I think this episode is without doubt the episode everyone has been waiting for since the series started, even before. It doesn't matter whether your a fan of the show or not, watched the original or not, because there's not many who haven't heard about the daleks. Even those who are too young to remember the original series have heard about the Daleks, so expectations for this episode were high.

The episode opened with a cameo from another of the Doctor's biggest and famous of enemies-the Cybermen. Luckily enough for the casual viewer the quick climpse wasn't laboured and full with remarks to previous encounters between TimeLord and Machine. Had this been the case many would have soon turned off put off by the constant remarks to events they know nothing off. Luckily the sequence was quickly over and the Doctor was arrested.

He was quickly introduced to the second villian of the piece, an american billioniare who collects alien artifacts. He wasn't the best of characters to be honest. Whether that was due to poor scripting or acting its difficult to tell but he didn't shine out, he just felt like a plot device to introduce the audience and the Doctor the main enemy of the episode-The Dalek. The Doctor stroded agrogantly into the cage expecting he could help the alien and expecting the alien to be greatful of his help. The last thing he expected to see was his arch rival hidden in the dark and the horror on the Doctor's face was plain to see.

The episode quickly picked up some much needed pace so it could be all over and done with in 45 minutes because of the restrictive new format. This episode could have done with being a two-partner to allow events to be spread out instead of feeling rushed. The deaths could have had more of am impact if the Dalek chasing through the corridors was expanded. It slowly hunting down and killing its captors. We could have seen the fear, horror and tension from the other characters as they fought for their lives and the realisation that there's a better killing machine other than mankind. All these themes and others could have been explored more deeply but let it not be said that this was an excellent episode.

The influence of the new Battlestar Galactica could be felt here. The enemies in that series were once chrome robots who hunted down mankind because they had no other purpose. But the new Cylons are humanoid and have emotions, they have evolved and because of it you feel for them. Their are times when you are on their side or at least you understand their motives. This episode had examples of that. The Dalek, by using Rose's DNA to regenerate, developed emotions as a side effect and by doing so the audience began to feel for it. You sympathised with it, more so than with the Doctor. The Dalek was the last survivor of its race and all it could do was follow long programmed orders to kill but desperately wanted new ones. Meanwhile the Doctor almost became the villian of the piece through his determination to kill without listening to reason or letting emotion come in the way. Even the Dalek pointing out the Doctor was acting more like his species than Timelords didn't really stop the Doctor. It took Rose and the mutating Dalek begging to be killed for the Doctor to realise what he had become.

The episode also confirmed my suspsion that the Daleks were invovled with the great timewar and also hinted that if a Dalek survived other Timelords may survive as well.

Once again Billie Piper stole the show with brilliant acting and the supporting cast were better than some so far although perhaps not as brilliant as one was hoping. Christopher Eccelston improved on previous performaces as the Doctor but he still doesn't quiet feel like the Timelord I have come to know and love thanks to UkGold repeats, VHS and DVD releases due to being too young to remember the original series. This episode gives me hope for future episodes after previous ones failed to engaged or to impress me, bar Wolrd War Three that is.

Once again, the work of a different writer marks a much welcome change of tone and pace for the show.

There were huge expectations for 'Dalek' - the return of the most celebrated of the Doctor's enemies, the middle-season event episode, the promise of a darker, more complex tale.

Incredibly, it delivered.

After the slightly goofy shakiness of 'Aliens of London' and 'World War Three', we were thrown straight into a tighter, more claustrophobic setting in the form of Henry Van Statten's UFO museum, deep in a bunker in Utah. The Doctor and Rose are catapulted into the tale within the first five minutes (after a rather wonderful fan-pleasing moment featuring a Slitheen arm and - brilliantly - the helmet from a classic series Cyberman), giving us over to the episode's real star - the Dalek itself.

There has been huge build-up to this moment - the Doctor's vague references to the Time War which wiped out the Time Lords and was responsible for countless further damage to the Nestenes and Gelth, amongst countless others, have clearly been related to the Daleks.

And the creature's unveling, followed by the Doctor's gobsmacked reaction, which soon turns to venomous hatred, was outstanding. This was not a dumb, clumsy pepperpot which could only yell 'Exterminate', this was a soldier, intelligent, manipulative and incapable of understanding that there was nothing left for it to fight for.

