Last week saw the start of the first two-part Doctor Who story in the new series and what a great start it was so this weeks episode already had a built in audience of over 7 million viewers, all anxious to see how the story ends.

World War III has a beginning that most viewers saw at the end of the previous episode, which in itself was characteristic of Doctor Who and immediately grabs the audiences attention.

It starts, as we all know (or if you don’t, watch the 4th episode), with the Doctor and other alien experts being electrocuted by aliens. The Doctor, on the spur of the moment, puts a tag on one of the aliens and they all start shaking writhing around with the electrocution, even the one in Rose’s mother’s house. Mickey enters Jackie’s house, grabs the chair and the alien over the head, then gets her up and they stumble out of the house. Meanwhile, at 10 Downing Street, the Doctor has recovered and gets the guards to come inside, where the aliens are. The aliens get the tag off and put the skin of the human back on. The Doctor enters the room with the guards, who don’t believe his theory that the two men at the front of the room are aliens, so he runs away. He gets cornered, but against a lift, which promptly opens and the Doctor makes his escape.

Rose and Harriet Jones are now running from an alien, as the Doctor appears when the lift doors open, sees the alien and promptly closes the doors again. He emerges on a higher floor. After more chasing, the Slitheen reveal the it’s not their race, but their surname and that they are here to start World War III and then sell off the radioactive chunks of the planet for fuel. The Doctor then closes the emergency steel doors and shutters, trapping the Doctor, Rose and Harriet Jones in the cabinet room. Meanwhile, the UN is voting to decide whether it should allow Britain to have the access codes to their nuclear weapons. Rose receives a text message from Mickey. She rings him. Mickey sees the UN on the news and puts the phone to the speakers. The UN have voted to allow the access codes to be released. The Doctor has an idea, but it may not be safe for Rose. Harriet Jones steps in and announces it is her decision to make, as the only elected representative of the people in the room. She tells the Doctor to do it. The Doctor tells Mickey the “idiot” to go to his computer and go to the UNIT website. He does so and the white home page of UNIT’s website (which is actually available at www.unit.org.uk) appears on the screen. After revealing the password (which also works on the website) the Doctor instructs Mickey to launch a missile at 10 Downing Street. Rose suggests they hide under a doorway, as you do during an earthquake. The Guards become aware of the missile and one of them runs upstairs to tell the minister, the General and the MI5 people, only to find that they are all aliens. He runs out and all the guards and press told to evacuate the area. The aliens, waiting for the phone to ring with the access codes, are blown to bits.

The steel box that is the Cabinet room is left sitting in amongst a pile of rubble, as the doors open and out come the Doctor, Rose and Harriet Jones, who later becomes the Prime Minister for three successive terms according to the Doctor. After that, Rose packs and she and the Doctor leave.

So the story was good and so was it’s execution (having the UNIT website actually available was great too), but was it as good an end as the first episode was a begin? In short, yes it was. The Doctor was more himself than in any other episode before it in this new series, from running away form guards to saving the world whilst trapped in a steel box, this was Doctor Who.

The direction of it was, of course much the same as the previous episode and it was just as good. The CGI was pretty good too, from the aliens running around to a missile flying over and into central London. However, they still look too ‘clean’, in other words, you can tell quite clearly that it is CGI on a real London backdrop for example and it still doesn’t come up to the standard seen in other sci-fi series such as Star Trek Enterprise and Battlestar Galactica. So the graphical side is still lacking in this new series and needs to get better. The preview of the Dalek episode promises to make a start on improving this, partly because a lot of it is real, such as the Dalek itself.

Although this was a good story and Christopher Eccleston did some great acting, I still can’t help feeling he’s not quite the Doctor, but this does make me look forward to the second season, with David Tennent, even more. So thumbs up as far as the new series goes and I’m sure I speak for millions when I say, I can’t wait for the next episode. Roll on Saturday!

Ugh.

World War 3 was a huge disappointment when compared with Aliens of London. Aliens was my favorite episode of the new series and I had high hopes for the second episode of the serial. As I expected the action was fast and furious but it didn't really last.

I guess that is my first complaint: two much of the Rose/Doctor/Mother/Mickey dynamic. While I really liked the angle where they returned to Rose's time and we saw what happened with her and family, etc... there was just a little bit to much of it this time. In my opinion this should be the backstory, a sub-plot that rounds out an episode. This dynamic almost dominated the episode. Considering the amount of this that we had in the first episode of the serial as well there was just a bit to much for my taste. The part where they were locked in the cabinet room and that part of the story was great and touching, but the last 8-10 minutes of the episode were not as good. I'm not saying that I don't like this stuff but weave it into the story line better. I must admit I let out a huge sigh of relief when Mickey declined the offer of a spot in the Tardis. *whew*

My second complaint is that the aliens were way to goofy this time. The farting, etc... was a bit much in the first part but their goofy antics in the second part were just over the top. A few times in the episode they frantically tried to put their suits back on...this was ok the first time but the second time they tried it was dumb. The way that the PM and the general acted was also ridiculous and the mindless idiots in the complex just accept that the two goofiest people ever are now running the country. The foolishness of the aliens can be forgiven this time but I fear they are continually going to be this way. Hopefully they won't be.

