The latest episode of Doctor Who was I am sad to say a little disappointing.

I like a fart gag as much as the next guy. No doubt RTD imagined that kids will be letting rip and declaring themselves aliens in playgrounds up and down the country. School rooms will reverberate to 'Sorry miss, i can't help it i'm a slyltheen'. Fine a throw away line, a quick laugh and be done with it. But for god sakes, it went on and on. I can understand RTD's desire to lighten the mood for the kiddies, but this was purile cheap and frankly nasty.

I rather liked the opening section in which Rose returned a year after she left, to find herself declared a missing person. it's an obvious plot device and I think the scenes with rose's mother were a nice touch and having watched 'confidential' looks like it might be developed further.

The Alien spacship crashing was resonably well done, although I found the design a bit to retro. The aftermath was ok but the TV reporter was weak. Nice to see Andrew Marr involved though.

Eccleston continues to give a decent performance as the Doctor, and Piper is a delight. The supporting cast are less impressive. Camille Coduri is average, and Noel Clarke is frankly wooden.... and what's with this whole Ricky bit from the Doctor. He comes across as both petulant and jealous.

The rest of the guest cast seem to treat the show as an extension of panto season. They overacted and over played everything.

The scene in Albion hospital was a good one. I'll even forgive the upright pig in a spacesuit. However, the actions of the soldier was a little farfetched. One moment they are pointing guns at the Doctor, the next, they are folowing orders from him. it was just a bit too lazy and rushed.

This brings me to one of my major concerns for the long term health of the show. Having RTD , as exec producer , de facto script commisioner, editor and writer, means no one is in a position to say, NO! and that's what this episode needed badly. In his first two scripts RTD was forced by the format to keep things tight and fast paced, and I suspect this reduced his ability to over indulge, but alas given 1 hour 30 mins to tell his story, he has allowed himself to overindulge in uncalled for homour and a lack of real tension.

As a two parter, much hinged on the cliffhanger. Oh dear , even this was badly handled with 3 seperate slow Alien reveals while everyone stands around and watches. The Aliens themself are average, and some of the effects work looked unfinished.

Then to make matters worse the 'next week' segment follows straight on, losing any dramatic tension built up. One of the aims of the show was to educate children to expect better TV. I am afraid this was not a good example. Children are much smarter than RTD gives them credit for.

One of the greatest pleasures I have had in the past few weeks has been the number of people who knowing my devotion to Doctor Who, have come up to me at work and told me how amazed they have been by the new series. I suspect that come monday morning i will be reminded of some of the darker moments of the Eighties.

Still onwards and upwards. Doctor saves the world, and bring on the Daleks!

Russell T Davies was the ideal choice to relaunch Doctor Who. There can be no doubt about it. Not only was he a fan, he was a top notch writer with experience in both genre and real-life drama.

What's becoming most interesting is that it is his real-life drama experience which seems to be working best in his latest project.

Doctor Who is never again going to be about hitting the reset button each week, having an adventure, disappearing off to find adventure somewhere else. And quite rightly. Today's audiences expect rounded characters, story arcs, teasing surprises. All of this Davis excels at. But there does seem to be a slight tension in his writing between this form of storytelling and his wish to keep Doctor Who recognisable as the show he always loved.

Alien of London was a perfect example of this. Rose returning a year later to the consequences of her departure - pitch perfect. Even Mickey the Plastic Actor gave a reasonable account of himself in this side of the show. The 'Bad Wolf' reference continues to tease, the spaceship crash was pitch-perfect, the news reporting, while at times a little melodramatic, was a great touch. The whole 'First Contact' angle was lovely. And we got a mention of UNIT into the bargain. Great.

Then we come to the problems. This is a family show. The BBC don't really need fans tuning in every week, they need families. So slapstick humour, manic grinning with 'fantastic' attached, the odd (perpetually awful) incidental music ding-a-ling I can understand and really don't mind. This aint Ultraviolet. But why did nobody at any point realise that today's children are savvy. They like dark, hard-edged stuff - take a look at Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket and the Philip Pullman novels. Have a look at the size of Buffy's audience which was preteen. Burping bins and farting aliens who giggle at their flatulence just weaken the show. There are better ways to please the target audience whilst not irritating everyone over 12 (still a sizeable proportion of the audience) who are watching.

Then there are the Slitheen. Sigh. And things were going so well. The Autons were a bit clunky, but you could see the thinking. The freak show in The End of the World was wonderful. The Gelth were absolutely, wide-eyed awesome. It looks like Ep 5's budget was splurged on the crash-landing, leaving us with rubber suits with bobble heads, horrible fake human skins and the dodgiest transformation CGI this side of Red Dwarf - which was at least a comedy at heart. Compare this to the CGI in The End of the World. You'd swear you were watching a different show.

