The secret of watching the new Doctor Who series is simple. If you are perturbed by any scene, any comment,any monster...then just try and think why RTD wanted it there in the fist place. The man knows his stuff. The burping bins, the flatulent aliens that so many old-school viewers will no doubt complain about, are there for the kids. They will love imitating the Slitheen, the ET type creatures in ALIENS OF LONDON. You can imagine, and probably hear, the school playgrounds on Monday morning. And that is the magic of Doctor Who and the magic of RTD.

Previously, on Doctor Who....

We've marvelled at how, in reinventing the show for the 21st Century, post-Buffy, tv-savvy family audience, RTD et al have kept the show eerily familiar for us older fans. Sure, the action is faster as dictated by the 45 minute format, and the sets don't wobble, and the effects are actually effective, but the essence of the series is still that of the show we've loved for over 40 years.

But in Aliens Of London, we encounter an entirely knew concept - and a welcome one at that. Yes, over the years, many an adolescent boy has felt the first stirrings of something alien in his pants at the sight of the Doctor's companions. And yes, we've all hidden behind the sofa as the latest Little Miss Screamy is threatened by the alien of the week.

Yet, somewhat strangely, we've never really had an exploration of the aftermath of a young woman absconding with a 900-yr old timelord. OK, so there was a brief, throwaway line in Survival, but here we have a whole backstory about Rose's departure. And it works! Strangely, it fits right in with traditional Who. Set against the backdrop of an alien incursion, we hear about the 12 month search for Rose, the suspicion thrown at Mickey, and the suffering of Rose's mother. Its that classic Who mix of huge world/cosmos shattering events with a parochial subtext that has always played a big part of the show's appeal.

As for the main plot itself, its the usual high standard the new series has become synonymous with. The farting aliens wear a little, the gag is overdone a tad, but the plot twists are inventive and tidy. The cliffhanger (thank God they're back!) is right up there with Deadly Assassin Episode 3, Remembrance episode 1, and all your other favourites.

Tidy performances from the supporting cast, and a fleeting glimpse of UNIT, adds yet another success to the RTD vision of Doctor Who. And after 16 years of VHS and DVD watching, I find myself enjoying the fact I HAVE to wait seven days for the resolution. For the first time since I first heard a CND spokmesman, I'm really looking forward to World War III.

Don’t you dare make this place domestic.

Why didn’t RTD take his own advice when he wrote those words? Aliens of London had all the promise of a great Doctor Who story but failed. But why did it fail when episodes 2 and 3 showed great things for this new series?

A great place to start is the pig. It highlights everything that RTD gets wrong when he writes an Earth based story. Instead of finding humour in the situation that is happening, he grafts slapstick humour onto it in the same way that the aliens graft a pigs head onto a bipedal body to disguise it. Let face it, after the 10th fart from an evil alien supposedly hell bent on world domination it’s no longer amusing, it’s very annoying!

When RTD is faced with the reality of present day Earth he no longer has the same pallet of the bizarre and the extraordinary to draw upon. What he needs to remember is that we’re in the age of “Shrek” where family entertainment can pitch to more than one level. We are far more sophisticated than the audience that watched “Doctor Who” 15 years ago. Don’t forget that this is family viewing, and at 7pm on a Saturday it’s the parents who have the remote control. If you lose that part of the audience you risk losing all of it. Furthermore, what becomes even more annoying is his overwhelming desire to make every situation funny. My biggest piece of advice to RTD is – if there is something funny in the situation, use it. If the situation is not funny then please don’t graft on the slapstick humour, as it’s very lazy writing.

The second problem with episode four is this inclusion of domestic drama. While RTD is obviously pitching the farting to the 4 and under, he’s trying to add drama for the adults to latch onto. Please DON’T do it! If we want domestic drama we have a number of soaps that do it far better. On a Saturday evening I want flights of fantasy, but instead I got a very poor episode of the Demon Headmaster crossed with Hollyoaks.

Unfortunately we are seeing a very obvious trend here. If you want to see classic “Doctor Who” then don’t watch any of the present day earth-based episodes penned by RTD. On a more possitive note however, hidden between these rather weak stories are some classic gems, and I guess that’s how “Doctor Who” always was.

Well, I guess we had to have a cringeworthy moment or two at some point in the series otherwise it wouldn't be the full Dr Who experience!

Like many others, I thoroughly enjoyed the first part of this episode; the alien crash landing, the news reports (the Blue Peter interruption had me laughing out loud) and of course the wonderful dialogue between Rose and the Doctor. These two are fast becoming my favourite TARDIS team as they play off each other so well. It is so refreshing for the series to explore more deeply the back story of a companion and the ramifications of their actions in disappearing with the Doctor.

And then we have the Slitheen - ready to join the ranks of the Garm, the Myrka, The Ergon (insert your favourite woeful monster here) as a failed realisation of a monster idea. Then again, my main problem was less with the poor realisation of these creatures (lets face it, they were still more impressive than many monsters in the classic series- just not up to par in this one) but more with the way they seem to be in the wrong story.

This episode encouraged me at first that we were finally going to see Dr Who deal with the concept of aliens visiting London realistically. The destruction of Big Ben, news reports, Number 10 in a panic, I was enjoying the realism in this approach. Lets face it, Dr who has been pretty woeful on this score before - explaining away Dalek spaceships landing in a London playground as humanity's capacity for self deception always rankled me. Here was a much more effective approach - one we could relate to should we ever see a spaceship fly overhead.

But all these efforts at realism were destroyed by turning the aliens into a farce. If the aliens had been written with a more serious undercurrent, this episode could have been truly chilling. As it was, the farting and overacting sucked the tension out of the whole scenario, destroying all the wonderful suspense built in the first half.

