The first 2-part story in the Eccleston's sole season of Doctor Who confirmed suspicions of a new tact that Russell T Davies wants to implement with the new series - that of an air of reality, humanity and drama that has never before been seen in Doctor Who. It is an element that is causing division amongst the fans, much like the first season of Peter Davison's time as the Doctor, in which the TARDIS crew was criticised for being too much like soap opera characters at times. I must admit to favouring the arguments and tussles of the main cast, because it brings a lot more depth to their characters. Adric's death in 'Earthshock' actually benefitted from these soap opera moments in my opinion, and while I don't actually think either Camille Coduri or Noel Clarke are particularly brilliant actors, I do think the characters of Jackie and Mickey are a fantastic addition to the new series. Some have said the character development between the four recurring cast members has taken up too much time in the new series, but if we are going to get original ideas such as the '12 hours = 12 months' gutwrencher at the opening of 'Aliens of London' and the lovely '10 seconds' finale to 'World War III' as a replacement for 25 minutes of running up and down corridors on an alien ship as many of the classic episodes were guilty of, then I'm all for bringing a bit of emotion in.

It was moments like these that made me think a lot of the Aliens of London/World War III episodes when I watched them back, having been disappointed in the story as a whole on first viewing. The plot itself is quite simple and traditional in terms of Who, with an alien race trying to take over Earth for their own ends, which turn out to be for the Slitheen 'family business'. The lovely twist of them using a decoy alien ship in 'Aliens Of London' is a wonderful idea, even if the pig in a spacesuit is a little bit of a badly realised moment for a modern audience to watch in my opinion. But where I was disappointed was that the menace of these aliens trying to take over 10 Downing Street was totally and utterly negated by misguided humour and a terrible, terrible creation in the design of the Slitheen. Whoever was in the BBC discussion room and said 'I know! Let's make the baddies EVEN MORE LAUGHABLE than the MIDGET PIG just to really annoy the fans' should be shot. After the nicely done Autons of 'Rose', monster fest of 'The End Of The World' and the frightening Gelth of 'The Unquiet Dead', the revelation of the Slitheen was disappointing, even more so because it was at the first cliffhanger ending of the series.

Certain elements of the script didn't fit well together. Whilst there were 3 moments of genuine tension in the entire 2 episodes for me, that worked brilliantly (namely, Dr Sato hearing noises in her laboratory; Mickey and Jackie battling to stop the Slitheen in Mickey's flat and the build up to the cliffhanger of 'Aliens Of London') many other moments in the story were presented as farcical. I love witty one-liners in Doctor Who ('Have you been seeing someone else?'; 'No, mainly because everyone thinks I murdered you'), but they need to be used at the right time: 'Would you rather silent but deadly?' is a dreadful, dreadful line, used in one of the most important points in the story and it is one of many misplaced moments where the tone changes from one of brilliant menace and danger to one of utter stupidity.

Which brings me onto Christopher Eccleston. While Billie Piper treats the script with respect and manages to make all of her scenes believable, Eccleston's performance is becoming more and more erratic, and utterly out of context in places. When his execution is ordered at the beginning of 'World War III', his response is a ridiculous diatribe about cornering people by lift doors. Any fear that the Doctor might be shot is gone, because he stands there for 5 minutes while the army just look at him and don't even try to shoot him at all. Eccleston performs these scenes like the very worst moments of McCoy in Season 24 and he doesn't have the benefit that he'll have 3 years to ease into the role, like McCoy did. Admittedly he's not helped by the script in these scenes, nor is he helped by utterly over the top performances from David Verrey and Annette Badland in the main villain roles, who both (Verrey in particular) seem to be sending the show up. Verrey is a poor actor at the best of times, and to see him in such an important role was disappointing.

Other members of the supporting cast were truly wonderful though. Penelope Wilton, as expected, was the standout. Her character was believable and well-rounded and far more developed than any of the characters from the earlier episodes in this season, which is another benefit of the 2-part stories. Other good performances in 'Aliens Of London' came from Navin Chowdhry and Naoko Mori, as Indra Ganesh and Dr Sato respectively, both in small, but important roles, and I was disappointed neither of them made it into 'World War III'. I'd love to see all 3 of these actors in the show again, but particularly Wilton even if she doesn't get to say 'Harriet Jones MP Flydale North' as the prime minister!

