Previously: Aliens with a gas problem were discovered on Earth, but after an hour, we still didn’t know what they wanted.
—
World War Three
Kirsti: We pick up exactly where we left off. The Doctor fights off the electricity and gathers it into a ball in one hand. “Deadly to humans, maybe!” he says, and shoves the electricity ball into the Slitheen’s chest. It and MP Sugar writhe in pain.
DOOO WEEE OOOOH!
After the credits, we see that the Slitheen in the Cabinet Room and the one in Jackie’s flat are both writhing in electricity covered pain too. The Doctor runs out of the War Room, Rose and Harriet run from the Cabinet Room, and Jackie cowers until Mickey bursts in and drags her past the writhing Slitheen. (S: Which, you know, good for you, Mickey. I feel obligated to give him his due for this success after whining about him so much in the comments.) He snaps a photo of it on his phone on the way past. Out in the hall, the Doctor grabs the armed police team and ushers them towards the War Room. Meanwhile, MP Sugar manages to turn off the electricity weapon. The Slitheen demands help putting its Asquith suit back on.
Harriet stops in the middle of the hall, telling Rose that the emergency protocols are still in the Cabinet Room and they need them. She turns and runs as Rose eyerolls. She quickly comes face to face with Slitheen!Margaret and runs screaming. She and Rose end up in a random room, the Slitheen chasing them. Meanwhile, the Doctor and the armed police arrive in the War Room to find MP Sugar just finishing Asquith’s suit. He demands to know where the police have been, and they hurriedly check the dead bodies for signs of life.
MP Sugar points at the Doctor, saying that he’s responsible for the dead people. The Doctor looks incredulous, saying “I think you’ll find the Prime Minister is an alien in disguise! …That’s never going to work, is it?” The policeman next to him agrees that no, it won’t work. The Doctor makes a run for it. He’s quickly cornered and Asquith orders the armed police to execute him. The Doctor sasses that they shouldn’t have pinned him against the lift.
Marines: That really shouldn’t have worked either. Maybe they threw him a bone.
Sweeney: This is a joke that hinges on the smug. “A-ha, gotcha!” except, you know, he didn’t. They all literally just stood around, motionlessly pointing their guns at him for no apparent reason. Stupid gag is stupid.
K: Seriously. As if a group of armed police wouldn’t notice that they’d backed him up against the lift.
Up on level 1, Rose and Harriet frantically try to get through locked doors. The Slitheen chasing them gets distracted when the Doctor’s lift opens, allowing them to escape. The Doctor shuts the door again. Rose and Harriet find themselves in a room with only locked doors, and decide to find the worst hiding spots ever. The lift arrives on level 2, and the Doctor finds himself in a deserted corridor. He rushes off.
Back in the basement, Asquith tells the armed police to lock down 10 Downing Street and shoot the Doctor on sight but not to come upstairs under any circumstances as they haven’t read the emergency protocols. He and MP Sugar get in the lift. Once inside, they fart some more and then take their skin suits off. Slitheen!Margaret heads into the room where Rose and Harriet are hiding. She singsongs creepily and Rose scurries to a marginally better hiding place. (M: “Surely these curtains will hide me,” says every three year old ever and Rose Tyler.)
Upstairs, the Doctor hears the lift ping and hides until Slitheen!Sugar and Slitheen!Asquith have passed. They head into the room where Slitheen!Margaret is, and join in the taunting. Slitheen!Margaret finds Rose, who screams. Harriet jumps out and yells that they should take her instead.
Mari: Margaret was saying crap about Harriet being old and having brittle bones, but look at that lady go! She’s causing a distraction while possibly sacrificing herself, so brittle bone that.
K: BEST.
The Doctor bursts in with a fire extinguisher and douses S!S and S!A. Rose rips down the curtains and hurls them over S!M’s head. She and Harriet rush over to the Doctor, who blasts the fire extinguisher again, and they all run.
They head for the Cabinet Room, the Slitheen close behind. Just before the Slitheen reach the door of the Cabinet Room, the Doctor grabs a decanter and says that his sonic screwdriver will make it super-flammable and all of them will die. The Slitheen back off. He asks them who they are, and Harriet’s all “ALIENS.” Rose points out that the Doctor is also an alien, and we gets a nice repeat of the “Lots of planets have a north” conversation from episode 1. Anyway, the Doctor asks why the Slitheen are there, and they reveal that Slitheen isn’t their race, it’s their surname. S!A calls the Doctor on his super-flammable booze thing, and the Doctor passes the decanter around instead.