The story is just a tad bit ridiculous as well. I especially find it hard to believe that when the Prime Minister has a news conference warning of the vast amount of weapons in space that no one else bothers to verify it. I mean surly a country like the United States may attempt to check this out on their own, or perhaps an amateur astronomer with $500 telescope in his backyard? The United Nations is going to vote to give nuclear codes to the UK without even checking the sky for themselves? If a mothership is lined up so perfectly that the UK can determine its belly is right over London then surely someone else could have seen these aliens. Ugh. It just is to much. I know it is science fiction and everything and they have to move the story on at a fast pace, but if the story is this foolish perhaps they should tighten it up a bit. After all they invested two epsiodes in this story, maybe they should have taken the time to build a solid second episode.

This is the first time I have been disappointed by the new series and it is unfortunately a BIG let down after Aliens of London. Another thing that concerns me is that after Aliens of London there may have been a lot of buzz an the second part may have had a higher viewership due to the positive talk. A lot of new, first time watchers may have tuned in to see the poorest episode thus far and may decide to give up on Doctor Who based on this one.

Since Charlton Heston pounded the sand in front of the down-on-her-luck Lady Liberty we've all known what Sci Fi was capable of. A level of shocking, nerve tingling brutality that domestic drama just can't replicate. Last night's Doctor Who somehow managed combine domestic drama with a sci fi shock which will stay in viewer's minds for sometime to come. The sight of Rose's mum waiting for 10 seconds and Micky starting what must have been an all-nighter staring at that spot was gut wrenching, finally a glimpse of how this series can better its previous incarnations. The ending to this episode was little short of genius.

Following last week's Aliens of London this episode was for me, duty over desire, and expectations were low. Seeing the Slitheen incapacitated by their own weapon and managing to get back into disguise just in time for the Doctor to return and look a wally in front of the military hinted at more of last week's pointless capering. However, what emerged from this was an excellent character driven disaster movie where Eccleston's grinning was reigned in for enough time for him to completely endear himself to his audience. Covering up for Mickey's reluctance to leave in the TARDIS, being unable to make the ultimate decision to risk his companion's life, diplomatically threatening the Slitheen that he would stop them if they didn't leave and finally nervously pacing the TARDIS waiting for Rose to ditch shepherd's pie for some stellar surfing added up to Eccleston's best performance to date.

I dont know what was different about this episode compared with last week's, perhaps it was the emotionally packed conclusion, the fact that each of the Doctor's associates had something meaningful to do, the emerging series continuity, it might have been the glass of wine I had with my dinner, whatever it was it made the farting seem less annoying. Whilst I wouldn't take back any comments made about the last episode this one certainly put to bed the notion that RTD couldn't write for his own series.

One minor gripe would be the obvious political commentry, the fat greedy Slitheen start a false war motivated by profit citing the presence of massive weapons of destruction and its New York where the decision is made to go ahead (geddit?). Sci Fi deconstructing the present through images of the future is nothing new, nor is it unwelcome, Star Trek, The Prisoner, Planet of the Apes and others have all commented on contemporary politics with great effect. Unfortunately when Andrew Marr is standing outside No. 10 talking about "massive weapons of destruction" the message is as subtle as a sledgehammer with 'I'm a political statement about the present govornment' written on it. The kids didn't get it and the adults all thought it anyway, this didn't change anyone's mind offer a moment of reflection and, for some, may have even been in poor taste. This is especially frustrating when Rose's own heartbreaking departure represented a triumph of open mindedness Vs xenophobia which far better made the point I feel RTD was getting at.

So my review started with the end and ended with the end which may be a little unfair to the rest of the episode. It was great fun with genuinely superb moments, what more could one ask for? Ans, The Daleks, oh yeah that's next week.

After watching Episode 4 "Aliens of London" I had high expectations of "World War Three". But after viewing it, I feel that I was cheated. Russell T. Davies should really start thinking about other writers taking over the show. I just feel he doesn't have the ability to put out good "Doctor Who" stories. When writing for science fiction I feel one must always have believable situations backed up by some science. But with "World War Three" I found more plot holes than any other Doctor Who story I have ever seen.

