Not to excuse the crap we're going to see, because we'll be seeing a lot of it.
After a brief recap of the events of Rose (since the production team apparently thought people had the attention span of a -oh, hey look! A squirrel!), the TARDIS lands back in the Powell Estate, the home of Rose and her mother Jackie (Camille Coduri). I didn't mention her in the Rose review because she's rather inconsequential in that story. I do like Jackie, though. She serves as a good counterbalance to both the Doctor and Rose being rather arrogant and annoying, refusing to take their sass. And, particularly when Tennant comes around to take the role of the Doctor, there is a lot of sass to not take.
The Doctor tells Rose that she's been gone about twelve hours and she heads up to go and see her mother...who is absolutely shocked to see her because it's been twelve months rather than twelve hours. Oops! Also, minor note here, but there's an entire sequence where the Doctor stops to stare in shock at a missing poster for Rose while Rose montages her way up to Jackie's flat. Then, just in time for Jackie to have a reaction, he shows up as if he'd followed Rose up there rather than been at least a minute or so behind.
What I'm saying is: damn, Doctor, how do you not run faster in literally every other episode?
After the title sequence, a child sprays "Bad Wolf" as grafitti on the TARDIS (again, not important yet) and Jackie lays into both Rose and the Doctor. Even the police have come by to interrogate, the Doctor raising some unfortunate implications with the term "companion" and Jackie rightly calling the Doctor out as being full of shit and backhanding him...which should actually count as assault. I'm not entirely familiar with the law in the United Kingdom (that is to say, not at all) but I figure that would at least have gotten the cop to separate them, if not arrest her. Of course, I doubt the Doctor would be pressing charges, all things considered.
After a short scene in which Jackie laments that Rose won't tell her where she's been, the Doctor and Rose chat on the roof of the Estate and the Doctor gives his age as 900...which is wrong. He was 953 during his first adventure as Sylvester McCoy, and while there is some argument over just how much the Doctor aged in between his Seventh and Eighth incarnations and given the retcon of the War Doctor in Day of the Doctor (more on that later), his age is a matter of conjecture...but even in the fantastic world of Doctor Who, I can't imagine the Doctor somehow got younger between 1989 and 2005.
I'm not sure if Russell just wanted to round down the age or if he was just taking the piss (or if the Doctor's going through a mid-lives crisis), but it's not as if this would have been difficult to look up. It's not like it's some rare bit of trivia from Fury from the Deep or anything.
Of course, by the time of the Whittaker era, the Doctor's age seems to be more or less where it should be, so this is kind of a non-issue in retrospect. In my thoughts, given how the ages of the Doctor have been largely different and the War Doctor later says in Day of the Doctor that he's 800, meaning that the Time War lasted about one hundred years from his involvement in it, that the Doctor is probably closer to 1100 years old, maybe even older given how we don't have a confirmed age for when the Seventh Doctor regenerated into the Eighth...at least on the show, anyway.
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| "...screw this, I'm going to Cardiff." |
Regardless, Rose laments the fact that she's the only person on planet Earth that knows that aliens exist...and there is a variety of companions who would still be alive at this point who are collectively crying...before an alien ship crashlands right through Big Ben and into the Thames, following the Independence Day rule of landmark destruction. Now naturally, you might expect the Doctor to remember that he has a time machine that can go literally anywhere in time and space, so staying in the same time and moving through space to get aboard said ship to investigate would be mere child's play to him. Or that, maybe, he could use his credentials with UNIT (who are on scene) to get through and investigate.
...oh, yes. This is the first New Who appearance of UNIT. More on them later.
But no...the Doctor doesn't do either of those things. What does he do? He goes back to Jackie and Rose's flat...and watches the news. Rose even points out that he could use the TARDIS, but he decides to not do that because...they don't have the budget for the inside of an alien ship yet. This really makes me miss the classic Doctor Who trick of using the same corridor but with different lighting. Just throwing that out there now, it'll become ironic later.
We see the news highlights and the only important piece of information is that a body has been found. We get the first Doctor Who universe appearance of Tosh Sato (Naoko Mori) from the later spin-off Torchwood and Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton), MP for Running Joke. We also get to see the totally not villains of piece who are definitely not aliens who have invaded positions within the British government, nevermind their evil cackling as soon as they're out of earshot.
