Boom Town (TV story)

Boom Town
Script release:	The Shooting Scripts
Doctor:	Ninth Doctor
Companion(s):	Rose, Jack
Featuring:	Mickey
Main enemy:	Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen
Main setting:	Cardiff, September 2006
Key crew
Writer:	Russell T Davies
Director:	Joe Ahearne
Producer:	Phil Collinson
Release details
Story number:	165
Number of parts:	1
Premiere broadcast:	4 June 2005
Premiere network:	BBC One
Format:	1x45 minute episode
Production code:	1.11
Confidential:	Unsung Heroes and Violent Death
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Boom Town was the eleventh episode of series 1 of Doctor Who.

It featured the reappearance of Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen (disguised as Margaret Blaine), a Slitheen, who previously had appeared in Aliens of London / World War Three. It also included significant development of the relationship between Rose and Mickey.

Off screen, the future version of Jack was keeping his staff of Torchwood Three from interfering with these events, to avoid distorting his timeline and the Doctor's.

The episode was the first to be set in modern Cardiff, and established that the Cardiff Space-Time Rift, implied in The Unquiet Dead, was still present in the 21st century and releasing enough energy to fuel the TARDIS. It thus laid critical narrative groundwork for Torchwood's central theme. It also introduced the extrapolator and established the energy present at the heart of the TARDIS — both crucial elements of the series 1 finale. Finally, it contained the main characters' first major recognition of the Bad Wolf meme.

Synopsis

The Ninth Doctor, and his companions, Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness travel to modern-day Cardiff and meet up with Rose's boyfriend, Mickey. There, they discover that their "enemy", Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen, is very much alive if without an easy escape route from Earth, and is willing to rip apart the planet to ensure her freedom.

Plot

In an office in Cardiff, a scientist brings his concerns to Mayor Margaret Blaine over a new nuclear power plant to be built there. It is dangerous, almost as if it had been intentionally built to explode. Blaine asks him if he has told anyone else about his findings. He replies that he did not, and instead went directly to her. She commends him for making the right choice — as she apparently and audibly experiences some gas. As the scientist expresses his relief that Blaine will shut down the project, she reveals herself to be Blon Fel-Fotch Passameer-Day Slitheen in disguise, and proceeds to kill the scientist.

The Ninth Doctor has landed the TARDIS over the Cardiff rift located in the Roald Dahl Plass, using slow radiation leakage to recharge the TARDIS. As the process will take a whole day, he, Rose, and Jack are joined by Mickey Smith and they take the opportunity to explore the area while they wait for the TARDIS to recharge.

Meanwhile, Blon hosts a toasting ceremony for her Blaidd Drwg project; which involves building a large nuclear power plant in Cardiff. A reporter called Cathy Salt approaches Blon about recent deaths of people connected to the Blaidd Drwg project, and the information they had left behind. Realising she is to be a forefront to her plans, Blon privately takes Cathy to the bathroom and she hides herself in a toilet cubicle. While Cathy explains the findings of how the Blaidd Drwg project could cause a meltdown greater than Chernobyl, Blon unzips from her skin suit inside the cubicle and prepares to kill Cathy in order to silence her. However when Cathy starts talking about how she is engaged and is also currently pregnant, they have a brief conversation where Blon admits she’s all alone and all her family are gone. Having had a change of heart in killing her after this, Blon dismisses Cathy, and as Cathy leaves, Blon hangs her head sadly, realising she is truly all alone now.

