Expectations were indeed very high indeed for this story, especially after the spectacular preview at the end of last weeks episode (my favourite so far), and I felt that in most cases it delivered. The high points of the story for me were the spaceship demolishing Big Ben and the brilliantly executed three in one cliffhanger! The Slitheen were also a remarkably unique alien, with their strange baby like faces I think they are a welcome change to the normal style of alien in SF(trying too hard be to creepy, usually accompanied by vast amounts of snarling). The use of established news reporters such as Andrew Marr was also another wise idea and made the whole thing seem so much more believable.

The obvious low point of the episode for many fans was the farting politicians. I could tolerate this, but did we really need the line I’m shaking my booty ? Aside from that aggravating quote though I can not see that much wrong with the story at all. Aside from what some people I know have said, I think the Slitheen look brilliant, as did the run away pig! Also, am I alone in thinking that the Slitheen looked better when the were CGI, as shown in next weeks preview?

As for the previews of what’s coming up Next Time, surely it would have been better to not to use it after a cliffhanger, especially such a good one? This is because we plainly see that the Doctor is fine and does not get hurt much at all. I feel that the cliffhanger is enough incentive for people to watch next week as they want to see what happens, rather then giving it away in a preview.

But all in all I felt that this was another VERY GOOD episode, worthy of the current series, which has exceeded my expectations. I only hope that the resolution to the story is as good as its opening part. We should also be able to see the preview for Dalek, the most anticipated story yet! I'm sure Robert Shearman has done wonders with those despot dustbins, but dont qoute me on that if it all goes horribly wrong! (Although I'm confident it won’t!)

The latest episode of Doctor Who was I am sad to say a little disappointing.

I like a fart gag as much as the next guy. No doubt RTD imagined that kids will be letting rip and declaring themselves aliens in playgrounds up and down the country. School rooms will reverberate to 'Sorry miss, i can't help it i'm a slyltheen'. Fine a throw away line, a quick laugh and be done with it. But for god sakes, it went on and on. I can understand RTD's desire to lighten the mood for the kiddies, but this was purile cheap and frankly nasty.

I rather liked the opening section in which Rose returned a year after she left, to find herself declared a missing person. it's an obvious plot device and I think the scenes with rose's mother were a nice touch and having watched 'confidential' looks like it might be developed further.

The Alien spacship crashing was resonably well done, although I found the design a bit to retro. The aftermath was ok but the TV reporter was weak. Nice to see Andrew Marr involved though.

Eccleston continues to give a decent performance as the Doctor, and Piper is a delight. The supporting cast are less impressive. Camille Coduri is average, and Noel Clarke is frankly wooden.... and what's with this whole Ricky bit from the Doctor. He comes across as both petulant and jealous.

The rest of the guest cast seem to treat the show as an extension of panto season. They overacted and over played everything.

The scene in Albion hospital was a good one. I'll even forgive the upright pig in a spacesuit. However, the actions of the soldier was a little farfetched. One moment they are pointing guns at the Doctor, the next, they are folowing orders from him. it was just a bit too lazy and rushed.

This brings me to one of my major concerns for the long term health of the show. Having RTD , as exec producer , de facto script commisioner, editor and writer, means no one is in a position to say, NO! and that's what this episode needed badly. In his first two scripts RTD was forced by the format to keep things tight and fast paced, and I suspect this reduced his ability to over indulge, but alas given 1 hour 30 mins to tell his story, he has allowed himself to overindulge in uncalled for homour and a lack of real tension.

As a two parter, much hinged on the cliffhanger. Oh dear , even this was badly handled with 3 seperate slow Alien reveals while everyone stands around and watches. The Aliens themself are average, and some of the effects work looked unfinished.

Then to make matters worse the 'next week' segment follows straight on, losing any dramatic tension built up. One of the aims of the show was to educate children to expect better TV. I am afraid this was not a good example. Children are much smarter than RTD gives them credit for.

One of the greatest pleasures I have had in the past few weeks has been the number of people who knowing my devotion to Doctor Who, have come up to me at work and told me how amazed they have been by the new series. I suspect that come monday morning i will be reminded of some of the darker moments of the Eighties.

Still onwards and upwards. Doctor saves the world, and bring on the Daleks!

It had its moments. An iconic spaceship crash, a traditional monster...it had the potential to be the best episode of the series so far. Unfortunately, as the unholy spawn of season 24, it turned out to be by far the worst.

The main problem is that the humour/drama balance was woefully misjudged. I like humour in the show when it's clever wit, but this was just idiotic slapstick. Hence we have Mickey's comedy pratfall, the Doctor wrestling with a baby and biped pig which may have been intended to be creepy and grotesque but was in fact just ridiculous.

