Well, after three episodes which either met or exceeded my expectations, there had to be a disappointment eventually. Aliens of London was that disappointment. Episode 1 wasn't great but did it's job. Episode two felt like Doctor Who, and episode three may go down as a classic. Episode four is hopefully a blip.

Let's start with the good. The plot is basically engaging, even though I didn't enjoy or like this episode as much as the prior ones I will be watching next week to see the outcome. The return of the multi-episode format with a cliffhanger is to be applauded, though the writing team has proved with episodes 2 and 3 that a single 45 minute programme can contain terrific Who. The effects concerning the crashing spacecraft were very good indeed. My wife, not much of a Who fan, is upset that she'll be in the states on Saturday as she wants to see the concluding episode.

But I have problems with this installment. I guess we're going to have to become used to domestic scenes in Rose's house and perhaps elsewhere. Though not traditional Doctor Who they aren't out of place in the plots and make the character of Rose more realistic. This can be forgiven, but the humourous aspect - always important in Doctor Who since Troughton - was overblown this time.

The basic premise we have here is that an alien space ship has crash landed in central London (good use of the location) so spectacularly that the Doctor surmises it is a decoy for some other alien activity. So we have a modified pig in a spacesuit placed in the crashing ship to keep earth's medical and scientific community busy while the real aliens plot to take over the world.

But the pig just looked silly. Clearly the viewer is supposed to have sympathy for the poor creature, the Doctor does, but I found it unconvincing. Perhaps a very good idea, poorly realised on screen. There should have been suspense in the scene where the Doctor is trying to find it but the pacing of the scene was wrong.

It transpires that the aliens have taken over the cabinet by disguising themselves as various government bigwigs. So far so good, but due to some malfunction of their gas exchange units all the aliens have terrible wind! This might have been funny the first couple of times, but a bunch of aliens disguised as politicians laughing and farting in the cabinet office only remains funny for a short while. After a minute this is about as funny as the later Police Academy fills. What could have been a suspenseful and interesting plot is almost ruined by the overdone attempts at humour.

UNIT is brought in, and the Doctor quickly explains who they are and that he worked with them before when he looked very different. Good, concise piece of dialogue for the uninitiated and hopefully a sign that we'll see UNIT again in the future. Word goes out to the various world authorities on aliens who are asked to gather in London, where the Doctor realises too late that they have all been trapped by the aliens who now reveal themselves to be the 'Slitheen'. I suppose they are meant to look nasty and frightening but they end up looking like a lifesize children's toy monster.

I'm glad you all wore your ID cards says their leader, before activating some sort of electrocution device which sends (presumably) deadly current through each experts ID card, cue 'scream' and roll credits.

A good plot, but the humour didn't help me take it seriously or feel any of the suspense. This should have been a thrilling adventure, instead it came across as childish and silly - precisely what Doctor Who needs NOT to be if it is to survive for another 26 years.

Disappointing, and hopefully a blip because the ability of RTD's team to produce quality Doctor Who is obviously there.

Aliens of London: So much promise in the title alone, but overall a very mixed episode with many moments of greatness but also a few moments of unfulfilled potential.

From the pre-titles teaser this episode was making me think differently about Doctor Who, or more specifically about why someone would give up on their life to randomly travel around time and space. Mostly, in the past, companions have either had no choice, or have really had something to escape from. Rose is different. Sure, her mum is annoying and her boyfriend’s a div but so what? That’s life, right? It’s great the way Russell T Davies is trying to give more depth to Rose and show that she is still connected to what she left behind. The teaser is the first chance you have to grab the audience’s attention it was pure soap opera with added time travel. After the big reunion between Rose and her mother nothing much happens except the characters shouting dialogue at each other in their front room. Yawn. At least they did it more cheerfully than on Eastenders.

