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...

Ahh, contrived cliffhanger resolution. Don't you just love it?

One of the immutable edicts of Doctor Who lore, ritually spoken by fans through the decades, is that Episode Three Shall Consist Mainly of Padding. However, in the new 45 minute format, episodes three are a thing of the past, with the second episode of this two parter forming the equivalent, in screen-time terms, of both three and four of a traditional four-part story. Thus there is the potential, in theory at least, for two-parters to lose the sagginess of the original format, combining the aimless running around of the penultimate episode with the climactic action of the finale without spending too much time on either.

Does World War III manage this? Does it ever.

Picking up from where Aliens of London left off, the cliffhanger is wrapped up in traditional Deus Ex the Doctor style, leaving room for a packed forty minutes of monster-filled mayhem. It may feel oddly paced to the committed fan, used to cliffhangers like clockwork every 25 minutes, but both the story and character development is well structured, the plot playing out intelligently, with a real sense of creeping menace towards the end. As you might expect from Russell T Davies, there is much playful subversion of expectation - a neat spin on the splitting-up-the-TARDIS-crew idea, some deliberate undermining of our expectations of the Slitheen and a genuinely surprising way to Save the Day - but happily he never loses sight of the essential 'run-away-from-the-horrible-things!' feel of a monster-based story.

The visual effects go a long way to helping this impression, of course, and thankfully the Slitheen turn out to be very impressive in the flesh, both as full-suit prosthetics and as CGI work. Nitpickers might complain of a certain costume-wobble in the head department, as well some repetition in terms of reveals, but reactions from children bear our Russell T's claim that these are great monsters, their baby faces and digestive problems belying their thoroughly bloodthirsty nature. Helpfully for parents, though, he makes a point of providing step-by-step instructions for dealing with them, revealing just what sandwich snacks to leave on the bedside table in case of nightmares.

While the cast is of course largely the same as that established last week, it's worth noting that Christopher Eccleston's awkwardness in last week's episode - a reflection of the fact that it was the first to be filmed - has by now disappeared, with the actor having apparently settled much more into the role. And with such a strong guest cast, even Penelope Wilton was hard pressed to outshine those playing the Slitheen, making her final scenes all the more satisfying to a die-hard fan of Ever Decreasing Circles. Less impressive were Jackie and Micky, noted in the past as the weakest regular performers, unfortunately made all the more obvious here with them being teamed up for large periods. However, while Jackie once again feels a bit out of her depth emotionally, with her talents clearly lying more in the comedy area, Micky manages to excel himself, helped by a strong and satisfying character arc playing on his relationship with the Doctor.

While the plot is still straightforward, there's a lot in this episode, from cosy domesticity (despite the Doctor's continuing insistence that he "doesn't do families") to gruesome comedy, to outright scare-the-kiddies-shitless monster moments. Luckily the Slitheen also get plenty of comedy to relieve the tension, as well as some subtle and not-so-subtle satirical jibes by virtue of the political setting - some of them almost too timely a fortnight before the UK's general election. With some nice directorial touches, including good use of live tv reports as established in Aliens of..., the whole thing fairly flies by, a million miles from Colin Baker's lumbering first season, which was also made as thirteen 45-minute episodes (albeit alll multi-parters), and yet all but universally derided as the worst in the programme's history. It may be too early to say, but it's hard to believe such a fate lies in store for this story - by turns scary, funny, tense, dramatic, emotional, visually stunning and very, very silly, it feels on the contrary like exactly what Dr Who should be.

(Although, having said that, it was the one thing WWIII didn't have that really made the highpoint of the episode - the final two minutes, when all the Slitheen nonsense was done with, the story was over, and we could get a preview of next week's episode... Dalek. Now that's worth turning on for.)

This is my first review, so I'd like to make a few general points first. It's great that the series is back, and I love the arrangement of the theme - it gives it a certain power and drive, that works well, though I am disappointed that the end theme is so truncated; I would love to hear the full version to this arrangement. The opening sequence itself is simply brilliant; the graphics are top notch!. When Billie was announced as Rose, I was sceptical, but she is already turning out to be one of the best and most three dimensional companions that I can recall. Christopher as the doctor is starting to grow on me; he is still a bit uneven, but he is a very adept actor, who is managing to add great depth to the doctor. I do find his "fantastic!"'s a bit wearing though. There is a certain hardness to his doctor that I like, we don't yet know the story behind the extinction (!?) of the time lords, but we see glimpses of how this has affected him. The Tardis set is, in itself, very impressive, but I'm afraid I hate it; it's not the Tardis I know and love.