It seems like RTD was halfway through writing the whole story, thought it wasn't good enough so then went in a completely different direction. The idea of Aliens faking a crash landing to kill all the experts on Earth so they won't have anybody to fight back is a good one. But when you start throwing in a family of "Aliens" who really just want us to nuke ourself so they can then sell the earth for scrap, is completely unbelievable. First off, the have a spaceship, they have better technology, yet they somehow can't seem to blow us up or the planet for that matter. If your from outer space and your in the "Business" of destroying worlds and selling them off as scrap, wouldn't you think you might have at some point just gotten weapons yourself to do it, and skip the whole 1-5 year plan of taking over governments and causing war?

Second: What was with the vinegar thing? That just made me feel like RTD thought we were stupid. It was like the garbage can that "eats" Micky in episode 1 which burps. This is a family show, but this latest story gave us farting aliens who die if you throw pickled eggs or salad dressing at them. I'm all for having a little bit of "camp" in an episode. But I don't think this is a comedy. Also when somebody gets on national television and claims a spaceship is right above the United Kingdom, don't tell me NOBODY takes a telescope or maybe just LOOKS UP! and says "Ummm it isn't their liar!". I feel that out of all the episodes so far, this was the laziest writing of them all. The 9th doctor really doesn't do anything here. He just talks on the mobile and gets Micky, Rose, Jackie and Harriet to do everything for him. And a good note though, once again Billie Piper shines throughout the episode. Christopher Eccelson is beginning to behave worse than Colin Bakers doctor though. I hate to say it but I'm kinda looking forward to him regenerating.

Third: Either make Jackie and Micky companions, or just drop them. I'm tired of going back and forth from Rose's life, to the Doctor's. The whole point of Doctor who's companions is that they are taken away from the world they know and put into outer space on adventures. It doesn't work when they "Visit" home every other episode. What's next? She forgets her favourite CD and goes home for zips home quick second to pick it up? For a doctor who doesn't do "domestics" he spends a lot of time with Roses family and friends. And I know in this episode it was only because of the situation that he interacted with them, but I checked upcoming episode casts and Jackie and Micky will be back.

I do have to say though the costumes and special effects were good. But I feel RTD has to make a choice, either write for Doctor Who, or produce it. But I don't think he can do both. The best episode so far wasn't written by him and it was the best. When you want the viewers to believe that you can hack into government missile control using just ONE password from your home computer.......its time to call in other writers. In the meantime, bring on the Daleks!!!

Downing Street exploding in a ball of flames, more farting, and Mickey saving the world ... just in time for tea at Rose's mum's house. Sounds ridiculous? Well, that is because it is.

If you take it all with a pinch of salt, it is all good fun and frolics on a Saturday night but World War Three was nothing really all that special despite some of the grand effects. While Aliens of London had its bad points, I still enjoyed it quite a lot and it had a lot of memorable scenes. I didn't think World War Three was as good - despite the big explosions and the grand scale of the events - it did not have the eerie impact of Dalek and Cybermen invasion episodes of yesteryear which both also had big London landmarks throughout.

After the fearsome Autons, the evil Cassandra, and the chilling Gelth zombies, the Slitheen just seemed so... gay (as Rose might put it).

Dr Who has gained a lot of credibility in recent weeks for good storylines and scary aliens, but the old fashioned green bug eyed monster never hit the mark for me. These are one type of alien I would not like to see come back but I did like the unzipping effect.

While there were some nice touches (the Doctor realising that the army would never take him seriously that the Prime Minster was actually a green alien), and the vinegary death of one of the Slitheen), I don't think World War Three ever got going.

Even Andrew Marr's brief reporting scene, which was done pretty well last week, was lacking in sparkle - the other journalist seemed like an actor rather than a serious news reader. In previous episodes I have laughed out loud at some of the lines, but it all got a bit bogged down at times in this episode. The exchange between the Dr, Rose and Hariott and the Slitheen towards the end of the episode before the Dr closed the door had possibilities, you would have thought, but it seemed to be lacking.

While all this seems a bit critical, I still enjoyed it and the show was harmless fun. There was an element of claustrophobia in it and there were some neat touches (I liked the Dr's escape into the elevator) - the episode just lacked some depth and gravitas which some of the previous episodes have had and left me gasping for more.

The teaser for next week was thrilling though and the Dalek lighting up and coming to life just made me feel like a kid again. And perhaps that is the whole point. The show is aimed primarily at children and it is a family show. There are some great lines of dialogue. There was one great scene of tension as the Dr deliberates over the next course of action as he is asked by Rose's mum about whether her daughter will be safe or not. It was good pathos and one of the best scenes in the episode as it reached its climax.The ending as Rose and the Dr leave did not have the same glorious hit the nerve impact of previous episode endings but at least the teaser made up for that! While it was understated, it just didn't feel all that special and after Mickey saving the world, his overtures to the Dr that he was too scared to go in the Tardis did not rest easily with this. Why would he tell the Dr not to tell Rose this - it just seemed a bit weak.

I would have preferred if Rose had just left again of her own accord and not tell anybody rather than this twee kind of ending.