Then it happens: A spaceship crash lands in the Thames taking a big chunk out of Big Ben on the way down, and it looks fantastic. Really these are some of the best effects I’ve seen on the BBC. Why this wasn’t used as the teaser I’ll never understand. Now this is where the episode really begins. London has been sealed off, there are rumours of an alien body being taken to hospital, the Prime Minister is missing and the military are trying to take charge. Perfect. So what does the Doctor do about all of this? Goes back to Rose’s flat and watches it on TV. Now the Doctor’s initial reluctance to get involved is actually quite interesting and only four episode’s in seems very ninth Doctor. However for him to then give up after one roadblock is out of character for any incarnation. There was potential here for something very interesting and Doctorish but we were dragged back into domesticity.

So far Christopher Eccleston has been a brilliant Doctor, and while his performance can’t be faulted there was something missing in Aliens of London. Some of the dialogue, the Doctor’s in particular was a bit throwaway, just to remind you he’s an alien, like when he eventually walks out of Rose’s overcrowded flat saying “it was a bit too human in there.” There were some very good Doctor moments though, chasing a pig down hospital corridors and walking in on soldiers having a tea break and then taking charge of them. Defence Pattern Delta! Wonderful. And the interaction between The Doctor and Mickey is some of the funniest dialogue I’ve heard in the series.

At last the incidental music is coming together and was the best of the new series so far. The juvenile humour can largely be overlooked,as only once was it overdone and didn’t spoil the episode. The main problem was the pacing of the story. Scenes were very short giving the impression that a lot was being crammed in but actually the opposite was true. It could have all slowed down without losing any impact and sacrificing anything. In some ways the episode was very Third Doctorish, and even UNIT are represented, in a blink and you’ll miss it kind of way. It would have been nice for more to be made of UNIT as they could have been re-introduced and updated in Aliens of London very easily, and maybe this will be picked up in part two. But I doubt it.

It all ended on the first cliffhanger of the new series, and I can’t wait to see how the Doctor gets out of this one.

Following the introductory package of the first three episodes - present, far future and recent past - the new series finally takes a step towards what could be described as traditional Doctor Who material. Aliens landing in London causing all manner of general panic; this is the kind of thing everyone remembers as being the kind of thing Doctor Who does well. And this episode is done well... to a point.

Let us get the more contentious issue out of the way - the farting. It was always made clear, was it not, that this was a very new version of the show and we would have to get accustomed to changes earlier series would not have touched. Following the fans' moans about Sylvester McCoy's series turning into a trumped-up kid's show, no doubt the same doubts are rising about this episodes wind-breaking aliens. It was necessary to have some form of symbol to identify the aliens, but this was not really the most appropriate. It was played for laughs, not a 'half and half' between laughs and explanation, and I can only hope enough aliens have been uncovered to ensure we don't suffer the wind again.

Also covered in Aliens of London for the first time, or for the first time in such detail, was the need of the companion to return home. Rose has always had a contemporary base and she would have always needed to return home eventually. In this episode, the Doctor - that 'fantastic' really is here to stay, isn't it? - has mistakenly returned Rose back home 12 months after she left, which results in a very 'domestic drama' sub-story to the alien invasion. In touch with contemporary concerns in a way never really touched on before, there are questions of improper behaviour and Mickey - her boyfriend - was accused of Rose's murder. In one very well composed scene, the Doctor is one amongst a host of normal, loud people in a small flat and this paints the multi-layered relationship between TIme Lord and companion in a very clear way.

Rose's mother has certainly a central role in this series, as she is the one constant Earth character Rose can be sent towards/made to communicate to, to ensure the audience don't get bored of 'full on sci-fi', which this series certainly is not. Her decision to call the police with an alien landing is exactly what any concerned mother would do, and underlines how well written RTD has made so many of those characters who are not always centre screen. For the first time, we have a companion whose streetwise persona is tempered with a very domestic, natural relationship with a parent; it's like seeing Ace's mum tutting about how she's ruined a perfectly good jacket with all those badges.

