NuWho Review: Series 1 Episode 5 “World War Three”

By: Russell T. Davies

**Spoilers**

If you have not yet watched this episode, please go and do so before proceeding.

            All right, let’s just get this arduous review over and done with. When last we left our heroes; The Doctor was being electrocuted, Rose and two government officials were cornered and in danger of death, and Jackie was being menaced by a pudgy, baby-faced alien. Yup, you heard me right – these aliens that Murray Gold’s bombastic music tried so hard to make us terrified of during last week’s cliffhanger have a striking resemblance to a green cabbage patch doll. I’m sorry, maybe my imagination is beginning to get a bit rusty, but I have a hard time being afraid of something that not only looks like a green poster-child baby (the sort you see on the Pampers ads) but blunders around with impractical, dangling claws that couldn’t grip the broad end of a funnel. When your body looks like an overweight Gollum and your face like…

                                                                                                   ...well, like that...

         ...then you’ve got problems with your design. The glowing zipper forehead was a bit creepy, I grant you, but it is so overused within this episode that it loses all potency. Also – um – why exactly did The Doctor’s sticking his hot name-tag on the ‘naked’ Slitheen instantly fry the others too? Are those hideous compression-field-collar things they wear somehow connected? Are the loincloths fitted with an intercom? Seriously! 


Favorite Moments & Random Thoughts:

- The problem lies not with the silly alien design nor even, much as it pains me to say, with the fart jokes, but with the fact that Davies seemed a bit confused about what tone he wanted this episode to take. One minute the shots are of people crying and sobbing in fear (accompanied by Gold’s most dramatic score) and the next minute we are having awkward lift scenes. I am all for mixing the humorous with the dramatic – but there is a difference between lightening the moment with some well-placed wit and killing the mood with a crass and out-of-place joke.

                                                    This is the latter!

- While it is nice to see a villain who wants to destroy the Earth for something other than just the sake of destroying it, their plan seems to be an awful lot of work and no satisfactory explanation for why they would go to all the trouble. Normally I rail against the overuse of Davies Forced Exposition, but after such a jumble and mish-mash of a story, we needed some comprehensible resolution. Something other than the Slitheen shedding their skins and cackling like an Austin Powers villain convention.

- Much as I loved watching Jackie and Mickey work together, I feel that Mickey really earned his nickname this week by making Jackie go and answer the door. C’mon, Mickey; you’re on the phone with an alien trying to translate a hostile alien invasion, Big Ben was just hit by a spacecraft, you hit a ‘green swamp monster’ over the head with a chair, and now you’re breaking into military files. Miss the elephant in the room? Yeah, a bit! 

- And what exactly was the point of the Slitheen being allergic to vinegar? It’s not like they dropped a pickle vat on them to kill them (thank goodness) but why exactly, for this episode, did we need to know that little tidbit of information?   

- What is up with Rose this week? I do dislike the mentality that seems to think that, in order to prove her capability, a companion must save The Doctor at least once every three episodes, but Rose could have been back at the flat with Jackie and it wouldn’t have made much of a difference. She seems primarily there for The Doctor to take shots at her choice of kissing partner (before sharing long, supposedly-meaningful stares with her when the missile is deployed) and to suggest that they hide from the missile in a cupboard. It wasn't a tornado, y’know. They were already in a steel-encased room – I highly doubt that a closet was going to be much safer. 

- Now you mustn’t think that I hate everything about this episode because there were rare pockets of good amidst all of the smothering bad. The Doctor choking as he admits that he needs Mickey was great, as was Jackie grilling The Doctor about whether or not Rose is safe with him. Margaret Blaine (the lone Slitheen with her skin still on) actually delivered her lines with a degree of believability and soldiered on through the more awkward scenes with aplomb. 

- Harriet Jones, the ID-card obsessed MP, is one of my favourite supporting characters. She goes from a backbencher (her words, not mine) to Prime Minister. Her attitude is great too (especially with the potentially painful speech about the farting, if you’ll pardon the word). 

- Mickey actually offering to sacrifice himself for Jackie was a nice touch, somewhat making up for his negligent thickness only moments earlier. 

- The ending was surprisingly emotional (if R.T. Davies had just kept this two-parter as Rose and Jackie scenes with a bit of Harriet – Doctor banter thrown in it would have been a good episode.) I actually got a bit choked up when Jackie begged Rose to stay with her. Rose's rather cold reply made me mad, though. Where is Rose’s sense of compassion and empathy (the one we know she must have, based on her interaction with Gwyneth in The Unquiet Dead) when it comes to her mother? I’m starting to not like Rose a whole lot; and that’s bad because, as a viewer, I need to like the companion through whose eyes I am seeing The Doctor’s travels. 

            As a whole, I give The Aliens of London/World War Three a 2/5. It’s not the worst episode ever written, just by virtue of the presence of Harriet Jones and Jackie Tyler, but it’s definitely not one I will probably ever watch again. 

           

What did you think? Do you agree with my rating? If not - what would you say differently?