Aliens of London / World War Three

Chapter The 142nd, where there are dangerous liars in 10 Downing Street, and they want to destroy us all.

Plot:

After adventures in the future and the past, the Doctor returns Rose home; he thinks it's only 12 hours since she left, but he's miscalculated and she's been gone 12 months. The questions and recriminations from Rose's Mum Jackie are cut short by a spacecraft descending into the skies above London, crashing into Big Ben and splash landing into the Thames. It looks like Earth's first contact, but the Doctor is suspicious, and sneaks away from the Tyler's flat to take the TARDIS to a London hospital to investigate the body of the alien pilot, which is under quarantine there. It is a fake - an Earth pig but augmented with genuine alien technology. In the febrile atmosphere in the aftermath of the event, people are getting assaulted on the streets after being falsely identified as aliens. When the Doctor returns to the Powell Estate, Jackie sees inside the TARDIS, and - in a state - rushes home to report him to the government helpline number. Certain words she says trigger an alert, and very quickly troops arrive and take the Doctor and Rose off to 10 Downing Street. They're not being arrested, though, but are instead being drafted in to help alongside many experts from UNIT.

Various minor politicians / public servants have been put in charge of the country, as the PM is missing and the rest of the cabinet are stuck outside central London with roads blocked. These turn out to be disguised alien criminals, the Slitheen family, compressed inside their human skin suits, who have killed the PM. They proceed to kill all the UNIT personnel, but the Doctor, Rose and a backbench MP, Harriet Jones, who happened to be there for a meeting when it all started to kick off, get away. They hole up inside the impregnable Cabinet Room, and call Jackie and Mickey to help them from outside. Meanwhile, the Slitheen, still disguised, make a statement broadcast around the world saying that aliens are orbiting Earth ready to destroy the world. They have indulged in all this theatre with crashed ships and pig pilots, to create a false flag narrative to encourage the release of UN nuclear codes, so they can kick off World War Three. Once that's over, they intend to sell the radioactive Earth for use as cheap spacecraft fuel. The Doctor talks Mickey through hacking into missile control, and he fires a conventional missile at 10 Downing Street. The Doctor, Rose and Harriet are safe within the reinforced walls of the cabinet room, but the Slitheen are all killed. Harriet Jones takes charge in the aftermath, and - as the Doctor tells it to Rose - will go on to become Prime Minister. Rose goes travelling off with the Doctor again, leaving Jackie and Mickey behind.

(Oh, and the compression required for the aliens to squeeze into their disguises causes gas to escape, which sounds like they're farting. This is, regardless of what some might have you believe, a minor part of the narrative.)

Context:

The family have come around to the idea of watching Doctor Who again! Most of the lovelies (Better Half and two of the children - boy of 13, girl of 7) watched this with me from the DVD one Sunday afternoon. I'd expected to have to switch off after the first episode, but nobody wanted to wait, and I was encouraged heartily, maybe even aggressively (you know, like the mafia encourage people) to put on the second part immediately. Christopher Eccleston's entire year is excellent, every second of it, even when there's farting aliens, and I'll fight anyone who says different. If the Slitheen are supposed to be embarrassing, and the plot of this story a bit wonky, then someone needs to tell my family as they adored it. They laughed at the bits that were supposed to be funny, got excited by the bits that were supposed to be thrilling, and were scared when it got scary. If you haven't seen this story recently and have a memory that it's rubbish, then I'd recommend giving it another spin - it is so much better than I remembered.

First time round:

This was the first story filmed for the new Doctor Who series, in a production block that also covered the re-launch episode Rose. The first scenes ever shot were those in the hospital with the space pig. Later, on August 20th 2004, this two-parter went into the studio for the first time. I mention this only because 170 miles away, I was getting married to the Better Half at the very same time. Anyway, a few months later, once the series had got underway, there was advance press regarding these, its fourth and fifth episodes. Slightly sniffy preview comments emerged online to suggest that this would be the first less than excellent story of the run. This caused worry amongst the fans reading it. The first three episodes had made a big splash, but even before episode 2 - when Eccleston's decision only to do one year had leaked - fans were thinking that the show would get cancelled any time soon, so we were all over-reacting to any bad news. Also, there was a small but vocal minority that hated anything and everything about the new series, and they were more than ready to put the boot in.