Overall, a mixed bag for me. Some truly wonderful moments, but some utterly terrible ones too. I think the story didn't quite live up to the premise of the first 20 minutes of 'Aliens Of London' and that there was far too much silliness and running down corridors at the beginning of 'World War III' (certainly the weakest 10 minutes of the season so far for me). Variable performances, variable scripting and variable production values also let the story down, but at the same time I found myself interested from beginning to end, so it can't have been all bad.

It seems a little odd to me to be reviewing "Aliens of London" and "World War Three" separately. True, to the casual viewer, they must stand on their own two feet as separate wholes ( which they succeed in doing - the reprise at the start of both episodes serves to set the scene concisely ) but they are, after all, two parts of the same story. With your indulgence, I should like to offer my thoughts on both parts together:

Episode 1 began with the fast pace that is becoming characteristic of the series; We are shown a summary of "Rose". The materialisation of the Tardis ( wasn't the swirling litter a nice touch? ). Rose - who at this point believes she's only been gone for twelve hours - is planning to state that she had spent the night at Cherie's. The Doctor reading a poster intercut with Jackie's shock at seeing her daughter and the sudden realisation that Rose had, in fact, been missing for a whole year. And all this before the opening titles!

Mr Davies once again shows his skill at grounding the fantastic in the real; The glimpses of Rose's family life, her mother's questioning - "just one phone call to let me know you're safe", slapping the Doctor across the face and the policeman asking whether their ( the Doctor and Rose's ) relationship was sexual were nice touches. Then onto the roof of the tower block and that great gag about the age difference. Russell T certainly knows his job. The characters he craetes are real and have real lives and real concerns.

With hardly a pause for breath we are thrown into the story proper - what a tremendous sequence of the spaceship flying over ( and into ) London's landmarks! This shiny new Doctor Who knows no bounds!! I loved the throwaway line blaming Ken Livingstone for the traffic jams ( he's mayor of London and responsible for the introduction of congestion charging ) and the fact that the Doctor is reduced to watching events unfold on the telly.

>From her we move to the mortuary of the Albion Street hospital - a nice nod to the past here as the incidental music gives way to the sonorous ticking of the clock, perhaps acknowledging the '96 McGann film? And then onto Downing Street, where we are introduced to our flatulent acting P.M., to Ms Blaine and to Oliver Charles, who, apparently has a penchant for young farmers! How did they get away with this when we're in the middle of a General Election campaign?

I cannot at this point not mention the only poor element of the story - that pig! Though this was mitigated by fast editing and by the horrified reaction of the soldier to the Doctor's furious rebuke that it was scared. Where events cannot be realised convincingly, they shouldn't be shown at all. It is far more convincing to shown the actors' reactions. A case in point occurred moments later where the first 'unzipping scene' was shot from the point of view of Harriet Jones ( played superbly by Penelope Wilton ) hiding in a cupboard.

I am glad to see that the character of Mickey has been allowed to develop from the mere comic relief - though this is still very much there as he crashes into the wall behind the de-materialising Tardis. His scenes taunting Rose that the Doctor has abandoned her " that blue box thing faded away " and again inside the Tardis where he, Mickey, and Rose almost kiss serve to raise his character beyond that of a mere cypher. In episode two he really is given a significant role to play. Similarly, Jackie's mental anguish before she telephones the help-line was equally 'real' and served to push the plot along nicely.

And what a cliff hanger! This was well worth the wait. All the principal characters are placed in peril as General Asquith, Blaine and the Police Commandant all reveal their true colours. Jackie cowering in her kitchen had me on the edge of my seat smiling with shear joy - my disbelief being completely suspended.

A second minor criticism here; Whoever took the decision to preview the next installment by showing us that the Doctor has survived being electrocuted made a mistake in that it deprived the audience of that tantilising frisson of a week's wait. That aside, deputy PM Green's laughter ( like some ghoulish fairground dummy ) overlaying the closing moments served only to pile on the tension.

Episode Two began with a 'in one bound he was free' type moment followed by some running around in corridors so beloved of our little show. This time however, the corridors were beautiful and the action not at all wobbly. The CGI Slitheen were brilliantly realised - I loved their blinking complete with camera shutter type sound effect!