K: I just love that Harriet, when faced with giant farting aliens, still insists on maintaining proper beverage serving protocol.
The Slitheen advance, saying it’s time for a slaughter. Rose asks if they should run. The Doctor gives a brief history of Downing Street, saying that the Cabinet Room features four of the safest walls in Britain. He presses a button and steel shutters cover every entrance to the room.
Sweeney: Before I was all, “At least the banter is good!” all of this, “The Doctor babbles and everyone stands around waiting for him to finish/foil their plans for him,” is equally No Thank You, I Quit Now as the rest of this plot. Or nearly – I guess it’s still not quite as bad as the farting aliens.
K: So true, Sweeney. Although, to paraphrase Elle Woods, “what, like it’s hard to be better than farting aliens?”.
Mari: And I only have to point out that villains standing around is only as bad as it ever was on Buffy or Angel. Trouble with this things here is that there isn’t enough good (yet) to balance it out.
K: The Doctor happily says that they’ll never get in now. “And how do we get out?” Rose asks. The Doctor realises the flaw in his plan. Outside, the Slitheen give orders to cut off communications to the Cabinet Room and to summon the rest of their family. Meanwhile, Mickey and Jackie sneak through the grounds of the flats, avoiding policemen.
Outside Downing Street, a reporter tells us that a bunch more fat people in minor positions of authority are arriving, but no one has any idea why. Back inside, the Slitheen have their people suits back on. Margaret greets the new arrivals, who fart, as Asquith tells the armed police to liaise with communications, as the Prime Minister (MP Sugar) will be addressing the planet. Upstairs, Margaret offers directions and takes skin suits from changing Slitheen.
Mari: Very nicely hanging up those SKIN SUITS stripped from human beings.
K: Respect the skin suit, Mari.
Mickey’s flat. Jackie says they have to tell someone about what’s happening, but Mickey tells her there’s no way to know who’s a “big bog monster” and who isn’t. He blames the Doctor for all of this, but acknowledges that only the Doctor will know how to get them out of it. (M: Pretty accurate summation of the series, Mick.) Jackie cries and he comforts her awkwardly and tells her she’s safe with him. Outside, Suspiciously Gassy Policeman sniffs the air, saying that he’s not finished with Jackie just yet.
Back at Downing Street, Margaret tells MP Sugar that all the Slitheen have arrived except Suspiciously Gassy Policeman. In the Cabinet Room, Rose asks why the Slitheen didn’t use the Prime Minister as a disguise. The Doctor informs her that he was too slim to contain a Slitheen. New reason to lose weight: so a Slitheen can’t use me as a skin suit… (M: Man, that’s actually a good one. *puts down chocolate*)
Anyway, Rose asks how an eight foot tall alien can fit inside a human skin, and the Doctor informs her that the little box they wear around their necks is a compressor that shrinks them a little. But it has unfortunate gas-related side effects.
Sweeney: But even so, the lady is pretty short and they all seem to be about the same height out of their suits. If a skinny person is no good, then I don’t see how a shorter heavier person works. Your skin suit wearing aliens are illogical, show.
K: Sweeney, how many times do I have to tell you not to poke the plot holes? HONESTLY.
Rose jokes that she wishes she had one so she could be a size smaller, and Harriet’s offended by her joking when people are dead. Rose apologises and says it just sort of happens when you’re friends with the Doctor, who’s scanning the walls with his sonic screwdriver. He realises that the name Harriet Jones rings a bell, but can’t work out why. Harriet, meanwhile, has been reading the emergency protocols. She says they’re all useless because the people listed in them are all dead now. Rose asks if the protocols include military codes and suggests hitting the Slitheen with a nuclear bomb. Harriet stares and says “You’re a very violent young woman…” which I find oddly hilarious. (S: +1.)
Mickey’s flat. He freaks to Rose about the Slitheen and how he and Jackie nearly died, then the Doctor comes on the line and says he needs a favour.
Mari: I love how Rose is all, “is my mom okay? BUT DON’T PUT HER ON THE PHONE.” Legit. My mom would probably still have a million random segues, even in the middle of an alien invasion.
Sweeney: My mom usually has all the answers to all things, but if I knew someone had more answers than her then yeah, we’d definitely need to not put mom on the phone ain’t nobody got time for those segues. (Segues like these. Which you do have time for because you’re here. On this blog. Hopefully not under imminent threat of death from alien invasion. Maybe reexamine your priorities if you are.)
