The second part to Aliens of London gets underway to a hasty start. The Doctor is being electrified to death by an ID card, Jackie Tyler is cornered in her own kitchen by a giant baby faced alien, and Rose Tyler is about to be murdered in 10 Downing Street. How will our heroes get out of this one? What ingenious move will the Doctor make?
Well, sadly, it's a tad disappointing if I'm perfectly honest. The Doctor seems slightly more immune to the deadly ID cards than humans are. Whilst the rest of the victims in the room drop dead almost immediately, the Doctor has enough time to take the card from around his neck, walk up to one of the alien beats and shove it into the collar strapped around the ringleader's neck. For reasons that are rather nonsensical, this electrical current is transmitted to all the other aliens; including the ones that are terrorizing Rose and Jackie.
So a bit of a lackluster opening, but is it the quality of the writing or my monstrously high expectations that make this the case? As I mentioned in my previous post, I was pretty geared up after the previous episode's cliffhanger. I tried to think of how they might worm their way out of this little pickle. All our heroes were hopelessly trapped. I couldn't come up with a solution in my head. This is the perfect cliffhanger. If the writers can come up with a situation that you simply cannot find a solution to, it makes such a hanging payoff all the more worth the wait. I was expecting Russel to flex his creative muscles here. I wanted to see something magnificent. Something that no one could see coming.
The final result really wasn't ingenious enough for my liking. Sure, I can't think of a better solution myself, but that's not my job. It is Russell's task as head writer to dream up new and unexpected ideas that his audience never could.
But what the heck. It works I suppose. Yet I'm still not buying the idea that an electrical current is able to transmit from one collar to the next. It just felt like too much of a cop out. The Doctor didn't know that Rose and Jackie were in danger. He was saving his own skin. The fact that it zapped the other Slitheen aliens was a mere coincidence which helped all the other characters climb out of Russell's previously established death trap.
So anyhow, now that the Doctor and chums are out of their cliffhanger pickle, the plot decides to ramp up its pace to full speed. The next few sequences are all running and roaring. Aliens chasing humans up and down corridors; Rose hiding for dear life in an office space and doors being smashed to high heaven by gargantuan extraterrestrial claws.
From these scenes alone, we can already see that this is a far different episode from that of last weeks. No longer are we in a slow paced zone of conspiracy theories and Rose apologizing to an angry ex. This is an all out chase story.
Well, for now at least. Things will slow down later. And then speed up again. And then slow down again. And...oh you get the picture.
Finally the Doctor bumps into Rose and her new acquaintance; Harriet Jones (more on her in a moment). Our heroes united once again.
And we're back to the chase. The Doctor, Rose and Harriet flee from the deadly alien baby faces; finally ending up in 10 Downing Street's Cabinet room.
It is at this moment that the Doctor holds up a bottle of alcoholic spirits and threatens the Slitheen with some made up technobabble (though in all fairness, the script does later on admit that he was making it up).
This pseudo-threat from the Doctor is an excuse for the plot to cram a load of poorly executed exposition down the viewers' throats. The Doctor demands that the Slitheen (who at this point reveal that the Slitheen is a family name, not a species) explain their absurdly apocalyptic plans to him.
Without any hesitation, they happily give him a round up of their murderous scheme. They want to drive the humans of earth into a fearful frenzy. The craft in the Thames was the catalyst for this global fear initiation. If they can just scare our species enough into thinking that hostile alien fleets are lurking amongst the clouds, then mankind will go batshit and light up the skies with an army of nuclear fireworks. Seeing as there aren't really any aliens up there, the nukes will inevitably wipe out the entire planet. Once their deadly plan is complete, the Slitheen plan to sell off the radioactive remains of the earth on an intergalactic black market; or something along those lines.
This form of exposition is hugely common in Doctor Who, and it really does drive me up the wall at times. I understand that viewers need to know what the story is all about, but just having villains explain their plan in the most blatant manner imaginable is nothing short of laziness. Writers need to find creative and unique ways to deliver exposition across to their audiences. Don't just have the Slitheen family go "oh we're going to get the humans to blow their planet up so that we can make a few quid", the script needs to do much more than that. Clues need to be put into place, piece by piece. The realization of what the monsters are doing must be subtle. One by one the story must unfold into a clear picture. If everything is explained in a matter of minutes, then there is no satisfaction in the discovery. Audiences are left thinking "oh, alright, so that's what they want to do, so what now?"
Additionally, exposition should not be delivered in its entirety. By the time that the Slitheen have explained all their plans to the Doctor, there are no blank spots in their plan. This means that there are no knowledge vaccums in place which the audience must figure out for themselves. Knowledge gaps can be a fantastic plot technique. It can allow for audiences to fill in the gaps for themselves or even dream up their own ideas of what the true meaning of such gaps are. Audiences are smarter than many writers give them credit for and gather a large portion of pleasure from texts by working out what is going on for themselves. Form the moment any episode begins, the minds of the viewers kick into fifth gear. They analyze and consume information at an incredible rate; striving to figure out and comprehend what sort of story they are consuming.