I shall long remember Rose and Harriet hiding whilst Blaine/Slitheen utters the immortal lines "Where are you children?" and "I can smell your sweat and fear". And later, where the Doctor threatens to "triplicate" ( shouldn't that be "treble"? ) the explosive power of the port only to have his bluff called and to offer Harriet the decanter, we are treated to a lesson in etiquette - the port should always be passed to the left! The dialogue sparkles and we are given a repeat of the line "lots of planets have a north ". To misquote Colin Baker, 'what's the point of a good quotation if you can't reuse it?'

With our heroes now effectively locked up in the cabinet office, a sizeable chunk of the action now moves initially back to the Tyler flat and then across the road to Mickey's. I don't want to spoil the story for those who haven't yet seen episode two, suffice to say I shall never look at a jar of pickled eggs in the same way and the Slitheen's momentary reaction to being doused in vinegar was so convincing as to be human!

References to 'mass weapons of destruction' to '45 seconds' and 'emergency debates in the UN' were obviously intended to strike a chord with today's audience but, I wonder if some might see these as being a bit too near the mark? Still, they do at least further serve to ground the programme in the here and now, to give the programme a more modern feel about it. 'Gritty' is a word often used to describe Pertwee's opening season, 'current' I think may well be used describe the 2005 season.

As I say, I don't want to spoil your fun, so I won't reveal the episode's climax save to say that the collected Slitheen's final word was the same as David Tennant's first in Casanova ( though understandably cut to only it's first syllable - there are children watching )! Am I alone in noticing that the line historical "happenstance" also appears in both programmes? Now why is that I wonder?

A cracking good yarn. If I've missed out anybody's contribution, this isn't because I don't genuinely appreciate them - I do, I do. Saturday nights are as they should be; cold, damp and hugely entertaining. And next week we get to see the Daleks. Joy of joys!

The Ninth Doctor and Rose return to Earth for the first multi-part Doctor Who since Survival. At last, we can celebrate the return of the cliffhanger… or can we?

The real world infiltrates Doctor Who in unprecedented ways, as the TARDIS returns to Earth. There are some very intelligent ideas at work here, as the repercussions of a companion being taken out of their home environment have never really been explored by the series before. So this is long overdue. Unfortunately, it’s carried off quite badly – the right characters ask the right questions, but then it’s all glossed over. I would have expected the Doctor to be thrown in the police cells for his abduction of Rose, but within minutes, he’s happily watching TV in the Tylers’ living room, which, considering that the aliens have landed, is a very un-Doctorish thing for him to do. If he’s so bothered by all the other people in the room, why doesn’t he just watch events unfold on the TARDIS scanner?

Despite not wanting to move the TARDIS for some reason, the Doctor then does so anyway, only to face a bunch of soldiers who immediately obey him without question. He is eventually taken to Downing Street where he meets some aliens who try to kill him by electrocution, but fail purely because he’s not human. He then uses a simple password to hack into the Royal Navy’s network and fire a missile at Downing Street, which reaches its target unopposed. Surely I’m not the only person who finds this entire plot utterly unrealistic and implausible?

Still, Doctor Who has always relied on scary monsters and great acting to paper over cracks in the plot. Sadly, both of these are lacking here, also. I don’t have a problem with the fact the aliens fart a lot, but the constant puerile jokes about that bodily function and their oft-stated desire to be naked are absolutely embarrassing. They’re also very badly acted, designed and realised indeed. Add to that an overlong cliffhanger with a “one-bound-and-he-was-free” resolution, and we have a very disappointing story indeed.

Fortunately, there’s a fair bit to redeem these episodes. Jackie and Mickey are also badly acted, but at least they have plenty to do in this tale. Jackie’s concerns for her daughter are realistic and well-written, and the Doctor looks very awkward when facing her – it’s as if he’s more scared of her than any of the monsters he’s faced so far. His continual put-downs of Mickey were grating in the first episode – especially when that character was doing a good job of redeeming himself after the season opener – but the fact he has to rely on him makes it almost worthwhile, and the scene where he refuses to let him on board the TARDIS at the end is beautifully scripted. And I can’t let the pig slip by without comment. It’s not the first animal to become a Doctor Who alien, and there’s a plausible explanation for it on-screen (which there wasn’t for, say, the cheetah people). It’s given little screen time, is well-realised, and it provides the Doctor with one of his finest moments in the series so far.

Nevertheless, the bad points have far outweighed the good in my estimation, and as with Rose, I find myself being embarrassed by the series I love. The Aliens Of London story is not one of the show’s all-time stinkers, but when it’s bad, it’s very bad, and coming straight after The Unquiet Dead does it no favours. And it’s a sorry state of affairs when the biggest thrill in a Doctor Who story is the trailer for the episode to follow…

4/10.