Meanwhile, the Doctor, Rose, Jack and Mickey are enjoying lunch in a restaurant and as they are laughing over a conversation, the Doctor noticed a newspaper with Mayor Margaret Blaine’s face on it. Knowing it is really Blon in disguise, the group resolve to stop Blon, and they converge on City Hall and corner Blon, who escapes using a teleporter. However, the Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to teleport her back to them. After repeated attempts of teleporting away and being teleported back by the Doctor, Blon gives up and surrenders. She tells the group that the teleporter is how she escaped the destruction of the rest of her family, and that she hopes that, as planned, the meltdown of the nuclear power plant would open the Rift and destroy the planet, with her using a hidden tribophysical waveform macro-kinetic extrapolator to escape the explosion. The Doctor notices that the name of the plant, Blaidd Drwg and asks Blon how she named it. Blon states she just randomly chose it because it sounded good, but Doctor notes that it is Welsh for "Bad Wolf", a phrase that he has observed before in his adventures with Rose but he shrugs it off as a coincidence. The Doctor tells Blon he will take her back to her home planet of Raxacoricofallapatorius, but Blon states that the entire Slitheen family were tried in absentia as convicted criminals back on Raxacoricofallapatorius, and any Slitheen found will be executed. As Blon notes that taking her home will mean taking her to her death, the Doctor states that is not his problem.

A last meal and attempted murder.

Jack recognises that the extrapolator can be used to halve the time to refuel the TARDIS, and stays there to install it. Rose and Mickey go out for a drink to discuss their relationship; Mickey, while inviting Rose to a hotel room, claims to be seeing someone else since Rose is not there for him. Rose counters that she knows the woman, that Mickey doesn't even like her and that "that's never gonna happen, so who do you think you're kidding?" She argues that this conversation has nothing to do with Trisha. Mickey says that he can't even go out with a girl from "the shop" because Rose picks up the phone to say she's coming back to present-day Earth and Mickey comes running for her. When Mickey claims he'd wait for Rose for the rest of his life, Rose apologises.

Blon is kept in the TARDIS, who is marvelled by the fact it is bigger on the inside. As she talks about how she has grown found of her human life, she asks if she can have a last request meal at a restaurant that she became accustomed to. The Doctor initially refuses, believing Blon will try to escape if he accepts. Jack places a bracelet on both the Doctor and Blon, which will electrocute Blon if she gets within a certain distance away from the Doctor. With this, the Doctor allows Blon to go to the restaurant where they share a meal together. As Blon initiates conversation about her life, she makes subtle attempts to kill the Doctor such as sneakily lacing his wine with poison, firing a poison dart from her finger, and expelling excess poison from her lungs, all which the Doctor casually avoids. Blon attempts to plead with the Doctor that she has changed, noting how she spared Cathy even when she was determined to kill her. The Doctor does not believe this means she has changed. As Blon continues pleading her case, a large earthquake shakes Cardiff.

Blon gets her wish.

The Doctor and Blon rush back to the TARDIS, where a bright column of light is shooting up overhead. Jack tells the Doctor that it is the power from the Rift, drawn by the extrapolator which is pulling the Rift open. Rose arrives at the TARDIS, and Blon swiftly holds her hostage. Blon reveals that she always had a back up plan in case she was ever captured. The extrapolator will latch onto the closest source of alien technology and pull the Rift open; this being the TARDIS. However, a bright light suddenly appears and begins to envelope Blon. The Doctor states that by pulling apart the TARDIS, this will expose the heart of the TARDIS, which is what the light is. As Blon stares dreamily into the light, she releases Rose and is then completely enveloped by the light, leaving behind her skin suit.

The Doctor manages to close the TARDIS console and reseal the Rift once more. When they investigate the suit, they find a Slitheen egg; the Doctor surmises as the TARDIS is telepathic, it may have sensed that Blon wanted a second chance in life and it gave that to her. As the Doctor, Rose, and Jack prepare to travel to Raxacoricofallapatorius to deliver the egg, Rose realises that Mickey has left; the Doctor offers to wait for him, but Rose lets him go, allowing him to also have a second chance.