The alien storyline, weaved amongst the domestic fireworks, was simplistic but did build towards the first of the new series two-part stories. Shapeshifting aliens - so realistic they don't quite fit into their new bodies hence the 'gas exchange' - have taken on the apperance of the Prime Minister, MI5 official and so on, to begin their invasion 'from the inside'. The News 24 coverage was realistic, but the bubbly presenter on the scene from the start has never been done particularly well. Was it 'Daemons' where a similar format was used? When Rose's mother reports her sighting of the Doctor and his 'blue box', a red alert is called within the bowels of Downing Street and from this a meeting is arranged of all 'alien experts'. It was certainly nice not only to see UNIT included here but the I've changed a lot since the old days line was a nicely phrased nod to the past.

The aliens - Would you mind not farting when I'm saving the world, please! - co-ordinate their unveiling with the three separate(d) groups of main characters all conveniently held within their own scenes: Penelope Wilton and Rose in the cabinet room; the Doctor and assorted experts within an internal 10 Downing Street meeting room; Rose's mother at home. The cut-away from one to other was typical Who and led to a good cliff-hanger ending. This was, of course, ruined by the taster trailer for Part II, where all the main characters were shown to be alive and well.

As a return to the kind of storyline Doctor Who has always been celebrated in making, Aliens of London was a fairly well paced episode, with only the farting and clumsy use of (the usually very good) Penelope Wilton the two minor hitches. The second part should keep this up, which I sure hope it does.

A quandary for Russell T Davies, back in the planning stages. Rose was to be an alien invasion of contemporary London. The End of the World would do exactly what it said on the tin, a race through space five billion years in the future. The Unquiet Dead would be a ghostly adventure in period drama history. So what to do with that tricky fourth episode, once things had been set up and the polar extremes of time-travel already explored?

Easy. Another alien invasion of contemporary London... but this time with fart jokes.

Aliens of London was always aiming to feel like traditional Dr Who. As a two-parter, it matches the screen-time of a classic four-episode story. The trailers hinted at soldiers, spaceships, and women screaming in the dark. Even the title seemed to promise a retread of almost every story made in the early 70s, when Jon Pertwee would pit his wits and venusian karate against a succession of rubber monsters in the streets around BBC TV Centre. A bold move, when the series had only just dragged itself free of all those cliches to recreate itself for the twenty-first century - but then, as you might expect, Russell T's version of traditional Who isn't quite the Saturday night runaround you remember.

On first viewing at least, this is a strange story. Russell deliberately eschews the sci-fi antics for soap opera domesticity, trapping the Doctor in a flat full of screaming children where he's reduced to watching the alien invasion on TV. Much is made of Rose's life-left-behind, her relationship with the Doctor and those around her, with the actual plot left to new characters to explore (who in doing so, thankfully, are given more room to breathe than in single-episode stories). It has to be said this doesn't always work: an emotional situation is set up that's slightly too big even for a two-part story to explore, and which is therefore abandoned unconvincingly abruptly. The self-consciously domestic setting, too, gives a sense of unreality, of a lack of focus, to the bigger events of the story, although this is swiftly rectified. And there are moments when the pacing is a little off, either blipping the tension up so high the following scene feels anti-climactic (as happens when the Doctor is confronted with the helicopter), or simply by events taking up more screen-time than they justify. This is more an editing problem than a script one, with the two-episode format perhaps responsible for a loss of tightness in places, particularly in the rather distended cliffhanger, but it's noticeable. And surely someone must have noticed the Next Week preview, devised as a substitute ending for episodes without cliffhangers, utterly undercuts the tension now that there is one.