I'm pleased to say that most of the reservations I was having about part one of this story, Aliens of London, were wiped away by the concluding installment. This mostly involved the Slitheen and how strange and funny they were being portrayed, but this week's episode gave us completely satisfactory and actually very entertaining reasons for all of it. They also looked better this week I thought than they did in those closing moments of last week... their effects seemed more consistent across-the-board.

The Slitheen seem to be a sort of cross between the Foamasi and the Dominators. I say Foamasi because they're almost like a mafia family, are interested in an irradiated planet (or what they hope will be one), and fit their huge bodies inside smaller human suits. And I say Dominators because of their scheme to turn the Earth into a radioactive fuel planet in the same way the Dominators did. The difference is they've all got a terrific sense of humor and are really enjoying their work. One moment that I loved was when the female MI-5 Slitheen went into the PM's office and gushed over how the hot line phone was actually red. And you've got to love an alien species that has the line, Victory should be naked! They also simply must have understood the irony in their warning about massive weapons of destruction. I've really grown to love these guys, and in fact I wouldn't mind seeing (or hearing) them again sometime.

Hilary Jones, MP Flydale North really came into her own this week too, as I was guessing she would seeing as they landed Penelope Wilton in the part. That the Doctor realizes she'll be a future Prime Minister was also not wholly unexpected. I loved watching her find her backbone as the episode progressed, until she finally realizes she can and must order the Doctor to push the button to destroy Number 10 (or at least to tell Mickey how to do it). I wouldn't mind seeing her again someday too. (I wonder if she's the one that eventually gets deposed by General Mariah Learman prior to The Time of the Daleks... and this episode explains why the head of government seems to be in a palace by that time, as No. 10 got destroyed.)

I also really enjoyed Mickey and Jackie's scenes together, with them almost bonding through their whole dodge-the-alien crisis and over how dangerous the Doctor is. Mickey wound up gaining the Doctor's respect to the point where he offered to make him a companion as well, and I was really glad to see that develop. The Doctor's continual goading of Mickey was beginning to annoy me as I thought it was taking the Doctor too far down the disagreeable road, but their eventual sort-of reconciliation really capped that off nicely before it got too out-of-hand.

The set-piece of the Doctor, Rose, and Hilary coming up with the Slitheen's weakness for vinegar was nicely handled as well... Narrows it down! sounds as though it could become another Ninth Doctor catchphrase like Fantastic! is (if there's time in his brief tenure for more of this). The way it ended brought a huge smile to my face too... with Jackie splashing the vinegar on it... it standing there for 5 seconds, letting off a huge fart, and then exploding all over them. My one hang-up with this scene is that I can't see from the way this is played out how the Doctor, Rose, and Hilary on the other end of the phone know that the alien has just died and come over all relaxed, when all they would've heard is a strange exploding sound and then not a word from Jackie and Mickey as they just stood there looking stunned.

This brings me to my other hang-ups with the episode, which actually apply to Aliens of London as well, and that's the almost Graham Williams-era-like sloppy way in which the Doctor is able to get his own way with guards, be they policeman or military. Russell T. Davies has gone to great lengths to address some of the common-sense questions people always had about the characters, such as doesn't Rose's family miss her? and the like, but he's apparently turned a blind eye to a defiance-of-common-sense problem I had with the original series, which seemed to come up most often in the Graham Williams-produced stories. This is how trained guards or police so often don't do as trained guards or police would do when the Doctor is in the scene. Example: in Aliens of London, he accidentally lands in a cupboard just outside where a whole bunch of the soldiers are, and they train their guns on him. There is then a scream, he shouts Defence Plan Delta (like that means something, which it clearly doesn't) and runs out, and rather than anyone trying to stop him or shoot him, they just start following him and doing what he says. This is wholly unrealistic and does not make sense. Here in World War Three, the 'General' outright orders the police to shoot the Doctor then and there, but they don't... he gets to blather on for a good 15 seconds more before the lift arrives and he gets into it and escapes. And even as he's escaping and they've all still got a clear shot at him, no one pulls the trigger. This is again wholly unrealistic and does not make sense. (Though some of this might be down to Keith Boak's direction and not cutting or staging the scenes quite right to avoid this problem, but it could equally be scripted by RTD.) And then there's the business about how Mickey can hack into the UNIT website and the website of the Royal Navy under instructions from the Doctor using a single password. The UNIT one I can buy as he worked for them and probably put the back door in himself at some point. The one I can't buy is that you can not only hack in the Royal Navy's website with that same password but also access a firing control on a submarine and have it fire a missile. Missile firing controls in every navy around the world are kept well off-line just to prevent things like this from happening... and even the off-line controls have extra safety things like those two-operators-have-to-turn-keys-simultaneously things. They got that right in The Invasion in 1968, so why this here? They could've still accomplished the same task by simply having the Doctor or Harriet call up the submarine over voice and issuing some passwords and orders to the captain of the sub that could've been in the Emergency Protocols (which they had at this point). So why not do that instead of stretching credulity with this lazy hacking solution? Still, the fact that it could've been done right doesn't make it feel like quite so much of a cheat, and I'm not going to dock the episode too much for this faux pas, but I hope that things like this get thought through better in future episodes.