Cast

• Doctor Who - Christopher Eccleston
• Rose Tyler - Billie Piper
• Mr Cleaver - William Thomas
• Margaret - Annette Badland
• Captain Jack - John Barrowman
• Mickey - Noel Clarke
• Cathy - Mali Harries
• Idris Hopper - Aled Pedrick
• Slitheen - Alan Ruscoe

Crew

Executive Producers   Russell T Davies, Julie Gardner and Mal Young

Written by Russell T Davies	Produced by Phil Collinson	Directed by Joe Ahearne	Director of Photography Ernie Vincze BSC	Production Designer Edward Thomas	Visual Effects The Mill
Make-up Designer Davy Jones	Casting Director Andy Pryor CDG	Music Murray Gold	Costume Designer Lucinda Wright	Edited by Graham Walker	Special Effects Any Effects
Original theme music by Ron Grainer

General production staff Associate Producer - Helen Vallis Production Manager - Tracie Simpson Location Manager - Gareth Lloyd Unit Manager - Lowri Thomas Production Co-ordinator - Jess van Niekerk Production Accountant - Endaf Emyr Williams A/Production Accountants - Debi Griffiths, Kath Blackman Finance Manager - Richard Pugsley Script department Script Editor - Elwen Rowlands Camera and lighting department 1st Assistant Director - Howard Arundel 2nd Assistant Director - Steffan Morris 3rd Assistant Director - Dan Mumford Continuity - Doroth Friend Camera Operator - Martin Stephens Focus Puller - Mark Isaac Grip - John Robinson Boom Operator - Damian Richardson Gaffer - Mark Hutchings Best Boy - Peter Chester	Art department Art Department Co-ordinator - Gwenllian Llwyd Production Buyer - Joelle Rumbelow Set Decorator - Catherine Samuel Concept Artist - Bryan Hitch Graphic Artist - Jenny Bowers Standby Props - Phill Shellard, Trystan Howell Standby Art Director - David Morison Property Master - Adrian Anscombe Construction Manager - Andrew Smith Costume department Wardrobe Supervisor - Yolanda Pearl-Smith	Make-up and prosthetics Make-up Supervisor - Linda Davie Make-up Artists - Claire Pritchard, Steve Williams Prosthetics - Millennium Effects Movement Stunt Co-ordinator - Lee Sheward Stunt Performers - Kim McGarrity, George Cottle, Tina Maskell Casting Casting Associate - Kirsty Robertson General post-production staff Post-production Supervisor - Marie Brown Assistant Editor - Ceres Doyle On-line Editor - Matthew Clarke Special and visual effects Visual FX Producer - Will Cohen Visual FX Supervisor - Dave Houghton 3D Artists - Joel Meire, Matthew McKinney, Jean-Claude Deguara 2D Artists - Simon C. Holden, Jennifer Herbert, Astrid Busser-Casas Colourist - Paul Harrison Sound Sound Recordist - Ian Richardson Dubbing Mixer - Tim Ricketts Dialogue Editor - Paul McFadden Sound FX Editor - Paul Jefferies

Not every person who worked on this adventure was credited. The absence of a credit for a position doesn't necessarily mean the job wasn't required. The information above is based solely on observations of the actual end credits of the episodes as broadcast, and does not relay information from IMDB or other sources.

Worldbuilding

• Jack mentions someone named Brakovitch.
• Mickey spots an old lady watching them.
• Blon launches a poison dart at the Doctor.

Species

• Baby Raxacoricofallapatorians are hatched from eggs that have tendrils which can move.

The Doctor's TARDIS

• Underneath the TARDIS console lies the Heart of the TARDIS, which contains the energies of the Time Vortex.

Places

• Rose mentions her visit to Justicia, Woman Wept and the Glass Pyramid of San Kaloon.
• The Doctor and Margaret have dinner at Bistro 10.

Food and beverages

• Margaret raises a toast of champagne to the future.
• Margaret was having a cup of tea when the Doctor was asking for her.
• The Doctor orders steak and chips for dinner.

Technology

• The Doctor uses his sonic screwdriver to reverse Margaret's teleport.

Languages

• Welsh is used or mentioned numerous times throughout the episode.

Culture

• Mickey refers to Captain Jack as "Jumpin' Jack Flash".
• Mickey rhetorically asks Jack if he's the captain of the Innuendo Squad.

Victims

• The architect of the project and the members of the Cardiff Heritage Committee are killed by Margaret.