However, that's all on the first viewing, when your Inner Geek is still expecting a cliffhanger after 25 minutes, and the Brigadier to turn up with a twitchy moustache and a request for explanations. Watching it again, with those preconceptions eroded, such worries evaporate. Just as Clive in Episode One felt like a geeky-injoke-too-far for some fans, while actually forming a chilling and effective prologue to the series for new viewers, so the pacing and focus on relationships here works far better than a self-confessed fan might realise. The episode manages to balance all this with intriguing, teasing suggestions about the alien incursion, along with humour, emotion, and some genuinely scary moments. Russell T plays expertly with audience expectations (and fears of low budget nonsense) with an ingenious, unpredictable and deeply satisfying plot-twist, and even the reviled 'farting' element - greeted with outright fan-horror when slipped into previews - somehow manages to be, not silly toilet humour at all, but wonderfully sinister. The exploration of what might greet one of the Doctor's companions upon returning home will of course frighten and confuse long-term fans, who are shy, nocturnal creatures with deeply ingrained habits, and who expect such things being swept under the carpet. But this is exactly the sort of emotional realism the new series has been praised for, and rightly so.

There is, moreover, much to be admired in Aliens of London, and not limited to the grandstanding effects shot of a UFO crashing through Big Ben. The supporting cast is large and impressive, with everyone from Penelope Wilton to Andrew Marr cropping up, and, remarkably, hardly putting a foot wrong. Two actors who attracted some negative criticism in Rose return, albeit with more mixed results: Rose's mother is less convincing than on her first outing, seemingly limited to stretching out her hands at people in place of emoting; while boyfriend Mickey, now with a more interesting emotional position, is vastly improved. The incidental music is excellent throughout, the sound design and location work terrific, and the lighting isn't bad either (even if it is slightly out of sync with the sfx in one scene). But of course, that's still the sort of thing only a geek would notice. So what would a real viewer see? Spaceships, soldiers, guns, explosions, helicopters, invasions, aliens, drama, adventure, action, havoc... And, yes, rubber monsters.

With claws.

Roll on next week.

First off I have to say that I came to this series with an open mind. I genuinely want it to succeed, I think everyone does. So why am I feeling a crushing disappointment at this moment in time.

Sure, this new series has had it's niggles, the 45 minute format quite obviously is not working, the incidental music has been rubbish to say the least, Eccleston's mugging veers dangerously close to ham acting on too many occasions, the sonic get out of jail free and, while you're at it, why not pass go screwdriver.

And then there are my personal annoyances with the series, the insistence that all no obscure references to the original series be made, so as not to confuse younger viewers, lets just make this clear, there are several million more older viewers than younger. We appreciate a bit of continuity (it doesn't take much for the younger ones to brush up, there’s plenty of quality stories on DVD and audio). The fact that special effects are not equal across the board, they can be fantastic in one episode and distinctly ropey in another, and while some of the acting has been cringeworthy, some of it, by the guest stars, has outshone the regulars. And also the fact that I am now quite safely able to predict the paths that each character will take in any given episode.

However, as I say these are personal minor niggles and haven't really affected my enjoyment of the series so far, mainly due to the fact that Unquiet Dead and End Of The World were such distinctly great scripts, even if they had plot holes I could drive a bus through (I'll be kind and ignore Rose here).

Aliens Of London, unfortunately, had plot holes I could have driven that spaceship through. Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to the worst story of the series so far, and quite possibly the worst story in Who since those Comic Relief things.

We'll deal first with the blatant stupidities of the script, what was RTD thinking? Firstly, why do these aliens, who have already infiltrated the British Government (Hardly taking over the world is it?) take the trouble to do the whole Pig thing? Especially as they are bodysnatchers. Quite frankly it would have been easier (and more interesting) for them to win a ruddy election than to go through the whole evil machinations plan. Was it me or was the entire first 35 mins of this 45 min episode completely irrelevant to anything more than character development, of which there was pitifully little.

