Who Reviews Aliens of London/World War Three by Tony J Fyler

 

Excuse Tony shaking his booty.

To some extent, each episode of Series 1 of Doctor Who, back in 2005, was an example piece of the things Doctor Who could do, the journeys it could take and the moods it could evoke. 

While Rose was a primer in mystery and mayhem and why a modern companion would go travelling with the madman in his box, The End Of The World took us to far off times and gave us space diplomats meets Agatha Christie. The Unquiet Dead gave us the celebrity historical and the creep-out aliens-as-supernatural story. 

And then…well, then there was Aliens of London and World War Three. 

If that two-part story had a fundamental mood, it was contemporary alien batcrap craziness.

Alien invasions that aren’t alien invasions. Big Ben destroyed. Pigs in spaceships. Farting aliens with zips in the heads of fat-suits. Baby-faced aliens with giant, powerful claw—tipped bodies. 

To say nothing of the Doctor watching alien invasions on the TV. 

Aliens Of London and World War Three are, above all, an exercise in new storytelling forms for Doctor Who – using modern new reporting, with both real and invented news reporters, showing real seats of power under threat. It was inevitable when Russell T Davies took over Doctor Who that this kind of ‘realistic’ storytelling would be coming. It had been a hallmark of his work for decades by the time he took the big chair. But with fifteen years of hindsight and more, it’s difficult to remember how innovative it was for Doctor Who. Yes, over the years, there had been occasional dabblings with news reports – The Daemons and the Eight Doctor TV story, to name just two. But the brightness, the speed, the use of the medium as part of the narrative structure, had never been used as well as it was in Aliens Of London and World War Three.

The dabblings with UNIT were a lovely touch, and the double-cross that ended Aliens Of London was both well thought-through and shocking. The use of Penelope Wilton as Harriet Jones, the backbench MP who still has concerns even as the world might be ending, was sublime – especially when she’s forced to hide in a cupboard while the Slitheen unmask and kill. That the horror of that moment is both inherently comical, but is played utterly straight by Wilton, is a thing of beauty, and a mark of 21^st century Who’s style. Underplay, or play for reality, wherever possible – especially when the aliens themselves are absurd. 

And perhaps as much as anything, Aliens Of London and World War Three are an object lesson in 21^st century Who by virtue of how they deal with the suspicions of Jackie Tyler and Mickey Smith. 

Neither of them have any real reason to trust this interloping Doctor, and when the story begins, neither of them do. But by its end, the Doctor has done what he can to reassure Jackie that he will put Rose’s life before his own, and Mickey has hacked into an international missile defence system  to blow the Slitheen to bits, guided step by step by the Doctor. 

Let’s talk about the Slitheen for a minute. 

More than anything else, the mark of the Slitheen is an utterly classless disregard for anything other than themselves (Gosh – wonder what that feels like). Their plan is classless and almost absurdly overcomplicated for the perceived reward – sell the cindered remains of the Earth to the highest bidder for spaceship fuel. That disparity elevates the level of their contempt. Their language is scornful of the humans they intend to destroy, their pretences crass and comic as they constantly apologise for the farts that follow them everywhere. When unmasked, they revert to primitivism – nakedness and primal hunting are what guide them, smelling out their victims like any predatory beast. 

They’re also interesting in the world of Doctor Who by being villains who aren’t a complete race of species, but just a family. A mafia-style family in some regards, determined to make the fastest bucks the universe will allow, but also in a very real sense, they’re repugnant hoorays, over-privileged, fact-light robber barons with a hunting obsession, who see themselves as better than everyone. 

And they find a home in Downing Street to hatch their plans. 

Between the modern drama storytelling techniques, the unusual villains, the batcrap-crazy elements of whimsy that, to be fair, were always a fundamental element of Classic Doctor Who (remember the killer armchair and the deadly daffodils?), and the thoroughly new idea that the Doctor’s actions might have real-world consequences on our Earth just as readily as they might on Peladon or Sarn, Aliens Of London and World War Three mark not only the stamping on the show of a new brisk relevance, but also a yanking into the 21^st century of the show’s storytelling style. 

The Doctor’s companions having family connections was to become a huge mark of the show for the whole of the Davies era, and to some extent the Moffat era too, and it’s in Aliens Of London and World War Three that the notion really begins that we’re moving towards a version of Doctor Who where there’s less Classic-style ‘cover-ups to keep people ignorant’ as with the Loch Ness Monster in the Thames, and more towards a world in which at least some people remember the previous escapades of aliens and the Doctor. 

As such, even if the realization of the Slitheen, either in terms of their story value or their look, isn’t the stuff of legends, there’s a lot in Aliens Of London and World War Three that make them memorable. You might never necessarily find yourself so bored as to go “I must watch this again right now!” But if you do, you’ll remember why, when you first watched it, you were swept along by the mystery, the what-the-hellery, Rose’s family connections and the weird, zip-headed farting aliens. 

If they’re never Genesis of the Daleks or The Caves Of Androzani, Aliens Of London and World War Three sit happily among the likes of Destiny Of The Daleks or The Dominators – barking mad from start to finish, but reliably watchable Who with lots of people who will remember them fondly.