World War Three was actually not a bad episode. I have the advantage of watching this series with my 7 year old son ( the age group aimed at, it would appear), and while he was scared of the Slitheen the previous week, he appeared not too bothered this week, though I think it was the unzipping scenes that got him. The plot itself petered out about half way through the episode, but the character development was good. There were some nice gags peppered about, the best being the doctor being held at gunpoint before backing into the lift, and "you kiss this man!". The Slitheen themselves were a disappointment; I groaned last week at the return of the 'extras running about in silly rubber suits'; the CGI scenes worked much better. I expect money limited the use of CGI. This is perhaps why the suits were thankfully not seen as much, and when they were, they tended not to move about.

The farting was overused and tedious, and is an example of why I'm not convinced that RTD is the great writer everyone seems to think he is. I will concede though that he is much better at character development than he is plot development. The interchanges between Mickey and the doctor were the highlight of the episode, closely followed by Rose and her mum. The doctor not being able to promise that Rose will be safe was very well done, adding realism and depth; life does not always have a happy ending.

I was surprised at a glaring oversight; the scene where the Tardis is being cleaned. The doctor looks out and you can clearly see the side of the police box, even though the doors are directly linked to the interior. Sloppy. The sonic screwdriver was overused, and the doctor seems to rely on it too much. Is it me, or does that particular prop seem to change from week to week?

The series is still finding its feet, and it shows, but there is a lot to commend it; its a shame that we won't get to see Christopher develop over a second season, as I think that would have been very interesting. Hopefully David will last longer, mainly because the doctor is reaching his limit on regenerations!

Christopher Eccleston really is turning into not only one of the most complex of all the Time Lords, but one whose personality could be sliced into each of the elements of his former incarnations; he is, in this much stronger half of a two-part story, much like William Hartnell's great-grandchild. Troubled, brooding, as hard-edged as flint. What makes "Aliens of London/World War Three" so strong is the fact that, in this "Volume II" of Doctor Who, the whole event is a faster, bolder, braver take on the main narrative, with enough depth and intellegence to tackle the domestic side of the characters' lives in great detail. Jackie and Mickey are not just cardboard cut-outs, and the decision to give Rose time back home opens more opportunities than it closes. "World War Three" is obviously one of the strongest episodes in the 9 year history of this "Volume II" of Doctor Who, and certainly one of the best ever all round multi-episode stories.

Satire can be subtle, but when a rogue prime minister warns the nation that alien invaders could strike at 45 seconds notice, and calls on the UN to do something about it, you know that the BBC decided not to bother with cutting back on the Hutton Report bashing so close to a General Election. Overall, the episode was a tense and well-written story - The Doctor challenged to risk his moral nerve, Rose having to trust her new best friend, Jackie having to test her mother's love. It was all about the nerve of bravery, a tense decision Christopher Eccleston can delivery because grit and determination are emotions he can carry off better than most other contemporary actors. His Doctor cares, but has tough love, not the slushy Grandfather figure of John Pertwee; more Colin Baker than Tom.

To defeat the Slitheen - great idea, shame about the obvious difference between the puppets and the CGI - the Doctor could use brains or brawn. He uses brains, but backed up with a nuke straight into Downing Street. Yes, this idea is somewhat silly - a little too silly one might think - but these really were desparate times, and Russell T Davies' writing made the viewer believe in those desparate times. This is why the domestic element of the story line is so important. "I could stop you, you know..." is an important line - Jackie could have stopped it all because she is a caring mother first, an element of Time Travel she is not.

This episode was important because it was able to place Rose into her familiar context one more time, to ensure the casual viewer is taught on the stark differences between herself and the Doctor, and the Doctor and their ideas about what a Doctor Who "should be". His decision not to have tea with the Tyler's was another important sign post - this is not a domestic Doctor, he does not do soft love. Killing the Slitheen was the only possible solution, he does not do un-necessary saving of life. For the Doctor and Rose to survive as a team, it had to be determined that they had to work as an un-easy union, not a "couple", and this episode painted that well.

All episodes thus far have had a few niggling doubts. The "after the cliff-hanger" solution was in keeping with the "Peter Davision closing and then not closing his eyes whilst crashing into Androzani" style moments where all is well at the start of Part 2. Heritage or not, it was a cheap way out of the cliff hanger and it did not make logical sense when it did happen. Whilst she did improve - "You pass port on the left hand side" - Penelope Wilton was still not as brilliant as she so often is. Her character was a little to silly to be given such an integeral role. It can also be accepted that UNIT would by now have a website, but one with such power?

The new era cannot be escaped, deleted or forgotten. Is this a gift, or a betrayal? Have all fans, from whatever end of the spectrum, been sold a golden gift or a pile of Emperor's clothes? From the 5 episodes thus far, it is certainly more positive than negative - this is a modern day classic Doctor Who and "Aliens Of London/World War Three" maintains the high standard. Next week... the benchmark may well be lifted higher still......