World War Three

So we open with scenes from the last show- spaceship crashing, the Doctor being electrocuted, etc, and then we have the Doctor ripping the ID card off and sticking it onto the Slitheen. That Slitheen being electrocuted causes all the other Slitheen to be electrocuted as well, rather over-dramatically might I add. This saves Rose and Harriet, as well as Jackie and Mickey, and of course the Doctor himself. But that doesn't put them completely out of danger; the Slitheen cannot be killed in that manner. The aliens chase the Doctor, Rose, and Harriet and trap them in the cabinet room, so that they're unable to directly attack the Slitheen- they have to relay their instructions through Mickey and Jackie to get anything accomplished. That annoys me- I mean, yeah Jackie and Mickey need to be fleshed out a little, but seeing the Doctor and Rose not in the middle of the action... it's so out of character it's unrealistic.
Anyways... they're able to find out that "Slitheen" is not a race of aliens; it's the aliens' surname. Their actual species is Raxacoricofallapatorian... from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorious. Upon discovering this, Jackie is able to kill one of the Raxacoricofallapatorians.
A Slitheen that is disguised as the acting Prime Minister lies on live TV, telling all of London that there are alien weapons of mass destruction poised to attack over Earth, with the mother ship directly over London itself. He does this to gain access to nuclear launch codes so that he can "destroy the threat-" or rather, attack the other countries and start a nuclear war. World War Three.
The Doctor, furious at the lie, goes to one of the Slitheen and demands an explanation of why they plan on destroying Earth. She tells the him what they want with Earth; the Slitheen want to start a nuclear war and turn Earth into molten slag and sell it off as fuel. There is a recession in space and they could become incomparably rich off of it- and they're already sending out a signal, calling other ships in and telling them of the fuel available for purchase.
The only way to stop them is to have Mickey hack into the Royal Navy and launch a bomb at 10 Downing Street itself- with Rose, the Doctor, and Harriet inside. The Doctor uses it as a last-ditch effort, telling Rose, "I could save the world but lose you." MELT! I love that line- when he finally tells Rose how much he cares for her. :D
So Mickey launches the bomb, destroys 10 Downing Street, kills the Slitheen, saves Earth- and Rose and the Doctor live. Harriet goes out and takes control, telling everyone that, "The crisis is over," and the Doctor, after agonizing over where he knew Harriet from throughout the whole episode, realizes how he knows her name. She is the future Prime Minister for three consecutive terms, and the architect of Britain's Golden Age.
Jackie finally decides that the Doctor isn't so bad and she wants to talk to him and get to know him, but the Doctor is unwilling to do that. Rose and the Doctor head off, leaving a dejected Jackie and Mickey behind.
Overall, I guess this is an okay episode. There aren't really as many great one-liners in this episode as there are on average, and Rose and the Doctor were well out of the action the whole time. However, there is another appearance of Bad Wolf, the discovery of who Harriet Jones is, and the Doctor's telling Rose that he, more or less, needs her.

Stay geeky (and nerdy if you're a nerd as well),
-A fellow Whovian

Aliens of London

You know that one awkward moment when you've been traveling through time and space, return home and think you've been gone for twelve hours and it turns out you've been gone twelve months? Well, that's what happened to our poor Rose. Happy to be home after witnessing Earth's death in the year five billion, she runs into her apartment only to find that her mother had believed her to be dead for the last year- with Mickey being the prime suspect in her "murder."
After being thoroughly grilled by her mother, who desperately attempts to find out where Rose was in the year she was gone (and also slaps the Doctor while she's at it- extremely funny), Rose goes to the roof of her building to talk to the Doctor. She confesses how upset she is that she can't ever tell her mom where she really was, and tells the Doctor that he's the only person she can talk to about her experiences- since she's the only person on Earth that knows aliens really exist. A spaceship promptly flies overhead and crashes into Big Ben and is rewarded with an exclamation from Rose: "Oh, that's not fair!" I think it's funny that two seconds before she was bemoaning her fate as the only human to know of aliens, and the instant this happens, she takes it back.
The Doctor sneaks into the hospital that the "alien" body from the crash is being kept, and he realizes that it isn't an alien at all, but an ordinary Earth pig that had had alien technology put in its brain. Aliens faking aliens. The pig in a spacesuit is actually fairly funny until it gets shot. :( That part's sad, especially when the Doctor tells them it was simply terrified, not attacking.
The Doctor heads back to Rose's building and her mom sees the T.A.R.D.I.S. materialize. Armed with the knowledge that he's an alien, she calls an alien hotline. That, in all honesty, I find completely ridiculous. Alien hotline? Really? I'd hate to be one of the people answering that phone- think of all the wackos they'd get.
All aliens experts, including the Doctor and Rose, are taken to 10 Downing Street to be consulted on what to do in the time of emergency. Rose, however, isn't allowed into the meeting along with the Doctor, so she walks around with a woman named Harriet Jones (MP for Flydale North). They discover the discarded skin of the human disguise of an alien and are trapped by one of the aliens.
The Doctor, in the meeting with all the other "alien experts" (one can assume that they really know nothing in comparison to the Doctor's vast knowledge of the universe) uncovers an alien plot. The episode ends with he and the others in the room except for the two aliens being electrocuted. Very big cliffhanger and all, unless you watch the "Next on Doctor Who," which shows the Doctor and Rose alive and well.
Overall, this is a pretty good episode. Introduction of the Slitheen, Harriet Jones, and of course it has its funny parts... satisfying episode, especially considering that it didn't bring up any of my former complaints.

