but the lavish “Mad Max”-esque scenes of destruction threaten to overshadow Gatwa’s pitch-perfect performance.

The episode opens with two soldiers — both deeply religious, one of them blind — hobbling through dense, flame-flecked smoke. The place? Kastarian 3, a planet ravaged by war. The year? 5087. Carson (Majid Mehdizadeh-Valoujerdy) has heard that his army’s enemies are lurking in the fog, but John (Joe Anderson), a devoted father with bandaged eyes, insists this isn’t the case.