Doctor Who (2005) 1-04: Aliens of London

Episode:

700

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Serial:

160

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Writer:

Russell T Davies

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Director:

Keith Boak

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Air Date:

16-Apr-2005

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This week on Sci-Fi Adventures I'm reviewing the 700th episode of Doctor Who! At least, that's how it works out by my count. Things weren't quite that simple when it comes to the production side however, as it was being filmed in the same block as the pilot episode Rose. In fact, the first scene that Christopher Eccleston filmed for the series was for this episode.

The episode's called Aliens of London, by the way, and it's a secret two-parter. There's no clue in the title, you just get to the end and find that there's no ending. I hope that doesn't count as a spoiler to anyone, because I'm supposed to keep all my SPOILERS down in the review below.

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Aliens of London begins with the TARDIS materialising near Rose's flat, bringing her back home to the 7th of March 2005. This was some pretty wild stuff for Doctor Who at the time, as fans had seen all kinds of incredible science fiction concepts but never anything like this before: a companion visiting their friends and family for a bit.

The Third Doctor was the first to (eventually) have enough control of the TARDIS to actually bring it back to the same place, but his companion Jo Grant was more of a UNIT agent who tagged along with him occasionally than a time traveller who sometimes returned home. All the people after her lived in the box until they didn't and we didn't get to see any of their families, aside from the occasional aunt or whatever. So this was new territory for the series.

Oh, UNIT, they get a mention in this story. I'm not sure if it's the first time we hear about them in the revival series, but it's episode 4 so it seems plausible.

But there's a shocking twist, as it turns out that the TARDIS has materialised a year later than they thought! Okay that's not so shocking on its own, the whole premise of the show is them ending up in different times, but it gets a lot more complicated when a companion's been missing for all those months in between. This is something the classic show never really dealt with either. Ian and Barbara just said 'Oh, we've missed a year, no big deal' and lived happily ever after.

The episode doesn't really get into discussing the rules of time travel, but we can make assumptions based on the fact that they have to live with the consequences. The Doctor never considers just going back to the correct year because they already know that didn't happen, they've got the posters to prove it. If he hadn't seen this poster and Rose hadn't gone home to talk to Jackie, then it wouldn't have been an issue, and the poster wouldn't have existed in the first place.

This rule remains consistent for the rest of Doctor Who going forward, except for the countless episodes where it doesn't.

There's another subtle Bad Wolf mention for you. It still doesn't mean anything, but after Gwyneth mentioned it in The Unquiet Dead we're clearly meant to be aware that something's up.

So yeah, Jackie Tyler has spent a whole 12 months worrying about her missing daughter and the episode actually takes it seriously. She was just a comedy character last time we saw her and now things have suddenly gotten real. I don't think anyone would've expected the series to go here.

They've even got the police involved, asking questions. Like whether Rose's role as the Doctor's companion is a sexual relationship! Damn, this is the episode with the comedy farting aliens in right? I'm not getting them mixed up?

It doesn't help that Rose's answers are terrible, as the best explanation she has is that she's been travelling and forgot to call. Funny thing is she actually did call in The End of the World, but didn't she probably didn't realise she was talking to Jackie at a time before her job exploded.

And then the Doctor gets properly slapped. By Jackie, I should clarify, though the police officer didn't do anything to intervene.

Poor Rose has really been through the wringer this episode, with her crying mother begging her to tell her what really happened, and it's only five minutes in!

Changing the subject, this shot of them on the rooftop just doesn't look real to me. I'm not convinced. Which is a bit weird, seeing as they apparently did shoot on the roof for real. In fact even though this is the Brandon Estate standing in for the fictional Powell Estate, this is just above the street where they filmed the TARDIS appearing. It's about a mile and a half south east of Big Ben, the London Eye and Downing Street, and quite a bit further from their studio in Cardiff.

This is the moment when the Ninth Doctor reveals that he's 900 years old. Later episodes seem to show that he's giving an exact figure, as the number goes up each year. I think the last definite count we got before this was in Time and the Rani, when the Seventh Doctor used his age of 953 as the code to unlock a door. But it was a door put there by a Time Lord, so it would've presumably been Gallifreyan years. Either way it's a bit older than Rose expected, but she's fine with it.