Also, the Prime Minister has gone missing, but that's going to become hilariously irrelevant soon enough.
But plot must give way to drama, because this is the Russell T. Davies era. The Doctor slips off to go investigate, only to be stalled by Rose who seems to think he'll swan off, maybe because she's realized that she's not exactly companion material, and the Doctor gives her a TARDIS key before heading off. Given how Susan had one of those at the end of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, it's no guarantee of anything, but nevermind. He heads off, Mickey catching him and running smack into a wall when he tries to catch the dematerializing TARDIS.
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| "Deploy the failure trombone!" |
After an aside where Harriet Jones gets into the cabinet room and starts reading the Emergency Protocols (insert "leaks in British intelligence" joke here), the Doctor lands in the hospital where the government brought the alien body. The body escapes, the Doctor somehow manages to commandeer a group of UNIT soldiers who were holding him at gunpoint with the power of fast talking, and they end up shooting the body which turns out to be a pig's head strapped to an alien body. In one of the few bits of praise that I can give for the episode, the Doctor berates the soldiers for this, comforting the creature in its last moments.
Harriet Jones then witnesses the reveal of our villains...the Slitheen.
God, the friggin' Slitheen.
Out of all the aliens that have been introduced in New Who, this is only saved from being that absolute worst by not being from the twin planet of their home planet. More on that much later.
Slitheen isn't a race, they're family, but that gets revealed later in the episode. The problem with them as a race, however...if that they're a walking fart joke. They can force themselves inside of human skin, a zip that is only visible in their foreheads when it's convenient to the plot allowing them to reveal themselves, with a static-y noise and a bright, blue light being revealed.
The episode's logic is that forcing so much Slitheen into a human suit has the by-product of making them flatulent. A lot. Not also that in the second appearance of the Slitheen, Boom Town later this season, that this doesn't happen. Why? Because the director for Aliens of London and World War Three apparently rewrote parts of the script to add more humor. Because that, clearly, is what a story about aliens who are invading the Earth for nefarious purposes needed. Humor. And farting humor at that.
I know you can't see it right now, but I've managed to facepalm through my head. Don't ask me how I'm still typing this.
After a bit where Tosh and the Doctor talk about the pig, then the Doctor disappears like he's Batman, we cut back to the Tylers' flat...where Mickey shows up. Mickey, who when last seen by Rose, was left covered in plastic stink and left out on the street while she went off into time and space. She didn't go to see him when she came back. Rose waited for him to come see her. It's understandable, I mean she was so busy, traumatizing her mother and then hanging around with the Doctor before coming back home to watch television. Clearly, just so much on her plate.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 2
But wait! There's more! Mickey was apparently brought in five times by the police for questioning as to Rose's whereabouts, suffered a smear campaign at Jackie's hands, and was altogether miserable while still being a devoted boyfriend to Rose...for some insane reason. While these things are not Rose's fault...what she later says means I'm going to count all of them.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 9
Don't worry, I think everyone who has seen this episode will think I'm being generous.
Oh, and Rose makes the comment that the Doctor isn't her boyfriend, that he's "much more important" than that. To Mickey's face. So...
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 10
The TARDIS returns, Jackie can't handle it and bails out, definitely not calling the cops to the Estate...and getting UNIT in on the fun as well. Back on the TARDIS, the Doctor is an asshole to Mickey (as in-character for the Ninth Doctor) and then...Mickey, with a calmer head, reaffirms that he did actually wait for Rose and was looking for the TARDIS everywhere in that year.
Rose's response?
"I dunno, it's only been a few days for me. It's hard to tell in this thing, but I swear, it's just been a few days since I left you."...okay. And?
...no. Seriously. And? Sure, she says she's sorry, but what good does that do? Even if it isn't her fault, which I'll admit that it isn't, her attitude is so dismissive, so hilariously flippant and ignorant of the pain she's caused the man who apparently loved her enough to wait an entire year for her. My original intention was to double the counter for this...and I think I'm going to go with that, because this is honestly the second worst thing that Rose has done pretty much in the entire show.