I'm also very sceptical of the idea that the UK would turn over its ability to launch its own nuclear missiles to the Security Council of the UN. This feels like a sort of callback to the destructor codes scenario back in Robot, but given how nearly disastrous that turned out, I can't believe that program continued after that story. From a security point of view it makes no sense for any nation to do this, especially one that's a member of NATO. Surely turning over the codes to the UN would violate some NATO duties for defence that the UK has?

Enough though of these plotting problems... back to the good stuff, and I've saved the best for last, and as we've come to expect, the best is the character work between the Doctor and Rose and the people around them. Rose remains as strong in this episode as she was showing in the last one, and also shows she's clearly been listening to even the Doctor's technobabble when at one point in the narrows it down brainstorm she blurts out that the alien ship had a slipstream drive. She's quickly come to trust the Doctor implicitly as she doesn't ever hesitate to jump into the situation, even with her mother pleading with her not to, but I have the feeling this trust is going to be to a fault at some point. We can see that on the Doctor's face, when Jackie repeatedly asks him if he can guarantee Rose will be safe, and he can't answer her, because he knows that she might not be and might join the list of his companions who didn't make it. That moment of him being silent and not answering is Eccleston's best work to date I think. I wonder if at some point there'll come a story where the Doctor decides that Rose needs some sort of lesson to teach her that they are not as immortal and infallible as she seems to be thinking they are, what with their 4-0 record after this story. (That'll probably be the season finale, I'd guess.)

Say, what happened to the alien ship in the Thames anyway? It's still there, isn't it? And couldn't the Doctor have used the missile on it instead of Number 10 and thus stop the Slitheen wanting to launch the nukes since they'd no longer have a ship to go hide in? (maybe it had shields... or maybe it would've had a big explosion of its own when its power core went up or something that would've hurt loads more people)

Oh, and why, on the morning of the potential nuclear strike and the news shows are showing those live shots of London, does the shot of Big Ben still have smoke coming out of the tower? Surely the fire would've been out by then!

And one last point I want to make... did you notice that this episode began with a Slitheen vs. humans _corridor chase_? Anyone at home playing the drinking game, take a drink. At least this time it wasn't any old corridors... it was 10 Downing Street's!

So, episode rating... 7 out of 10 again. And I'll give the whole story that too. The alien portrayals and motivations got cleared up, but there were some plot holes that really could've been plugged up without too much trouble which weren't.

I'm pleased to say that most of the reservations I was having about part one of this story, "Aliens of London," were wiped away by the concluding installment. This mostly involved the Slitheen and how strange and funny they were being portrayed, but this week's episode gave us completely satisfactory and actually very entertaining reasons for all of it. They also looked better this week I thought than they did in those closing moments of last week... their effects seemed more consistent across-the-board.

The Slitheen seem to be a sort of cross between the Foamasi and the Dominators. I say Foamasi because they're almost like a mafia family, are interested in an irradiated planet (or what they hope will be one), and fit their huge bodies inside smaller human suits. And I say Dominators because of their scheme to turn the Earth into a radioactive fuel planet in the same way the Dominators did. The difference is they've all got a terrific sense of humor and are really enjoying their work. One moment that I loved was when the female "MI-5" Slitheen went into the PM's office and gushed over how the hot line phone was actually red. And you've got to love an alien species that has the line, "Victory should be naked!" They also simply must have understood the irony in their warning about "massive weapons of destruction." I've really grown to love these guys, and in fact I wouldn't mind seeing (or hearing) them again sometime.