K: My mum once left me a voicemail that was fully five minutes long and contained no useful information, so AGREED. No mothers on phones during alien invasions.
Cut to Mickey hacking into U.N.I.T.’s files. Apparently secret military organisations use the password “buffalo” to secure all the planet’s secret information. OKAY, SHOW. WHATEVER. (M: Really lazy or a totally failed joke. Either way, not good.) (K: Possibly also a Classic Who reference?? Help us out in the comments, Classic Who fans…) As Mickey searches through various pages, the Doctor wonders aloud why the Slitheen hit Big Ben and put the planet on red alert when the alien experts would have gathered over a weather balloon. Jackie, meanwhile, wants the Doctor to promise that Rose will always be safe. He and Rose stare at each other before Mickey grabs the phone back from Jackie and announces that they’re in.
The Doctor directs Mickey to click on a specific thing, which lets him overhear the transmission from the Slitheen spaceship in the North Sea. He says it’s a looping message, but he can’t work out what it says. Mickey’s doorbell rings, and he sends Jackie to answer it. The Doctor says that the message is beaming out into space. Jackie answers the door to find Suspiciously Gassy Policeman on the other side.
Mari: She almost got killed by an alien and answered the door without a look out or a, “who is it?” THAT’S WHAT HAPPENS.
Sweeney: Why is everyone in Rose’s life so stupid?
K: Jackie squeals and slams the door, running back to Mickey’s room. Rose tells them to run while the Doctor says he needs the signal. SGP pulls off his skin suit. Mickey grabs a baseball bat and tells Jackie to run. Harriet demands that the Doctor do something.
He says they need to work out where the Slitheen are from, and Rose starts firing off information about them, each piece of which narrows down the list of possibilities in the Doctor’s head. The Slitheen at Mickey’s flat starts to break down the door. As it tries to clamber through, the Doctor narrows his list down to one possibility: Raxacoricofallapatorius. I’m a little embarrassed to say that I knew how to spell that without checking. He yells down the phone that Mickey should get to the kitchen and find some vinegar.
Mickey has no clue if he has vinegar, but Jackie grabs a jug and half a dozen pickled products, tipping them all in together. “You kiss this man?” the Doctor asks Rose in disgust as he listens to what Jackie’s adding in. The Slitheen knocks the kitchen door down and Jackie tosses the pickled mixture in its face. After a second, it farts and then explodes, covering the kitchen in green goo. Everyone heaves a sight of relief.
Mari: As impressive as the Doctor is, what’s really lucky is that the Slitheen seem happy to advance but never really attack. Like, what was that super strong alien doing in the living room this whole time? Checking out the decor?
K: Yes. Obviously.
Back at Downing Street, MP Sugar and Asquith wonder angrily how someone could have killed a Slitheen, then MP Sugar heads outside to brief the nation/planet. He tells them that the aliens do not come in peace and there are weapons of mass destruction in the skies above them. Mickey watches it on TV in horror and the Doctor’s all “The fuck are you talking about???” as he listens over the phone. MP Sugar urges the UN to take immediate action to protect the planet.
The Doctor realises that it’s a trap, just like before, and he opens the steel shutters. The Slitheen are on the other side. “You get the codes, release the missiles. But not into space because there’s nothing there. You attack every other country on Earth, they retaliate, fight back. World War Three, whole planet gets nuked,” he says. Here, Doctor, have a gold star!
Margaret, still in her skin suit, sasses that they can wait it out in their spaceship in the Thames. Harriet asks in disbelief why they’d destroy the planet, and the Doctor says it’s for profit. The message is an advert, announcing Earth is for sale in radioactive chunks to be used as fuel. Margaret has no fucks to give about the billions of lives that will be lost. The Doctor tells the Slitheen to leave or he’ll stop them. They laugh, then realise that he’s deadly serious. He coldly closes the metal shutters again.
Mari: He is an adorable puppy, but Nine does the cold, menancing, this-guy-is-probably-a-maniac thing well, too.
Sweeney: Except that it was another example of the problem being rather easily and immediately solvable but not because we had to listen to him speechify.
K: HUSH, SWEENEY, OR I WILL BANISH YOU TO THE TEAM HEARTLESS COW OTTOMAN.
