Doctor Who Episode Guide - Aliens of London
Table of contents for doctor who episode guide ninth doctor
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - The Ninth Doctor
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - Rose
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - The End of the World
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - The Unquiet Dead
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - Aliens of London
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - World War Three
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - Dalek
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - The Long Game
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - Fathers Day
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - The Empty Child
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - The Doctor Dances
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - Boom Town
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - Bad Wolf
- Doctor Who Episode Guide - The Parting Of The Ways
Teaser:
The Doctor takes Rose home. But when a spaceship crash-lands in the Thames, London is closed off, and the whole world goes on Red Alert. While the Doctor investigates the alien survivor, Rose discovers that her home is no longer a safe haven. Who are the Slitheen?
First Broadcast: 16 April 2005
Running Time: 45′01″
UK Rating: 7.63 million
Writer: Russell T Davies
Director: Keith Boak
Cast:
The Doctor - Christopher Eccleston
Rose Tyler - Billie Piper
Jackie Tyler - Camille Coduri; Spray Painter - Corey Doabe; Policeman - Ceris Jones; Reporter - Jack Tarlton; Reporter - Lachele Carl; Ru - Fiesta Mei Ling; Bau - Basil Chung; Matt Baker; Andrew Marr; General Asquith - Rupert Vansittart; Joseph Green - David Verrey; Indra Ganesh - Navin Chowdhry; Harriet Jones - Penelope Wilton; Margaret Blaine - Annette Badland; Doctor Sato - Naoko Mori; Oliver Charles - Eric Potts; Mickey Smith - Noel Clarke; Strickland - Steve Speirs; Slitheen - Elizabeth Fost, Paul Kasey, Alan Ruscoe
Notes:
We get a mention of UNIT, which is perhaps the first real link the new series has shown to the original one.
Links:
The Aliens of London Review
Doctor Who - Ninth Doctor Episode Guide
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2 Comments, Comment or Ping
Thor
Harriet Jones (Penelope Winton) also played Mum from Shaun of the Dead. Shaun himself (Simon Pegg) is in a later episode–The Long Game.
Sep 24th, 2005
Andrew Oakley
This is the first of a two-parter, with the second part being “World War Three”. This episode starts quite slow, which is enjoyable after the fast pacing of previous episodes. We get quite a bit of interplay between the Doctor and Rose, and best of all we get a “nobody thinks of the henchmen’s families” moment, when we see what happens to a companion’s family when the companion mysteriously disappears into the TARDIS (answer: a lot of missing person posters).
All the BBC News mock-ups are done by genuine BBC News reporters, which means the producers had to go to great lengths not to get their audience confused (in a world after 11th September, it is not entirely impossible for programmes to be interrupted by real news footage of an aircraft crashing into Big Ben). So although all the reporters and graphics are genuine, the shots pan out to reveal camera crews, or Rose’s family on the sofa (with the Doctor amusingly trying to battle a toddler for the remote). Very clever.
The spaceship crash effects are also worthy of note - both the Big Ben collision and the river splashdown are superbly done. There’s also an almost self-referential moment when the Doctor and Rose are having a mundane chat on a suburban rooftop, only for the spaceship to dive overhead (fandom lore has many theories about why the Doctor always ends up landing in an adventure, and this juxtaposition really emphasises the point). However, the story skips the opportunity to introduce more classic series background, giving only a brief mention of UNIT (the Earth-based millitary taskforce to which the Doctor was assigned in the 1970s), which I think was the right decision in order to avoid new fans feeling left out.
The aliens turn out to be childish and annoying, but overall this is another sound episode in a great series. It’s particularly nice for the story to be given a little more time to develop, something missing in this revamped series of mainly self-contained 45-minute episodes (in the classic series, a story could develop slowly over four, five, six or more 25-minute episodes).
Oct 5th, 2005
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