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.

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.