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.

Who Reviews The Idiot's Lantern by S.F. Cambridge

The Doctor: “In the street. They left her in the street. They took her face and just chucked her out and left her in the street. And as a result, that makes things simple. Very, very simple”

Set in North London in 1953 this is another iconic episode which happens around a real-life event mainly the Coronation of Elizabeth II

Mr Magpie, a shop owner selling mainly radio’s and a few TV’s which were still considered rare at this time, is contacted by an alien force through the T.V known as “The Wire” It takes on the physical appearance of a T.V presenter and manipulates Magpie into doing her dirty work for her which is mainly installing cheap TVs into the surrounding houses so that when they are switched on, The Wire can suck the life force out of those gathered round to watch by means of removing their faces, leaving a faceless empty shell behind.

When The Doctor and Rose land in 1953, it’s by mistake as they were supposed to be in Vegas and are suitably dressed for that era, but when they witness someone being taken from their home with a sheet over their head and driven away by the police, they then start to notice the other strange things going on within the street itself, i.e., everyone seems to have a T.V when the reality was that only one or two people within a street community had one and everyone used to gather round it to watch important events. The Doctor and Rose decide to question the Connolly’s, a local family who appear to be behaving suspiciously. The son, Tommy, introduces them to his to Grandma whose entire face is missing. His mother wants to get her help but the father has become aggressive and is refusing to let her bring shame on his family because she is nothing more than a monster in his eyes. Before the Doctor can even offer to help or ask how it happened, the police burst in and remove Tommy’s Grandma in the same way they removed their neighbour with a sheet over her head. The Doctor decides to follow them and Rose decides to investigate Magpie’s shop, where she discovers "The Wire", and learns it is an alien that managed to escape execution by its people by turning itself into an electrical form. The Wire seeks to consume enough minds to recreate a body (also stealing the face of the victim in the process) and plans on using the broadcast of the Coronation to do so. Rose is unable to flee before falling victim to the Wire and loses her face.

Without wishing to force spoilers onto those who have not yet seen this episode, it is fair to say that The Doctor saves the day as he usually does even with the usual near miss disasters as he scales the telephone tower determined to catch Magpie who is trying to hook “The “Wire” up so it can broadcast across the nation, dropping his equipment on the way which brought about memories of Back to the future when Doc Brown was trying to attach his wire to the town clock before lightening could strike.

This episode also reminded me of a quote from “The Unicorn and The Wasp” in which Lady Edison says…” We’re British, we carry on” …The Connolly family had been the victim of an alien attack. They might not have known it at the time but although something horrible had happened to one of their family, it was their determination to carry on and watch the Coronation no matter what, even if that meant locking Grandma away so no one could see her.  I could deduce that having only just come out of the 2^nd world war 20 years earlier that those fighting in it had seen and been through worse and faced difficulties that had to be dealt with without the help of outside forces. As usual, if it hadn’t have been for Tommy’s determination to stand up to his dad and help his grandma and The Doctor’s help in solving the mystery, this perhaps would have been just another thing that happened during that time that was never investigated which could lead views to question, just how many other incidences like this went on during a time when people were hellbent on celebrating anything good that was happening, whilst ignoring everything that went on behind closed doors including as this episode also touches lightly upon, domestic abuse.

Who Reviews End of the World by Tony J Fyler

Tony’s counting down

The structure of Series 1 of reinvigorated Doctor Who is a masterpiece in its own right. While Rose is the welcome mat to a whole new world of fans, focusing on the companion’s point of view, a threat to the Earth and in this case, the human and family relationships that surround the companion, bringing the worlds of soap and sci-fi together, it’s actually The End Of The End that takes the concept and shows the kind of thing it can do.

In some senses, it’s a love letter to the past, like The Curse Of Peladon with an early 21^st century effects budget and a look that blows most of Classic Who off the screen. It’s a mad collection of random aliens, trapped in an enclosed environment for a particular purpose, and then things start to go wrong. People start to die.

It’s got everything you could want from a Peladon homage – gruff aliens, silently menacing aliens, snarly-looking scary aliens who turn out to be squeaky little darlings. It has blue-skinned space station staff, CGI metal spiders which when they tiptoed across our screens in 2005 looked amazing compared to what people expected of Doctor Who effects. There are walking sexy tree-people, for goodness sake. But as the mystery unfolds of who’s killing off the visitors to the day the sun explodes – an almost-nod to Douglas Adams’ ideas of The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe – it becomes clear that the last of the genetically ‘pure’ humans is the source of trouble. Take that, people who think ‘the humans are the bad guys’ is an invention of the Chris Chibnall era.

As much as it’s about the love letter to The Curse Of Peladon though, it’s also an in-the-moment adventure with the separation of the Doctor and his new friend, an almost-test of Rose’s ability to accept and live in the wider universe, and it’s a test she takes in her stride. Yes, there are moments when her mind is blown by quite how alien the aliens are, but it’s in Rose’s ability to talk to the staff, to show an actual interest in people’s lives, and in her rejection of the mindset of the villain, the creed of species purity, that we see what this Rose Tyler girl is going to bring to our universe that can earn her the right to a wider passport in time and space alongside the best of the Doctor’s previous companions. Yes, the sun might be about to blow up, but Rose is interested in the people who go mostly ignored. Yes, the aliens might be alien, but that doesn’t mean they’re lesser than her, and she’ll stand up against notions of racial purity, species-purity and people with a sense of even inherent class entitlement, in favour of equality for all. In Rose, we see her dealing with the absolute broadening of her world on Earth. But in The End Of The World, Rose Tyler deals with the absolutely broadened palette of experiences the universe has to offer, and stands up for the values of her time and place, which are some of the best humanity had to offer at the time.

