Doctor Who - "World War Three"

WHOSCALE: 6.5 OUT OF 10



Following up as the second part of "Aliens of London" was "World War Three," also penned by Russell T Davies.



Davies often dumbed down his scripts for the sake of understanding by average viewers, and as a result, his two-parters often struggled to keep a plotline afloat for two full length episodes. I felt that had Davies committed a bit more screen time to explaining and filling relevant plotholes, instead of "sweeping them under the rug" with domestic drama, family affairs, emotional scenes, and a heightened orchestral soundtrack, then his episodes probably would have appealed more to the Whovian society and they would have had more admiration for his contributions to Doctor Who.



Water under the bridge, as they say. The pacing of this episode was relatively the same as Aliens of London, but it sufferred more due to the bulk of the plot being touched on in the first part. As result, the episode frequently contained scenes of irrelevance to the plot solution. The Slitheen proved to be a menancing threat, only to be stopped by a vat of vinegar.

Some of the better scenes were when the Doctor took charge of the briefing at the close of Part 1 and quickly surmised the situation logically with intelligence, as the scientific advisor once did in classic Who. Another memorable scene is when the Doctor barricades himself, Rose, and Jones inside the conference room, Jones asked, "How do we get out?!" and the Doctor smiles, looks at Rose and then back at Jones and replies, "Ah."

The ending was a bit overdid, I thought - the last scenes where Rose packs her things and says farewell to Mickey and Jackie again I felt was there solely for the sake of adding a spot of extra drama to the episode - drama that appeals to One Tree Hill fans.