And was I the only one who thought the cliffhanger was drawn out? Yes we get the point, you don't need to cut between the three scenes ten times to show us the same information. All three groups threatened by monsters. Got it. I hate to say it, but I was almost relieved when the titles came up because the cliiffhanger had been flagged about a full minute before it actually occurred and I was just waiting for them to finally admit it.

So far the weakest episode of the series (End of the World being one of my fave Dr Who stories EVER). Lets hope the slitheen can regain some respect in the next episode, although I suspect the jump between CGI creatures chasing around Number 10 and the more clumsy and obviously animatronic models is going to be rather jarring.

In Dr. WHO’s past, companions would arrive back on Earth after a year or two away, to be met with a brief where’ve you been?, only to be brushed off with an instant request for supper or the like. This was more realistic - Rose’s pictures up as a Missing Person, with Mickey questioned as a murder suspect.

Russell T. Davies’ evocation of a UFO crash-landing into the Thames after having nipped into the Big Ben was completely fresh, bold, daring - post 9/11, hence contemporary. The image of the Big Ben impact received a lot of coverage and will I’m sure remain in the Top 100 Iconic moments of DR. WHO of all time.

Elsewhere, the script was fast-paced and visual. Only a moment prefaced The Doctor leading the U.N.I.T.? soldiers through the double doors (an Eccleston moment this) onward.

The domestic scene of The Doctor fighting for control of the TV remote in Jackie’s lounge to catch BBC News 24 bulletins of the UFO was just great. I caught the bulletins for this episode first on the website and I was very impressed. They were played completely straight, as Kenneth Kendall and Alex MacIntosh had done previously - mostly in the Pertwee era.

While The Doctor’s no stranger to earnest BBC news coverage of alien invasions (how many years has it been?) The Doctor’s having to “do domestic” in a sustained way for the very first time. He wasn’t even around when Benton & Yates were making corned beef sandwiches. Jackie (& Mickey) see inside the TARDIS. Jackie promptly calls the hotline and reports the Doctor as an alien. But far from being entangled in red tape, he's rescued by an Internet search engine - only to discover than the sinister Slitheen want all the experts in one room to electrocute.

The Doctor & Rose being feted in a chauffeur- driven limo to No 10 brought back memories when our leading man was an Establishment Darling - Hartnell in “THE WAR MACHINES” & Jon Pertwee - before Tom Baker rebelled against the thought of tea at the Palace and became a Bohemian again.

I personally thought the farting aliens wouldn’t have been passed by JNT for Season 24 or even Tom Baker in his wilder excesses, but the strength of the production as a whole reduced them to only a ‘passing embarrassment’. It was clear these were aliens having trouble adapting to human bodies. I experience this myself from time to time...

The overweight Regional politician was clearly John Prescott, so expect him to land a knock-out blow. And the PM who fell from the closet bore more than a passing resemblance to Tony Blair. Since this is set a year on from now, I do hope not.

The cliff-hanger was extended and played for all it was worth. The Slitheen worked to script as appearing either cute or menacing.

Personal Rating: 9 and a half / 10 (shame about the farts).

Being a long-time Doctor Who fan is, at the moment, something of a treat - people keep coming up to me and saying "You know, you were right, it's actually very good!" And tonight's episode got the thumbs up from the previously uncommitted in our house (although, after last week's murdering corpse, the smallest viewer - 2 year's old - had to make do with only the first 50% of the show).

Tonight's episode rattled along and paid homage to that most familiar of Who storylines - the taking of central London by aliens ... and these ones were undeterred by the congestion charge (although I did pick up on the quip about Ken Livingston). And the first multi-part story gave us our first cliff-hanger (and a decent one is was too). But ... the story doesn't seem to have got very far as regards the main action. Aliens have landed in London and taken on key positions of authority - the Doctor knows that the spaceship in the Thames is a decoy and now all 'alien experts' (that is experts ON aliens, as opposed to experts who happen to be aliens) are now trapped in 10 Downing Street where they can be eliminated. Don't get me wrong, it's still a great story (I especially liked the line about a spaceship ploughing through Big Ben was "just too perfect"), but it feels a bit slow compared to the snappy one-parters.

While I'm feeling in critical mood -

1. The "Rose-returning-home" plot is something completely new for Doctor Who and a storyline that us 30-somethings will need to get used to. It did seem to get in the way of the action in this episode - although it was very well performed throughout (good line about Micky not seeing anyone else; "mainly because they thought I was a muderer").

2. Connected to 1 - I hope the "vague romance" thing between Rose and the Doctor can be alluded to rather than overtly mentioned (which is more in keeping with the traditional perspective of the show). It wouldn't be out of place anywhere else on TV, and it's not detracting from things here, but I would hate it to become central to the series. Maybe others will disagree, maybe it's just the older fan in me being used to a more paternalistic Doctor who dominated rather than allowed the companion to have such prominence.

3. The grin accompanied by "fantastic!" is obviously here to stay, so I'll just have to accept it. However, it would be better if the Doctor could respond with a little more gravitas when the world around him explodes.

4. Have the BBC made their first SFX bungle? The little heads on the aliens don't appear too realistic when the creatures are in motion - they appeared to bounce a bit like one of those "back of the car" toy dogs. Maybe it's about getting the balance between horror and humour that the BBC spokeman was talking about last week ...

5. ... finally, farting aliens are no problem, but please, PLEASE don't have this "emerging" as a key plot twist - "We're safe, Doctor, the aliens have all left and returned to their planet ..." -RASSSPPPP!! - "Oh my God, they're behind you!"

These "not-particularly-large-grumbles" aside, this continues to be very, very good TV and the show manages to combine storylines on many different levels (something which the best of the 'classic' series managed to do on occasion).