The End Of The World, as well as doing all that, stands as a statement of dramatic and comedic intent by Russell T Davies – you’re not allowed to bring weapons or religion on board the station. There’s relatively modern pop music used as incidental music alongside the score. There’s a heavyweight acting talent in the main villain role, as Zoe Wanamaker gives voice to Cassandra, the stretch of skin linked to a brain in a jar who nevertheless has ideas of her own purity. There’s social satire in the fact that she’s been tweaked and tucked until all that’s left of her is a strip of tight skin and a vicious brain. There’s some solid companion-peril, allowing the Doctor to rescue his new friend, but there’s also a big doohickey that the Doctor has to face – the big fans of spinny doom – and a connection with a random person who ultimately pays with their life for the Doctor’s necessary actions. And, more than ever in Classic Who, there’s a quiet moment, a conversation between the Doctor and his friend, where they ask him questions and don’t take no for an answer. Where Rose has that moment and gifts us the ‘Turn of the Earth’ speech, The End Of The World gives us the first real inkling of the Time War, and the first real idea that while this is absolutely the same Doctor we knew in the Classic era, he’s seen things, and possibly done things since he was the Byronic man in the Bill Hickock costume that have changed him, shown him things he never wanted to see.

And while the sun explodes, everybody’s more engaged in the drama of Cassandra and her plot than with the stellar shenanigans – the human conflict foregrounded over the space opera.

By the time we reach the end of The End Of The World, Rose has proved herself in time and space, we’ve been introduced to the first New Who statement of intent, we’ve been treated to a visual feast that knocks the whole ‘shaky sets and dodgy CGI’ mythology of Who out of the window, those who know have seen The Curse Of Peladon reinvigorated in the 21^st century, those who are new have seen a shedload of aliens, had their expectations subverted in the Moxx of Balhoon, met heroic tree-people in Jabe and the Forest of Cheem – kiss my Groot, Marvel Universe – and overall, enjoyed a murder mystery in space with none of the cliched problems people used to talk about with Doctor Who. The End Of The World takes new Doctor Who out into the universe, and for the most part, nails both the soundness and believability of the visuals for a 21^st century science fiction show and the Russell T Davies mentality and aesthetic of what that wider universe looks like, sounds like and thinks like. It proves that Rose was no fluke, that the show could stretch itself into futuristic settings, fix many of the budget-based problems of future ages, and compete in the early 21^st century market for slick sci-fi, while still possessing that barmy touch of comfortable kitsch that is forever Doctor Who. It consolidated the casually curious into solid viewers by throwing down the challenge to itself, and meeting it spectacularly.

Who Reviews The Stealers of Dreams by DJ Forrest

Written by Steve Lyons

For BBC Books 2005

Set on the Colony World 4378976 Delta-Four, the residents are a scared bunch of people who are not allowed to imagine anything. Not to dream. Certainly, not to use their brains to predict a possible scenario, that could have you sent to the Big White House!

I must say; I love the 9^th Doctor stories that feature Captain Jack Harkness. This is a Captain who is yet to become immortal, and for that reason, he is a stronger character. He knows that life is precious, but he is also fiercely protective of Rose Tyler and of the people he feels sorry for in the story.

When Rose, the Doctor and Captain Jack Harkness arrive on the planet, they stay in a hotel where something piques the Doctor’s interest while Rose and Jack sleep. So much so, that when Rose awakes and finds the Doctor missing, has an adventure of her own when she learns of a young man hiding from the Police. He’s a creative artist, who isn’t allowed to use fiction in any capacity. And when he’s discovered doing just that, with a bunch of fiction geeks, the four lads go into hiding. Domnic is lucky in one sense. Rose Tyler finds him. Except, after discovering the channel Static, where secret messages are hidden in the white space, even Rose begins to change; begins to see things are not all that they seem.

In the first chapter, the imagination can conjure up all kinds of monsters, and throughout the story, I really wanted to know what happened to the young girl who had suffered frightening dreams, so horrendous that monsters did lurk beneath her bed at night.

In fact, whenever a ‘fantasy crazy’ as they’re called, began talking about fictional things, and imagining, and thinking of a worst case scenario, you half expected to see something monsterish charging towards them on the next page.

The police chase was interesting, and the Doctor was keen to get to the bottom of the mystery about who Hal Gryden was; the man who ran the Static channel, who nobody had seen.

When Rose and Jack were hoodwinked either by their own imagination or by someone claiming to be Hal Gryden, you feared for their fates in the Big White House, aka the lunatic asylum. Its description was very Victorian era, and if you’re from the UK, the Victorian building and archaic torture treatment to fix the ‘crazies’ is as barbaric in the novel as you remember reading in the history books.

The Big White House is run by Cal Tyko who I imagined to be Professor Gagan Rassmussen from the episode ‘Sleep No More’, so obviously, that just upped the creepiness of his treatment even more. 

I’ve a few novels still to read of Steve’s, but if this is anything to go by. The ‘edge of the seat’ ride through the chapters. The ‘hang on a minute, did I just skip a page or two here, what just happened?’ are going to be frequent questions as I read on.

But they’re good questions, as I have to admit, picking up the final chapter I wondered if I’d missed a few pages somewhere. But it does round off the story well, and answers a few of the nagging questions I had reading through the novel.

If you’re a 9^th Doctor fan as I am, then The Stealers of Dreams is a good read. You don’t have to have read any of the other novels first, I certainly didn’t, plus I never read them in order.

I love stories which feature the good old Captain, and it’s great to see him involved in the story as much as Rose or the Doctor, and it would be great to read more of his adventures with the Time Lord, more than the few I’ve discovered he’s in with the 9^th.

If you’ve got the novel, read it. If you haven’t, buy it.