Doctor Who: Modern 1x4: "Aliens of London" | Reaction!

[@deebeedaydreamer]

The "politicians are duplicitous gas bags" angle will never not be relevant.

[@andygozzo72]

hmm, yeah, Donald Trump, with 'trump' being UK slang for a fart 😜

[@stephencoppins9467]

The Doctor expressed his frustration for humanity’s capacity for self-desception, in Remembrance of the Daleks, when Ace asked why she didn’t know about the Daleks invading Earth in 1963 (and was also unaware of Yeti’s in the Underground, or the Zygon gambit with the Loch Ness Monster).

[@CRINOTH]

Harriet Jones' parliamentary constituency of Flydale North is entirely fictional. So is Hartley Dale, which Joseph Green is MP for. :)

[@SeanS102]

It's so easy to make up authentic sounding constituency names 😅

[@CRINOTH]

@@SeanS102 Oh yes, I think the boundary commission have a lot of fun with them at each review. 😂😂

[@ValueNetwork]

Also apparently the scene with the pig in the hospital was the first scene filmed for the revival, over 20 years ago now. and Chris said it was his favourite day of filming. Now that’s probably because his feud with the director of this episode hadn’t stated yet, but also I think that’s a really good scene for a first performance as a doctor. Especially the “It was scared line”. A very underrated scene

[@Darren79]

20:55 - when they edited the episode together they found out that it was significantly underrunning so new scenes were written and shot in later filming blocks. It was made in the first production block for the series so they were working out how to make it as they went and that caused issues for Eccleston.

[@alexthehunted]

I won't lie this episode did scare me as a kid.

[@ClintBandito]

People always talk about the farting being humour for kids, but as a kid it was completely serious, like that's a tell that someone is an alien and suddenly you're suspicious of people in the real world who have some excessive gas 👀

[@johnthewiz]

2 part stories cut production budgets by quite a bit. One set of sets, location shoots, one cast and one crew. In this season they played the old 'Oh no, Genesis of the Daleks used up the rest of this years money - I know, lets use the Nerva Beacon setting again.' which again, cuts set build and FX costs. It's the BBC, they love frugal writers.

[@jacobhogan3208]

Bullets worked on the pig, that was our first clue it wasn't alien.

[@jacobhogan3208]

In terms of UNIT, I believe one of the background characters in this episode was identified ages ago by some official sources as a UNIT character from the novels, but the episode still lacks anyone we know from the show. To be fair Yates and the Brigadier left and Benton's been serving since at least the 70s so it makes sense for him to be retired by now. The RTD Era and UNIT is a complex topic on its own for another day.

[@MrJ.Smith1234]

I think this two parter is underrated. Sure there's some silliness and some bad CGI in the next part, but it also has a great domestic storyline and the Slitheen look really well made for 2005. I also enjoyed your dads reaction to the fart jokes which was something I thought your dad might dislike about this story. 😄

[@StephanieMaireFaith]

TOSH! R.I.P 😢 Space Pig 🐽

[@purrceys7959]

I'm always amazed how little Americans knows about the parliamentary system which many governments use (including your closest neighbour use) when we know so much about your political system & history.

[@benjaminwilson2945]

16:06 Dan Lewis is taking notes.

[@benjaminwilson2945]

5:58 That's 2005 for you, folks.

[@MuchWhittering]

To be fair, we had our election on the 4th of July, so you can talk about the greatness that is the UK if you want. Kind of surprised you're splitting the 2-parters, since they're just the length of the classic 4-parters. I enjoy this. Really great story. Take the farting out and it'd be basically perfect. Also, nice early cameo from Tosh from Torchwood here, doing a Star Wars style retcon to say it's actually her. I like this soft re-introduction of UNIT. The Christmas special has UNIT soldiers too without really using the name. I guess slowly bringing them in in a way that old viewers will notice, and new viewers won't. Like a lot of NuWho stories, the BBC reporters seen on the news are actual reporters from the time, adding to the immersion. (Classic Who did it too way back in The War Machines) As is Matt Baker on that clip of Blue Peter they show. Although they intentionally keep the parties of the various politicians unstated, the PM is meant to vaguely resemble Tony Blair, and Harriet Jones (MP for Flydale North. Not a real place. Again, keeping stuff fictional helps to be neutral, which the BBC has to be. Can't show political favouritism) says she's "hardly one of the babes", a reference to "Blair's babes", so I think it's safe to see that Harriet is Labour, as is the new government that came in 10 days ago.

[@SeanS102]

They hired a Tony Blair lookalike in fact to portray the dead PM, but were angry when he arrived and they assessed he did not look sufficiently like the real Blair. Personally I've always thought he does look enough like Blair when tumbling out of the cupboard, I understood it even back then as a largely politically ignorant child.

[@Jaketherobonrd]

Oh yes this was another doctor who episode that scared me too as a kid. City of death was the first scare , then there was this two parter. I remember I didn’t watch the first part of this story on first broadcast, not til I got series 1 volume 2 on dvd and I had to watch it with my sister so she can tell me when the scary bits come on. Aliens disguised as masked men always scared me as a kid

[@TastySalamanders]

37:00 Flydale North is fictional.

[@SeanS102]

I really like this two-parter! The script is very dynamic and interesting. I think the farting is darkly funny! I will say, they were still finding the tone of the show, especially given this is the first committed to film. The direction on the other hand is quite poor, and this is unfortunately the production that broke the relationship between lead and producers.

[@joshuajoshua2732]

Just on the conversation of when the cybermen coming down to earth in 1986 or the invasion of the dinosaurs and that no one has heard of those events in 2005 it's all timey wimey Alex 😂 you must surely know by now after going through 26 seasons of Classic Who that there is no consistent continuity with this show it all goes down to whatever the mood of whose writing Dr. Who at the time keeping up with every bit of info would be painstakingly very hard work so it's easier to excuse ah "times wimey" just like they ignore the Doctor being half human which were told in the TV Movie.

[@andrewbowman4611]

See, farting is funny.

[@oldwebshooter]

To be at the same rate as Classic Who you'd be watching two episodes a week. But if you want to take it slower, you could watch Doctor Who Confidential as part of your reactions for the episode watched?

[@rebeccaburgess8710]

This is my favourite none series final new who story. My top 3 are the series 4 final first, then the series 1 final second, and this story along with its second part in third.

[@michaelscofield5483]

You should react to “the boys”

[@flaggerify]

Not one of the great episodes. As others mentioned I don't know why you aren't pairing the 1st and 2nd parts as you did with Classic Who.

[@whobp8]

Have a good vacation! If you're taking a plane or train and get seated next to an overweight person who farts a lot, make sure you get them in a headlock and check beneath their hairline for a concealed zipper. You never can tell...

[@richardlemin7840]

Who: Coming home, I was seated next to a gentleman who was larger than Alex and me combined. Fortunately, there was no flatulence and he had a receding hairline… ~Dad 🤣

[@ValueNetwork]

This first season of new who might be the most “Of its time” that the show has ever felt. It screams 2005, on the same level if not more so that the 7th Doctor screamed late 80s and the 3rd screamed early 70s. This episode is aggressively of it’s time, and that’s good in some areas (it’s political commentary still holds up, it’s a critique of Tony Blair’s Labour. RTD is left wing and was critical of the “New Labour” movement of the time and how it started drifting away from the left to collaborate with Bush & the US right post 9/11. The dead prime minister is implied to be Blair himself and the next episode leans heavily on Iraq war commentary) but it’s not so good in other areas (the farting aliens and the brash comedy of the time)