Outside, London is eerily quiet. A reporter informs us that everyone’s at home waiting for news. Cut to the UN in New York. A news anchor says the UK have provided irrefutable proof of the weapons of mass destruction and the UN security council will make a decision any minute. Jackie cries as she watches it. Back at Downing Street, Margaret, Asquith and MP Sugar gather excitedly in the Prime Minister’s office for the big phone call. Margaret squees about the fact that the red phone is actually red. There’s more farting, because obviously. (M: BECAUSE WHY?) (S: Because you’re all liars and the Doctor Who fandom is a giant conspiracy/prank wherein people make themselves feel better about having lost hours to this show by tricking other people into watching it too.)
Mickey’s flat. Jackie begs for the Doctor to do something. Harriet wonders if they can ferment the booze into vinegar. Mickey says he’s been trying to call emergency numbers but they’re all on voicemail. “Voicemail dooms us all…” says Harriet. YUP. There’s nothing worse than voicemail, because it means making phone calls. Which I’m allergic to. ANYWAY. The Doctor announces that there is a way out, but he can’t guarantee that it’ll keep Rose safe. Jackie says he can’t do it, but Rose says he has to because everyone dies otherwise. He’s taken aback by her faith in him. Jackie begs him not to, and he replies “this is my life, Jackie, it’s not fun, it’s not smart, it’s just standing up and making a decision because nobody else will.”
Rose tells him to do it, and they stare at each other intently. Harriet butts in to say that, as the only elected representative there, the decision is actually hers. She commands him to do it on behalf of the British people. He grins at Rose. Back in the Prime Minister’s office, the Slitheen decide that they should be au naturel for the phone call, and remove their skin suits. (S: If they’re going to destroy Earth, at least they did us the courtesy of putting the farting to rest.) Rose asks how they get out. The Doctor opens the emergency protocols and says they’re staying put. The news anchor announces that the UN security council are voting.
The Doctor tells Mickey to go back into the U.N.I.T. website, using “buffalo” as the password for everything. Hello, contrivance. We’ve missed you. Mickey, on the Doctor’s orders, hacks into the Royal Navy and selects a missile on a submarine off the coast of Plymouth. Not a nuclear missile, just a regular one. Jackie tells Mickey that she could stop him, but doesn’t actually do anything. Mickey hits the fire button, and somewhere off the coast of Plymouth, a badly CGI-ed missile bursts out of the water. (M: The badly CGI-ed ones just seem less scary.)
There’s a moment of tension, then Mickey watches the missile moving on a map. Back in the Council Room, Harriet asks how strong the steel shutters are. The Doctor informs her that they’re not strong enough. Rose says that she’s making a decision now – she’s not dying. Just like in an earthquake, they can ride out the missile attack in the doorframe of a cupboard.
On the TV, the news anchor announces that the UN security council have decided to release the codes. The Slitheen gather in front of the phone, waiting for it to ring.
Mickey stops the military from intercepting the missile. It flies towards London as the armed police spot it on the radar and hit the evacuate button before rushing from the building. The Slitheen are all “the fuck is that alarm?” and stay put. An armed policeman rushes in, announcing that a missile is incoming, then rushes out when he sees a room full of aliens.
Jackie rushes out onto the balcony in time to see the missile fly past. The Slitheen fight over skin suits. Rose, Harriet and the Doctor huddle in the cupboard, holding hands. The missile slams into 10 Downing Street, obliterating it. Rose, Harriet and the Doctor are shaken but otherwise okay. The head of the armed police rushes up as they emerge from the wreckage. Harriet orders him to contact the UN and tell them the crisis is over. He hurries off as Harriet says that someone’s got a lot of cleaning up to do. Then she realises they don’t have a Prime Minister. The Doctor suggests that maybe she should try it out. She laughs, and Rose says she’d vote for Harriet. Harriet tells her not to be silly, but rushes off to help, shouting orders.
Sweeney: I like Harriet. It’s a low achievement bar, but she was easily the best thing in this episode. Nobody and nothing else even showed up for the competition.
K: As Rose and the Doctor walk away, he tells her that he remembered where he knew her name: “Harriet Jones, future Prime Minister. Elected for three successive terms, the architect of Britain’s Golden Age.” Rose smiles and they walk away as Harriet speaks to the press. Back at Jackie’s flat, Rose hugs her mother. They watch Harriet on TV, and Jackie says Rose and the Doctor should get knighthoods for what they did. Rose replies that the Doctor doesn’t like fuss. He just does things and moves on.
Jackie admits that he’s good in a crisis, and asks if the Doctor likes shepherd’s pie. She wants to learn about Rose’s life, travelling with the Doctor. Rose sasses that the Doctor has finally met his match, then her phone rings. It says “TARDIS calling” complete with a little TARDIS picture.