Then we have Doctor Who's new worst-ever scene: the farting aliens. I'd heard about this before, and I've been dreading it. There was a time once where a script was written in iambic pentameter-now we have fart gags. Even Delta And The Bannermen, the show's worst episode, didn't have fart gags. Anyone would think they were trying to lose ratings. I can't remember when I last cringed so much.

Other humour is of the traditional RTD kind: self-conscious shots at fandom that would be postmodern if they were less smug and unsubtle (and unfunny). What we have then is a very poor episode: special effects and embarrassing jokes, and little else of substance except what was probably a good idea once.

The cliffhanger was fine...until the next episode trailer where we get to see the Doctor alive and well. A good cliffhanger should be a good cliffhanger for a whole week, not for thirty seconds.

Look back to The Unquiet Dead. It had the perfect balance of good humour and scares, was well paced, and had a core central idea that was allowed to shine through. Much like the original series then, we can have an absolute classic followed next week by an absolute dog. My only hope is now that the invasion has kicked in things will toughen up for part 2. I haven't given up on RTD just yet, but his I know best attitude is starting to grate on me. The problem with having the boss write an episode is that when they have a stupid idea there's no one to stop them.

I might be a good idea for next season (assuming ratings don't plummet now that is) for RTD to tone down his own input and give the other writers a greater slice of the pie, as I get the feeling that in terms of quality hes definitely the small fry.

Russell T Davies was the ideal choice to relaunch Doctor Who. There can be no doubt about it. Not only was he a fan, he was a top notch writer with experience in both genre and real-life drama.

What's becoming most interesting is that it is his real-life drama experience which seems to be working best in his latest project.

Doctor Who is never again going to be about hitting the reset button each week, having an adventure, disappearing off to find adventure somewhere else. And quite rightly. Today's audiences expect rounded characters, story arcs, teasing surprises. All of this Davis excels at. But there does seem to be a slight tension in his writing between this form of storytelling and his wish to keep Doctor Who recognisable as the show he always loved.

Alien of London was a perfect example of this. Rose returning a year later to the consequences of her departure - pitch perfect. Even Mickey the Plastic Actor gave a reasonable account of himself in this side of the show. The 'Bad Wolf' reference continues to tease, the spaceship crash was pitch-perfect, the news reporting, while at times a little melodramatic, was a great touch. The whole 'First Contact' angle was lovely. And we got a mention of UNIT into the bargain. Great.

Then we come to the problems. This is a family show. The BBC don't really need fans tuning in every week, they need families. So slapstick humour, manic grinning with 'fantastic' attached, the odd (perpetually awful) incidental music ding-a-ling I can understand and really don't mind. This aint Ultraviolet. But why did nobody at any point realise that today's children are savvy. They like dark, hard-edged stuff - take a look at Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket and the Philip Pullman novels. Have a look at the size of Buffy's audience which was preteen. Burping bins and farting aliens who giggle at their flatulence just weaken the show. There are better ways to please the target audience whilst not irritating everyone over 12 (still a sizeable proportion of the audience) who are watching.

Then there are the Slitheen. Sigh. And things were going so well. The Autons were a bit clunky, but you could see the thinking. The freak show in The End of the World was wonderful. The Gelth were absolutely, wide-eyed awesome. It looks like Ep 5's budget was splurged on the crash-landing, leaving us with rubber suits with bobble heads, horrible fake human skins and the dodgiest transformation CGI this side of Red Dwarf - which was at least a comedy at heart. Compare this to the CGI in The End of the World. You'd swear you were watching a different show.

The performances ... I seem to recall hearing that a lot of this ep was filmed at the start of the shoot, which would explain Chris Ecclestone's slight shakiness (much more reminiscent of Rose than the masterclass of the previous 2 episodes). It's ironic that Billie Piper was the casting which caused the most controversy, since she consistently steals every episode. It speaks volumes that, upon Ecclestone quitting, I was immeasurably relieved to hear that Billie would be staying.

The story could well wrap up nicely next week, we'll have to wait and see.

So, for me, Ep 2 remains the most satisfying so far. But, not to worry, for the all-conquering Dalek storylines, Simon Pegg and Paul Cornell's eps are still to come!

It was with a huge buzz of excitement that I sat down to watch Aliens of London this evening. I was expecting great things, hideous aliens possessing cabinet ministers, UFO crashes and a good old fashioned invasion of London.

Well that's what we got but why do I feel so disappointed and let down?

Well, in a word it was childish. Yes Doctor Who is a 'kids show that adults love' but does it have to be so ridiculously childish? Burp and fart gags? Russell you can do better.

I can only hope that the alien menace proves to be just that next week now that they are out of their skin and running amok. Fat middle aged politicians laughing about bodily functions is not what I would call terrifying. Where was the horror? Aliens disguised as human politicians could have been done so much better - the acting was terrible and the part where they all share a maniacal laugh together reminded me of the scene from the 60's Batman film with all the villains in it sharing a chuckle at the apparent demise of the dynamic duo.

