Aliens of London (TV story)

Aliens of London was the fourth adventure of series 1 of Doctor Who. It was notable for featuring the first cliffhanger in the BBC Wales era, by virtue of starting the first two-part story. Narratively, the episode introduced the Slitheen, who would return to both Doctor Who and The Sarah Jane Adventures, and Toshiko Sato, who would later feature on Torchwood. It also marked the first appearance of recurring British politician, Harriet Jones.

One of its legacies — sometimes forgotten by writers and fans alike — was found in its opening teaser sequence. There, the ninth Doctor mistakenly brought Rose Tyler one year into her mother's future, thus making the "present day" of Russell T Davies' Doctor Who notionally one year later than the year of initial broadcast.

It was also the final episode of Doctor Who to have any portion recorded at BBC Television Centre.

Synopsis
The Doctor takes Rose back to 21st century London one year late, just in time to witness a spaceship crashing into the River Thames. The crash triggers a worldwide state of alert and the closing off of the city. As the Doctor investigates the survivor of the crash, Rose finds problems closer to home.

Plot
The TARDIS materialises on a street in Rose's council estate. The Doctor has taken Rose back home, some twelve hours after she first left with him, by his estimate. Or so he believes. However, while waiting for Rose to return, a flyer on a nearby telephone pole catches his eye -- a missing-persons flyer with Rose’s picture on it. When Rose enters her flat and casually greets her mother, claiming to have spent the night with a friend, the stunned Jackie sweeps her daughter up in a desperate, unbelieving hug -- and, over her shoulder, Rose sees a table covered with missing-persons flyers and posters, all with her name and picture on them. The Doctor bursts into the flat, takes in the situation, and apologetically tells Rose that she hasn’t been gone for twelve hours, but for twelve months...

Some time later, outside Jackie’s flat, a young boy spray-paints the words “BAD WOLF” on the TARDIS and cycles off. Meanwhile, inside the Tylers' apartment, a police inspector sits and listens patiently as Jackie lashes out at Rose for her thoughtlessness in vanishing for over a year without so much as a phone call. Rose says that she’s been travelling, but Jackie angrily points out that she left her passport behind. The Doctor tries to explain that he employed Rose as his companion (in a non-sexual sense, of course) but Jackie only turns her anger on him, to the point of slapping him and accusing him of luring away her daughter for immoral purposes. Rose is embarrassed and remorseful, but despite her mother's pleas, she can’t even begin to explain where she’s been for the past year.

Rose and the Doctor talk on the roof of her tower block, where she expresses her frustration at having just unwittingly traumatized her mother. Nobody else on Earth knows that there are aliens and spaceships and things, and just as Rose mentions being frustrated that she is the only person to know about these, a massive cruiser-like spaceship roars overhead, trailing black smoke; the Doctor takes Rose by the hand as she says "That's not fair" and the two of them follow the ship. The craft zooms through Central London, its wing cutting into the side of Big Ben, ringing the bell before it finally splashes into the River Thames near Westminster Bridge. The river is cordoned off by soldiers from the Parachute Regiment, and the Doctor and Rose have to watch the events unfold on the television in Jackie's flat. Due to Jackie's friends and neighbours also joining her in the flat to discuss the crash and Rose's return, the Doctor has difficulty listening to the news (at one point, he is even fighting for the remote with a toddler trying to watch Blue Peter). The world is being put on red alert, flights have been cancelled over North American airspace, and the UN Secretary General has advised people to watch the skies. Divers recover an alien body from the wreckage of the craft, which is placed under military supervision under the command of General Asquith and brought to the nearby Albion Hospital. The general examines the body and asks Dr. Toshiko Sato, the pathologist, if the creature is by any chance a fake. She informs him that several X-rays of the skull show wiring she has never seen before — no one could have made it up.