There is a reason the Doctor never ever takes his companions home, or if he does, that's it, the end of the affair. Precisely because of the reaction of Rose's family. This is a condition of entering the Tardis, the first thing that the First Doctor pushed onto Ian and Barbara. The price for wandering the Galaxy is that you become a hobo, you can't just pop home for a cup of tea whenever you feel like it. This is perhaps the worst crime the new series has committed bar one. It just takes away the whole romance of the Doctor, step into the Tardis and get whisked away on unbelievable adventure, step out and that's it, no more. And the Doctor will leave and maybe he was just a figment of your imagination all along and he'll be as sad as you but he will continue on other planets, other worlds, other times, with other companions. And in our heads, we were his only constant companion.

RTD allowing the Doctor to take Rose home just ripped out the romance and the soul of Doctor Who. It's gone, I'm not sure it can come back. His exclamation to Rose not to bring her domestic into the Tardis was simply embarassing, Camille Coduri's excruciating performance didn't help, kudos to Noel Clarke however, Mickey was just annoying this time around rather than all out pathetic. But why did the Doctor insist on calling him Ricky? Is the Doctor as petulant as all that? It was like watching jealous schoolkids, it didn't sit right, as so many things didn't.

Let's move on in this excuse for an episode (We'll ignore the fact that the Doctor should have been arrested the first time around as a kidnapper or something) lets report something positive. Penelope Wilton, gave an excellent, as always, performance.

Ok that's the positive side over and done with. It must be said that Andrew Marr also gave a great performance, but there is something seriously wrong with the BBC casting agents when he outperforms every actor on the show.

Several commentators have noticed that for all the dash and vim of this Doctor, what does he actually do?

Apart from figuring out that the so called alien was actually just a pig, lets just go over the events here, first contact is made with an alien species and the corpse is left in the care of a single med student in a minimum security and blatantly unsterile environment who can't work out that it is a pig, despite the fact that it is, actually, a pig? This from the man who promised us more realism in the show.

So The Doctor figures out that the Pig is in fact, a pig. What else did he do in this episode exactly except watch telly and avoid Rose's mum?

Ok now we come to the actual bad guys of the piece. Simple things first, their design was just utterly awful. There have been better monsters in Troma films. Secondly the CG was pretty bad, not terrible but not great by any means.

Why have a cliffhanger if you're gonna spoil it with a trailer of next week??? WHY WHY WHY!

And last but not least, just to sum up how bad this episode really is, here's a list of some of the Doctor's past foes:

1st Doctor fought Nero, The Trojans, WOTAN, Daleks and Cybermen
2nd Doctor fought Yeti, Ice Warriors, Salamander, The Macra and Krotons
3rd Doctor fought Autons, Silurians, The Master, Omega and Dinosaurs
4th Doctor fought Sutekh, Sontarans, Rutans, Zygons and Wirrin.
5th Doctor fought The Mara, Rassilon, Sea Devils, and The Black Guardian
6th Doctor fought Sil, The Rani, Androgum’s and The Valyard
7th Doctor fought The Cleaners, Kane, The Gods of Ragnarok, Mordred and Fenric
8th Doctor fought The Master and the end of the world.
9th Doctor fought fat farting aliens.

This really is an embarrassment on the scale of Dimensions in Time. Not only is RTD pulling apart they Mythos and Romance of Who, he seems to be intent on removing its dignity as well. There have been bad scripts before in Who, but never have they degenerated to the level of infantile pap that this was. They might as well have cast Matt Lucas and Peter Kay, in fact they probably should have, at least they might have been funny.

Who at its best is incredibly clever and witty, look at Tom Baker’s era. Degenerating to fart gags indicates a lack of ideas and ability. Not even the Carry On’s were that crude.

This marks the moment that I lost faith in RTD’s ability to deliver Dr Who.

The announcement of David Tennant as the 10th Doctor does not fill me with hope and smacks of an RTD love in as he just recruits his former leading men. No offence to Tennant, I’m sure he’s a great actor, but he doesn’t appear to have the physical presence to hold the role when there are great actors who could do a really credible performance who don’t even seem to get a look in. Was anyone else (Such as media favourites Nighy or Davies) ever really considered?