The performances ... I seem to recall hearing that a lot of this ep was filmed at the start of the shoot, which would explain Chris Ecclestone's slight shakiness (much more reminiscent of Rose than the masterclass of the previous 2 episodes). It's ironic that Billie Piper was the casting which caused the most controversy, since she consistently steals every episode. It speaks volumes that, upon Ecclestone quitting, I was immeasurably relieved to hear that Billie would be staying.

The story could well wrap up nicely next week, we'll have to wait and see.

So, for me, Ep 2 remains the most satisfying so far. But, not to worry, for the all-conquering Dalek storylines, Simon Pegg and Paul Cornell's eps are still to come!

It has to be said that Aliens of London is the episode of the series so far that has left me least ecstatic - whether that is because of the quality of the episode, or just because the novelty of new Doctor Who is subsiding remains to be seen. However there were many bits that I liked and some that I was not so keen on.

The crash landing and the mocked up BBC News 24 coverage was excellent - as had been expected from last week's trailer. It's good to see a full scale invasion of Earth again - with the army, politicians and mock TV crews - and this felt like very traditional Who territory. In fact, there were many elements that made this episode feel more like the old series than any of the previous three. In many respects it felt reassuringly familiar. It is obvious that the two parter format is going to allow for more slow-building, complex plots and this, again, felt more like 'classic' Who. While not being overly complex, the plot was interesting, and the idea of the faked crash landing good. The mention of UNIT was also a nice little touch, put in to excite those of us who care about these things. The Doctor was once again quickly bossing around soldiers, just as he used to do in the Pertwee days. The Slitheen look very like traditional Who monsters, right down to their slightly rubbery, 70s looking costumes. And there was a cliffhanger! Just like the old series...only this one was largely negated by the teaser trailer for next week. Yes, I know nobody expects that the Doctor is about to die, but to see him running around grinning, just three seconds after the cliffhanger takes the edge off of it a little bit. That was a shame.

So, there were many elements to this episode that seem, on paper at least, to be very 'old Who'. However, if anybody was expecting Spearhead from Space, they were in for a shock. This was '2005 Who' through and through (and more specifically 'RTD Who'). After the sombre ghosts of The Unquiet Dead I think some people may have been unprepared for farting aliens and flying pigs, however I think that, outrageous as these elements seem, they managed to work - just. While they were a little too frequent, at least the fart gags did have a reasoning and purpose in the plot (beyond making the kids laugh). And the pig - well that was a complete surprise and an audacious move. I find that, as silly as 'RTD Who' (in contrast to The Unquiet Dead) can sometimes be, I do actually quite like it. And I think the reason is that it is so fresh and daring that it takes my breath away. It is so different to how the series was, while still being recognisably Who, that I can't help but be impressed. It would have been inconceivable in the old series that a companion would turn around to the Doctor and say "you're so gay", but in Aliens of London it was a minor aside that seemed so natural I'd completely forgotten about it five minutes later.

Other non-traditional elements of the story were, of course, the 'domestic scenes' and, once again, these do work. I love Rose's mum and even Mickey is alright this time around. However, I do feel that the series should now start to move on a bit beyond 'Rose's story'. It's been refreshing to see that the companion, and the effects of time travel on her, have been handled realistically, and she has been given a background. But if Rose is still squealing "but it's soooo alien", endlessly pondering the effects of time travel and arguing with her boyfriend and mum by episode 13, it may have got a bit soapish and a bit boring.

Finally, I just need to make a point about Christopher Eccleston's Doctor. Although his portrayal is largely good and his relationship with Rose interesting and intriguing, I just wish he would stop laughing and grinning inanely at everything! It sometimes seems a little put-on and makes me wince (I think it was in the car going to Downing Street). There seems to be a hint of a slightly pseudo-sexual relationship developing between the Doctor and Rose and it will be interesting to see how that pans out over the series - tricky territory.

All in all then, I enjoyed Aliens of London. The silliness really should have been toned down a bit, and hopefully CE will calm down a little as the series goes on, but Doctor Who is still the most original, enjoyable, clever and interesting programme on TV on a Saturday night by a long shot.

Now back to the story (or episode?) itself. It opened with a brief re-cap from episode 1 'Rose' , reminding viewers that Rose has a family, boyfriend and past. This nicely sets up this near-future adventure which reintroduces these elements. The Tardis arrives in the pre-credits sequence only for the Doctor to discover that Rose hasn't been returned 12 hours after she originally left, but rather 12 months!