There has been no sign of the Prime Minister since the state of emergency was declared, and due to the gridlock and the grounding of flights, most of the Cabinet has been stranded outside central London. Thus, Joseph Green, the rotund MP for Hartley Dale, and Chairman of the Parliamentary Commission on the Monitoring of Sugar Standards in Exported Confectionary, has unexpectedly become Acting Prime Minister. Escorted to 10 Downing Street, he is met by Indra Ganesh, a Junior Secretary with the Ministry of Defence. Green seems to have difficulty handling the pressure, and as Ganesh tries to brief him, he breaks wind, claiming that nerves are giving him an upsert stomach. Ganesh hands Green a red box containing the Emergency Protocols, all of the procedures to deal with extraterrestrial incidents, and Green is met by Margaret Blaine of MI5 and Oliver Charles, Transport Liaison, both as rotund as Green is. Blaine reports that she escorted the Prime Minister this morning to his car, but according to Charles, the car has disappeared, and it seems to have literally vanished. The three government officials leave Ganesh and enter the Cabinet Rooms. Once inside, Green drops the book, they look at each other and start laughing about the success of their secret plan.

The evening settles on Rose's estate, and people are holding alien-welcoming parties. The Doctor leaves Rose's flat, saying that he is not good with people (and that it's hard to understand why people are talking about where to buy dodgy top-up cards for half price in the middle of a historical milestone). Rose thinks he is going to investigate the crash, but the Doctor tells her that he is not going to interfere with humanity's first contact with extraterrestrial life. To assure her he is not going to disappear, he gives her a TARDIS key. However, once downstairs, he enters the TARDIS and starts it up. Mickey spots the Doctor from his own flat and rushes down, too late as the TARDIS dematerialises.

The Doctor lands the TARDIS in a storage cupboard in Albion Hospital, and opens the door only to run into a group of soldiers on tea break, who level their rifles at him. At that moment, they hear a scream, and the Doctor immediately takes charge, barking out orders to lock down the perimeter. The Doctor finds Dr Sato cowering in the corner of an operating room. The supposedly dead alien has come back to life. The Doctor spots the alien, which looks like an Earth pig in a spacesuit, and the creature flees in terror, only to be shot by a soldier. He angrily berates the soldier for killing the creature, protesting that it was only frightened. Examining the body with Dr Sato, the Doctor tells her that it is a real pig, its brain augmented by alien technology. Some other aliens wanted to fake an alien crash landing, but for what reason? By the time Dr Sato asks the question, the Doctor is gone, to the echo of a dematerialising TARDIS.

Meanwhile, at 10 Downing Street, Harriet Jones, the backbench MP for Flydale North, tries to convince Ganesh to let her speak with Green, but he refuses to interrupt Green’s important meeting for her minor concerns. When Green, Margaret and Oliver emerge from the Cabinet office, Harriet tries to speak with Green, explaining that she’s come up with a scheme by which cottage hospitals don’t have to be excluded from centres of excellence. Green laughs in her face and walks off with the others. Nettled, Harriet slips into the deserted Cabinet office and drops the report she’s prepared in Green’s briefcase... but she then notices that he’s left the Emergency Protocols booklet behind, and, curious, she begins to leaf through it.

Later, she hears General Asquith berating Green, Blaine and Charles about their inaction (they aren't returning the White House's phone calls, they haven't started any of the Emergency Protocols, and they've cancelled the airlift that would have brought senior cabinet members into the center of London), and hides in a side room. In the Cabinet Rooms, the three officials all seem to find Asquith's complaints amusing, and they all start to uncontrollably break wind, laughing. When Asquith threatens to relieve Green of his role as Acting Prime Minister and place the country under martial law, the three mention that his latest complaint is just hair raising, literally. They proceed to unzip the tops of their heads, a bright blue light shining through, and reveal their true alien forms. As Harriet watches terrified through a crack in the door, General Asquith screams as the disguised aliens advance on and kill him.