Until, that is, it uses some of Rose's DNA to repower itself (a contrivance which seems sketchy but is entirely forgiveable given the places it takes the story) and sets about wiping out the inhabitants of the bunker.

There were so many superb moments here, not just Doctor Who moments but moments of real, heartfelt drama. Chris Ecclestone, after looking a little unsettled in the previous tale, dives into the script with a vigour and commitment which is entrancing to watch. Here is a Doctor who is not only eccentric and mercurial, he is damaged. He still hurts and hates for what happened to his people. Ecclestone's movement from fear to hatred to anguish to desperation to sympathy is an absolute joy.

Yet, almost unbelievably, it is once again Billie Piper who runs away with much of the episode. She has none of the Doctor's (or, indeed, many of the audience's) history with the Daleks, allowing her to see the wretchedness of its existence and to show it a second's kindness which ultimately saves all their lives and takes the viewer into the real tragedy behind the two races of aliens whose face-off she gets caught in.

Special mention should also go to Nicholas Briggs, who gives the Dalek more depth than any seen before.

It's hard to see how the series could get any better than this. Rob Shearman should certainly be given more episodes to write next season and I can only imagine what such a radical rethinking could do to, say, the Cybermen or The Master.

All this, and a new companion to boot. The Doctor has been back for a few weeks but now, finally, he's even better than before.

And just what is this recurring Bad Wolf reference leading to?

There seems to be a general consensus that this was the weakest episode yet and while in some cases that is probably quite true, it also contained some of the best scenes from the series yet, scenes that knock anything from the first three episodes out of the pool. The series is still clearly trying to find its feet and trying new things all the time, sometimes they work and sometimes they don’t…I realise Doctor Who has been on screen for over fourty years and has tried many styles in the past and some of you might think it should KNOW what works and what doesn’t. But I’m sure you will agree Russell T Davies’ new series is unlike anything we have ever seen before and as such it is a new learning curve for him and the series and posting SACK RTD NOW!!! on the forum is rather pathetic and juvenile, written by ungrateful bastards who want the series to match what they envisage Doctor Who to be. They are probably the same people who slagged off Christopher Eccleston when they found out he was leaving just days after they were praising his performance to the high heavens.

I was perfectly willing to enjoy the farting, indeed it has been a staple of one of my other favourite shows, Farscape, with the hilarious Rygel expelling helium farts into the air during some particularly tense moments. The result is a juxtaposition of the frightening and the absurdly crude and wonderfully uncomfortable televison. Aliens of London didn’t quite get it right, not because the flatulence wasn’t a laugh (the Doctor’s “Excuse me, do you mind not farting while I’m trying to save the world?” was especially funny…and the look on his face!) but it did not occur in any scary scenes…it was just sort of there, with the trio of heifer nasties chortling away at how funny their out of control bottoms were. Unlike Farscape which is puerile with style…this was just sort of puerile. And the line Would you prefer silent but deadly? almost threatens to collapse the cliff-hanger moment and should have been cut.

But honestly are people willing to underrate this episode just because of a few seconds worth of farts? There was still so much to enjoy…

Domestic scenes in Doctor Who should be just awful? Turning our beloved show into a parody of Eastenders…how dare you Mr Davies, how dare you sir! But Davies is such a clever writer and he knows exactly what he is doing and by grounding the series in modern day London we get to return home to Mickey and Jackie every couple of episodes and see how much Rose has grown and how much her departure has affected everybody she cares for. It is a cracking dramatic device and when written as well as it is here Doctor Who can resemble Eastenders as much as it likes!

The teaser was predictable (Simon guessed straight away) but still wonderful; a terrific oh shit moment to hang the rest of the episode on. I adored Jackie in the first episode because despite some overdone acting on Camille Coduri she felt like a real person caught up in a freaky situation. Each subsequent appearance has seen both her character and the actress grow into the part to the point now where I found Jackie’s situation as compelling as Rose’s. Her performance was right on the nail throughout, first shock and relief to see her daughter safe, then vicious anger and blame for her disappearing without thinking about anyone else, then back to normal life (“Guess who asked me out!”) and then suddenly she is confronted with the truth about her daughters disappearance, a brief glimpse inside the TARDIS which turns her whole life upside down. Simon was boo-hissing her reaction to the mind-blowing spaceship, to grass him up to the police but to me it felt so very real, a mother trying to protect her daughter from something she doesn’t understand. Which is why Jackie deserved a slice of the cliffhanger frankly, because at this point the series (and especially this episode) is as much about her than it is about the Doctor and Rose and to finally be confronted with a deadly situation where it looks like she cannot escape is the next logical step for a character who has emerged into the Doctor Who world. And bizarrely, of triple barrelled cliffhanger, it was Jackie squeezed against her kitchen sideboard as the Slitheen approaches that I found most disturbing, not only because I really, really like her but because it is such a normal location for such a horrific scene to take place.