Notes

• The episode had a working title of Dining With Monsters. Russell T Davies joked that a much better name for this episode would be What should we do with Margaret?
• This episode was originally offered to Paul Abbott, with whom Russell T Davies had previously co-created the soap opera Springhill with Frank Cottrell-Boyce. Abbott submitted a storyline called Pompeii, which saw Rose feeling jealous of the Doctor's friendship with Jack. When they land in Pompeii in 79 AD, Jack discovers that Rose's life has been manipulated by the Doctor in an experiment to create the perfect companion. Abbot had to abandon the project due to his commitment to Shameless. In its place, Davies developed The Void, which was principally set aboard the TARDIS.
• Russell T Davies brought back Annette Badland as Margaret Blaine due to her performance in Aliens of London and World War Three being "brilliant", though she had few lines.
• Russell T Davies intended the episode to be a character piece exploring whether the Doctor had the authority to take someone to their death sentence, as well as showing the consequences of the Doctor's actions the last time he met Margaret. The storyline was fitting for Christopher Eccleston's war-torn Doctor. The consequences of the Doctor's lifestyle is also explored through Rose's boyfriend Mickey, who has been forced to move on because she is not around.
• The resolution is a deliberate deus ex machina, regressing Margaret so she can start anew, although Russell T Davies remarked that the resolution did not come completely out of nowhere as the TARDIS' psychic link had been already established.
• The night shoot of Rose and Mickey in front of the water tower at Roald Dahl Plass had to be extended to two nights because it was below the temperature at which the fountain automatically shuts off.
• Russell T Davies stated that he wanted to incorporate Welsh culture because the series is made in Wales and contains a lot of Welsh crew members. He also wanted to show off how beautiful the area could be.
• The dinner scene between the Doctor and Margaret was filmed in January 2005 at the Cardiff restaurant Bistro 10 before the rest of the episode was filmed. Christopher Eccleston filmed the scene while Billie Piper and John Barrowman were filming scenes for The Empty Child. This was due to Annette Badland also filming the final season of Cutting It. Some of the schedule was also rearranged because of the death of Piper's uncle, resulting in her and Eccleston being replaced by doubles during some scenes near the end of the episode.
• The egg Margaret turns into was a reused prop from The End of the World.
• The French title is "L'Explosion de Cardiff" (The Cardiff Explosion). The Japanese title is "The Sorrowful Slitheen".
• This is the first episode of the revived series to include a "PREVIOUSLY" caption at the beginning of the episode. Even though this episode wasn't a two-parter, it did have the same Slitheen from the first two-parter, Aliens of London and World War Three. This would be the only episode in the first Russell T Davies era that has a caption for the 'previously' trailers shown at the beginning of an episode if it was part of a two or three-part story. The next episode to feature this would be Flesh and Stone.
• William Thomas, the actor who played Mr Cleaver, had previously appeared as Martin in Remembrance of the Daleks, making him the first actor to appear in both the classic and revived series of Doctor Who.
• Since so many cost-saving measures were in place for the episode, Russell T Davies concluded that the budget could stretch to accommodate a visually striking climax, which took the form of the Cardiff earthquake.
• Russell T Davies intended the script to tread new ground by examining the moral repercussions of the Doctor's deeds, particularly in the context of capital punishment, to which Davies was personally opposed.
• Rose refers to an adventure on the planet Justicia, a reference to the novel The Monsters Inside, marking the first time the television series ever acknowledged any of the spin-off material. It replaced dialogue referring to an unseen adventure on Grajick Major.
• It was initially planned that the episode would be paired with Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways to form season one's fifth and final production block. For logistical reasons, however, episode eleven eventually comprised Block Five on its own.
• Paul Kelly was an early candidate to direct.
• The dinner scene took place in Bistro 10, at Mermaid Quay in Cardiff Bay, which was close to where Russell T Davies lived.
• It was during production that it was confirmed that the series would return for a second season.
• Russell T Davies was delighted by Aled Pedrick's performance as Idris Hopper and hoped to make Idris a regular character in Torchwood, only to learn that Pedrick was unavailable. Instead he created Ianto Jones.