Mickey enters the Tylers’ flat, and is furious to see Rose sitting with the rest of his neighbours. Rose apologises for not visiting him, but that’s not enough to satisfy Mickey: when she disappeared with no explanation, Mickey was nearly charged with her murder. He’s been questioned by police five times in the past year, and even when Jackie blamed him (even searching his mailbox), Mickey couldn’t tell her the truth, as he knew she’d never believe him. He now demands that Rose admit the truth; she might as well, because the Doctor’s gone without her. Rose refuses to believe this, but when she goes out to see for herself, there is indeed no sign of the TARDIS. She insists that the Doctor wouldn’t have left her behind -- and as she speaks, the TARDIS key begins to glow in her hand, followed by the TARDIS materialising before their eyes. Rose proceeds inside with Mickey, but Jackie is too overwhelmed by what she has seen, and exits the ship to run back to her flat.

The Doctor admits that in fact he had suspected from the start that the crash was a fake — it was too perfect a set-up (including it hitting Big Ben). Mickey notes that it is an odd way to invade a planet by putting it on red alert. Mickey (whom the Doctor insists on calling "Ricky" rather than admitting he can't remember his real name) and the Doctor exchange barbs, but the Doctor has more important things to do. Rose apologises for the Doctor’s behaviour, and assures Mickey that she did miss him, even though she’s only been gone for a few days from her perspective. He tells her that he spent the whole year looking for her, and that he never dated anyone else (though, admittedly, most people think he murdered Rose and then proceeded to hide her body somewhere). Now that she’s back, she realises that Mickey wants to pick up where they left off -- but before she can decide, the Doctor announces that he’s finished his work. He has modified the TARDIS scanner to track the spacecraft back twelve hours before the crash and discovers that it was launched from Earth. Whoever these aliens are, they have been here for a while.

Jackie huddles up in her flat, trying to cope with what she’s seen -- and when the Emergency Alien Hotline number reappears on the TV, she calls it up and blurts out her story, claiming that her daughter is in danger because of an alien called the Doctor who travels in a blue box called the TARDIS. These key words trigger an automated alert which Ganesh receives at 10 Downing Street.

Ganesh rushes to tell General Asquith. Inside the Cabinet Office, meanwhile, the alien that was posing as Oliver Charles has put on the general's skin; however, like the other aliens, he must frequently break wind in order to fit into his tight disguise. Blaine remarks that they have to do something about the gas exchange that is causing their flatulence. As Asquith tosses his former skin into the closet where Harriet Jones is hiding, he complains about the fact that he'll now have to leave behind Oliver's wife, his mistress, and the young farmer he was seeing on the side. As they leave, Ganesh tells Asquith about that the Doctor has been spotted, and when Blaine asks who this "doctor" is; Ganesh explains that the Doctor is the expert on aliens, one they desperately need. In the meantime, other alien experts from around the world, including the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, are being summoned to Downing Street.



When the Doctor, Rose and Mickey exit the TARDIS, they are immediately surrounded by armed soldiers, vehicles and a helicopter. Mickey runs away and escapes, but the Doctor and Rose are put into a limousine and escorted to 10 Downing Street. The police escort Jackie up to her flat and Police Commissioner Strickland, a rather rotund and gassy man who seems uncomfortable inside his own skin, assures Jackie that Rose is in a position to help her country, and asks Jackie how she made contact with the Doctor. Strickland sends the other police away so that he can speak to Jackie alone.

At Downing Street, Ganesh, who has gathered all of the experts together, meets the Doctor and Rose. Ganesh tells them that their ID cards must be worn at all times, and ushers them into a room. Rose, however, is not cleared and thus not allowed in. Harriet Jones, who managed to sneak out of the Cabinet Rooms unseen, comes along at this point and offers to take care of Rose. She takes Rose to the Rooms and shows her Oliver Charles's empty skin. When they search the room for alien technology, they find the body of the Prime Minister stuffed in a cupboard. Ganesh enters at this point, and is aghast when he sees the Prime Minister's body.

At the briefing headed by Asquith and Green, the Doctor reads the reports and notices that three days before, a satellite picked up a blip of radiation under the North Sea. However, before anyone could investigate, the crash happened. The Doctor realises, however, that the reason someone would fake an alien invasion is so they can gather those who have experience and knowledge in fighting off aliens together in one place. The crash is not a diversion — it's a trap.