All this great work with Jackie is somewhat undermined as this was my least favourite week for Christopher Eccleston’s Doctor yet, despite some of his most Doctorish moments. People are moaning that he doesn’t convince entirely as the Doctor and that he comes across as a mainstream actor trying to play the Doctor, which is not always an unfair assessment. Some of his scenes in this story were fantastic (as seems to be his catchphrase) and totally convinced you that you were watching Doctor Who (his tinkering with the console, his angry “It was scared!” after the military shoot down the pig, his brilliant, excited reaction to being escorted to 10 Downing Street and his marvellous realisation at the climax that the whole thing is a trap) and yet in places I felt he was still finding his feet in the role and played the ‘normal guy’ role a bit too well to stick out as an alien from outer space (such as the scenes with him trying to watch the telly with all the family getting in the way…whatever happened to the Doctor who used to just storm into a crisis regardless?). His relationship with Rose is obviously vitally important and his casual Are you going to stay here now? hints at more fireworks to come in part two. Oh and I loved the sweet moment as he gave her the TARDIS key.

Billie is exceptional. She’s climbing the companion ranks with each passing episode. During Rose she was an exceptional, generic companion fulfilling the asking questions and wanting to leave her boring life role perfectly. But Davies and Piper keep adding layers each week that make her more and more interesting to follow. Aliens of London explores why Rose is the perfect companion for the Doctor, torn between her loved ones back home and her life of adventure on the TARDIS. This is new stuff for the series and another sign that the series is still growing up and has much to learn. Rose’s firm insistence that the Doctor doesn’t disappear and leave her proves she desperately wants to go with him and yet her emotional reaction to seeing her mum and boyfriend again reveals she still has ties to Earth. I sense top drama for episode two and that this story will look a whole lot healthier as one, hour and a half adventure. Billie and Clarke’s quiet moment at the TARDIS console, saying they missed each other is unexpectedly touching and serves to add much depth to Mickey’s character.

Want to know what my favourite moment in the whole series has been so far? That glorious moment when the spaceship crashes into the Thames of course! Fan-bloody-tastic! Not only does it look fabulous, with some giddying POV’s from the spaceship, and ultilise London’s recognisable locations with panache (is there anything as shocking in Doctor Who as when the spaceship smashes through Big Ben and then dive bombs into the Thames?) but it also kick starts a contemporary Earth alien invasion story the likes of which we all know and love and Russell would be hard pushed to get wrong. Honestly, if there was ever a moment to define the new series this gorgeous effects shot (complete with heart racing score) is the one and worthy of a Hollywood blockbuster to boot.

Cue mass panic as we see an alien incursion on a much bigger scale than we are used to. The plot is sneaky, throwing Rose’s domestic situation and a fake alien pig to distract from what is really going on. The pig is a marvellously embarrassing scene, almost grotesque in appearance and extremely comical as it zips along the corridor; it is suddenly twisted into a moment of great pathos as the Doctor reacts with total disgust at its death. Tom Baker would have laughed at the poor thing but Eccleston looks devastated at its horrific mistreatment.

All the build up to the cliffhanger was terrific with the mounting tension cranked up to a spectacular degree. It was marvellous how long he kept the danger going before finally cutting to the end music…with three plots taking place there are three cliffhangers for each of them, the editing quite superb as we cut back and forth between each with plenty of moments to leave it but the creepiness goes on for several minutes with l’ill Joe going cue music! about five times before it finally happened. Davies is playing around with our expectations and in a terribly fun way.

I shall certainly be tuning in next week, usually the set up is much more pleasing than the pay off but I feel the reverse will be true of Aliens of London and World War Three. This was a good hour of telly don’t get me wrong with more than enough to keep you glued but if they had turned down the farting and giving the Doctor a bit more to do I would have been more satisfied. The emotional aspect of the series has been cranked up to a new level and have a strong feeling that Rose’s dilemma and the alien invasion will be handled with considerable skill next week.

