The Great 'Doctor Who' Rewatch: 'World War Three'
This week, we continue on into the back half of this adventure, called not-at-all-dramatically World War Three. Wish I could tell you the flatulence jokes are fewer in this half. They’re not.
In Medias Res. We pick up World War Three right where Aliens of London left off and everyone appears to be in very dire straits – facing off against angry Slitheen (Rose, Harriet Jones MP, Jackie) or getting electrocuted (the Doctor, a lot of government officials). It all turns out okay though, because the Doctor manages to just pull off his electrocuting energy ball/ID thing with his hand, because it’s only deadly to humans, and shove it onto one of the giant collars worn by the Slitheen. Somehow, because these collars are like the best Wifi ever, the fact that he electrocutes one of them electrocutes them all, and the monsters facing Jackie and Rose both start screaming because they’re getting zapped too. Everyone runs away from the monsters and we just won’t talk about the room of dead government officials the Doctor has apparently left behind.
Time for Some Pointless Running. The Doctor grabs some of the apparently thirty odd armed guards outside Downing Street who managed to not hear any of the screams from a roomful of dying people and alerts them to the presence of aliens in the building. Mickey shows up to grab Jackie away from the monster at her house, but stops long enough to take a photo of it. The Slitheen manage to get the electrocuting collar situation turned off and start chasing everyone again. Rose and Harriet Jones, MP, get out of the room in which they were previously trapped and then proceed to spend a long time running thorough the building away from a growling monster. The Slitheen manage to get their government official/human disguises back on and tell the guards the Doctor has killed everyone. Everyone then spends some time running away from either the Slitheen or armed guards and it kind of goes on for a bit (way) too long.
Family Reunions of All Sorts. After a bit more running around Downing Street, and another unnecessary scene where the Slitheen take their human costumes off again (did you know they are really aliens under there?), the Doctor rescues Rose and Harriet Jones, MP from the three monsters by using a fire extinguisher to blind them. Harriet Jones says that they should go find the emergency protocols in the cabinet room, because those say what to do in case of aliens. The three barricade themselves in – the cabinet room having particularly reinforced doors –but not before they learn that the Slitheen aren’t a “race” of aliens, per se, they’re a family (Slitheen is a surname), who are out to use the Earth for their own nefarious business purposes. The aliens begin to bring additional members of their “family” to Downing Street – all dressed in various human costumes that also happen to be members of government. Everyone turns back to their alien forms once their inside, and the number of Slitheen steadily grows.
Back to Mickey and Jackie. Mickey and Jackie – who have fled to Mickey’s flat - make tea and discuss the alien situation. Mickey says that this is all the Doctor’s fault, because everywhere he goes death and destruction follow. Jackie’s upset about nearly dying and is worried that the alien policeman’s still out there somewhere.
Meanwhile in the Situation Room. The Doctor, Rose and Harriet Jones regroup and try to figure out what to do and what the aliens want. We learn that the Slitheen can only impersonate certain kinds of humans because of their size (no short people, etc) and that the flatulence is caused by the compression collars they wear around their necks, which allow them to shrink enough to fit in their human costumes. Harriet Jones says the emergency protocols are useless, because all they say about aliens is to contact the people who are already dead downstairs. Rose suggests maybe they can just lob a nuclear bomb at the aliens, but Harriet Jones points out that to activate those weapons you need a release code from the United Nations.
The Doctor perks up at this fact and asks a few more questions. He also says that he’s heard of Harriet Jones before and can't remember why. It bugs him quite a bit. They try and speculate about what the Slitheen “family” could want from Earth that could possibly make them money.
The cabinet room has no obvious computer terminals, phone jacks or outward communications, but Rose still has her cell phone - and sees that Mickey’s texted them a photo of a Slitheen. They put Jackie and Mickey on speakerphone and have them start doing some research on the UNIT website. (UNIT, if you’ll remember is basically the secret government agency that deals with aliens.) Jackie takes this opportunity to give the Doctor a piece of her mind, and says that all she wants to know is if he can promise that Rose will be safe in the midst of this dangerous life he leads. Rose protests that she’s fine, but the Doctor looks thoughtful. He’s spared from answering by the fact that Mickey manages to get into UNIT’s website at that exact moment. How convenient.
