And it is. Once again RTD does a simple, tiny thing and makes Doctor Who seem utterly new. He takes the fantasy seriously, connects it to the real world of the audience, and finds wonderful human drama where the two intersect. The TARDIS, famously unreliable, has accidentally returned Rose home in the wrong year - so far, so The Visitation. But this has consequences: Rose has been missing, presumed murdered, the subject (presumably) of Crimewatch reconstructions; Mickey has been living under a cloud of accusations and interrogations; Jackie has been bereft. A few minutes later, the Doctor is sat watching the telly in the Tyler's living room surrounded by friends and neighbours. "I don't do domestic," he says. Oh, but you do Doctor, you do!
This is all marvellous shows exactly why RTD was the right person to bring the show back, and why it was such an incredible success. The programme, suddenly emotionally literate, connected into the world of the viewer, and a whole new audience of people were, in return, prepared to step into the TARDIS.
The episode's reputation has suffered though, particularly with parts of fandom who just couldn't get over the farting green aliens. Ah, the Slitheen. No, they're not necessarily going to end up in many people's Top Ten Doctor Who villains, but they are an original addition to the show and they're immensely popular with kids, at once repulsive, scary and funny (the Slitheen I mean, not the kids). Peer around them at the plot and there's an intriguing mystery beginning to build: a corruption of the (hopefully) dependable instruments of the state as politics, army and police are all infiltrated. The natural order of things is literally being perverted: many viewers won't forget the poor little pig forced up onto its hind legs and chased around the hospital, another victim of the Slitheen's plan.
It's in these scenes that Eccleston's Doctor recovers some of his authority, shouting orders at the sqauddies, questioning Tosh and remonstrating over the death of the pig. He manages to take charge at Number 10 too: in a room full of human experts (and Slitheen) he is calm and self-assured, right up until the trap is sprung.
Yes, a CLIFFHANGER! I had been waiting for this since, well, ever since Ace's eyes went yellow. I love cliffhangers. They're one of my favourite things about Doctor Who: the caveman's shadow, "You shall be like uzzzz...", the giant hand reaching down, "So you see, I'm not going to let you stop me now!" - well I could go on, obviously, but the scream of the music, the moment of suspension as the jeopardy was sustained for a whole week... this was all something I got from Doctor Who, roughly three episodes out four, and I had missed it.
This is a good one. A lavishly comprehensive cliffhanger with all the 'good' guys threatened across multiple locations. I was happy then, it still satisfies now. Yes, the overly-prompt Next Time trailer kind of spoils it, but lessons were learned, just look at The Stolen Earth.
The boys, raised in the Netflix age, do not like cliffhangers. Maybe I'm being unfair, but I think they resent them and the feeling that something available is being withheld. And the better the cliffhanger, the more excited they are, the worse they like it. This one almost stops Chris giving the episode a 10. Almost.
"Was there nothing wrong with it?" I ask.
"Well, the cliffhanger wasn't very good."
"Oh," I say, prepared, "Why didn't you like it?"
"Have you *seen* The Pandorica Opens?" he cries.
Maybe his scale goes to eleven.
He described Aliens of London as "amazing and scary'. William also gave it a 10, praising the "great writing", scary cliffhanger ("I liked how they held back the reveal"), and Penelope Wilton's Harriet Jones ("I like her, she's nice"). It's a family show, aimed at anyone, but no one can deny that something skews Doctor Who towards 9 year old boys. The key demographic has spoken: this is a classic.
They were so excited they wanted to press on with part two. I made them wait.
NEXT TIME...
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