In the Cabinet Rooms, Blaine enters, closing the door behind her. Ganesh states that it's impossible for the Prime Minister to be dead, as he was driven away from Downing Street that morning. Blaine smugly explains that the only reason that he thinks that is because she told him that earlier, and begins to unzip her head before a horrified Ganesh, Rose and Harriet.

In Jackie's flat, Jackie insists to Strickland that she knows nothing about the Doctor, that isn’t good enough for Strickland. This Doctor means trouble, and that means anyone associated with him is trouble. And that is Strickland's job: eliminating trouble. He unzips his forehead and removes his skin-suit...

In the briefing room, when Green breaks wind loudly, the Doctor turns on him for the interruption, and General Asquith goes ahead and removes his skin suit. The enormous, greenish aliens wriggle out of their skins, the one inhabiting Blaine attacking Ganesh and the one posing as Strickland cornering Jackie in her kitchen. In the briefing room, the unmasked Asquith identifies himself and his cohorts as the Slitheen. With that introduction, Green activates a hand-held device that sends a deadly dose of electricity jolting through the experts' ID cards, including the Doctor's.

Cast

 * The Doctor - Christopher Eccleston
 * Rose Tyler - Billie Piper
 * Jackie Tyler - Camille Coduri
 * Mickey Smith - Noel Clarke
 * Policeman - Ceris Jones
 * Reporter - Jack Tarlton
 * Reporter - Lachele Carl
 * Ru - Fiesta Mei Lung
 * Bau - Basil Chung
 * Matt Baker - As himself
 * Andrew Marr - As himself
 * 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
 * Spray Painter - Corey Doabe
 * Space Pig - Jimmy Vee
 * Police Commissioner Strickland - Steve Spiers
 * Slitheen - Elizabeth Frost, Paul Kasey, Alan Ruscoe

Story notes

 * This episode had the working title "Aliens of London Part One" ("World War Three" being "Part Two").
 * The episode ends on a cliffhanger, the first since episode two of DW: Survival. The story continues in World War Three. This is also the first occasion since Invasion of the Dinosaurs in which the first episode of a serial does not share its title with the second.
 * A poster announcing Rose's disappearance states that she has not been seen since 6 March, 2005. However, the BBC-produced "official" UNIT website indicates that the climactic events of Rose happened on 26 March. The same site also dates this episode at either 26 May or 28 June 2006. If the June date is accepted, Boom Town (and also The Parting of the Ways) would have to take place in late December 2006 — the same week as The Christmas Invasion (dated to 2006 by the Guinevere One website). On the other hand, if only on-screen evidence is accepted, Aliens of London would take place in March 2006, Boom Town in September, and The Parting of the Ways later in the autumn or early winter.
 * The official police poster is the first reference to the Powell Estate on the television series. In whole, the notice says, "Rose Tyler has been missing from her home on the Powell Estate since 6th March 2005. Rose is described as 19 years old, 5 feet 4 inches in height, slim build with shoulder-length blonde hair." The photograph used is one of Billie Piper herself, rather than one of Piper playing Rose. Several other, home-made posters are seen on Jackie's table, including one with a banner headline saying "WHERE IS ROSE?".
 * When the Doctor complains of being slapped by Rose's mother, Rose laughingly remarks, "You're so gay!" This remark has caused some controversy in fan circles, some seeing it as an anti-homosexual slur. Davies, who is gay, wrote in an e-mail response that it was the way people talked, and claimed that he was trying to provoke discussion by using the phrase.
 * A running joke involving the Slitheens suffering from flatulence while in their human disguises was also slightly controversial in fan circles, with some critics disapproving of the style of humour. It did, however, give rise to one of the most quoted lines uttered by the Ninth Doctor during the season: "Would you mind not farting while I'm trying to save the world?"
 * The scene where the pig-like "alien" is breaking thought the metal door with Dr Sato watching in shock is reminiscent of an almost identical moment in the 1996 Doctor Who television movie, in which the newly-regenerated Eighth Doctor breaks through the metal door of the morgue, terrifying a hospital worker.
 * The production team had intended to suggest that the murdered Prime Minister in this episode was current real-life incumbent Tony Blair. On the DVD commentary for the following episode, producer Phil Collinson explained that they had hired an actor to play the dead body on the understanding that the man was a Tony Blair lookalike. When the resemblance proved disappointing, they decided to avoid showing the body clearly. The suggestion that the body is Blair's remains in Harriet's line "I'm hardly one of the babes", a reference to the large number of female Labour Party MPs who entered the House of Commons in Labour's 1997 general election victory, who were dubbed "Blair's Babes" by the British media. That Tony Blair was elected in the Doctor Who universe was confirmed in Rise of the Cybermen.
 * The armoured personnel carrier seen outside Number 10 is a Saxon, possibly foreshadowing future events.
 * According to Russell T Davies in Doctor Who Magazine, as well as Doctor Who Confidential, the decision to establish the Bad Wolf meme in the series did not occur until after the spur-of-the-moment decision to have the words "bad wolf" graffiti-painted on the TARDIS; subsequently Bad Wolf references were added to the scripts for most of the other Series 1 episodes, and notwithstanding a few minor or inferred references in the interim, returned in force in the Series 4 episodes Turn Left and Journey's End. With the origin of the meme established, the mystery that remains is exactly why the words "bad wolf" were chosen to be spray-painted on the TARDIS in the first place (as opposed to any other phrase).
 * Although not clearly seen on screen, one of the UNIT officers killed by the Slitheen at the end is wearing the name tag "Frost" (the tag is seen more clearly in publicity stills). This may have been a reference to the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip character Muriel Frost, who worked for UNIT.
 * The TARDIS key began as an ordinary-looking Yale key, then changed during the Third Doctor's last season into a more alien looking one, which was also used for the first two seasons of the Fourth Doctor's tenure. It then reverted back to the Yale key for the rest of the run of the original series. The alien key made one last appearance in the Doctor Who television movie. It has now returned to looking like an ordinary key, except that it starts to glow when the TARDIS is arriving.
 * This is not the first time someone has written on the Doctor's TARDIS.