Flawed, but still containing some of the finest material we have seen yet.

There are only a few things on this planet of ours that can be called truly faultless. Perfect. Beethoven's 3rd is perfect. Yoshi's Island on the Super Nintendo is perfect. Aliens of London is perfect.

This is a story that truly has it all - a brand-new monster (that is not only ingeniously-conceived, but truly threatening); an absolutely watertight script (which is a real rarity in Doctor Who... or any sci-fi programme); and a magnificent supporting cast.

Even before the credits roll, we see that this story will be unlike any of the others we have seen so far: Rose's mummy reacts to her daughter's disappearance exactly as we would (by slapping an alien...!); and the realism does not drop by one iota for the next 45 minutes (be it BBC News 24's reports; or the animatronic Andrew Marr's ears). Kudos also to whoever did the amazing 10 Downing Street sets - they deserve an OBE (Other Bugger's Efforts!!).

If only every new monster on the programme was as well-done as the Slitheen: with their disturbingly babyish faces (the childish-freakiness motif returning in Episodes 9 and 10) and their subtle malice.

With slick humour (barring the unforgivable flatulence), amazing acting from Messrs Eccleston, Clarke, Miss Piper et al, the unexpected (and delightful) reappearance of UNIT, and the new series' first true cliff-hanger (and oh, what a cracker: that one kept me guessing all week how they could possibly survive), it's more than clear that the Doctor is here to stay; and if during the repeats they cut the Next Time... montage from the cliff-hanger, we can rest easy: it'll last forever.

Mr Davies, I shall forever be grateful to you for this masterpiece. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

Forget all the haters, this episode frickin' ruled it.

And dammit it's about time we saw several things in that episode.

Like, for example, what happens when a companion goes off with the Doctor and then comes back. In Rose Tyler's case, she accidentally comes back a YEAR after Rose. Oops. Jackie's filed missing persons reports and gone on a childsearch campaign, whereas Micky was at home heartbroken. Rose and the Doctor act like business as usual. Such is life in the TARDIS I guess.

The other thing I wanted to see was a PUBLIC alien landing. FINALLY. No coverups, no sleepy villages in the North of England, I wanted full-on raging BBC and CNN covered alien landing, and dammit I got one. FINALLY! YES! BBC splashed out the FX budget on this one, and Big Ben suffers for it! WHOOOOOO!!!

But wait! There's plots afoot. The Doctor determines the alien corpse pulled from the Thames is a fake! Specifically, a genetic chop-job on a pig. So is that ship a fake too? Yeah, probably. But are there real aliens?

Yes. At 10 Downing Street. The Slitheen have taken over the bodies of several key government members, and killed the (not Tony Blair) Prime Minister in the process. And BOY are they gassy.

Yes, there's a lot of fart-jokes in the episode. Not typical, pretty childish, but when you see the Slitheen for what they are, it makes sense, when they compress themselves into a human body. Because they're frickin' huge. And...babydoll-faced. Which is actually...a bit frightening really.

And look! Our first cliffhanger of the new series! And UNIT! WHEEEEE!!!

Yes, sorry, I love this series. No, wait. I'm not sorry for loving it. Not in the slightest.

As I write, ‘World War Three’ has already aired. I have not seen it, and cannot until Friday, when I will watch the video I’ve recorded. I do not know much about ‘World War Three’. I hope it is better than this (although I doubt it).

Pleasingly, reviewers on this site are beginning to tune in to what I have said since March 26, that Christopher Eccleston’s performance in the role of Doctor Who really isn’t very good at all. Throughout, the man has looked a bit like a secondary school level actor, occasionally struggling to deliver the most basic lines in a manner even slightly resembling convincing. Given his performances elsewhere, I can only assume that this is because Russell T Davis’ writing is forcing him to play it goofy and erratic – basically, to conform to Davis’ own twisted conception of what is ‘Doctorish’ – and he is unfamiliar with this. The BBC’s press release refers to this Doctor being ‘wise’, as well as ‘funny’, but the petulance (seen in his treatment of Mickey), arrogance (always ready to tell people to shut up, even Charles Dickens!) and most of all basic incompetence (‘cause, think about it, what does he actually do in this episode? Apart from walk into a trap – again – he shows off his mental brilliance by figuring out that the pig-like thing is, in fact, a pig! Well done, Doctor) of this incarnation makes it very hard for me to take it seriously.

