Doctor Who: 9 Funniest Episodes Of The Revived Series

8. Boom Town

Oh, look. It's an episode featuring the Slitheen which doesn't rely on farting to make its audience laugh. Not that watching them letting it rip was ever even remotely amusing anyway (you probably chuckled out of confusion more than anything else), but it just goes to show that sometimes it really is better in than out after all. To all intents and purposes, though, Boom Town is pretty dire, really, but it's a fine example of Doctor Who's ability to turn something dark into a story featuring an underlying touch of comedy. The fans bloody needed it, too, after the emotional and mental trauma that was the preceding The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances two-parter (although, rather heartwarmingly, everybody lived in that), and a story in which our heroes take a break from their time travelling escapades to go on holiday in Cardiff is just what the Doctor ordered to prepare us for the climactic events of the Series 1 finale. Suffice to say, things got pretty serious for the Doctor & Co in Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways. Rose died (OK, she was actually teleported), Jack was killed by the Daleks (OK, he was resurrected by the Bad Wolf shortly afterwards) and the Ninth Doctor also popped his clogs (OK, he... oh... that was actually happened!), so it's no wonder that Russell T Davies thought the viewers had earned a bit of comic relief before their Whovian hearts were torn into pieces. And thank God he did! While Boom Town doesn't really stand out in the grand scheme of things, there are some lovely moments that are guaranteed to make you titter, most notably the general camaraderie between the Doctor, Rose and Jack (and the fact that Mickey is completely left out of it all!) and Margaret Blaine's multiple failed teleportation attempts. Yes, Margaret's trying to blow up the entire world and Cardiff Bay gets destroyed by the rift but it all ends with Blon Fel-Fotch being turned into an egg which kind of suggests that it's not supposed to be taken seriously. Perhaps that's true of the Russell T Davies era in general, but let's save that discussion for another day.