Just then a spaceship flies overhead, which I guess reveals why the TARDIS brought them here.

I expected that the rest of the episode was going to be about Rose feeling less special now that everyone else knows about aliens, but we only really get one line about it. That's fine with me, I like that this is considered something to be excited about.

Russell T Davies' original plan was that the spaceship was going to be found underground. This would've been very close to the premise of 1967's Quatermass and the Pit, but if you're going to borrow something for Doctor Who it might as well be from classic '60s British sci-fi. He changed his mind though when he saw what was possible with CGI on a TV budget and went with big flashy blockbuster spectacle instead. Looks much better on the trailers.
 

So it's maybe a bit ironic that the most dramatic shot of the sequence was done with a miniature.
This still holds up I reckon, with Elizabeth Tower crumbling like an actual real object. You can barely tell that the footage was flipped and the numbers are on the wrong side and I'm not even being sarcastic.

The shot of the spaceship hitting the Thames and dunking the camera underwater is pretty great too. More because of how the water looks than than the spaceship.

Incidentally, judging by the angle, the camera is currently right next to the London Eye, where the entrance to the Nestene lair was in Rose. That means that the Doctor and Rose would've been on the opposite side of the Thames in the scene where they standing by the TARDIS trying to work out where the Nestene transmitter was. They were next to the RAF memorial just out of shot on the right.

1-01 - Rose

It was not a huge shock to me when I learned that these two stories were filmed in the same production block.

The Doctor grabs Rose's hand and rushes off with a grin to investigate, but it a spaceship crashing nearby hasn't helped the traffic at all, especially with the military in the streets. Lots of extras in this episode, none of them getting anywhere close to the alien ship.

This is actual history, humanity's first proper contact with aliens, and the Doctor's hyped to be here for it. He's less hyped to be stuck miles from the action, having to learn about it from the news. C'mon Doctor, don't you want to see how regular people react to this historic event?

I like how the tables have been turned a bit since The End of the World, and the Doctor's now being immersed in Rose's world, surrounded by strangers. It's definitely not his comfort zone.

Hey, it's the first appearance by American news reader Trinity Wells! Though she wasn't named until much later in the series. I said I wasn't going to spoil later stories, but seeing as she's just a face we see for a few seconds on a TV I don't think it ruins much to say that she continues to show up from time to time. In fact, her most recent appearance was in 2023.

Also she's the only named character to make an appearance in Doctor Who and its spin-offs Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. Apparently. I have to take the internet's word on that as I have not seen them.

Hey, it's Blue Peter! The two series have been tied together from basically the start, ever since Blue Peter taught kids how to make a Dalek from egg cartons or whatever back in 1964, so this clip of them showing kids how to make an alien spaceship cake is a nice reference.

This is so distinctively Russell T Davies era Doctor Who, with the sci-fi grounded by glimpses of what normal people are seeing on their CRT televisions back home. There's no criticism of the media here, it's just showing what it would be like if aliens arrived.

And then after this Blue Peter ran a contest to design a Doctor Who monster, which led to us getting the Abzorbaloff in season 2's Love & Monsters. The connection hasn't always been a good thing.

Anyway the Doctor learns that they recovered an alien body from the spacecraft and took it to nearby Albion Hospital.

Cut to General Asquith marching in and meeting with the doctor examining the alien... it's Tosh from Torchwood! Okay I don't really know Tosh from Torchwood, but I do think it's nice when an actor wins over the producers so much that they give them a larger role later on. It's funny how many companions have been played by actors who'd already been in the series. Doctors too. This time it is actually the same character though, even though she's only credited as Doctor Sato.

The scene reveals that the alien is dead, experts are being flown in, and there are rumours about the Prime Minister... who will not be named for the entirety of this episode. (In real life it was still Tony Blair.)

It turns out the Prime Minister is missing and a whole bunch of suspiciously unimportant MPs are arriving at Downing Street. Like this guy in the middle. Also Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, though she hasn't been invited into the big meeting. She's just here because of her appointment.

I know that Harriet's arc has to start somewhere, but her determination to carry on doing her best to help her constituents while the Prime Minister is AWOL and aliens have crashed through Big Ben comes across as kind of bizarre. I'm with Indra Ganesh (on the left) when he says the schedule has probably changed. Later on even the bad guys are telling her to get some perspective!