These are not the only problems with this scene. In fact, the exposition dump at the start of World War Three means that there is not really much else for the plot to do. Our heroes know exactly what the villains are up to and now only have to figure out a way to stop them in their tracks. This results in the Doctor, Rose and Harriet Jones chin wagging for the next 30-minues or so.
Once the Doctor, Rose, Harriet and the audience are filled in on the deadly plot, the Doctor admits that his technobabble threat with the spirit bottle was a bluff and locks himself (along with Rose and Harriet) inside the Cabinet room.
This move does kind of make sense. Aliens of London and World War Three is a story which is global in its scale. The plot is a lot bigger than it initially seems. Contemporary earth is placed on red alert after an alien crash takes place in London's city center. The architects of this hoax are now going to groom the nations of the world into blowing one another off the face of the earth. This is a huge space for our protagonists to occupy, so the plot has to confine them to one area. We can't have them running all over the planet in search of a solution, there simply wouldn't be enough time in two 45 minute episodes to even attempt such a plot.
So the writers have to lock them into one area. The Cabinet room is the perfect solution. The Doctor, Rose and Harriet must now solve the obstacles which lay before them from the isolation of one room. Nice move.
Now for Harriet Jones. Who is she? Well she's an MP for Flydale North. Her character actually appeared in Aliens of London, but I was too lazy to talk about her in my previous post. My main reason being that her character was pretty annoying at that point in this story. Despite the wonderful performance by the always brilliant Penelope Wilton, Harriet did nothing more than frustratingly badger Downing Street staff during a global crisis, bang on about the well being of a hospital from her local constituency, and cry like a neurotic teenager who had just split up with her boyfriend of two weeks.
She latched on to Rose like a bloodthirsty leach. In this episode, however, she slowly begins to grow in importance. Her first leap into the heroic mode comes when she appears willing to sacrifice herself in order to save Rose. Her character grows further as soon as she finds herself locked in with the Doctor and Rose.
The Doctor begins to notice her before anyone else, but he struggles to see why. Her name rings a bell to him. "Harriet Jones. I've heard that name before. Harriet Jones. You're not famous for anything, are you?" She's not, but he still cannot drop his suspicions. There's more to her than meets the eye.
The twist of her character, of course, is that she is destined to become the Prime Minister of Great Britain soon after the events of this story. More to the point, she will be the Prime Minister of Britain that will lead our country into the next golden age. This is a cute idea. The immediate future for Britain is suppose to become some sort of utopian land for its citizens. Of course there is no political intention on Davies' behalf here. He has a show which allows him to place such a neat concept into place and it works an absolute charm in a series that was made prior to the economic collapse of 2008.
As the chin wagging between Rose, the Doctor and Harriet persists, viewers are thrown into yet another action set piece. This time with Mickey and Jackie.
Jackie has gone with Mickey to his flat, in order to try and remain hidden from the Slitheen who attempted to kill her during the Aliens of London cliffhanger. Her attempt to seek asylum are in vain however, as the monster-disguised-as-a-police-officer manages to effortlessly tracked her down.
We're soon thrown into a mash-up of hasty dialogue and over-the-top music from Murray Gold (a composer whose score on Doctor Who transends form annoying 'ploinky-de- ploink' music to absolute orchestral brilliance in the space of several years). The Doctor helps Mickey and Jackie concoct a recipe - using domestic indigence found in his kitchen - in order to kill the Slitheen alien. It ends with Mickey throwing the content of the Doctor's recipe over the nine foot blob; resulting in an undignified and explosive death.
I do like this sequence. It's fast, fun and successfully incorporates racy dialogue into the action. A great theatrical piece of work from Davies. But I can't help but feel it is there to help fill out a story that is fast running out of steam.
The problem is the main plot of this story does not really require two whole episodes to tell it. The only reason why it took so long for us to get to this point is because of the sub-plot from last week's episode. Due to its presence, there was no way for Davies to build up and pay off this story in a 45 minute period. But it is also very difficult to tell this sort of a story with a 90 minute canvas either.
It would appear that Davies is trying to have his cake and eat it. He wants to put the character arcs of Rose's family firmly into place, whilst simultaneously delivering an alien conspiracy/destruction story. It's an audacious attempt and I can see why he attempted such a multi purpose story, however it is flawed in its design.
Aliens of London/World War Three is a bigger-than-usual story, but it's not big enough to warrant two full episodes. On top of that, the lazy exposition of the early half of this episode means that there really isn't that much more for it to do before it can finally be wrapped up.
Yet Davies tries to keep things ticking along. But it is done so with action scenes such as this one and further domestic dialogue exchanges between Jackie, Rose and the Doctor.