Ratings

 * 7.6 million viewers

Myths
None

Filming locations

 * The Cardiff Royal Infirmary provided the setting for the fictional London Albion Hospital.
 * The entrance to the Prime Minister's residence was a redress of a similar-looking door in Central London.
 * Cardiff Royal Infirmary, Newport Road, Cardiff
 * Westminster Bridge, Westminster, London (News report on the crash)
 * Tower Bridge, London (seen as the Slitheen's ship flies over it)
 * The Queens Walk, Westminster, London (seen when the Slitheen's ship crashes into the Thames)
 * Hensol Castle, Glamorgan, Wales (Interior of Downing Street)
 * Bute Street, Cardiff (when Rose are taken to Downing Street in the limo)
 * John Adam Street, Westminster, London (Exterior of Downing Street)
 * Belvedere Road, London
 * Whitehall / Parliament Street, Westminster, London (seen as the Slitheen ship flies over the top)
 * Brandon Estate, Kennington, London (Long shot exterior of Powell Estate)
 * Channel View Flats, Cardiff (Closer shots of Powell Estate)
 * Unit Q2, Imperial Park, Imperial Way, Newport
 * BBC Television Centre (Studio TC4), Shepherd's Bush, London
 * HTV Wales Studios (Studio 1), Culvershouse Cross, Cardiff
 * BBC (Kendal Avenue), Kendal Avenue, Acton

Production errors

 * When the ship crashes into the clock tower, both the numbers on the clock face and the text beneath are backwards. (According to the DVD commentary, director Keith Boak altered his shots of the crash sequence but this was not related to the visual effects team, who had prepared according to the storyboarded version. As a result, the sequence was electronically flipped to make it conform to the spaceship's final descent pattern.)
 * The clock also appears to keep working after the incident: the time reads roughly 10:55 when the spaceship strikes it, but reads roughly 6:10 when the clock is later seen on a news broadcast. (The shot is flipped)
 * Around 26:32, when Mickey appears at the party, the BBC News broadcast in the background can be heard talking about how, "with no head of state", "it falls to Harriet Jones to form an emergency government". This didn't happen until the subsequent episode.