Oh, this guy's now Acting Prime Minister by the way, even though he's clearly way out of his depth and looks kind of terrified. Also he keeps farting. I would look up what the guy's called, but it doesn't matter because he's actually an evil alien in disguise.

Once they're in the Cabinet Room and they've got some privacy the alien infiltrators drop the act and start laughing their asses off. So at least they have a sense of humour on their planet.

By the way, the building the production team found to represent 10 Downing Street looks really good. I don't know if this is what 10 Downing Street looks like, but I'm happy to believe that it is. I can imagine real politicians gathering in a room just like this, bursting out into evil laughter and letting rip with noxious alien farts.

Meanwhile the Doctor assures Rose he won't disappear on her and gives her a TARDIS key... before getting into the TARDIS and disappearing on her. But it turns out that Mickey lives in that building they were on the roof of earlier and he spots the Doctor walking to the TARDIS. He rushes down (after putting his shoes on), but he's too late...

... and literally bounces off the wall. C'mon episode, treat Mickey with a bit more respect. Or at least give him better comedy to do, because that was kind of embarrassing.

Also, how did he go the whole day without noticing the TARDIS parked outside his own flat? It was bright sunlight when they arrived and it's night now. Well I guess he might have been indoors watching the news.

Meanwhile Harriet sees a chance to sneak into the empty Cabinet Room and stick her document inside the case containing the emergency protocols for alien contact... after first sitting down and having a read.

The Doctor arrives at Albion Hospital and walks right into a room full of soldiers who are very quick to point all of their guns at him.

Fortunately the alien corpse takes this moment to pull an Eighth Doctor and bust out of the morgue, sparing him from having to convince these folks that he should be there. He just yells "Defence plan delta, come on!" and his team follows him out.

I like this twist, as it's an early hint for new viewers that the Doctor's maybe done some work with the military before. He's got so much confidence and authority that they even obey his order to put the hotel under lockdown even though they have no idea who he is. I love how he silently points to one and then points to Tosh, and they immediately come over to protect her, it shows how they all know what they're doing here. Well... so far. Unfortunately behind the scenes things were not going so smoothly.

The scene of the Doctor chasing the alien around the corridors was the very first scene filmed for the Doctor Who revival, on 18th July 2004. The last scene was apparently filmed on the 24th November, and they'd shot scenes during August, September and October as well. So I can believe people when they say that production on the first few episodes was a total mess.

It was an ambitious series, intended to compete with the big American genre shows on their level, so it took a bit of working out before they hit their stride.

It turns out that the alien is a little pig guy and he's very much alive. At least until someone puts a bullet into him.

It was practically a running joke in the classic series that bullets did nothing against the aliens they were fighting, but still people kept trying. Now the modern series starts with the bullets actually working against the alien, but it's a tragedy. The poor guy was just scared.

This probably hits harder if you're an alien yourself, especially if these same humans were just pointing guns right at your head.

Back at 10 Downing Street, General Asquith marches into the Cabinet Room on the rampage while Harriet hides in the cupboard. That means she gets to witness their new Prime Minister open a zip on his forehead and show Asquith exactly why he's been so useless today. Well, once all the farting and giggling is finally over.

It's a shame really as Asquith seemed like a reasonable guy. He was a bit of a shouty authority figure, but he only moved to take power from the Prime Minister when the emergency protocols demanded it, and he was absolutely right to do so. Well, right to try at least.

Back at the hospital, the Doctor chats with Tosh over the corpse of the now definitely dead alien, who it turns out is definitely not an alien. It's a mermaid: a constructed creature created to trick people. Aliens faked an alien crash with a fake alien.

And then Mickey arrives at Jackie's flat and it all gets a bit awkward. Turns out that when Rose went missing, Jackie accused Mickey of being responsible! He was questioned by the police, multiple times, and now the two of them hate each other. Man, it's amazing how far this episode goes to ruin their lives. It's almost like we're seeing a dark possible future that needs fixing, but nope, this is just how things are.

At least Mickey knew that Rose was with the Doctor all this time, and he also knows that he just left her behind. He's loving it, in fact, gloating about the fact that the Doctor abandoned her like she abandoned him.