In the original series the monsters may have at times looked cheap, amusing and completely failed to terrorise anyone but at least they tried. By the time the Slitheen revealed themselves they had lost all credibility. Had they been a lot more sinister while they were disguised as humans it would have had greater impact to me. While they certainly look impressive, I just pray that the Slitheen can make up for the pathetic showing in this episode and give the story some much needed horror and hopefully not turn out to be a batch of baby faced giggling incompetents.

It was interesting to see for the first time, with possibly the exception of 'Survival', the reaction back home of a companion's disappearance. It would be more interesting if Rose's mum and Mickey were actually decent characters. Rose's mum is perhaps not so bad but Mickey was just as bad as he was in 'Rose', is he supposed to be comic relief? If so, he isn't funny and there certainly doesn't need to be any more comic relief, there is so many attempts at humour it detracts from the suspense and excitement.

Still there were some good points, the UNIT presence was good, I don't know why the Doctor had a problem with them not recognising him but never mind. The effects in this episode were fantastic it has to be said, perhaps a bit too CGI'd but when did Doctor Who fans ever care about dodgy effects?

Both the regulars were as good as ever, Billie Piper once again proving any doubters wrong. Eccleston was perhaps less hands on than I'd like to have seen, spending too long on the sidelines at the start of the episode but once he did get off the couch he was as good as ever and proving that he will be missed once he goes.

Oh, and the pig, I really liked the pig.

Seriously, I did..

It has to be said that Aliens of London is the episode of the series so far that has left me least ecstatic - whether that is because of the quality of the episode, or just because the novelty of new Doctor Who is subsiding remains to be seen. However there were many bits that I liked and some that I was not so keen on.

The crash landing and the mocked up BBC News 24 coverage was excellent - as had been expected from last week's trailer. It's good to see a full scale invasion of Earth again - with the army, politicians and mock TV crews - and this felt like very traditional Who territory. In fact, there were many elements that made this episode feel more like the old series than any of the previous three. In many respects it felt reassuringly familiar. It is obvious that the two parter format is going to allow for more slow-building, complex plots and this, again, felt more like 'classic' Who. While not being overly complex, the plot was interesting, and the idea of the faked crash landing good. The mention of UNIT was also a nice little touch, put in to excite those of us who care about these things. The Doctor was once again quickly bossing around soldiers, just as he used to do in the Pertwee days. The Slitheen look very like traditional Who monsters, right down to their slightly rubbery, 70s looking costumes. And there was a cliffhanger! Just like the old series...only this one was largely negated by the teaser trailer for next week. Yes, I know nobody expects that the Doctor is about to die, but to see him running around grinning, just three seconds after the cliffhanger takes the edge off of it a little bit. That was a shame.

So, there were many elements to this episode that seem, on paper at least, to be very 'old Who'. However, if anybody was expecting Spearhead from Space, they were in for a shock. This was '2005 Who' through and through (and more specifically 'RTD Who'). After the sombre ghosts of The Unquiet Dead I think some people may have been unprepared for farting aliens and flying pigs, however I think that, outrageous as these elements seem, they managed to work - just. While they were a little too frequent, at least the fart gags did have a reasoning and purpose in the plot (beyond making the kids laugh). And the pig - well that was a complete surprise and an audacious move. I find that, as silly as 'RTD Who' (in contrast to The Unquiet Dead) can sometimes be, I do actually quite like it. And I think the reason is that it is so fresh and daring that it takes my breath away. It is so different to how the series was, while still being recognisably Who, that I can't help but be impressed. It would have been inconceivable in the old series that a companion would turn around to the Doctor and say "you're so gay", but in Aliens of London it was a minor aside that seemed so natural I'd completely forgotten about it five minutes later.

Other non-traditional elements of the story were, of course, the 'domestic scenes' and, once again, these do work. I love Rose's mum and even Mickey is alright this time around. However, I do feel that the series should now start to move on a bit beyond 'Rose's story'. It's been refreshing to see that the companion, and the effects of time travel on her, have been handled realistically, and she has been given a background. But if Rose is still squealing "but it's soooo alien", endlessly pondering the effects of time travel and arguing with her boyfriend and mum by episode 13, it may have got a bit soapish and a bit boring.

Finally, I just need to make a point about Christopher Eccleston's Doctor. Although his portrayal is largely good and his relationship with Rose interesting and intriguing, I just wish he would stop laughing and grinning inanely at everything! It sometimes seems a little put-on and makes me wince (I think it was in the car going to Downing Street). There seems to be a hint of a slightly pseudo-sexual relationship developing between the Doctor and Rose and it will be interesting to see how that pans out over the series - tricky territory.

All in all then, I enjoyed Aliens of London. The silliness really should have been toned down a bit, and hopefully CE will calm down a little as the series goes on, but Doctor Who is still the most original, enjoyable, clever and interesting programme on TV on a Saturday night by a long shot.