Thoughts and prayers

Talking of obnoxious phrases, Steven Moffat recently skewered it in this interview when the interviewer mentions it in the context of his new Who episode, “Boom”:

I always think, how about, “I’m sending thoughts and prayers”… how about cash? You could send cash! Or, help! What the hell is that? I’m against it. It’s like saying, “I’m very, very saddened about these needless deaths.” I’m glad you gave me that useful piece of information! I thought I might have cheered you up.
I think it is vacuity. How can people come out with this crap in the face of genuine tragedy? You come out with thoughts and prayers? Say something useful or do something useful. Be respectful. Don’t reach up for a line off a shelf and throw it in the grieving faces of the massively traumatized.
Yes. My hope was, if we can get “thoughts and prayers” going as a villainous catchphrase, like “Exterminate!”, people might stop saying it.

Which is kind of how he deploys it in the episode, and in a particularly vicious way, too… Indeed, in its way, despite ending happily, “Boom” is one of the harshest episodes of the show (and the “caskets” may be the most quease-making story detail since the “soup” from “Time Heist”):

And that’s not even the nastiest thing the Doctor has to say on that subject. The story itself has the Doctor stuck on a landmine, which is not the first time he’s been in that position:

But this mine is a rather more complicated proposition than that one on Skaro; there’s no easy way for the Doctor to get off it and if he doesn’t it’ll eventually explode anyway and wipe out a substantial chunk of the planet they’re on. Ncuti Gatwa is, accordingly, stuck in one place for almost the entire episode, meaning all he really has to work with is his face and his voice, and godDAMN he puts those things to amazing use. The people whining about the first two episodes being too heavy on the fantasy and absurdism shouldn’t have much to complain about in this one. Though not everyone’s agreeing on its merits, obviously: