Doctor Who Series 1 Episode 4 - Aliens Of London (Part 1) - Review
Starring: Christopher Eccleston, Billie Piper, Camille Coduri, Noel Clarke & Penelope Wilton
Written By: Russell T Davies
Directed By: Keith Boak
After
taking us to space stations five billion years in the future, and
battling Victorian ghosts with Charles Dickens, the TARDIS is
bringing us back to present day London. If there's one location that
the original run of Doctor Who didn't really take us all that
often (with the exception of Jon Pertwee's tenure), it was a regular
contemporary setting. We started getting glimpses of this in the
final classic story, Survival, but with the new revived
series, it seems that we'll be clocking in back home a lot more
often.
The
Doctor attempts to bring Rose back home twelve hours after she left,
but miscalculates and arrives twelve months later. Having been
missing for a year, Rose has to try and make amends with Jackie and
Mickey, while also deciding whether or not she can travel with the
Doctor anymore. Soon after, a spaceship descends over London,
smashing into Big Ben, before crashing in the River Thames. Humanity
has made first contact, sending London into lockdown and the eyes of
the world focused on the UK, but all is not as it seems, and the
aliens may have been here longer than we think...
Aliens
Of London manages
to highlight one of the biggest changes to this new run of Doctor
Who
– the fact that the companion now has a family and a life on Earth
away from the Doctor. It's one of the things that makes Rose a more
developed character, and I love the fact that we're now getting to
know characters like Jackie and Mickey a lot better. We've never
fully seen one of the Doctor's companions have to face the
consequences back home that come about from a life of adventure and
time travel, and I appreciate the series for touching on this. We can
easily sympathize with Jackie and Mickey, and how they were left
behind. When Jackie learns about the TARDIS, and who the Doctor is,
it's hard not to feel sorry for her and how overwhelmed she is, even
when she ends up calling an alien emergency helpline. The same
applies to Mickey, and honestly when he asks Rose about whether she's
going to stay now that she's back home, I sympathize with him a lot
more than I do with Rose.
Speaking
of Rose, it's a shame that in this episode, she ends up taking a step
back in terms of character development. After a wobbly start in the
opening episode, Rose had been showing signs of improvement,
particularly in her scenes with Gwyneth in The
Unquiet Dead,
but here, she becomes very hostile once again. Even though her mother
has been worried sick about her for the past year, and her boyfriend
was thought to have murdered her, Rose just doesn't seem to care all
that much. In fact, she shows more concern when she thinks the Doctor
has left her than she ever does for her family. However, while Rose
disappoints, the Doctor continues to impress. I love how the Doctor
clearly doesn't fit into the domestic situation he's found himself
in, getting slapped by Jackie at one point and awkwardly trying to
learn more about the alien arrival, while everyone goes on with their
day-to-day lives around him. His inner-child also comes out as the
spaceship crashes into London, and his investigation gives him one of
the best lines of the episode: “Excuse
me, do you mind not farting while I'm saving the world?
As
you may have gathered, this is a story of two halves, and while the
Tyler family's side of the story is generally a success, we also have
an alien invasion to talk about. The spaceship's crash into the River
Thames looks brilliant, feels very cinematic, and gets this episode
moving after a relatively slow start. Even with the limitations of
Doctor Who's
budget and the fact that we are mostly confined to London, the
episode still manages to generate a great sense of scale. We have
rapidly edited news footage from different stations, an alien
helpline for people to call if they're worried, a military presence
(I loved the references to U.N.I.T.), government protocols,
involvement from the United Nations etc. etc. Not only is it grand in
scale, but it feels like a very realistic and believable reaction to
an alien arrival. You've even got Andrew Marr here from time to time,
giving some updates on the situation from outside Downing Street.
With
all of this working in the episode's favour, it feels like we should
be in for Doctor
Who's
spin on a political thriller, but sadly there's also a lot holding us
back from this. The main problem with Aliens Of
London
is that it doesn't seem to know quite what it's going for – comedic
and mostly aimed at kids, or a thriller with a wider aim. Given the
parallels this episode shares with the 9/11 attacks (which at the
time of broadcast, had only happened four years previously), and the
jab of having big green aliens masquerading as politicians, the more
serious political thriller would have been vastly preferred. If the
episode had gone down this more serious route, then nice, likeable
characters like Harriet Jones would have sufficiently prevented it
from becoming too serious, without the need for silliness and loads
of farting. I just can't feel intimidated or affected by aliens that
are farting one minute, and then trying to be threatening in the
next. In fact, this week's aliens, the Slitheen, sum up this problem
perfectly – they're well-designed and the concept of them hiding in
the skins of politicians has plenty of subtext to it. But the farting
gimmick and the silliness surrounding them undermines all this.
However,
even though it has its fair share of problems, Aliens
Of London makes
up for some lost ground with its ending. As the first two-part story
of the revival, Aliens Of London treats
us to not just one cliffhanger – but three brilliant cliffhangers.
(Spoiler Warning!)
As Rose and Harriet are cornered by one of the Slitheen, and Jackie
is cornered by another in her kitchen, the Doctor and his fellow
alien experts are under attack from a lethal electrical shock. As
cliffhangers go, this is a pretty strong one, filled with tension and
the reveal of the Slitheen design is well-lit and well-directed.
Seeing as this is a two-parter, it leaves us with plenty of questions
over the course of the week as we wonder if and how everyone will
survive, and also allows us room for further development and answers
in next week's episode.
In
conclusion, while Aliens Of London
may not be the strongest of starts, it is still playing around with
some interesting ideas. The silliness and Rose's poor attitude
towards her family are unfortunate, but if next week's World
War III can
filter this out and focus on what does work, then we may still be
able to salvage something that can definitely be described as good.
The groundwork is here, but it's in need of refining.
Find
my review of Part 2 here: https://ojgreviews.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/doctor-who-series-1-episode-5-world-war.html
Aliens Of London
6/10
(So
far...)