Stay geeky (and nerdy if you're a nerd as well),
-A fellow Whovian

The Unquiet Dead

Hi there. I did something stupid and somehow deleted this post, and I am not going to rewrite the whole thing and have it not be as good as it was before, so... yeah. No more post for this episode. Sorry.

Stay geeky (and nerdy if you're a nerd as well)

-A fellow Whovian

The End of the World

Having accepted the Doctor's offer of traveling with him, Rose goes to the year five billion- and to the day the sun expands. Aka, the end of the world. All very exciting and dramatic. I think this episode is great because it holds the first appearances of Lady Cassandra, long-time enemy of Rose and the Doctor, and the Face of Boe as well, long-time mystery.
My favorite gift that's given is the ostrich egg, because "legend says it had a wingspan of fifty feet, and blew fire from it's nostrils," but the "iPod" is pretty funny too. It makes you wonder what historical inaccuracies we've made- maybe what we think are ancient pots are really toilets. On the subject of funny stuff, one joke that I enjoy is when Rose is trying to use her cell and says they're "Out of range. Just a bit." A bit? Sure. We're only outside of that time. Walk a few steps to the left and I'm sure you'll get service. And then the Doctor performs some "jiggery pokery" and her phone works. Ta da! Another funny is when Jane tries to figure out what Rose is to the Doctor- his wife, partner, concubine, prostitute? Rose, saying that "Whatever I am, I must be invisible. Do you mind?" heads off to talk to "Michael Jackson-" the Lady Cassandra. They promptly disagree, mainly about Cassandra's many (seven hundred eight) operations.
I'm glad that Rose eventually has a freak-out moment when she begins to realize that she is surrounded by aliens, her only way home is in a strange blue box that is bigger on the inside and gets inside her head so that she can understand and speak in alien languages, with a strange man that she's known for less than a day, and that everyone she's ever known is dead. It's completely justified- in fact, if she hadn't freaked out, I would probably say she was a Dalek in disguise.
First off, though, I hate how Rose went from heroic human to helpless damsel in distress in two episodes. In Rose, she saved the Doctor's life, rescued all of London from certain doom, and then boldly went where no man has gone before (none from our century, anyways). And then, in The End of the World, she has a mental breakdown, gets trapped and almost killed, and is mostly useless and cumbersome throughout the episode. I mean, honestly?! What brought about this sudden changed from "hero to zero?" -to incorrectly paraphrase the Muses from Hercules. I guess it's meant to show how, even though Rose is awesome, she has her limits and "is only human."
And then there's the dramatic death of Jane. She really didn't have to die- if the Doctor had moved faster through the slowly rotating turbines of decapitation- because they're moving so fast they're obviously going to kill him *not*- she wouldn't have caught on fire. But no, there had to be a meaningless sacrifice. Pffft.
The main thing that annoys me here, however, is when the sun filter is descending. The temperature outside is extremely hot, yes? Of course it is, the freaking sun is exploding. So the glass of Platform One is breaking, allowing pretty little beams of sunlight to stream through... and not cook anyone unless it touches them. Uh, hello? Anyone in a, say... twenty foot radius of one of those beams would be fried instantly! Not to mention the great big gaps in the glass! If the external shields are down, and the glass is broken, is the air going to stay inside the ship? I THINK NOT.
I think the best part about this one isn't the wit or the plot or any of that; I think it's the moral. Life doesn't last forever- nothing does. We need to cherish each and every day we're given for the gift that it is.
Overall, this is a fairly good episode. I mean, come on. It has the Face of Boe! If you haven't watched all of season three then you won't understand why the Face of Boe is so great, but for the rest of you...