I shall continue to watch until the return of the Daleks, as that will be the story that this series will succeed or fail on, but it’s going to have to do a heck of a lot more to convince me now than it did before Aliens of London. To be frank, even if it’s perfect I’m not sure it can. This was a pathetic attempt to play at Who, written by fanboys with a mental age of ten and may have done irreparable damage to the esteem of the show.

Scuse me, do you mind not farting while I’m saving the world?

Would you prefer… silent but deadly?Doctor Who just gets better and better! Each episode so far has improved on the last – and tonight’s was the finest yet, with nine more yet to come!

A fair few of the early reviews for this episode have been the usual grouchy nit-picking we’ve come to expect from the more anal fans of this series. The pig was wrong, the farting aliens were wrong, UNIT were wrong, Ecclestone was wrong…everything was wrong, and Not proper Doctor Who.

Well, sorry, but I emphatically disagree. This series is turning out to be the best thing that ever happened to the Doctor, and it just keeps getting better and better.

At the beginning, I’ll admit I had my doubts. I wasn’t sure about Christopher Ecclestone’s performance, I thought that drama was being sacrificed for the sake of the comedy, and I was particularly worried about the 45-minute-per-story running time. Doctor Who at its best always built up the scares and the suspense, allowed characters and storylines to mature. This new incarnation seemed to be all surface bangs and flashes, with no depth to it. Three times now, whatever problem there is has been solved in the final five minutes, pretty much directly from square one.

It was all good stuff, don’t get me wrong – a fifth of the population watched that first episode, which is not to be sneezed at – but, I thought, it could be better.

And tonight, it was. The first two-part story, an opportunity to do all the things that the old series did, and do them even better. Tonight for the first time I felt that Doctor Who was really, truly back.

It was funny, scary and – a new thing for Who – quite moving as well. These characters are real people, rather than pieces to be moved around the chessboard of the plot. The scenes with Rose’s Mother and boyfriend were surprisingly realistic and affecting. When Rose’s Mum gives the Doctor a hearty slap in the face I find myself thinking, Good. I’ve been wanting to do that for the last three weeks.

The baddies – the Slitheen – are brilliant. In their human guise, all bulbous, farting and clearly having the best time taking over the world – but when their true forms are revealed they get even better. Huge, leathery, boggle-eyed creatures with enormous arms and weird, girly lips – proper aliens, not like the bumpy-forehead shit trotted out week after week by the various Star Trek franchises. Deanna Troi could never have a tragic, fifty-minute love-affair with any of this lot. (And wouldn’t it be interesting if she did?)

The pig in the spacesuit was fantastic! The first time I thought it was real, and was wondering how they’d done it. The Doctor’s reaction to its death was equally wonderful – His shout of “It was scared!” is delivered with such agonised power it sent a shiver up my spine. This is a Doctor who cares about all life (Except for the humble potato, it seems)…

A couple of other points:

• Nice to see UNIT mentioned, even if they’re not really going to be in it, but where’s the Brigadier?
• What’s the point of building up to a brilliant cliffhanger when you immediately show them getting out of it in the “Next episode” bit?
• I don’t know why such a big fuss was made about the alien spaceship crashing into Big Ben – it looked like a cheap cardboard model. Watch it more than once you see the whole clock face coming off, revealing the balsa-wood behind it. A little bit crap, that.

Still, I can’t wait for next week. Everybody should be watching this series, I’m not kidding. I think that established fans should try and leave their prejudices about the old series behind them, and just enjoy the new one for what it is. Times have moved on since the late Eighties (3-4 million viewers for McCoy, remember?) Farting is allowed now. Real emotions are allowed now. Comedy (Proper comedy, rather than late-Baker pratfalls) is allowed now, and I for one say thank the Maker for that.

God, I love this series!!