Hilary Jones, MP Flydale North really came into her own this week too, as I was guessing she would seeing as they landed Penelope Wilton in the part. That the Doctor realizes she'll be a future Prime Minister was also not wholly unexpected. I loved watching her find her backbone as the episode progressed, until she finally realizes she can and must order the Doctor to push the button to destroy Number 10 (or at least to tell Mickey how to do it). I wouldn't mind seeing her again someday too. (I wonder if she's the one that eventually gets deposed by General Mariah Learman prior to "The Time of the Daleks"... and this episode explains why the head of government seems to be in a palace by that time, as No. 10 got destroyed.)

I also really enjoyed Mickey and Jackie's scenes together, with them almost bonding through their whole dodge-the-alien crisis and over how dangerous the Doctor is. Mickey wound up gaining the Doctor's respect to the point where he offered to make him a companion as well, and I was really glad to see that develop. The Doctor's continual goading of Mickey was beginning to annoy me as I thought it was taking the Doctor too far down the disagreeable road, but their eventual sort-of reconciliation really capped that off nicely before it got too out-of-hand.

The set-piece of the Doctor, Rose, and Hilary coming up with the Slitheen's weakness for vinegar was nicely handled as well... "Narrows it down!" sounds as though it could become another Ninth Doctor catchphrase like "Fantastic!" is (if there's time in his brief tenure for more of this). The way it ended brought a huge smile to my face too... with Jackie splashing the vinegar on it... it standing there for 5 seconds, letting off a huge fart, and then exploding all over them. My one hang-up with this scene is that I can't see from the way this is played out how the Doctor, Rose, and Hilary on the other end of the phone know that the alien has just died and come over all relaxed, when all they would've heard is a strange exploding sound and then not a word from Jackie and Mickey as they just stood there looking stunned.

This brings me to my other hang-ups with the episode, which actually apply to "Aliens of London" as well, and that's the almost Graham Williams-era-like sloppy way in which the Doctor is able to get his own way with guards, be they policeman or military. Russell T. Davies has gone to great lengths to address some of the common-sense questions people always had about the characters, such as "doesn't Rose's family miss her?" and the like, but he's apparently turned a blind eye to a defiance-of-common-sense problem I had with the original series, which seemed to come up most often in the Graham Williams-produced stories. This is how trained guards or police so often don't do as trained guards or police would do when the Doctor is in the scene. Example: in "Aliens of London", he accidentally lands in a cupboard just outside where a whole bunch of the soldiers are, and they train their guns on him. There is then a scream, he shouts "Defence Plan Delta" (like that means something, which it clearly doesn't) and runs out, and rather than anyone trying to stop him or shoot him, they just start following him and doing what he says. This is wholly unrealistic and does not make sense. Here in "World War Three," the 'General' outright orders the police to shoot the Doctor then and there, but they don't... he gets to blather on for a good 15 seconds more before the lift arrives and he gets into it and escapes. And even as he's escaping and they've all still got a clear shot at him, no one pulls the trigger. This is again wholly unrealistic and does not make sense. (Though some of this might be down to Keith Boak's direction and not cutting or staging the scenes quite right to avoid this problem, but it could equally be scripted by RTD.) And then there's the business about how Mickey can hack into the UNIT website and the website of the Royal Navy under instructions from the Doctor using a single password. The UNIT one I can buy as he worked for them and probably put the back door in himself at some point. The one I can't buy is that you can not only hack in the Royal Navy's website with that same password but also access a firing control on a submarine and have it fire a missile. Missile firing controls in every navy around the world are kept well off-line just to prevent things like this from happening... and even the off-line controls have extra safety things like those two-operators-have-to-turn-keys-simultaneously things. They got that right in "The Invasion" in 1968, so why this here? They could've still accomplished the same task by simply having the Doctor or Harriet call up the submarine over voice and issuing some passwords and orders to the captain of the sub that could've been in the Emergency Protocols (which they had at this point). So why not do that instead of stretching credulity with this lazy hacking solution? Still, the fact that it could've been done right doesn't make it feel like quite so much of a cheat, and I'm not going to dock the episode too much for this faux pas, but I hope that things like this get thought through better in future episodes.

