#i hope this post doesn’t go far outside my circle bc ppl will inevitably argue and i don’t want that

[hobgoblinns]

no i’m not suggesting doctor who has much in common with jim garrison’s investigation into the kennedy assassination lmfao. but prior to watching the film i didn’t know a whole lot about the kennedy assassination, or america’s military industrial complex. and after adding that context to ‘boom’, it really changes how you see it (unless you’re cool and already know about that stuff — this post is based on my own ignorance. in my defence, i’m not american, don’t know much about geopolitics, and in many ways naïve about the kind of evil that lurks behind a corporation’s desire to profit. but i feel the need to add a disclaimer: if you’re familiar with the military industrial complex, the JFK conspiracy, or even similar conspiracies like the danny casalaro murder, this probably won’t be new information to you.)

you watch ‘boom’, and you (i) think, ‘ok, i get it. it’s a clever bit of satire. moffat is saying that in war, we’re fighting “ourselves” (ie. common soldier of x team against common soldier of y team) while the real enemy is the military corporations profiting from the violence. when we see villengard tech killing the soldiers it’s designed to protect, it’s commentary on how corporations are the ones indirectly ‘killing’ by supplying the machinery, even when someone else pulls the trigger’. you enjoy the episode, think, classic moffat, and go on with your day.

and then you watch a film like oliver stone’s ‘JFK’. it’s a 3-hour epic based on an autobiography by new orleans district attorney jim garrison with so much going on that i can only give the most basic of summaries: garrison investigates the inconsistencies in the official court findings of the JFK assassination and ends up uncovering an elaborate conspiracy, leading him to the conclusion that kennedy was killed as part of a coup d’etat with the intention of installing LBJ as the new president in order to escalate the vietnam war and thus ensure continued profit for the defence industry.

side note here: watch the film, and if you can, read the book, too. i’m normally a very sceptical person, but considering the fact that as of 2023, more than half of the US population believe there was more than one gunman involved in the assassination, i don’t think it’s particularly controversial of me to suggest here that i was convinced. though the film is a dramatisation, you can fact check most of what’s presented to you, and once you do, it’s hard to go back to accepting the official story. so from here on in, i’m going to act on the assumption that garrison’s theory is correct — that kennedy was murdered for arms dealers’ profits. that in mind, i’ll be using the term ‘they’ a lot, because there isn’t really one name i can umbrella these corporations with. i hate to paint them as these shadowy puppet masters, but i don’t have much else to go on.

i mentioned my naïveté earlier. though i have nothing good to say about the us government or the radical branch of capitalism it operates on, it was still a tough pill to swallow. this whole ‘essay’ (used lightly — this is a self-indulgent post made on a ton of caffeine whose main purpose is to take the thoughts out of my brain and put them in words) is, in case i distracted you, about doctor who, so i’ll use it as an example. if you’re raised on that show like i was, you’re instilled with at least some kind of optimism. a belief that nowhere in the universe exists pure evil. a belief that the good and the noble will always triumph if they’re brave enough.

so it can be difficult to wrap your (my) head around the fact that there are people in the world — powerful people, at that — whose sole aim is to perpetuate war and violence. not on the grounds of self-defence, or on religious faith, like the soldiers in ‘boom’. these people don’t even particularly care who wins, or what they’re fighting over. their only interest is ensuring that peace doesn’t happen. how do you even begin to accept that that kind of evil exists?

and that’s where ‘boom’ comes into it. because then you (i) realise that you’ve got it all wrong. this isn’t a satire, perpetuating an absurdist future in which defence companies directly kill their own clients and frame it on an imagined enemy to ensure their continued success. this isn’t some kind of warning — ‘better keep an eye on those corporations! who knows what they might do?’ — and it’s certainly not an exaggeration. it’s a retelling of history. it’s a recount, not a cautionary tale.

because, accepting garrison’s theory as fact, they’ve done it before. not just killing footsoldiers, either. they killed one of the most powerful men in the world simply because he was in a position to negotiate peace. when the villengard tech begins slaughtering soldiers, it’s not a dystopia. it’s a parallel.

moffat has always been known for writing terrifying doctor who stories. he’s a master of monsters. i grew up terrified of the empty child, the weeping angels, the vashta nerada, the silence. ‘boom’ was already a masterpiece of an episode, but with the context i have now, it might also be the most terrifying to date. because there is no metaphor. just a statement of fact — those who stand to profit from war have killed, do kill, will kill, to stay at the top.

for some reason after watching boom i decided to watch oliver stone’s JFK on a whim and by complete coincidence i think i found the perfect “further reading” film