I watched the first episode on BBC1 broadcast in April 2005 and thought it was great: couple of dodgy moments where they hadn't got the tone quite right, but mostly excellent material, particularly around Rose, Jackie and Mickey, and the real world consequences of the Doctor's erratic time travel. Ditto the second and final part. The internet went crazy, though, piling on and decrying everyone responsible. This was so severe that I questioned my first impression and watched it all again, waiting for the moment where it went south. And I waited, and I waited. I got to the end thinking it was better than I had before. There were a couple of moments where the tone was wrong, but they were shorter and less significant on second watch.

One other nice point about the first ever watch was a multi-textual treat for the obsessives in the audience like myself who'd be devouring every scrap of information available about the new series. There was some fun online stuff tying in to the early stories. The website run by amateur alien investigator Clive shown in the first episode Rose was launched for real online following the broadcast, and was then updated weekly after that with tie-in content. Following the in-show continuity, it was being run by an unnamed someone else (as Clive died at the hands of the Autons in that first story). Within the text, hints were dropped by the person running the website that they were in trouble, and having run-ins with the police. It was then revealed after Aliens of London that it was Mickey's website now, part of his ongoing investigations into the Doctor to clear his name, and the run-ins with the police were connected to Rose's disappearance. It was a nice little bit of world building.

Reaction:

I like to imagine, and it may even be right, that Russell T Davies - the writer and executive producer of the story - was plotting the scene where Jackie is being interviewed by a police officer in her home, and the audience has to be clued in that he is in fact one of the disguised aliens. I picture him brain-storming how that could be achieved in an innovative way. Sure, the alien's eyes could glow, but that's been done so many times before (including by Russell himself in his then recent ITV drama The Second Coming, where he insisted the production team made the demon characters' eyes glow silver instead of red, as red would have been too much of a cliché). Eureka! What if they farted instead?! It is original, you have to give him that. Many people, as mentioned above, think that this kills the episode stone dead, but there's so much more here than just farting. The only egregious bit is a moment where the actors are encouraged to play it like children (where Annette Badland says "I'm shaking my booty"); the idea I think is for this to counterpoint the moment where the scene turns sinister, but it's taken too far. Aside from that, it's just a few gags ("Do you mind not farting when I'm trying to save the world?!", and Penelope Wilton wringing every ounce of comedy from Harriet Jones' discomfort at having to discuss farting "If you'll pardon the word").

It is perhaps understandable that the tone isn't quite there - this was was one of the earliest written scripts, and part of the first recording block. As well as Annette Badland shaking her booty, the pig looks a bit too much like one of the Muppet Pigs in Space (which may have been deliberate, but is still very wrong), and there's blood seen in one moment (they would never show blood again during Russell T Davies's era, and very rarely at all). There's too much of an obvious join between the physical suit and CGI versions of the Slitheen, and nobody knows how to edit a cliffhanger with economy. These are blink and you miss them moments, though, and weirdly they are now not the moments that necessarily stand out most for the wrong reasons. Far more wrong tonally, at least with the benefit of hindsight, is the Christopher Eccleston Doctor's bullying of Mickey, and Rose's use of "gay" as a derogatory term roughly synonymous with the word "lame". The former at least has a plot purpose, with Mickey and the Doctor eventually coming to a grudging respect for one another during the course of events; the latter, though common usage at the time, doesn't feel like something Rose would say; Davies was trying to be provocative, but because the Doctor lets the word pass without censure, I'm not sure what point he was trying to make. Again, though, to dwell too much on these very minor and momentary blemishes would be to miss the truly excellent material all around.

This was a show finding its way, clearly, but finding its way very quickly and confidently, and this is where the new series truly begins to my mind. After three quick-fire and, beyond some of the trappings, fairly traditional tales - present day invasion, trip to space with weird aliens, historical trip to Victorian Britain - Davies does what he does best, and has continued to do often in his later career: big sci-fi / fantasy ideas explored within a domestic family situation. The regulars, who made a big impression in the series opener, get fleshed out here: Mickey's rough treatment, keeping secret all the weird stuff he saw in that first episode while he's suspected of having murdered Rose; Jackie - making explicit the dramatic question and emotional core of the story - asking the Doctor whether he can keep Rose safe. This is also where the key Davies Earth invasion tropes get established, like global events being filtered through broadcast media, including celebrity cameos (Matt Baker doing a Blue Peter make of a spacecraft), and the first ever glimpse of Trinity Wells, news anchor on AMNN, the fictional American station, who continues to appear throughout Davies's stories.