Mari: Adorbs. Just missing a doo-dee-dooo midi-ring tone.
K: I’m still waiting for the day when that happens to my phone.
She answers and the Doctor says they can leave in a couple of hours. She tells him that Jackie’s making dinner, and he insists that he doesn’t do that.
She says that it’s just tea and it’s her mum and to be nice. He starts telling her about a plasma storm that’s brewing in the Horsehead Nebula and how they could fly the TARDIS into it and end up anywhere in the universe. “Your choice,” he says before hanging up. Rose looks thoughtful. Jackie comes out of the kitchen, tea in hand, to find Rose gone. She’s in her bedroom, packing. Jackie begs her not to go, and Rose looks at her mother for a second before she resumes packing.
Out by the TARDIS, the Doctor instructs the kid who tagged it with BAD WOLF to clean it off. Mickey says he thought the world would have changed, but instead the headline in all the papers is “Alien Hoax?” Gangs on PCP, amIrite? (M: Always PCP.) The Doctor hands Mickey a disc, telling him that it contains a virus that will wipe every trace of him from the internet so that no one can track him down again. Mickey wants to know how the Doctor can admit that he’s dangerous and still take Rose away. The Doctor suggests that Mickey come too, but Mickey says it’s too much for him and he can’t.
Rose and Jackie walk up, Rose insisting that she’ll be back soon. She throws her massive bag at the Doctor, saying that she’s prepared this time. She asks Mickey to come, but the Doctor glances at Mickey and says he’s a liability. Mickey gives him a grateful look before kissing Rose goodbye. Jackie turns to the Doctor and demands to know what happens to Rose if something happens to him. He looks a little twitchy, but Rose grabs her mother: “You’re forgetting, it’s a time machine. I could go travelling around suns and planets and all the way out to the edge of the universe and by the time I get back, yeah, ten seconds would have passed. Just ten seconds. (Puts her hands on Jackie’s shoulders, smiles kindly). So stop worrying. See you in ten seconds time.”
She hugs her mother and gets into the TARDIS, which vanishes. Jackie counts off ten seconds on her watch, then rushes back inside. Mickey resumes his newspaper reading, and we fade to black.
Look, the fart monsters are still stupid. But I really enjoy the way this episode is more about the human characters than it is about the Doctor.
Mari: This episode is an improvement over part one, which was more about the fart monsters than the humans OR the Doctor. One of the things that this show does well, I think, in the midst of all the craziness of aliens and space travel is the exploration of humanity. I love the moments with Rose and her mom. Jackie’s understandably taking Rose leaving personally. It’s things like that, plus all the moments where the show is trying to help us understand the Doctor that slowly woo you over.
Sweeney: Says you who have already been successfully wooed. I have not been wooed. I did not enjoy this. An improvement over Part One, yes, and Harriet Jones was a fun character, but it still felt like a lot of contrived bullshit strung together by fart jokes. It doesn’t help that I’m still pretty ambivalent about these other human characters. Jackie had a few moments with Rose that I appreciated and Mickey is, at least, no longer walking right into wobbly garbage cans, but those aren’t really banner achievements.
I’m still watching on account of how I have to, but I’m still side eyeing everyone pretty hard.
K: It’s cool, Sweeney. I had the same “WTF even is this and why do people like it?” reaction to Dollhouse. Except I was allowed to quit. At least I can assure you that the next episode doesn’t feature fart jokes.
Next time: The Doctor and Rose find themselves in a museum that has one of his old foes in Doctor Who S01 E06 – Dalek.
I'm a 30-something librarian and I still live with my parents because I'm super broke. Leader of Team Heartless Cow. I have an inexplicable love for 90s television, eat too much chocolate, and read more than is good for me.
Nicole is the co-captain of Snark Squad and these days she spends most of her time editing podcasts. She spends too much time on Twitter and very occasionally vlogs and blogs. In her day job she's a producer, editor, director, and sometimes host of educational YouTube channels. She loves travel, maps, panda gifs, and semicolons. Writing biographies stresses her out; she crowd sourced this one years ago and has been using a version of it ever since. She would like to thank Twitter for their help.
I'm a 30-something south Floridan who loves the beach but cannot swim. Such is my life, full of small contradictions and little trivialities. My main life goals are never to take life too seriously, but to do everything I attempt seriously well. After that, my life goals devolve into things like not wearing pants and eating all of the Zebra Cakes in the world. THE WORLD.
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