Mickey’s Flat is Pretty Gross. The Doctor uses UNIT’s site to listen to the message that’s being broadcast from the alien spacecraft the Slitheen have hidden in the North Sea. He deduces it’s on a repeating loop, but can’t tell what it says. The doorbell at Mickey’s flat rings, and it turns out to be the Slitheen that attacked Jackie earlier. Things are not looking great for the two of them, and Rose is horrifically anxious at the thought that she might be about to listen to her mother die. Her worry galvanizes the Doctor who says they have to figure out where the Slitheen are from in order to know their weaknesses. He launches into a rapid fire back-and-forth with Rose and Harriet Jones about what the Slitheen can do and what their technology is like. Nine goes into an almost Sherlock-style deductive monologue that culminates in him realizing that the flatulence problem is also a symptom of calcium decay and therefore that means they can only be from one planet – Raxacoricofallapatorius. Which, by the way, is the best name for a planet ever.
The angry Slitheen manages to break into Mickey’s flat precisely at that moment. The Doctor tells them to run to the kitchen and to find anything with vinegar in it. Jackie makes a disgusting concoction out of pickled eggs and onions and who even knows what else and throws it on the Slitheen. Things get even more disgusting when it causes the monster to explode. Seriously probably no one should go into Mickey’s kitchen for a while or possibly ever again.
The Slitheen’s Grand Plan. While all this is happening the Slitheen dressed as the Acting Prime Minister goes on television and spins a grand lie for the public – that the experts on extraterrestrials brought to help them have all been killed by aliens, that Earth is surrounded by heavily armed alien spacecraft bent on destroying the planet, that everyone is in danger, that the Earth is at war. He begs the United Nations for access to the nuclear launch codes (thanks for that primer in how this process works earlier, Harriet Jones MP!) so that they can take out the alien threat to humanity.
Of course, literally none of this is true. What’s actually going on, as the Doctor rapidly realizes, is that the Slitheen created a huge spectacle of fear and uncertainty on purpose. Their plan is to access the nuclear weapons and turn them on every other country on Earth and start World War Three, which would result in basically killing everyone and reducing the planet to radioactive rubble, which they can then sell off to the highest bidders. The looping signal they’re broadcasting isn’t a message, it’s an advertisement – meant to let all nearby wandering spacecraft know that Earth is about to become a fire sale. The Doctor offers the Slitheen a choice: leave or he’ll stop them. Mean Lady Slitheen laughs in his face and questions what he can do locked beneath Downing Street. This is obviously going to be a bad decision. (But it’s always so fascinating that the Doctor is ridiculously insistent on giving even the worst sorts of monsters a chance. He offers them the choice – but the Slitheen continue to choose greed.)
How Do You Solve A Problem Like Space Aliens. Later, back in the Downing Street bunker: The Doctor, Rose, Harriet Jones, MP, Jackie and Mickey are having a conference call and trying to brainstorm ways to take down the Slitheen, including fermenting the port they’ve been drinking. (Ew.) Rose laments that surely there’d be something they could do if they could just get out of the room they’re currently unable to leave. The Doctor sighs audibly and says he knows the way out, that there’s always been a way out, but if they use it, he can’t guarantee Rose will be safe.
The scene shifts into a strange and quite direct conversation between the Doctor and Jackie even though there are ostensibly three other people involved. Jackie doesn’t want him to do anything that might endanger her daughter. The Doctor points out that if he doesn’t, everyone else is going to die. Rose says to just do it, whatever it is. Nine looks up at her, vaguely wonderingly, and says she doesn’t even know what he’s planning to do, and she’d just let him do it, like that. Rose says yes, without hesitating. Jackie pleads that Rose is her daughter and only a child. Nine says he knows that, but this is his life and it’s not fun or smart, it’s just standing up and making a decision because no one else will. Rose calmly asks what he’s waiting for then, and the Doctor looks up at her worriedly. He says he could save the world, but still lose her in the process. They stare at each other for a long minute while the music swells and presumably everyone at home is making various aww-sounding noises.
Harriet Jones, MP, however, is not having it. She says that it’s not the Doctor’s choice at all, it’s hers, because she’s the actual only elected representative in the room (and , let’s be real, possibly the entire building). She says that on behalf of the people of England, she commands the Doctor to do whatever he thinks might work.