The story has a great guest cast, particularly Penelope Wilton as Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, who was so good they had to bring her back, even though it ruined the continuity of the character established here (she does not end up in power for three consecutive terms). The moment that epitomises her character is at the point in the narrative when someone has to make the crisis point decision, to risk individual safety for the greater good; she steps up. Asked "Who the hell are you?" over the phone by Jackie, she says "Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North" turning a running joke into a statement of intent. There's so much great dialogue, great jokes, great effects (the model work of the spaceship crashing into Big Ben still looks amazing to this day). Despite the reported issues with director Keith Boak, he gets some great sequences in the can, particularly the scenes creeping around the darkened hospital while an unseen menace makes sounds from off. There's quality in every aspect of the piece, down to the smallest decisions: Davies made the TARDIS key an ordinary one, so that every child could have one, but also makes it special - it glows when the TARDIS approaches - to fire the imaginations of those same children.

This story also has a handful of those great Doctor Who moments that send a shiver down one's spine, or get one jumping up and down in excitement, or punching the air. My favourite is the "Narrows it down" scene, which combines thrills and humour to reach a fever pitch. Mickey and Jackie are stuck in his flat, with no escape and a Slitheen breaking down the door. If we love these two characters by now (I did!) we're already emotional that they've been thrown together after spending the year of Rose's disappearance hating one another. But now they're in trouble, and their only help is the Doctor, locked in a room miles away, with only a phone to communicate. Eccelston becomes a still point, thinking, while the chaos whirls around him, and Rose and Harriet brainstorm everything they know about these aliens so that they Doctor can work out from where they originate. With every fact, he says "Narrows it down" as the tension ramps up. As the final splinters of Mickey's flat door break, the Doctor works out where the Slitheen are from, and Davies gets a huge laugh from the incongruity and silliness of the planet name "Raxacoricofallapatorius!", then manages to top that with Mickey's dry reaction "Great - we could write 'em a letter". It still keeps building, as this helps the Doctor find their weakness - vinegar ("Just like Hannibal!"). They attack the Slitheen using vinegar from Mickey's kitchen, there's a wonderful dramatic pause, then the explosion of tension and another great gag as the Slitheen blows up and Jackie and Mickey get gunged. It is a great piece of writing and performance: serious and silly, in perfect balance, but underlining that the Doctor is a hero that uses his wits first and foremost.
 
For some, I suppose, the story is too jokey, too much of a romp; but watch the quieter moments, particularly at the end, and you'll see that there's an underlying seriousness. Mickey sits proudly on a bin, having put his fears behind him - previously, he's been very cautious around bins, having been eaten by one in Rose. Jackie patiently waits, after her daughter has a little too glibly told her that, because she's travelling in a time machine, she can be back only ten seconds after she leaves. Jackie watches the TARDIS disappear, calmly counts to ten, then walks away resigned, her daughter not having returned. Another moment as a demonstration of how this story can change its attitude in a split second: Eccleston, on his first day filming, is pursuing Jimmy Vee, playing a Muppet pig waddling down a corridor. It is a bit risible, to say the least. Then, the pig is gunned down by a twitchy squaddie, and Eccleston kneels down, looking up, eyes imploring, asking why the soldier did what he did, and says "It was scared" with such gravitas that he lifts the whole thing up five or six levels, and the pig is imbued with more life than it ever could have been by the costume alone. He is, so far and by far, the best actor ever to play the Doctor.

Connectivity: 

Another story where aliens lie to fool a gullible populace into helping to bring about their own destruction. In both productions the design of the monsters is somewhat unwieldy.

