- 7 weeks ago
Meeps, marines, and fish custard! Here’s our breakdown of Doctor Who Season 1's third episode - Boom!
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00:00Hello everybody, Ellie here for Who Culture and welcome to another video full of Easter eggs.
00:07Today we're going to go through the Easter eggs that we found in episode 3 of season 1,
00:11Boom. Now this was obviously the grand return of Stephen Moffat and he certainly gave a lot of
00:17callbacks to his own work and previous episodes in this specific episode. So just for a little
00:23bit of fun, we're going to have a moth counter happening during this video. Let's see how many
00:28times he managed to reference his own work. Number 21. Right from the cold open we are introduced to
00:35John Francis Vader, which is a great name. Now Vader's dad status is a really important element
00:41to this episode. So rather fittingly, Vader is actually the German word for father, so he's
00:48actually John Francis' father. And actually now I think about it, father also has the connotations
00:53of the Anglican marines, you know, their religious beings. So that father element actually works with
00:58regards to that as well. That just came to my head just then. Yeah, smart thinking Ellie.
01:02And also if anyone else thought that this guy was going to turn out to be a young father Octavian
01:07from the time of Angels and Flesh and Stone, then don't worry because we also kind of thought
01:12that was going to be the case and that would have been really cool. Number 20. Let's get this one out
01:16of the way. Obviously we've kind of come to expect it at this point, but we have yet another
01:20appearance from Susan Twist. Right in the cold open this time, although she is present throughout
01:26the majority of the episode, and she is the ambulance interface. So Susan Twist, again,
01:32let's just reiterate, is the name of the actress, not the character. But she has appeared in five
01:37different roles so far in the last seven episodes. So we had Isaac Newton's maid, Mrs. Meridue,
01:44in Wild Blue Yonder. We had a woman in a pub in the church on Ruby Road. We had a comms officer
01:49in Space Babies. A tea lady in The Devil's Chord. And now we have the ambulance interface here in
01:54Boone. Who she is, what exactly is going on with her, we don't really know at this point. But we do
02:00know from some of the trailers that we will meet her properly and the doctor will meet her. So she
02:06is relevant overall. Although at this point, we're not entirely sure how. Number 19. So on the ambulance
02:12screen, we see that John Francis Vader's profession is listed as an Anglican Marine. So there's our first
02:20one for the moth counter, because these play a major part in Moffat law. So the idea of the church being
02:26an army was actually introduced in the 11th doctor story, The Time of Angels and Flesh and Stone.
02:31And that's where we met Bishop Father Octavian, who I just mentioned a little while ago, alongside his
02:36group of clerics, which included good old sacred Bob. He's their bishop, there is cleric. Since the
02:4251st century, the church has moved on. And then there was an entire army of Anglican marines in
02:47another 11th doctor story, which was A Good Man Goes to War, where they were actually pitted against
02:53the doctor when a branch of the church led by Madame Kovarian went rogue. And then we later
02:58visited the church headquarters in 11th's final story, The Time of the Doctor. So this was basically
03:03a through line throughout the entirety of the 11th doctor's run. And it was really nice to see it
03:08revisited here. Number 18. So sticking with that ambulance interface, it mentions that it's part of
03:14the Villengarde Corporation. So as the doctor then later explains, Villengarde is one of the biggest
03:20weapons manufacturers in the universe. Also, part of Moffat lore. Villengarde first popped up in
03:27Steven Moffat's other first story in a Russell T. Davis era of the show, in The Empty Child and the
03:33Doctor Dances, where the ninth doctor comments that Captain Jack Harkness's sonic blaster is a weapon
03:39from the factories of Villengarde in the 51st century. And then 12 years later, Moffat actually
03:45visited Villengarde in Twice Upon a Time, which was his final episode as showrunner. So it was this
03:50nice little full circle moment to incorporate this same place. And in that episode, the 12th doctor
03:56visits the weapon forges of Villengarde, which is now in ruin, where he goes to seek help from good
04:02old Rusty the Dalek. Number 17. So after Vader's death, we cut to this sweeping cinematic shot where
04:09the camera pushes right in on the TARDIS and then the doctor opens the doors. So as many of you might
04:15already know, we did mention this previously in some of our other videos, but Boom was filmed using
04:19these giant LED screens, which had the surrounding planet displayed on in real time, as opposed to
04:26a giant green screen with that background being put in in post-production. But a really cool detail
04:31with regards to this shot in particular, is that the TARDIS interior is actually being displayed on
04:37that LED screen. So if you took the TARDIS doors away, you'd still be able to see the inside of
04:43the TARDIS, which was actually projected on the screen behind Shuti Gatwa. Honestly, this has been
04:48achieved so well that you wouldn't even really notice. Number 16. So right before the title sequence,
04:54the doctor stands on a landmine. Now if this rings a bell, this scenario rings a bell to you,
05:00that's because this isn't actually the first time that this has happened to the doctor. As confirmed by
05:05Stephen Moffat, one of his inspirations for Boom was the 1975 serial Genesis of the Daleks,
05:12where the fourth doctor also stands on a landmine. Although not for anywhere near as long as 15 has
05:18to here, and not on one leg. And I guess spoiler alert, because four doesn't blow up because his
05:23companion, Harry Sullivan, wedges some rocks under the mine and allows the doctor to move his foot.