Amongst this domestic dialogue, however, Davies utilizes this screen time to put some pretty neat foreshadowing into place, and it really is quite brilliant at times. Jackie keeps questioning the Doctor. She wants him to promise her that her daughter will be safe with him. Naturally he knows that such a promise cannot be met. The Doctor's life is dangerous and he cannot guarantee that he will always deliver his companions home in one piece.
These moments begin to put questions into the audiences' heads. We are beginning to realize that the fate of Rose Tyler could go in any direction. How will she inevitably leave the show? Will she give up and chose to return to her normal life, or will a mortal accident force her to depart from the Doctor indefinitely?
It is a question which looms heavily throughout the episode and it actually fills the climax of this episode with a heap load of tension. As the missile aims toward Downing street, the Doctor admits that he could very well lose Rose in the process. After 45 minutes of foreshadowing, the Doctor's most recent companion finds herself in mortal danger.
Remember what I said last week? About how we still don't know what direction the show is going in? Well this is where that lack of knowledge works perfectly. I knew that Billie Piper had signed on for all thirteen episodes of series one, but what if it was all a lie? What if Davies did throw audiences off their guard by adding an unexpected death to one of the lead characters? Companions are expendable in this long running show, so there's no reason why a head writer may choose to write a main character out mid-series.
This wasn't going to happen of course. Like I say, Piper signed on for thirteen episodes and Davies wasn't going to be that audacious this early on. But in those climactic minutes, when that missile was racing toward London, I didn't have time to think logically. All I could think about was all of that foreshadowing which took place in the preceding scenes. It was a fantastic and tense moment.
Yet the climax has some huge gaping flaws in this episode. So let me explain. The Doctor decides that the only way to put an end to the Slitheens' destructive plan is by basically blowing up 10 Downing Street. How does he plan on doing this while locked away? By getting Mickey Smith to hack into the United Nations and take control of a missile.
Hmm, ok, fair enough. I mean this is Doctor Who after all. Crazy things like that do happen on a regular basis. But how is he going to get Mickey to do this? By typing in the password - Buffalo - into the UNIT website countless times over.
Sorry? What? A website, which not only contains all the world's secret information but also gives you control of long range military arsenals, can be accessed and controlled by one freaking password typed in several times over? And hold on, this top secret, deadly site also has its own public webpage?
Come on, even for Doctor Who, this is kind of ridiculous. I know that they didn't really have much time left to wrap up the episode, but they've just spent the past 30 odd minutes nattering about Rose's safety. They really could have utilized that time by conjuring up some sort of ingenious way around saving the world inside a locked room! I'm sorry, but I'm seriously not buying any of it. What a weak climax for the first two-parter of new Who.
Oh yeah and Rose survives. Like I say, of course she wasn't going to die. But the foreshadowing does not end there, oh no. The very final moments of the episode amplify the "will she die?" question to the max.
Rose explains to her mother that the Doctor's ship is a time machine; promising her that she will be return home to her in ten seconds. As the ship dematerializes into the nothingness, Jackie and Mickey time her absence by the watch. Ten seconds pass and there's no sign of Rose. They walk off into the night; not knowing whether Rose is still alive.
She probably isn't dead. As we already know from the opening of episode four, the Doctor isn't the most efficient time traveling alien when it comes to time keeping. Nonetheless, it is still a nice way to end the episode, plus it wraps up the themes of this story quite fittingly.
In conclusion, Aliens of London/World War Three is a story that tries to do one too many things with itself. Davies wants it to be his first alien thriller epic, as well as a catalyst for the program's character arcs. Some of this is executed wonderfully, however some parts fall flat on their backside.
The pacing of the story is quite wobbly at times. I think that the episode could have worked better if only Davies tweaked some of the scripts. For example, episode five runs out of steam quickly, but if he had just spaced out the exposition and the climax build up, then the story could have really made the most of this 90 minute space.
Furthermore, there are a few of the elements included in this one which really do soil the memory of this story quite considerably. The flatulent aliens, the upstanding space pig, and the United Nations website with awful security really do notch up the campness of this show to levels that are even too much for Doctor Who (which is seriously saying something!).
The character arcs of this episode are quite wonderfully constructed however. Davies is a master in this field and his talent really does leap off the screen here. Mickey's ascension from the idiot to the hero is wonderful. His relationship with the Doctor also goes through a drastic change during this 90 minute period. During Aliens of London, the Doctor does not like Mickey in the slightest. He bullies and insults him on an almost sadistic level. By the end of World War Three, however, the Doctor invites Mickey on board the Tardis. Despite Mickey declining the offer, it shows that he's already moving toward companion status. This is a huge transformation for someone who was nothing more than a transient character just five episodes ago.
All-in-all, this is a story which has many issues and poor decision choices, however it is also one that helps to shape the overlying character arcs for the next two series of this new era.
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