Deeper Thoughts:

Untruth and Anti-reconciliation. After recent events in the UK, you'll understand if I'm a little depressed: yes, it's been announced there's no Doctor Who special on Christmas Day, and Spyfall is instead debuting on New Year's Day 2020, seemingly sealing that date as the ongoing festive special day for the foreseeable future... Oh, and the end of everything I hold dear in the UK following the general election too, of course. I'm hoping it won't be that bad, but it is a dark day indeed for anyone here yearning for a progressive and social democratic country. While it might not be the end of civilisation, I fear it is the end of civility. It's clear from the events of the Autumn and prorogation of parliament, and multiple pieces of evidence elsewhere - they haven't been shy about it - that the newly empowered Conservative government are not going to play fair. The old, and sometimes unwritten, rules are gone, blown away by the wind of a Britain Trump. Shameless opportunism, or even outright cruelty, are no longer to be avoided, but actively to be embraced, it seems. The Conservative candidate that proposed nuisance council tenants should be put in forced labour camps was duly elected last Thursday. Ditto for the candidate who said disabled people should be paid less as they 'don’t understand money’.

If such ugly truths bring reward, then it seems unlikely that anyone is going to care about the lies anymore. There were plenty of those too. That forced labour camps candidate, Lee Anderson, was caught faking a doorstep interaction while canvassing, for example. Independent fact checkers found that nothing Johnson said in his interview with Aliens of London cameo player Andrew Marr was accurate, and separately it was found that 88% of Conservative Facebook ads during the campaign were misleading. The percentage for the main opposition party Labour was 0%, but they lost the election comprehensively. This is, at least to my mind, a major change since the era of spin referenced in Aliens of London / World War Three, with the script's sly digs about the UK justification for the 2003 Iraq War ("massive weapons of destruction capable of being deployed within forty five seconds"). Whether you believe that justification was right or not, or no matter how much you felt it was fabricated or exaggerated, you can't deny that the people who thought they were being lied to minded. There were mass demonstrations. In the 2005 election, which took place a couple of weeks after the Slitheen Invasion episodes aired, Labour saw it's majority reduced; it's never been and will never be forgotten, and will forever be a toxic part of Tony Blair's legacy. These days, though, with arguably bigger porkies being told, nobody seems bothered.

With a more than decimated main opposition, the other hope for holding the government to account is the fourth estate: journalism. Print journalism in the UK (particularly England) is fiercely partisan, so no hope there - but what of broadcasters, particularly that independent and unique broadcaster, the BBC? Where to start. There have been so many issues with BBC News over the course of the election that it would take too long to list them. I don't go in for tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, but there is without any doubt establishment bias in the BBC (it would be very hard for there not to be - it is part of the establishment after all). This, plus the ever accelerating news cycle and manifestly untrustworthy sources gaming the situation, leads to issues where, to take one example, BBC Political Editor Laura Kuenssberg gets informed by a source that a group of Labour activists organised a confrontation with Health Minister Matt Hancock, and that one of them punched an aide. This is then tweeted verbatim. Only, there was no evidence that the three or four people barracking Hancock were Labour activists (one of them was clearly someone who was on his bike coming home from work), nor that they had been organised. There was video evidence however that the "punch" was in fact the aide walking into the back of someone's arm, brushing against it lightly. Kuenssberg deleted the original tweet, but her retractions were mealy-mouthed; she stated that it didn't "look like punch thrown". It wasn't. She went on to call it a "grim encounter". It wasn't, just a distraction from the main issue - the state of the National Health Service - that Tory central office had spewed out and that she'd enabled.

It wasn't just the BBC either; ITV's Robert Peston also rushed wholeheartedly into the "punch" story; other ITV mainstays agreed to be used as photo opportunity props by agreeing to a selfie with A. Johnson MP. All of this matters because even with a less than rigorous and hostile press, this government does everything it can to avoid scrutiny. The Prime Minister unprecedentally evaded many opportunnties to face questions during the election campaign, both locally and nationally. In its new and even more entitled and emboldened phase, I can't see this situation getting better. This government desperately requires scrutiny. There have already been threats to the BBC, as well as some other badly smelling things: keeping ex-MPs in key government roles that have stepped down, or that the electorate have rejected, scrapping previous commitments on workers’ rights, posturing about tying parliament's hands over extending the deadline for leaving the European Union (which was supposed to be easy to manage in a year - why would he need to block it from being extended, if it's so easy?). All of this is depressing, but I haven't lost hope. For the next couple of weeks, though, I want to put it out of my mind and enjoy Christmas, before the fight starts again in 2020. Deprived of a festive special until January 1st, I'm going to choose a random old Doctor Who Christmas special to watch next...

In Summary:

Phrases one never thought, before it came back, that one would use to summarise a Doctor Who: there's more to this one than just farting.