I'm also very skeptical of the idea that the UK would turn over its ability to launch its own nuclear missiles to the Security Council of the UN. This feels like a sort of callback to the "destructor codes" scenario back in "Robot," but given how nearly disastrous that turned out, I can't believe that program continued after that story. From a security point of view it makes no sense for any nation to do this, especially one that's a member of NATO. Surely turning over the codes to the UN would violate some NATO duties for defence that the UK has?

Enough though of these plotting problems... back to the good stuff, and I've saved the best for last, and as we've come to expect, the best is the character work between the Doctor and Rose and the people around them. Rose remains as strong in this episode as she was showing in the last one, and also shows she's clearly been listening to even the Doctor's technobabble when at one point in the "narrows it down" brainstorm she blurts out that the alien ship had a slipstream drive. She's quickly come to trust the Doctor implicitly as she doesn't ever hesitate to jump into the situation, even with her mother pleading with her not to, but I have the feeling this trust is going to be to a fault at some point. We can see that on the Doctor's face, when Jackie repeatedly asks him if he can guarantee Rose will be safe, and he can't answer her, because he knows that she might not be and might join the list of his companions who didn't make it. That moment of him being silent and not answering is Eccleston's best work to date I think. I wonder if at some point there'll come a story where the Doctor decides that Rose needs some sort of lesson to teach her that they are not as immortal and infallible as she seems to be thinking they are, what with their 4-0 record after this story. (That'll probably be the season finale, I'd guess.)

Say, what happened to the alien ship in the Thames anyway? It's still there, isn't it? And couldn't the Doctor have used the missile on it instead of Number 10 and thus stop the Slitheen wanting to launch the nukes since they'd no longer have a ship to go hide in? (maybe it had shields... or maybe it would've had a big explosion of its own when its power core went up or something that would've hurt loads more people)

Oh, and why, on the morning of the potential nuclear strike and the news shows are showing those live shots of London, does the shot of Big Ben still have smoke coming out of the tower? Surely the fire would've been out by then!

And one last point I want to make... did you notice that this episode began with a Slitheen vs. humans _corridor chase_? Anyone at home playing the drinking game, take a drink. At least this time it wasn't any old corridors... it was 10 Downing Street's!

So, episode rating... 7 out of 10 again. And I'll give the whole story that too. The alien portrayals and motivations got cleared up, but there were some plot holes that really could've been plugged up without too much trouble which weren't.

Far, far better. Any problems that I had with Aliens of London are successfully ironed out and as a whole this works very well indeed with each storyline being paid off with a great deal of style. The comedy, drama and excitement mingle together to create a thrilling 45 minutes of television and for the first time this season I actually got the very real impression that I was watching ‘old style’ Doctor Who. If you were plummeting to the depths of TV hell and watching Celebrity Wrestling on the other side instead of this then shame on you.

I know this will leave my good friends Mike Morris and Rob Matthews spitting blood but World War Three felt like a really good episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Not only because it was well performed and filmed but there is a terrific thread of humour running through the episode that keeps things electrical on screen. The characters all have a marvellous chemistry and all get very funny lines, which helps to balance the crisis with entertainment. Don’t get me wrong…this isn’t light entertainment, not when you are talking about nuking the world and aiming missiles at Downing Street but the humour compliments the action brilliantly, helping you to like the characters and really care about the danger they are in.

Would any other show do something as daring as crashing a spaceship through Big Ben and blowing up Downing Street? After the reaction to 9/11 it is understandable that terrorist attacks on TV have calmed down a tad with only natural disasters acceptable to see famous landmarks destroyed (ie The Day After Tomorrow). How like Doctor Who to jump in feet first with these unforgettable images…certainly the destruction of Big Ben was all talk at my work place last week. It is the shows bravery and unashamed melodrama that has kept it going for so many years. You want Dinosaurs roaming about London? Or the Loch Ness Monster peeking up from the Thames? Now we can add these glorious shock images to the list and even better, we now have the budget to support such spectacle. And they just look fab.

