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.

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).

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.

It seems strange reviewing a story that hasn’t reached it’s conclusion but, film critics had to do it with the Lord of The Rings trilogy so why not the latest Doctor Who story?

With a two part story, there’s more time for many different plotlines in comparison to the previous single story episodes. Many fans who’ve complained about the apparent brevity of the single episode storylines, will no doubt be delighted with the complexity of this story.

Some may not be delighted however with farting aliens. But for these fans who have had a sense of humour bypass (no doubt the same ones who vehemently criticised Christopher Eccleston’s departure) may I point out, this is science fiction; aliens may exist and if they do, who knows, maybe they do fart? Anyway it’ll have the kids laughing and help to lessen the impact of the horror…

Once again, the special effects were very special. From the Slitheen to the spaceship crashing into Big Ben, this was a Doctor Who that was light years away from bubble-wrap Wirrn and cannibalised spaceships from old Gerry Anderson series. The superb and rather scary effect of the Slitheen peeling back their foreheads will no doubt cause anyone under the age of eight to be terrified of flatulent fat middle-aged people.

And as for Excuse me, do you mind not farting while I’m trying to save the world? What a wonderful line!

And what about an alien that looks like a pig? Just when you’re all thinking how daft a pig running down a hospital corridor looks, the plot revelation that it really is a pig, albeit genetically engineered to pilot a spacecraft, is one more novel twist in this complex and (so far) clever story.

As well as the sci-fi thrills, Aliens of London deals with a blatantly obvious idea regarding time travel that the series has never approached before. The opening scenes where Rose discovers she’s been missing for twelve months not twelve hours were very well done. Camille Coduri was able to stop being just the comedy mother and allowed to be a real person, coping as any real mother would do; grieving for her lost daughter, then having her grief turn to anger and letting rip by slapping the Doctor. Noel Clarke was also good, showing Mickey’s reaction to Rose’s return while Chris and Billie continue to work so well together, they feel like old mates to the audience as well as themselves…

The rest of the cast were faultless. The human versions of the aliens were extremely sinister as well as funny. Penelope Wilton and Navin Chowdry were both superb, providing the all-important human contrast the aliens, in a believable way.

One complaint, however. What's the point of building up an immensely tense triple cliff-hanger, if you're going to spoil it and show a next time trailer immediately afterwards?

D’oh!!!!

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.