All this is a rather slow and predictable opening, but things soon pick up when the UFO flies overhead and hovers over London's landmarks and finally crashing through Big Ben and falling into the Thames. This particular scene is wonderful and superbly filmed, the model sequences here are some of the best ever presented, and all the partial-authentic News 24 stuff following was very well done and added more credibility to the whole proceedings. It was great seeing the Doctor sat down watching the tele, only to have Rose's flat populated with friends and family constantly talking in the background and effecting the Doctor's concentration. Very much something I can identify with!

The Doctor being confronted by the army was another fantastic scene, and then seeing that Pig in a spacesuit, was astonishing and is something that you could only find in Doctor Who. The Doctor's reaction to it's death was very moving and surprisingly effective, and what about those farting aliens, well, they were certainly something new to Doctor Who, and the big kid in me found these moments very funny (I'm easy to please!).

When we see the Slitheen revealed by their unmasking towards the end of the episode by unzipping their foreheads (and how great was THAT effect, it helpfully explained how Scaroth and the Foamasi probably concealed themselves under very convincing human skins). The cliffhanger ending was brilliant, and with the Doctor and friends in immediate peril it brought the whole thing to an adrenaline rushed finale! Shame then that it was followed by a teaser for the follow-up episode, it kind of took the shine off the ending somewhat. What a missed opportunity!

Still, overall the episode was pretty good and ticked most of the right boxes, it was funny, dramatic, shocking and action-packed. Billie Piper is still magnificent and lovely as Rose, and Christopher Eccleston as the Doctor is great, the best Doctor since Peter Davison in my opinion. Now you must excuse me, but my bowels are about to release something quite fowl I think. 8/10

To begin I must admit that this has been my favorite episode so far. I have been fascinated by the background story of the Doctor and the time war and actually gasped when it was revealed that Gallifrey was gone. Anyway this story, at least in episode 1, has been pretty lean on the details only revealing information that was already known (ie the Doctor is 900 and UNIT wouldn't recognize him due to regeneration). It is with this that I think the show's producers have made a bit of a mistake. The Doctor is over 900 yes, but he does age. If I recall he has been 900+ since the days of Tom Baker but he must have aged along since then. I mean was he 900 when Hartnell was the Doctor (I am not sure) but if he was did he really manage to get there on one regeneration and has burned 9 since then? Ugh, with no carry-over companion it was a perfect moment to age the Doctor. Anyway, a small point.

I really liked how the Doctor and Rose are on the outside looking in for a while. That they were forced to watch the crash on TV like everyone else was a good way to go about things. Far to often in the past the Doctor has shown up and just said, "I'm the Doctor and I'm here to help" and with no questions it is accepted. I thought it would be a good place to use the psychic paper (which I think is a good way of getting the Doctor in on a story, especially considering the fast pace of things) but the way they did it was brilliant. The news casts, etc.. also made it feel much more real! I was very impressed.

The story itself is really quite good as well. I was pretty upset when it was over and really wanted more. There are a few issues (such as the flatuence) but overall I thought it was really well done. The story seemed a bit slower than the other episodes but this is probably because they have 2 episodes to work with instead of one, and I really like this. It gives time to build the story up over the first episode and then have the crazy, fast paced "save the world" action sequences in episode 2 of the 2 parter. I'm expecting the second episode to move quite quickly. The pig-alien was a big disappointment but they made up for it a bit with the reasons and the unfolding story line.

The special effects were a little dubious in parts. The "unzip the head" style movement from person to person the aliens use was pretty tacky (in my opinion) but the actual aliens themselves were wonderfully done. The crashing of the space ship in London was magnificent and really set the tone for the episode itself. I guess I should be used to some dubious effects in Doctor Who as I am a newer fan who got into the series during the last season of McCoy and thus have been used to the dated effects of years past. It is a bit of a style for Who but I am starting to feel the "blue light" effects are getting a bit old. Hopefully with Daleks and others coming we won't see this effect for a while or it risks becoming the wrinkle of star trek (ie all aliens are human just with wrinkles located in different parts).

Over all I am really excited as this is the first time I have experienced a true cliff-hanger. The old days saw me watching Who on PBS and so it was complete serials rather than episodes. This is the first time I have actually had to wait a week to see an episode because it hasn't been broadcast yet. Based on part 1 of this story I hope they do more dual-part episodes in season two. Anyway that's it for now, time to go eat some jelli-babies.