Look, I'm gonna be honest with you: I'm not especially psyched about writing this post. There have been episodes in the past that I haven't been fond of (I'm looking at you, Planet of Giants), but even with the worst of them I haven't been insulted by them. Disappointed? Sure. But never insulted. Until now.

So let's get this over with.

Aliens of London

(TARDIS Data Core recap)

First the good: This story marks the first time, to my recollection, where the question is seriously asked, "what happens with the people left behind when someone becomes a companion of the Doctor?" In this case, the Doctor and Rose return to London following their Charles Dickens adventure. Supposedly they land only twelve hours after Rose left, and from Rose's perspective it has only been a few days. Unfortunately, the TARDIS is an unreliable beast, and the Doctor is a mediocre pilot, and so they actually return a full year after Rose left at the end of the pilot episode.

During that time, her mother has searched frantically and put Missing Person posters everywhere possible. The prime suspect in Rose's disappearance became Mickey, who was hauled in by the police to be interrogated five separate times. Pretty much everybody thinks he murdered Rose and hid the body.

Naturally, when Rose comes flouncing into the flat for a change of clothes, her mother goes through an eruption of emotions. Since Rose can't explain where exactly he has been or why she never called, her mom (rightfully) blames the Doctor and suspects him of terrible things. Given that Rose is only nineteen while the Doctor appears to be a middle-aged man, she more or less considers him to be a pedophile.

This is not an unfounded position.

Which leads me to the bad: Did I mention that Rose is a nineteen-year-old human whereas the Doctor is a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord? While the both vehemently deny anything sexual is happening in their relationship, everything about how they behave together screams "romantic partners". Just, ew. I don't care how effortlessly charming Billie Piper is in the role of Rose, it doesn't change the fact that she is still basically a child who has never lived independently, held anything beyond an entry-level job, or really done anything at all adult-ish. I know I keep harping on this, but it's just gross. Even if the Doctor was only the forty-one-year-old that Christopher Eccleston was at the time this aired, it would still be gross. I don't think it is a controversial position that middle-aged men should not be romantically involved with teenagers.

On top of all that, there is an actual plot going on here. An alien spaceship crash lands into the Themes after smashing through Big Ben (whose clock face is surprisingly backwards, due to a mishap with the practical model effects shoot), but it all turns out to be a ploy. Real aliens create a fake pig-alien to manufacture a world crisis, and the masterminds behind the plot are a group of plump, farting nobodies who have infiltrated the British government. Did I mention that they fart? Because roughly eighty seven minutes of this forty five minute episode involve the main three villains farting.

Dear God, there is even a point where the Doctor actually says the words, "Would you please stop farting while I save the world?" I mean, Russel T. Davies actually wrote that line of dialog, and master Thespian Christopher Eccleston actually spoke them. On purpose.

So the entire episode builds to the big reveal where the farting aliens unzip the the heads of their human suits to reveal the Slitheen underneath. They use compression technology to fit their giant green bodies into the human skin suits, and all that compression makes them fart. Constantly.

Look, I'm all for juvenile humor. I think Dumb and Dumber was a great movie. My wife and I both make tasteless jokes to each other on a regular basis. But there is a time and a place, and Doctor Who is neither. 

So basically this episode opened with some solid character writing, had a pretty clever plot involving aliens faking an alien encounter, and then rapidly collapses under a giant brown cloud of flatulence, never to recover.

And I still have another day of this tripe. Ugh.

STATS:

Doctor(s): Ninth
Companion(s): Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith
Episode(s): Aliens of London
Steps Walked: 7,636 today, 2,564,821 total
Distance Walked: 4.25 miles today, 1,331.25 miles total
Push-ups Completed: 0 today, 283 total
Weight: 249.98 lbs (five day moving average), net change -57.32 lbs