Bizarrely, some people have said that he is the ‘best Doctor yet’. Those people are the ones who have gone into the new series simply adamant that nothing and no-one is going to spoil the experience for them, and insist that the sun shines out of RTD’s backside irrespective of the quality of the stories they are watching (they clearly also have never seen Tom Baker or Pat Troughton in the role). Well, fair play to them – they are clearly who Russell is writing this for (he is very similar, convinced that his view of the series is the best ever) – it must be really nice to enjoy it, and I bet they are happier in life than me! It’s just that one or two of the things that fans in various forums have said come across as holier-than-thou. Why shouldn’t my blisteringly negative interpretation of this series be as valuable as their positive one, without being labelled ‘anal’? I bet they hate ‘Time and the Rani’, or something, and don’t get grief for it. This is something that really annoys me!

To return to ‘Aliens of London’ (like the title, by the way). No, it is not Eccleston’s performance which ruined this episode for me. Here he puts the lid on it a bit, or perhaps I’m just getting used to him ( I heard the man himself say on BBC Radio 5 that in ‘Dalek’ he’s a very different Doctor to in the other ones – I certainly hope so). This time it was a combination of the scripting and the production that did it. Actually, despite my intense mistrust of Russell T Davies (which is founded in part on the universal insistence from the media, everyone at Doctor Who Magazine and most fans whose views I’ve read that he is the greatest writer, with the greatest credentials, in THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE!!!, and in part on his falling victim to ‘Tony’s cronies’ syndrome, hiring his old mates to do the Doctor Who job and presumably not considering other people and actors) I have never before been able to find much corroboration of it in the scripts themselves, but the farting aliens and totally unrealistic reaction of the military establishment to alien incursion (plus of course the supposed cream of British science not recognising a pig!) in this episode were enough this time around.

The production, however, though detailed and glossy, has so far been harmful to the show in the way that it is presented. The 45-minute episodes, obviously, are a problem, but they could work very well were the general ambience within them not so noisy, blurry and, well, orange. It’s like ‘The Claws of Axos’ in there! The lighting and look of the show do not meet expectations – my over-riding image of episode 1 is of the Doctor and Rose, grinning, walking though an orange smudge. The sound and editing are similarly bad, some dialogue and much sense lost in a welter of fast cuts and music. They should cart that digital video camera off down the scrap yard and start filming the series – and quieten it down a bit, for heaven’s sake! One thing it could certainly be accused of is possessing atmosphere: that, to me, is a bad thing. This week’s gastrically-tormented aliens are a case in point, being utterly ludicrous and unconvincing. Take, by contrast, the shot which ends the teaser in the previous episode, ‘The Unquiet Dead’, where the living corpse walks howling towards the viewer, venting light. That is excellent stuff on paper, and well directed, and more appropriate music and some decent lighting could have made it look good.

Oh dear, oh dear. So, where does this leave us? Well, in many ways, this is a new low for ‘Doctor Who’. This ‘anal’ fan here hates fart jokes, and thinks you don’t need them to tell a good alien invasion story – but of course his opinion is not cared for by The Powers That Be, being far too la-di-dah and Middle English (haven’t you heard? We all live in council estates now!) and old fashioned. It simply reeks of Old Fandom! However, there is no question that the show has been worse: Seasons 23 and 24, and even some Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker stories were worse than this. The acting (apart from Chris) is mostly ok, actually, and the scripting has been mostly fine given the enormous constraints. The reason this review has been so violently critical is that I feel betrayed, hurt and terribly disappointed by my beloved show. I was willing it to be amazing, and wonderful, and glorious, and for it to fly, fly like a bird, and to be majestic, and shining (to draw upon RTD’s column style!) I was convinced, totally convinced that it would be a masterpiece – even after ‘Rose’ I was willing to be convinced, and God, even ‘Rose’ was better than this. I feel really gutted with what we have now. I know, four episodes in and already judging! 80s-style anti-producer witch-hunts are not a road any of us want to go down again, I’m sure. But, to be honest… well, let me quote Russell’s own ‘Production Notes’ column in DWM: “But you promised us the Doctor!”; “Hate the Slitheen!”; and, most importantly, “RTD must go now!”.

D’oh!!!!