Would You Mind Not Farting While I'm Saving the World? - "Aliens of London" & "World War Three"
The First Two-Parter — and the Great Slitheen Debate
Modern Who hits its first cliffhanger, and the boys hit their first real disagreement of the new era. The elephant (or rather, the green baby-faced family) in the room: the Slitheen and their, ahem, bodily enthusiasms. John makes the case that this is secretly one of the best-crafted stories of the season — a genuine political thriller with a chillingly simple villain scheme — that happens to be saddled with the lowest of low humor and some wobbly rubber suits. Jim lands a notch lower, unable to get past the way the flatulence drains the menace out of what could've been a truly frightening enemy. Either way, both agree: a real "it doesn't know what it wants to be" problem, where behind-the-sofa scares and schoolyard gags keep tripping over each other.
Twelve Hours? Try Twelve Months.
The half both hosts warm to most has nothing to do with aliens: Rose comes home to discover the Doctor overshot by a year, and Jackie is anything but pleased. The domestic fallout — a frantic mother, a boyfriend who spent twelve months as the prime murder suspect — is RTD operating at the height of his powers, and the hosts dig into how the show is quietly advancing something new here: a companion with a real family, real consequences, and a relationship with the Doctor that's getting harder to define. Is there a "fear of the other" running through both the alien plot and the Powell Estate kitchen? John and Jim turn it over at length.
Downing Street, a Pig, and a Backbencher Named Jones
A spaceship clips Big Ben and drops into the Thames, the world goes on alert — and the whole thing turns out to be bait. The hosts unpack the clever trap at the story's center, the genuinely strong "models-and-CGI" crash, the surprisingly real-feeling news coverage, and the arrival of Harriet Jones, backbench MP for Flydale North (Penelope Wilton), a character so good you'll be glad to hear she'll be back. Plus the one that got Jim genuinely heated: a certain world-famous organization, hard-won permission and all, reduced to a roomful of faceless ciphers — with not so much as a nod to its most beloved old friend.
A Colder Doctor
"I don't do domestics." The hosts track this harder, more distant Ninth Doctor — his flashes of regret, his "900 years" refrain, his oddly flat "I am a doctor" — against the warmth that keeps peeking through, and weigh the gamble RTD took asking audiences to accept it. There's also the third Bad Wolf mention (now officially a murmur among the fans), a genuinely chewy chunk of real 10 Downing Street history John fact-checked, a desperate choice that puts Rose's life on the line, and the question of whether this is really a straightforward adventure at all — or RTD pushing the whole show somewhere new.
Also This Week
Coming Up Next:
Saturday (Main Feed): The Unquiet Dead — dropping Halloween day, right on cue for a ghost story.
Monday (Patreon Exclusive 195): Music, the Memory TARDIS, the six-part comic Wormwood — our new Doctor's first story (or is he?) — plus a Big Finish Unbound review of He Jests at Scars, featuring Mel and the Valeyard.
Friday (Patreon): Dalek — the first Dalek story of the new era. Finally. Will Jim's beloved pepper pots win him over? (He's keeping his curmudgeon dues paid up.)
Hashtags:
#DoctorWho #AliensOfLondon #WorldWarThree #NewWho #NinthDoctor #ChristopherEccleston #BilliePiper #Slitheen #HarrietJones #PenelopeWilton #BadWolf #RussellTDavies #DoctorWhoPodcast