05:28Now in reference to this, the BBC One continuity announcer for Boom on Saturday night actually said,
05:34where's Harry Sullivan when you need him? Now on BBC One Wales, where's Harry Sullivan when you need
05:41him? Which was actually a really nice little reference to all those years ago and to those
05:45people in the know to this, to this connection to Genesis of the Daleks. So hats off to the
05:51continuity guy, even though he probably was given a script. But I like to think that he just ad-libbed
05:55that line because he was a big Doctor Who fan. Number 15. So after the doctor has stepped on the
06:01landmine after the title sequence, Ruby then steps out of the TARDIS and goes looking for the doctor
06:06and she can hear him singing. And the doctor then explains that he's singing the Skyboat song
06:11to get his zen on. Now the Skyboat song is an old Scottish song, and it's been one of the doctor's
06:16go-to tunes almost since the very beginning. So the second doctor actually plays this on his recorder
06:22in the 1968 serial The Web of Fear, after he and Jamie and Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart,
06:29he's not actually a brigadier at this point, are captured by the Yeti. And then decades later,
06:34the spymaster would then also play the Skyboat song on the recorder once again in the power of
06:40the doctor after he hijacks the 13th doctor's regeneration. Number 14. So the doctor tells Ruby
06:47that he heard someone screaming and that she should go and see if anyone needs help. But he warns
06:52Ruby to be careful where she treads as she makes her way up there and that she should take the
06:57long way round. Now here's another one for the Moffat counter, because this is actually a recurring
07:01theme or a recurring phrase throughout the tenure of Stephen Moffat as showrunner. In the 50th
07:07anniversary, the day of the doctor, Eleven says that he's going home to Gallifrey the long way round.
07:13Then when the 12th doctor made it back to Gallifrey in Heaven Sent, he said that he arrived the long way
07:19round. Tell him I came the long way round. Now also, there's twice upon a time where the 12th
07:26doctor is wrestling with whether or not he should regenerate and carry on. And the first doctor asks
07:31him what he's going to do and 12 replies, you'll find out the long way round. You get where I'm
07:37going with this, right? He uses that phrase quite often in his scripts. Number 13. After Ruby does leave
07:44the crater, she spots an ambulance in the distance and she says to the doctor that the only thing she
07:49can see is a flashy light thing. Now this is a very specific description and we would put money on
07:55Stephen Moffat having pulled this directly from his 2010 episode, A Christmas Carol, where the 11th
08:02doctor describes Kazran Sardik's machine as a big flashy lighty thing multiple times throughout the
08:08episode. It's just another phrase that seems to be quite common in Stephen Moffat's scripts.
08:13Number 12. So Ruby then picks up John Francis Vader's vacuum-packed corpse, which is still gross.
08:20It shows that he died in the year 5087, which means that boom takes place in the 51st century.
08:27So let's bring up that counter again because this is yet another Moffat easter egg. So the 51st
08:33century has actually featured quite a lot in Moffat's stories over the years. So as I previously
08:39mentioned, the 9th doctor says that Captain Jack's blaster comes from 51st century Villengard and
08:45Captain Jack himself is a time agent from the 51st century. Then you have the scenes that are set
08:50on the SS Madame de Pompadour in The Girl in the Fireplace. That also takes place in the 51st century.