Stay geeky (and nerdy if you're a nerd as well),

-A fellow Whovian

Rose

I love how this first episode of Doctor Who since 1989 starts in modern day London with the boring but happy life of Rose- not space. There's no T.A.R.D.I.S. or Doctor or aliens in sight. Not for the first five minutes or so, anyways.
The best part is when the Doctor is all like, "Oh yeah, I might die, but I'm ninja so you go on with your life," and then he slams the door. After a few seconds a bewildered Rose turns to walk away when he suddenly pops back out, introduces himself, and tells her to run for her life.
And then there's the whole matter of...
"Run!" I think it's great that, after sixteen long years of silence, the first thing the ninth regeneration of the Doctor says is run. This one phrase sets up a whole idea of excitement and danger and, yes, running, for the show. Out of all the lines that could have been his first, I'm glad this is the one that got top spot.
Another funny part is the next morning when Rose hears sounds from the cat flap and when she checks it... the Doctor is peering through. The exchange of wit that follows is one of my favorites. "What're you doing here?" "I live here." "Well what did you go and do that for?"
And it's all of ten seconds later that another one of my favorite exchanges occurs: "I'm in my dressing gown." "Yes, you are." "There's a strange man in my bedroom." "Yes, there is." "Anything could happen." "No."
After that we have the attack of the plastic hand; it's really funny because at first Rose thinks the Doctor is just messing around. "Give a man a plastic hand," she mutters disgustedly. She changes her mind about that when it attacks her as well.
After a long while of Rose bugging him and trying to find out who he is, the Doctor tells her this:
"Do you know like we were saying? About the Earth revolving? It's like when you're a kid. The first time they tell you the world's turning, and you just can't quite believe it because everything looks like it's standing still. I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour and I can feel it. We're falling through space, you and me. Clinging to the skin of this tiny world, and if we let go... that's who I am. Now forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home."
I love this quote! It sounds so mysterious and impressive and awesome and... alien. The Doctor in a nutshell, I guess. :)
One part that is a little corny is when Mickey is eaten by the trashcan and the peculiar plastic Mickey takes his place. I have no clue how Rose goes for more than a second without realizing that something's wrong, but hey, it leads to her seeing the Doctor again, so I'll let her cluelessness slide. That leads to her going into the T.A.R.D.I.S... and promptly back out to run around it and be bewildered. When she goes back inside, the Doctor asks, "Where'd you want to start?" Rose replies with the sacred, "The inside's bigger than the outside." 
Another great part is the Doctor's complete idiocy when he's looking around for a round and massive transmitter... a huge, metal, circular structure... don't mind that giant Ferris Wheel, Doctor, it's not like that's big and round and metal or anything...
Something I don't like about this episode are some of the special effects; the Nestene Consciousness is a giant blob of lava, the manikins twitch and flail long after their controller is destroyed. The T.A.R.D.I.S. special effects, however, are as good as they've ever been. Sounds: awesome. Looks: awesome. Materialization: awesome.
Overall, this is a fantastic episode, chock full of wit and jokes. How could you not like that?

Stay geeky (and nerdy if you're a nerd as well),

-A fellow Whovian

Introduction

Hello to everyone out there, fellow Whovians, fellow bloggers, and few random people who were unfortunate enough to stumble onto my blog! Welcome to my first blog post.

I am a devout Whovian, and I've watched almost every episode. I'm sad to admit that I haven't seen season seven, but I've seen the rest. As a devoted nerd and geek (those aren't interchangeable, by the way; nerds are academics with no social life and geeks are extremely passionate about their hobbies) I have decided to devote my summer to "walking the path of the Whovian" once more- I am going to re-watch every episode of Doctor Who and write one post for each one. So, if you are a normal person wanting to keep your normalness intact:

• stop reading
• go to a different page
• don't look back!

For the rest of you- sit down, relax, and be ready to be subjected to Whovian awesomeness.