The Slitheen come off much better in World War Three mostly because we always suspected they were supposed to be comedy aliens and they are now confirmed as such. Their cute, bug eyed appearance and wickedly funny lines combine to create an alien race with one of the most ingenious schemes ever to grace the series. Selling the nuclear remains of the Earth during a recession? What, have they let Margaret Thatcher run the universe or something? There is nothing more amusing than a being chased around corridors by monsters and if you are going to do then why not choose the most spectacular locale to do it in…10 Downing Street! The FX team pull off the rubber costumes and CGI with minimal fuss, you can obviously tell which is which (and occasionally those fingernails are a bit too rubbery to have the knife edge sound effects playing over them) but I was so caught up in what was actually going on I can only remember nodding at the scene where the Doctor, Rose and Harriet are being pursued by three CGI Slitheen and commenting “That is so cool.” Whether arguing over whose disguise belongs to who or uttering a quick “BOL-“ before being blown to smithereens, this was simply a far better attempt to appeal to adults as kids with the aliens than the last episode and the incessant farting (which made a brief appearance but was not dwelled upon, much as it should have last week). Personally my favourite Slitheen moment came during the climax when the missile has been launched and everybody is getting nervous and excited and we cut back to the Slitheen for a quick second all waiting by the phone for the emergency codes and one of them cries “Ring, damn you!” Absolute genius.

Of course there is a more serious side to the episode which began in Aliens of London dealing with Rose’s return home and her mothers integration into her new life. This is where Russell’s writing is at its best to be honest. Whilst this episode has sold me on his ability to write good science fiction, I was always convinced that he could write good human drama and he excels himself here. I love how it is slipped into the chaotic moments without feeling intrusive, any other series would be mad to take a second out of the end of the world to discuss a distraught mother worrying about her child but Jackie’s concerns feel real and her “Can you promise me my daughter will always be safe?” when a bloody missile is heading for Rose really hits home. World War Three has proven that this two parter is far more interested in Jackie than it is in Rose which is probably no bad thing, we can emote with Rose in any episode but our rare glimpses of Jackie have got to have a real punch. And boy has she come on since the first episode, now she is a fully fleshed out character, funny, sharp and pathetic all rolled into one. I think she is great and has been responsible for the most emotional scenes yet. Her quiet “Don’t go sweetheart” at the end is heartbreaking and for a second you want Rose to stay. It says something about Russell’s writing for ‘straight’ drama that I found the final scene of World War Three far more satisfying than that of Aliens of London, big blobby aliens are all very well but a mother and daughter being torn apart is just shattering.

And wow! That was Mickey! I really wanted him to hop in at the end, I think Noel Clarke has relaxed into the series and would make a pretty cool companion, had he accepted the Doctor’s offer I think there could have been a nice bit of tension on board the TARDIS. It is the Doctor’s nasty comments about him that make Mickey such fun, despite how has been treated by our favourite Time Lord he still hacks into the Royal Navy and saves the day. There is something wonderfully boggle-eyed about Mickey, that he is constantly being confronted with things that are just beyond his comprehension and Clarke has the comedy coward with a heart down pat. I find his character very appealing (and not just because I think black guys are hot) because he does what a situation demands, he’ll pick up a baseball bat and fight even if his instincts are telling him to hide under a table. The “I just saved your life!” “How embarrassing!” scene was excellent.

The least Doctor-ish episode is followed up by the most Doctor-ish episode. How bizarre. Three episodes in and Eccleston has got it. Not perfect mind because he still grins inanely during some tense moments (I really wanted to punch him when that lift door opened and the Slitheen was standing there…and he grinned!) but he is afforded some strong, emotional moments, which really suit Eccleston. Plus he is given some very witty dialogue, which reminded me of Tom Baker at the peak of his powers, his whole sequence with the sonic screwdriver and the alcohol was very funny and delivered to perfection. It was his dilemma between saving the world and saving Rose that I found most satisfying and rarely has the Doctor’s love for his companion shone through so bright. When he tells Jackie over the speakerphone about how dangerous his can be you believe him totally.

I feel I should say a few words about Murray Gold whose incidental music has been given a good slagging off week after week now. If you don’t like synthesised music then you are fans of the wrong show! I think he understands the show perfectly, slightly camp but full of excitement, he gives the action a real boost and scores the emotional moments with appropriate beauty. He certainly did a brilliant job with this episode with his constant, jittery score throughout the missile sequences and a tear-jerking finale as Rose is reunited with her mum. Bravo.

The first two parter can only be seen as a success. Perhaps my bad feelings towards last week was because I was frustrated at not being able to see how this concluded…no…there were some genuine problems there. But World War Three addressed them and improved them and made for a far more entertaining and powerful 45 minutes.

Now we have a set of ‘regulars’ that extends beyond the Doctor and Rose, I cannot wait until we pop back and visit them again.