08:56Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead also takes place in the 51st century and so does Time of
09:01Angels and Flesh and Stone. Then you have Deep Breath, which featured the SS Marie Antoinette,
09:07which was the sister ship of the SS Madame de Pompadour, which was also from the 51st century.
09:12Setting boom in the 51st century actually made it a lot easier for Moffat to incorporate things such
09:18as the Villengard and the Anglican Marines into the story. And we know from previous stories set in
09:23the 51st century that all of these things were active during that time. So it actually helped him
09:29bring back these familiar characters and settings and plot threads.
09:34Number 11. So throughout the episode we see a burnt out spaceship in the background. It's probably most
09:39prominent in the scene where the Doctor tells Ruby what the casket is. Now if this spaceship looks
09:44familiar, that's because as revealed in the accompanying episode of Unleashed, it was used
09:50in the Starbeast as the Meep's escape pod and basically it was just repurposed here for this
09:56episode. They stripped it down, set it on fire. Hey presto, reduce, reuse, recycle.
10:01Number 10. So after Ruby does hand the Doctor Vader's casket and then he manages to get his
10:07foot on the ground, the lights on the landmine actually start to tick up. He starts to run out
10:12of time and so he tells himself this little rhyme, poem, thing to try and calm his adrenaline. Now one
10:18of the lines in that rhyme is the moon and the president's wife, which is yet another Moffat
10:24reference. So in the series 9 opener, Clara asks Missy why she seems to care about the Doctor all
10:30of a sudden and this is what Missy replies. Since always, since the cloister wars, since the night he
10:36stole the moon and the president's wife, since he was a little girl. One of those was a lie. Can you
10:40guess which one? Then in the finale, the Doctor revisits this, he mentions it again but he clarifies
10:45that it was the president's daughter, not the president's wife and that he didn't steal the moon,
10:49he lost it. Number 9. So the Doctor asks Mundy to tell him about the Kastarians and she says that
10:56they might be in the mud or they might be in the fog but the Doctor mocks her by saying that
11:00sentient mud is ridiculous and that he's actually met sentient mud before and that they were lovely
11:05girls. And sure enough, the Doctor did meet sentient mud in the Witchfinders where the 13th Doctor
11:11fights a species called the Morax which are sentient mud creatures that can also possess humans. So
11:17that wasn't some throwaway line, this actually did happen. Sentient mud, do you know how ridiculous
11:23you sound? Number 8. So when the Doctor is taking Mundy's gunshots to the arm like an absolute
11:29trooper, he tells her that he's a complex space-time event and that it would be very, very, very, very
11:35bad for this planet if his landmine was to blow up. Now another one for the counter here because the
11:40Doctor previously referred to himself as a complex space-time event in the Moffat episode Flesh and Stone
11:47where he tells River Song that a big complicated space-time event such as himself would be able to
11:53seal the nearby crack in time. Now Moffat also referred to the Doctor in this way in his first
11:58official bit of Doctor Who writing which was actually a short story in the 1996 novel Decalogue
12:043, Consequences. Number 7. So when everything kicks off and the ambulance heads towards the crater,
12:11there's a moment where it scans the environment with this green laser. Now fittingly for Doctor Who,
12:16this might actually be a reference to something that hasn't even happened yet because if you
12:21remember in the trailers for season 1, we see a shot of the TARDIS in Unit HQ being scanned by the
12:29exact same type of green laser that the ambulance has here in Boom. We would suggest that there's a
12:36connection here to Susan Twist in some way because obviously she is inside the ambulance, we know that
12:41she may or may not be playing someone to do with triad technologies later on or it could just be a
12:47reused effect. We've got a green laser in the computer database, ah we'll use that. Number 6. So after Ruby
12:55gets shot and is literally laying there on her deathbed asking for her next of kin, it starts snowing and
13:01the Doctor says while there's snow there's hope. Well actually he gets cut off because the snow kind of
13:07freezes in midair but the point is he was supposed to end that sentence with the word hope. This is
13:11yet another direct callback to a Moffat line. This time it's from the 12th Doctor episode,
13:17The Doctor Fools. So this story sees companion Bill Potts turned into a Cyberman but when the
13:22Doctor sees that she can still cry, he tells her where there's tears, there's hope. And then Bill
13:27later repeats the line back to him when he's on the brink of regeneration.
13:32Where there's tears, there's hope.