Overall, perhaps destroying Downing Street was going a bit far? Hariot was okay and may have made a half decent companion but becoming the new Prime Minister at the end seemed a little bit predictable. It was all good fun anyway and while it was probably the weakest episode so far, it was still exciting. Roll on the Daleks to truly exterminate Celebrity Wrestling once and for all

Well, slightly better than the scatological absurdity that was, in general, Aliens of London. Sadly RTD still saw fit to stretch out the flatulence idiocy to the second part, but thankfully it was much less prominent than in the first episode. Unlike the Colin Baker x2 45-minuters of Season 22 which tended to deteriorate from good premises in the first episodes to bathetic run-arounds in the second episodes (bar Revelation of the Daleks of course), World War III was a (small) improvement on its opening episode, but still not enough of an improvement to redeem this generally peurile two parter.

Re-watching it I thought to myself: is this what we've waited sixteen years for? This sort of soft-focus, cod-filmic, nauseatingly contemporaneous and flimsily scripted near-pastiche of the old classic series? Unquiet Dead excepted, so far New Who is a very very pale shadow of Old Who, and it makes me almost long for the days of the cheaper but more inventive, video-dominated McCoy era (bar of course S24). To me New Who just doesn't convince and I'm afraid neither does the Ninth Doctor: Eccleston, powerful actor though he is, simply wasn't suited to this part, as I suspected prior to the series airing. If his 'northernness' had been more understated and his image, ironically, more overstated, so he resembled something a little more interesting than an ordinary bloke straight out from a Salford pub, then he might have made a pretty memorable incarnation. I just can't get used to this Doctor despite occasional attempts to bring some vague bit of gravitas to his performance. The eccentricity just isn't really there - at least not convincingly. There are many highly gifted actors who are not suited to this particular role, and Eccleston is one of them. Whilst there were/are legion other far more suitable actors/character actors who were/are begging to be put in the role for the Ninth and Tenth Doctors (Tennant isn't too bad a choice, but I'm not very keen on his latest assertions of wanting to do it with his Scottish accent and in a kilt): David Collings (always my first choice and still going strong, though not on TV), David Warner, Rhys Ifans (to my mind the most obvious choice now, in the ascendant as an actor and the right sort of age range plus eccentric and very versatile), Pete Posthleswaite - even, to some extent, Daniel Craig. Still, as with general style and storylines, it's all been decided for us behind closed doors.

Back to World War III (what a dull and unimaginative title): improvements include generally convincing and well-realised Slitheens - not so much the CGI which makes them look almost totally different due to their Alien-esque movements - bar one shot of a bobbing head; fairly nice change on the old invasion plot, the Slitheens actually being a family business of marauding capitalists, though this all seemed a bit implausible really; touch of polemic with the '45 second' clause, let down a bit by RTD's typically clumsy and overly obvious writing; the Doctor was doing more of the thinking this time than his companions (used to be the other way round in the old series of course, bar early Hartnell stories); the Doctor remembering Harriet Jones will become Prime Minister of a future golden age; far less fart jokes. Right, that's it.

Quandaries: did one of the Slitheen say 'Oh boll....' as it was being blown up at the end? I think so. Could you imagine any of the old aliens exclaiming such a terrestrial expression on being destroyed? Simply inappropriate for Who and more in keeping with comedy sci-fi films or Hitchiker's (on which RTD seems to be basing most of his New Who vision - perhaps someone should mention to him that Who isn't actually meant to be a comedy? And for that matter, Hitchiker's was funny). It seemed very easy to hack into UNIT's computer network and casually set off a missile; it also seemed very convenient that the first missile Mickey clicked on happened to be the one they needed!

Criticisms: the domestic scenes, which are a scandalous waste of potential plot/Doctor development time, not to mention general story time. Jackie is excruciatingly annoying and superfluous as far as I am concerned - it's a pity the one Earth family milked in the series, which is irritating in itself, happens to have as its matriarch a sexually frustrated paroxide-blond air-head who wears tracksuit tops! Another sign of the BBC's patronising opinion of the public. Whilst Mickey's actor admittedly does put a lot into his part, and can be quite amusing sometimes, again, what's the bloody point? THIS IS NOT SUPPOSED TO BE YET ANOTHER TEDIOUS SOAP OPERA! Doctor Who is supposed to be one of the very few programmes which can offer an alternative to the usual peurile viewing!

The climax was pretty far-fetched over all and implausibly providential. Why wasn't UNIT featured more substantially? If you're going to have explosions solving everything in a contemporary Earth setting, you may as well throw UNIT into the pugilist proceedings.

Over all then, a pretty vacuous story with a marginally better second episode, but, let us not forget (or rather, let us forget) a lavatorial opening episode which went to prove decisively that Weapons of Who Destruction can definitely be deployed in just 45 minutes!

Roll on 'Dalek', for God's sake...