Rose Tyler is Awful Count: 20
Jesus. Christ! The first worst thing is only slightly worse than this...
Ignoring the fact that Mickey accepts this and getting back on with the plot, the Doctor determines that the alien ship was sent from Earth before crashing, meaning that the aliens are already here. When UNIT gets brought up into the conversation, we get the vaguest mentions of the Doctor's time with UNIT during the Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker eras, but the Doctor doesn't want to go to them because he's "changed so much since the old days".
Unfortunately, UNIT has found them because the TARDIS has no scanners apparently, and the Doctor and Rose get snatched up to come to 10 Downing Street because the Doctor is "the ultimate alien expert".
Apart from Giorgio Tsoukalos, of course.
Getting there, Rose links up with Harriet Jones and the Doctor is ushered into a room with two of the Slitheen and the alien experts the government of the United Kingdom has gathered. The sad thing here is the wasted potential. Beyond just the potential cameos (though Sir Patrick Moore does get name-dropped and actually does appear in a later episode, The Eleventh Hour), they could have had former companions, particularly the UNIT family from the Pertwee and early Tom Baker eras. All of the actors were still alive at this point, so why couldn't we have seen Sargent Benton, Liz Shaw, and the Brigadier around for one last hurrah? Or even just one of them?
To say nothing of the scores of other companions who would still be alive at this point and likely would have been tapped because of their connections to the Doctor. The reason is three things - budget (which I imagine was the chief concern), the fact that the episode would get bogged down by cameos galore, and...well, Rose. I imagine that Russell T. Davies wouldn't want his poster child of a companion overshadowed by far, far better ones. His ego wouldn't allow it.
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| "Hey, have I got something on my face?" |
But as the episode winds to a close, the Doctor starts working out things because he senses that the episode is drawing to a close and Harriet Jones shows Rose one of the Slitheen skin suits before they discover the body of the Prime Minister...who the Slitheen did not possess for some reason...and are attacked by a Slitheen.
Also, way back at Jackie's flat, she is visited by a policeman being worn by one of the Slitheen because...loose ends? When we find out the plot of the Slitheen in the next episode, this makes a surprising amount of no sense at all.
So, the Slitheen are poised to kill Rose, Harriet Jones, and Jackie. The Doctor susses out that the entire thing has been a trap to get all the alien experts together. Now, you might think they're going for a paranoia angle like The Thing, where the Doctor knows that someone among them has set a trap, but he doesn't know who. Nope! Instead, we get another fart joke and one of the Slitheen in the room reveals himself while the other gives the worst fake laugh since Rocket Raccoon.
Also, this might be a cheap shot since this is the early 2000s, but the CGI'd Slitheen look terrible. And so do the practical suits. It's just...all so bad. Bad bad bad.
But as Rose, Harriett Jones, and Jackie are all about to have meals made of them, the episode ends with the Acting Prime Minister Slitheen activating an electrocution device on the ID badges on all of the experts, the Doctor falling to his knees and screaming out in pain...
This episode sucks! Beyond the aforementioned problems with the Slitheen in both practical and computer effects, the plot makes no sense in relation to the immediate sequel. It's as if two separate scripts were completely torn apart and then stitched back together at the absolute last minute before rehearsals started.
The supposed villains of the piece are impossible to take seriously because they are literally a race of fart jokes. They cackle evilly like this is, as another reviewer - Diamanda Hagan - shall now be misquoted, some kind of Saturday morning cartoon. The entire episode builds this up as some kind of big, dramatic, grand threat and it is most definitely not earned. Not in any way.
That isn't even getting into the drama of Rose's return. Both Jackie and Mickey were completely devastated by Rose's departure, had their lives completely ruined by it, and she acts for the most part like she doesn't even care! Sure, it's not her fault that this happened...but she really should be apologizing and trying to make amends to her boyfriend and her mother. Instead, she just heads off on adventure because why give a damn about anyone else's feelings but hers?
This whole episode is a mess. It isn't the worst episode of Doctor Who, old or new, but it's a front-runner for one of the worst. The next episode, World War Three isn't much better. But that'll be next week.
I might need the week to recover from this crap. Don't watch it!
Doctor Who is the property of the British Broadcasting Corporation.
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