13:35And actually while we're talking about 12th's regeneration, just a bonus little reference here,
13:39but the snow freezing midair in Boom, the exact same effects that we saw in 12th's regeneration
13:44story Twice Upon a Time, just after he meets the first Doctor. Number 5. So after Kanto gets blown up
13:52out of literally nowhere, anyone else still cannot get over how abrupt that was? There's a moment of
13:58silence before we then hear his AI hologram in this kind of robotic voice repeating the phrase
14:04I'm fine, how are you? I'm fine, how are you? I'm fine, how are you? And then later on we hear
14:11John Vader, his hologram, repeating Antelope, we saw Antelope, we, Antelope, we, and he kind of glitches.
14:19Now this repeating of an innocuous phrase to imply that something sinister has happened
14:23is a trick that Moffat famously used in Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead, where the
14:29people inside the spacesuits kept repeating the same phrase over and over again, such as
14:34Hey, who turned out the lights? Or Miss Evangelista with I, I, ice cream, ice cream, ice cream.
14:41This suggests that their consciousness is fading away, but those phrases are still repeated,
14:46and I definitely got those vibes from these repeated things here.
14:50Hey, who turned out the lights? Hey, who turned out the lights?
14:54Number four. So after saving the day, or rather after actually John Vader saves the day,
14:59the Doctor gets his little mic drop moment and he tells Villengard, basically,
15:03just wait till Daddy gets home. Now this is another one for the Moffat counter,
15:07because this absolutely has shades of the 11th Doctor's iconic line,
15:12basically, run. Which he said in his very first episode, and in both cases, this is basically
15:18the Doctor rubbing it into the villain that he defeated them.
15:22Number three. Fish fingers and custard is my favourite.
15:25Well, that's the best one, isn't it? That's the best easter egg. So obviously if you're not familiar,
15:29in the 11th hour, when the 11th Doctor is newly regenerated, he has new taste buds,
15:33and he's trying to figure out what it is he wants to eat, and he throws many things literally out the
15:38window, out the door, down the sink, until he settles on fish fingers and custard, which is his
15:43new favourite thing to eat. Then later on, in the power of three, he sits there and enjoys a little
15:48catch up with Amy and Rory, while they enjoy some fish fingers and custard, and then just before 11
15:53regenerates, he again treats himself to his favourite meal. Now a lot of people actually
15:58commented on our ups and downs, that they were disappointed that we didn't give this an up
16:02in the ups and downs. So in my mind, I was thinking, well, let's save it for the easter eggs,
16:06but actually, you know what? Let's give it a retroactive up. There's another up for Boom.
16:12Number two. So the Doctor delivers this really great line, which is,
16:15snow isn't snow until it falls. Now according to Stephen Moffat in the commentary for this episode,
16:21this line was actually originally supposed to be in his 2010 Christmas special, A Christmas Carol,
16:26but it ended up being cut. So when he saw the chance to include it now in Boom, he just grabbed
16:32that opportunity and added it into the script here, which is kind of crazy when you think about it.
16:36I mean, he wrote a ridiculous number of episodes between A Christmas Carol and Now, and the fact
16:41that he managed to remember a specific line just goes to show how much he cares about what he writes,
16:46I guess. And number one, we have another great line from the Doctor, which closes out the episode,
16:52actually. And he says,
16:53A sad old man once told me what survives of us is love. And Stephen Moffat actually confirmed that
16:59this was lifted from the Philip Larkin poem, An Arundel Tomb, which concludes,
17:05Now, love saving the day is a big sentiment for Stephen Moffat's Doctor Who. I mean,
17:17in his very first story, you have Nancy's love for Jamie saving the day. And then a little bit later,
17:22you have love beating the villain in both of James Corden's stories with Craig. So I think this is
17:27one of those things that he believes is really important in Doctor Who. And that's why he wanted
17:32to reinforce it yet again, both with this line, but also just with the whole concept of John
17:37Vader saving the day through his love for his daughter Splice. And that is all the Easter eggs
17:43that we managed to find in this episode, Boom. If we missed one that you spotted, let us know in
17:48the comments down below. And make sure if you haven't already, you've checked out the ups and downs
17:52review and the discussion video for this episode. In the meantime, though, I've been Ellie for
17:56WhoCulture, and in the words of Riversong herself, goodbye, sweeties.
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