A televised story featuring the Ninth Doctor, Rose, and Mickey
Written by Russell T. Davies and directed by Keith Boak
Polarity Rating: 3.5 out of 5
This year I had the pleasure of attending Gallifrey in Los Angeles and meeting some of my fellow Doctor Who fans, most notably those from the podcasting community. At dinner with my new friends, someone broached the subject of what our first impressions were when the series returned in 2005. Everyone more or less had something good to say with one exception: they all hated, hated, hated "Aliens of London" and "World War Three."
This sentiment is apparently shared by the majority of Doctor Who fans, and out of all of the Ninth Doctor's adventures it seems to be singled out as the worst. (Everyone seems to have forgotten "Rose," with the abominable plastic Mickey.) It had been quite a while since I had seen it, so after Gallifrey I decided to pop it into the DVD player and revisit it to find out if it deserves all these rotten tomatoes. And now I have to ask my fellow fans: Why?!
The first thing the critics like to point to is the farting. It's completely uncalled for and silly, they seem to say. Had this been an hour and a half of nothing but fart jokes, this would be a valid point, but the farting is just one rather amusing characteristic of the villains in the piece and it's only remotely touched upon in the story. Another object of ridicule seems to be the Slitheen themselves. This criticism, of course, comes from many people who think the Daleks (definitely the most overused villains in all of Doctor Who) are the ultimate foe. While I admit that the juxtaposition of the Slitheen as lumbering hulks with images of them dashing through the corridors of 10 Downing Street seems just a little mismatched, the concept of the Slitheen is pretty original. These are not creatures who are bent on ruling the universe; they simply want to blow the earth into tiny pieces and sell the remains for profit. Their plan for doing this is clever, albeit a little overcomplicated: murder various high officials in the British government and impersonate them by donning their skins. It's a classic ploy used often in horror movies like The Thing and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Indeed, as the story progresses, the Doctor and his friends quickly learn that no one is to be trusted because anyone could either be under the influence of the Slitheen or a Slitheen themselves.
With the exception of a few head-scratching moments (and I'll get to those in a moment) the plot itself is a nice little treat. There are some wonderful moments, including a three-pronged cliffhanger at the conclusion of the first episode that remains one of the series' best (and I include the oft-lauded "The Time of Angels" in that mix). A tense encounter with a Slitheen in Mickey's kitchen concludes with the amusing realization amongst the protagonists that the creatures' weakness is vinegar, the result being bits and pieces of an exploding alien all over Mickey and Jackie. Russell T. Davies' writing, always the subject of criticism, is sharp as ever, particularly the dialogue between the Doctor, Rose, and Harriet Jones. There's even a little nod to the dodgy risks of time travel; the Doctor assures Rose he's brought her back to London just after she left, but it's almost a year later and Rose has gone missing all that time. For the most part, it's just great fun.
But this particular patch of petunias is not without its proverbial cat turd. Perhaps RTD should have watched Independence Day again before writing in that ridiculous conclusion involving Mickey hacking into the military's network and launching a missile from his computer. Granted, the Doctor provided him with the required security codes, but it still doesn't seem plausible. The possibility of three people surviving an explosion by crouching in a closet is rather contrived, especially since all of 10 Downing Street was incinerated save for that single closet door and its adjoining wall.
This story begins RTD's obsession with an alien menace popping up none-too-subtly in the middle of London, which was repeated in "The Christmas Invasion" and again in "Army of Ghosts" and again in "Runaway Bride" and again in "The End of Time." In RTD's world, the English must be a paranoid lot, always looking to the skies for fear of when the next alien menace will strike. I'm probably not the only one who would recommend that he review some of the Third Doctor's UNIT adventures, in which the alien invaders were dealt with discretely without sacrificing the adventurous elements of the story.
At the end of the day, I suppose that "Aliens of London" gets slightly higher marks than "World War Three" in light of the problems mentioned above, but the two episodes combined still make for some slightly above-average Doctor Who. Fans are, of course, entitled to their opinions, but I still say it's just a jolly fun romp.
Fun Facts:
- "Aliens of London/World War Three" was ranked 132 out of 200 in Doctor Who Magazine's 2010 poll. It beat out two other Ninth Doctor stories: its sequel "Boom Town" and "The Long Game."
- Just a couple episodes later, the Slitheen returned in "Boom Town." They have yet to make a reappearance on the show (to the relief of fans everywhere), but their relatives the Blathereen popped up in The Sarah Jane Adventures. Many people feel that this particular race is more suitable for that show, perhaps because younger viewers enjoy fart jokes more.
- Harriet Jones made an appearance in "The Christmas Invasion" before she was sadly exterminated by the Daleks in "Journey's End."