Ratings

• 7.68 million viewers. (UK final)

Myths

• An early Radio Times synopsis of this episode read "The Doctor comes across someone he thought was long dead...". Many viewers thought this to be in reference to a classic series villain, usually the Master. This was ultimately proven untrue, as the reference was to Blon Fel-Fotch Passimeer-Day-Slitheen.

Filming locations

• Cardiff, Wales

Production Errors

• Just as Jack is about to jump over the cafeteria trolly when chasing Blon, a springboard to assist John Barrowman in jumping can be seen behind the wheels.

Continuity

• Six months have passed since the events of the Slitheen's attempted destruction of Earth. (TV: Aliens of London / World War Three)
• Rose mentions how a woman called Gwyneth saved the world in 1869. Rose and the Doctor also encountered the temporal rift at that time. (TV: The Unquiet Dead) Jack will have many dealings with the rift during his later association with Torchwood. (TV: Everything Changes, etc.)
• The Doctor once again calls Mickey "Ricky". (TV: Aliens of London)
• Rose mentions previous trips to Platform One (TV: The End of the World) and Justicia. (PROSE: The Monsters Inside)
• Any Slitheen who returns to Raxacoricofallapatorius will be slowly melted into living soup. (PROSE: Raxacoricofallapatorius)
• Blon mentions that other groups of the Family Slitheen survive in other parts of space. (PROSE: The Monsters Inside, Raxacoricofallapatorius)
• The Doctor explains the TARDIS' shape while discussing the chameleon circuit to his companions, mentioning that he landed it in the 1960s and it got a stuck as a police box. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
• There is some sort of "power" beneath the TARDIS console. (TV: The Edge of Destruction)
• The Heart of the TARDIS previously appeared in TV: Terminus, where it was merely an electronic engine for the vehicle that could be manually removed from the console. This more powerful iteration of the TARDIS's heart would later serve as a crucial plot point in TV: The Parting of the Ways and TV: Journey to the Centre of the TARDIS.
• "Tribophysics" was first mentioned offhandedly by Sarah Jane Smith. (TV: Pyramids of Mars)
• Torchwood Three had been in existence since at least 1899 in Cardiff, with Jack involved in the organisation since 1899 and in charge from the end of 1999. (TV: Fragments) This means that the Doctor's arrival near the rift, his party's reunion with Mickey, and the subsequent Slitheen adventure — all involving Captain Jack — take place very close to the older Captain Jack and his Torchwood team. Jack would later reference having to wait until a version of the Doctor that coincided with him arrived; encountering the Doctor and his younger self at this point would have been unacceptable. (TV: Utopia) In addition, a third, older Jack, cryogenically frozen, is also nearby, unknown to both younger Jacks. (TV: Exit Wounds) In PROSE: The Twilight Streets, it is established that Jack locked himself and his team inside the Hub for the day to prevent them from meeting his younger self.
• A newspaper clipping regarding Blaine's election was pinned up in the Torchwood Three "information office" entrance. (TV: Reset)
• Similarly, another enemy of the Doctor, Pangol, was also regressed in time (this time to a baby). (TV: The Leisure Hive)
• In his fifth incarnation, the Doctor was similarly told by an alien that returning them home would result in their death, but that time he offered to take the criminal to another planet to avoid his death sentence. (TV: The Visitation)
• The previous Lord Mayor of Cardiff was killed by an Auton in London on 5 March 2005. (TV: Rose; AUDIO: One Rule)
• Blon briefly plays with the silver ball the Doctor had previously fiddled with. (TV: The End of the World, Father's Day)
• The Ninth Doctor's mobile phone was first mentioned in PROSE: Have You Seen This Man?.

Home video releases

Series 1 Volume 4 DVD Cover

• This story was released with Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways on a "vanilla" DVD with no extras.
• It was also part of the series 1 DVD box set.
• This story was also released with Issue 6 of the Doctor Who DVD Files.

External links

• Official BBC Website - Episode Guide for Boom Town
• Boom Town at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• The Discontinuity Guide to: Boom Town at The Whoniverse
• Boom Town at Shannon Sullivan's A Brief History of Time (Travel)