They all head outside to where the TARDIS had been, and Rose is horrified when Jackie witnesses it rematerialise.

In fact she even comes inside and see the console room!

Mickey finally gets to confront the Doctor about he was a murder suspect thanks to him, but the Doctor isn't interested in domestic drama in his TARDIS. He doesn't even remember his name, calling him Ricky, and he mocks him when he tries to correct him.

Man, Mickey wasn't all that sympathetic in the first episode but now I'm starting to feel bad for the guy. He's had a rough year and he doesn't need this crap from the Doctor as well. Plus he actually decides to stick around in the console room and makes some helpful observations. Like how it's really strange for aliens to fake a crash and deliberately put the world on red alert.

Everyone has a reaction to seeing the inside of the TARDIS for the first time. Some people rush back outside, run around the box, and then say some variation of "It's bigger on the inside".

Jackie's reaction was to run home and call the emergency hotline number shown on TV to report an alien. She's not quite as helpful as Mickey.

Especially as she says all the right words to get an immediate government response.

In the episode this screen flashes up so fast I didn't really think about what was going on with the red background, but when you have time to look it gets kind of weird. There are two layers of random words scrolling by like it's Matrix code or something.
 

This is a rare shot from the floor of the TARDIS looking up.

With Mickey here, Rose finally gets to admit the truth to someone. She's only been gone a few days, she didn't really leave him for a year. Mickey has something to tell her as well: he hasn't been seeing anyone else while she was gone. Mostly because everyone thought he was a murderer.

The Doctor has suspicious that the alien ship's flight path was a bit too flashy, with how it just happened to clip the most famous landmark in the country, so he does some tweaks to TARDIS to let him calculate its origin. Turns out that its origin... is Earth.

By this point the aliens have stolen General Asquith's skin to impersonate him, leaving behind their old disguise for Harriet to find.

Damn, the guy's skin has a literal zip on it! Why does Doctor Who have to be like this sometimes? They worked so hard to make the sets convincing, the shot of the ship smashing through Big Ben was really well executed, the actors are all doing the best to make the drama between Rose, Jackie and Mickey properly emotional, and now we're looking at some dude's skin with a zip put in.

You know what this means? It means that while Harriet was hiding in the cupboard, the aliens have been hard at work stitching a new zip into Asquith's head.

I like the twist where it turns out that the Doctor's not being captured by the government as a threat, he's being taken to Downing Street as to join the other experts! He mentions UNIT and Mickey shows he's been doing his research by telling Rose that he used to work for them. Rose is like a new viewer who just wants to find out stuff as it happens, while Mickey is the guy that looks up about the old episodes on Wikipedia.

We get a (bad) explanation for why he wouldn't just go and join UNIT to begin with: they wouldn't recognise him. C'mon Doctor, UNIT's met at least 6 of your previous incarnations already. But hey, we just got maybe the first hint in the series that he regenerates.

It's nice to see Rose so hyped to be getting a trip to 10 Downing Street while the Doctor is hyped to wave at all the press. Mickey could've joined them if he hadn't ran off to hide, but that's probably for the best with how things turn out.

I don't know if this shot was filmed for real with them driving around an actual street, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was. It looks pretty real.

While the Doctor's in a briefing with all the alien experts (and the aliens), Jackie gets a visit by another police officer. This one a bit gassier than the other guy.

Meanwhile Rose is taken aside by Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, who breaks down in tears at the thought of what she's seen. Some characters manage to walk the line between goofy comedy and emotional sincerity, but she's swaying all over the place this episode.

Together they find the dead Prime Minister in a cupboard in the Cabinet Room. We never did learn his name though.

Ganesh turns up to yell at Harriet for straying into part of the building she should be and quickly realises this is a 'dead Prime Minister on the floor' situation.

Over in the briefing, the Doctor realises that part of the aliens' scheme was to get the world's experts in a room together. So it's a good thing that I don't know any of these people from the classic series. This could've been a room full of former companions about to get killed!

Oh no, the police officer visiting Jackie was wearing a hat to hide the very obvious zip! Wait, the others didn't wear hats. Does this guy just suck at making seamless skin suits? Also, here's a question, how do the eyes work? And the teeth? And the ability to expression emotion?