Time for Some Thrilling Heroics. The Slitheen are waiting in the Prime Minister’s office for the phone to ring with news about whether or not they get to launch nuclear missiles at everybody. There’s a pointless thing where they decide their victory should be experienced naked and we have to watch them do their blue light special, and take their human costumes off bit again. Guys, we get it okay. You wear human costumes. Whatever.
The United Nations - apparently without bothering to check for themselves whether there are actual spaceships with weapons pointed at Earth in the sky – says it’s cool if England wants to shoot some nuclear rockets off.
The Doctor goes through the emergency protocols again, then talks Mickey into hacking into the Royal Navy command center in order to fire an ordinary non-nuclear missile from a nearby submarine at Downing Street. Dramatic missile CGI montage time occurs, as we track the rocket towards its destination, complete with Jackie freaking out, Downing Street evacuating and Harriet Jones, MP, worrying about whether the room they’re in can withstand the blast. Rose decides to hide the three of them in a fortified closet because it’s sturdy and that’s what you do for earthquakes. I love Rose, because that is seriously ridiculous logic.
And It’s All Okay In the End. However, Rose’s logic somehow, miraculously ends up being sound, as her fortified earthquake closet is pretty much the last bit of Downing Street left standing after the blast is over. Everyone’s okay! Well, not the Slitheen it would appear, as they do that classic movie Oh, crap face right before the missile hits. Dun dun.
The Doctor, Rose and Harriet Jones, MP, struggle out from the wreckage, looking really none the worse for wear. Harriet Jones, MP, identifies herself to a nearby guard and tells him to call the UN immediately and tell them to stand down. She then laments that they don’t even have a Prime Minister at the moment and Nine tells her that maybe she ought to give it a go. Rose says she’d vote for her. Harriet Jones, MP, looks flattered and heads off to help organize recovery efforts. The Doctor takes Rose aside and says he knew that he’d heard her name before – that Harriet Jones, MP, will eventually become Harriet Jones, Prime Minister, get elected for three consecutive terms and become the architect of Britain’s Golden Age. The two of them smile at Harriet Jones, MP, who is delivering a speech to some television cameras and walk off together.
They return to Jackie’ s flat where Rose and her daughter hug, then have an awkward talk about the Doctor, and what kind of person he is, and how Jackie thinks Rose is infatuated with him. Jackie also wants to know whether the Doctor eats because she wants to make shepherd’s pie to they can have a proper sit down dinner so she can learn more about him. It’s kind of adorable.
The Adventure Continues. Sadly, that’s all the family togetherness we’re going to get though, because that’s right when the Doctor calls Rose’s cell. (“TARDIS Calling” will never not be awesome.) They have an awkward, bickering couple style conversation about Jackie’ s desire to get to know him – which Nine is categorically uninterested in. He says he doesn’t do that sort of thing and won’t budge even when Rose protests that it’s her mom and it’s not fair. (Which, really, it’s not fair. She’s risking her life, he can put up with Jackie’s food for an hour.) The Doctor still refuses and then says Rose is more than welcome to stay behind and eat if she wants to, only there’s this plasma storm happening in the Horsehead nebula with fires burning millions of miles wide. But it’s her choice, of course. He says all this with this bizarre expression on his face like he’s strangely anxious about what Rose’s answer is going to be, even though it’s stupidly obvious.
Rose, of course, decides to go with the Doctor and see plasma storms and all the other amazing things in space and time, even after Jackie very sadly asks her not to go again. Rose packs a bag, says goodbye to her mother and Mickey and tells the Doctor he’s stuck with her. She tells her mother not to worry, because since she’s going traveling in a time machine, she won’t be gone that long. The music swells dramatically as the TARDIS vworp vworps off, and you sort of get the feeling that that statement may or may not actually be true. It’s an oddly sad sort of to end the episode on, given the fact that they’ve just saved the world and Rose is making her own fully informed choices and deciding to do something with her life at last. But it does highlight something that later seasons of Doctor Who kind of forget – meeting the Doctor affects a lot more people than just the individual that decides to go along for the ride in the TARDIS.
Next time: A Dalek!
Thoughts on this two parter? Neither episodes are very on my list of overall favorites, but the character moments – and of course the amazingness of Harriet Jones, MP – are worthwhile.
