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Aliens of London & World War Three (20-Year Retrospective)

TommyR01D

TommyR01D

Captain
Captain
Ninth_Doctor_and_Toshiko_Sato_with_the_Space_Pig.jpg

We are two decades on from the Downing Street duology - part 1 being aired on 16th and part 2 on 23rd April 2005. It was the first multi-part story in modern Doctor Who.
It featured the first appearance of Toshiko Sato and Harriet Jones, as well as the Raxacoricofallapatorian species. It also marked the reintroduction of UNIT and was the episode which started the tradition of "present day" stories being set one year into the future of their broadcast dates.

What are your main recollections?
 
Remembered for the fart gags, but also the dig at politicians of a certain stripe with the "mine has a wife, a mistress and a young farmer - God I was busy!" line...
 
I remember thinking it was mostly awful, having wholeheartedly embraced the new series this was the point when I realised I wasn't going to love every episode.

It did give us Harriet Jones though
 
Whenever I saw it, after a few of the other series, I really dug it. Season 1 as a whole is great as almost a reboot of the show but with small references to keep the continuity. I liked the mundanity of the Doctor forced to watch the alien invasion on TV like the rest of us and having things progressing whether the Doctor is involved or not. The facade coming down that we are alone in the universe was quite cool and I liked the reasoning for why a landmark gets torn up like it's a Roland Emmerich film. I liked the element of the Doctor having messed up big time by taking Rose away for a year by accident and now having to deal with the consequences. The Doctor being such a jerk to Ricky was quite fun. I just ignore the alien farts. It's stupid but it's not the end of the world. There's enough body horror in it to be scary. I really dig Harriet Jones and I hate how the Doctor later handled her but I love the implications of what his meddling with the timeline did.
 
Other memorable bits:

The Doctor showing his empathy for all life over poor little Space Pig.

The realistic response to Rose having "vanished" for a whole year, showing how the Doctor whisking folk off over time and space can feel from the POV of those left behind. As I pointed out in the TNZ Who thread, Belinda's reluctance to travel with the Doctor even IF he can get her back "the second you left" can very easily go pear-shaped, as it did here for Rose.
 
It's funny. Over the years, everyone always complains about this as "the silly one with the farting aliens" or whatever. But I remember when I first started watching Doctor Who back in 2005, this two-parter was the one that actually convinced me to stick with the show after waffling a bit with the first three. Plus with the next episode after WWIII being Dalek, that pretty much solidified my commitment to the series.
 
I thought it was great. Yeah, the farting was annoying, but I thought everything else about it was good, we got some nice character stuff for Rose with her return home, and other than the farting I thought the Slitheen were pretty cool villains. And Harriet Jones was one of my favorite recurring characters in the earlier seasons. I also just watched Stolen Earth and Journey's End and I liked that it was Harriet who brought The Children of Time together, and she got her big dramatic death as she faced off against the Daleks. It also ended up Torchwood, which is another plus.
 
I recall some early leaked photos of the Slitheen (well before the series aired) that were comparable to grainy and blurred BigFoot photos. Fans were trying to determine just WTF they were examining. "Wait, are those the eyes? It's too grainy, but I think that may be a mouth. What about that 'collar' around the neck?" Some fans seemed to appreciate the design better when they had the quality of UFO snaps compared to the crystal clarity of the final broadcast.

That era of pre-broadcast speculation was something of a wild ride!
 
It had the new idea of focusing on the companion's home world and how other characters related to that companion might react. But that's by far the best 2 minutes the episode had. The compassion to the sentient pig-like lifeform was also a decent moment.

But once it turned into a cheap live action cartoon complete with the latest round of bodily function jokes, the definition of the show as "made for children" took a steep plummet. It even got to the point where the Doctor's affiliated military organization had to have its name changed to be disassociated from the real-world entity from which the fictional entity's name was partially derived from.

Okay, to be fair, the "farting" had far more relevance than the belchin' wheelie bins ever had that's due to the materials and basic laws of physics so, used that should be a positive - despite the use of it as an otherwise generic lowbrow cartoon joke.

At least we got "Boom Town", using the Slitheen surprisingly better, afterward.
 
It even got to the point where the Doctor's affiliated military organization had to have its name changed to be disassociated from the real-world entity from which the fictional entity's name was partially derived from.
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Had nothing to do with the perceived "kids' show" element and was solely down to the actual UN not wanting official-looking websites connected to the relaunch showing their emblems (or close approximations thereof).

 
The UN took issue with the existence of a website claiming to be "UN Missile Control" even with disclaimers that it was fictional. RTD overreacted and changed the meaning of the UNIT acronym as a result.
 
Turtletrekker said:
Was it RTD or was it BBC's legal department?
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It was RTD. According to people In The Know, it was only the website the UN objected to. All RTD had to do was remove the website and the matter would be considered settled. Going ahead and rebranding UNIT as "Unified Intelligence Task Force" was not required and was his decision and his decision alone. Moffat and Chibnall could have reverted to referring to UNIT as "United Nations Intelligence Task Force" if they wanted, though they clearly didn't. Though as it is, UNIT still said to answer to the United Nations anyway despite the rebranding.
 
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