He's here to eliminate anyone associated with the Doctor, because they're trouble. Which is smart actually, considering how the Doctor's friends often play a big role in saving the day. Of course they have to make sure to eliminate the Doctor as well, as killing all his friends tends to put him in a vengeful mood.

Anyway it turns out that these guys are actually giant baby-faced CGI aliens compressed into human size who climb out through the top of the head. I think the thing that bothers me most about this, is that's a really stupid way to get out of a suit. Just put the zipper at the back!

The alien who took the identity of Margaret Blaine shows up to threaten Rose, Harriet and Ganesh, so they're not being left out of this big cliffhanger. The aliens are the Slitheen and everyone's is going to be killed by their big wobbly arms!

Everyone except for the Doctor. He's just going to be electrocuted by the badge he's wearing like the other experts, while the Slitheen does an evil laugh.

And that was Doctor Who's first cliffhanger ending. Or something like its 540th, if you're counting the original run. Classic Doctor Who had a lot of practice with its cliffhangers, but the trouble with a fresh start is that this was a new team figuring out how to make the cliffhangers work with their new format. The episode drags the crisis out forever, with over two minutes of the Slitheen unzipping their heads and threatening people. It goes on for so long that Jackie finally notices that her living room is flashing blue from the dude's glowing zip hole.

Then afterwards the episode takes just over two seconds to start spoiling what happens next, as the trailer for the next part comes on before the credits have even begun. You have to be quick with the stop button for this cliffhanger to have any threat in it.

Hang on, I just realised that they forgot to put an explosion at the end! There's been an explosion in every story so far this season. Though I suppose the story's not over yet.


CONCLUSION

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The trouble with Aliens of London for me is that it's like two very different episodes edited together.

A lot of the time this is actually a really good episode about what happens when the Doctor and Rose arrive a year late. It's a great premise and it goes in directions the series had never gone before. Which is impressive, seeing as it had been going for 26 seasons. The scenes with Jackie in are all gold as far as I'm concerned. Any scene with the Doctor in was gold too, even when he was sitting in Jackie's flat with her friends, being tormented by normality.

Also an alien spaceship crashes and the Doctor investigates, that's all part of the 30 minutes too. We get the first example of RTD Doctor Who showing news anchors and celebrities talking about the events to increase the scope and make it feel more real. The Doctor leaps into action commanding troops, that's good too. Most of the stuff with Mickey is good. The effects are good. It's all good stuff. Suitable for kids, without being outright childish. Fun without being absurd.

But 12 minutes into the episode it starts cutting away to what's happening in Downing Street, and we get scenes from a different kind of episode. An episode made to entertain children, with farting aliens threatening to be 'silent but deadly', skin suits with zips, and Harriet Jones being determined to slip her proposal about cottage hospitals in with the emergency protocols for dealing with alien incursion. It's Plastic Mickey all over again.

There's nothing wrong with a story shifting gears between serious and comedic, realistic and fantastic, but when they feel disconnected that's not good, and when I don't even want to sit through the comedic side, that's worse. I usually like the comedy in Doctor Who! I want it to be witty.

I know the Slitheen side of the plot is supposed to be satire, especially in the next part, but they're among the goofiest body snatchers I've seen and they drag everything down to their level. If you put farting aliens in your political sci-fi thriller, it's going to detract. And I imagine the kids young enough to love the aliens were bored by all the rest of it.


RATING

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I gave Rose a score of 6, The End of the World an 8, and The Unquiet Dead a 5, so where does the notorious Aliens of London fit? Well, it's got the same problems as Rose with the childish comedy, and the same strengths as Rose with all the good scenes with the four main characters. Plus it brought Jackie and Mickey back. So I think I'm going to give it...

6/10. Which is like a 7/10 except slightly worse.

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NEXT EPISODE

Next on Sci-Fi Adventures, it's not the epic conclusion I'm afraid, as I have to write about the new episode, Lux! Maybe Lux will turn out to be the better story, I don't know. All that is certain is RTD's gonna do what RTD does.

Speaking of people doing things, it'd be cool if you left a comment below with your own thoughts on this episode.