Continuity

 * Dr. Sato later reappears in the Torchwood spin-off series, where her full name is revealed as Toshiko Sato (TW: Everything Changes)
 * TW: Exit Wounds establishes that she was working undercover for Torchwood during this incident and in fact her colleague Owen Harper was originally to have done the autopsy. This retroactively makes this the first appearance of Torchwood in the series (unless one counts Jack's possible appearance as the Face of Boe), although the name wouldn't be established until Bad Wolf later in the season and the current nature of Torchwood not until the end of Series 2. The Exit Wounds reference also confirmed that the Dr. Sato who appears in Aliens of London is, indeed, the same person as the Torchwood operative.


 * UNIT makes its first appearance on screen since DW: Battlefield. The Doctor spells out the acronym -- United Nations Intelligence Taskforce. This would be the final on-screen use of this name, as by the time the full name of the organization was uttered again in DW: The Sontaran Stratagem, it has been changed to Unified Intelligence Taskforce. (Apparently the UN objected to the use of its name in the fictional organization, even though it had been used as such since at least 1968).
 * Mickey notes that he found out on the Internet that the Doctor had worked before for UNIT, among other things. A notation at WEB: http://www.whoisdoctorwho.co.uk/ implies that Mickey is the one who has been updating Clive Finch's website since the latter's death in DW: Rose.
 * The TARDIS was previously defaced with chalk scribblings in DW: The Time Warrior and The Leisure Hive, graffiti in Paradise Towers and was painted pink in The Happiness Patrol.
 * The Doctor revisits Albion Hospital in 1941 during DW: The Empty Child and The Doctor Dances.
 * In DW: Love & Monsters the crash sequences (and the events that follow) are seen from an entirely different point of view.
 * The Doctor tells Rose he is 900 years old, however in DW: Time and the Rani he was 953, in NA: Set Piece he was 1000 and in EDA: Vampire Science he was 1,012, the Doctor spend 100 years on Earth (EDA: The Burning to Escape Velocity) which makes him at least 1,112 (this isn't counting all the intervening time during adventures either). The given age of 900 has been the baseline for all future references to the Doctor's age (such as 903, given in DW: Voyage of the Damned). The discrepancy with the earlier stated age during the Sylvester McCoy era has yet to be addressed on screen, though numerous fan-generated theories exist.
 * This is the first episode in franchise history to chronicle the impact the departure of a companion with the Doctor can have on those left behind. In this case her family believed her to have been murdered, and her boyfriend, Mickey, had become a suspect. The impact of a companion's travels with the Doctor on family and friends back on Earth becomes a recurring theme throughout the Russell T. Davies era.
 * Beginning with this episode, most "modern day" Earth stories are said to take place approximately one year after the year in which they were broadcast; i.e. this episode and its second chapter take place in 2006, but were first broadcast in 2005. As noted above, this has not been applied consistently. This displacement also applies to the later Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures spinoff series, and has been applied fairly consistently, although some discrepancies have been noted. This would continue until Series 5, where the "modern day" stories would once again synch up with the year in which they were aired, and, although unconfirmed at this time, would seem to follow for Series 4 of The Sarah Jane Adventures and Series 4 of Torchwood.

Timeline

 * This story occurs after IDW: The Forgotten (flashback)


 * This story occurs before DW: World War Three

Home video releases

 * Aliens of London together with World War Three and Dalek were the first Doctor Who stories released on the Universal Media Disc format for the PlayStation Portable.
 * This was also released as a vanilla release along with the next two episodes.
 * It was also released as part of the Series 1 DVD boxset.
 * This was also released with Issue 2 of the Doctor Who DVD Files.

External links - Online media

 * Doctor Who Confidential - Episode 4: I Get a Side-Kick Out of You
 * Official BBC Next Time Trailer
 * Mock report from BBC News 24 (used in Aliens of London)

Aliens of London