The Slitheen were a criminal family from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius. The Slitheen were calcium-based lifeforms which meant that they were susceptible to vinegar. Dodgy deals, deceit and claws were the mainstay of the Slitheen. The Slitheen wore skin suits and used a compression field to disguise themselves as overweight politicians. I am convinced that Donald Trump is secretly a Slitheen in disguise! Thankfully, the Doctor and his friends defeated the Slitheen more than once in Doctor Who. And the Doctor’s companion Sarah-Jane Smith had her own encounters with the Slitheen in The Sarah Jane Adventures. The Slitheen are greedy criminals, but their relatives, the Blathareen are not irredeemable!

Aliens of London/World War Three

★★★☆☆

TX: 16/04/2005 – 23/04/2005

Written by Russell T Davies    Directed by Keith Boak

The Ninth Doctor returns Rose Tyler to Earth, but the TARDIS accidentally lands a year after they left. Rose’s mum Jackie has been distraught, fearing her daughter to be dead and she pointed the finger of blame at Rose’s boyfriend Mickey. Jackie even slaps the Doctor! I have been slapped by multiple women! Jackie’s suspicions about the Doctor are put to one side when a huge spaceship hurtles into London’s airspace, hits Big Ben and crash lands in the River Thames. The Slitheen ship hitting Big Ben is a deliberate allegory for 9/11. The Doctor says that the landing is too perfect and his suspicions are correct. The spaceship (piloted by a fake pig) is a decoy laid by the Slitheen, a criminal family from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius who have murdered their way to the top of the British Government. The Slitheen skin their victims and wear their skins as a disguise, in a similar way to the Foamasi in The Leisure Hive. They do this through the use of a compression field which creates a lot of excess gas leading to increased flatulence. If a girl farts or poos in front of you or doesn’t wear make up when you’re around, then you know that she is comfortable around you and that she loves you! Disguised as the Prime Minister, one of the Slitheen announces that an alien space fleet is above the Earth containing “massive weapons of destruction capable of being deployed within 45 seconds”. This lie is an allegory for the blood-soaked fallacy that Iraq held weapons of mass destruction capable of being deployed within 45 minutes, which was the pretext for the illegal Iraq War. We should never have gone to war in Iraq! The Slitheen’s plan is to get the nuclear codes in order to provoke a nuclear war which will destroy the Earth. The Slitheen will then sell the remains of the Earth as scrap for fuel, a similar plan to the one that The Dominators used when they invaded the planet Dulkis using the Quarks. Trapped inside Downing Street with the Slitheen, the Doctor, Rose and Harriet Jones MP make contact with Mickey and Jackie, who have had their own problems with the Slitheen at Rose’s council estate. The Doctor instructs Mickey to hack into the Royal Navy and fire a missile, which destroys Downing Street and the Slitheen. The Doctor, Rose and Harriet Jones survive in a cupboard in a barricaded room. After leaving the ruins of Downing Street, the Doctor reveals to Rose that Harriet Jones will one day become the UK Prime Minister. Back at the Powell Estate, Rose decides to continue travelling with the Doctor, much to Jackie and Mickey’s disapproval. Billie Piper and Christopher Eccleston both give incredible performances in this underrated story. Eccleston is on the podium of Doctors! The Slitheen were monsters that were more aimed at kids so they worked better in The Sarah Jane Adventures than they did in Doctor Who. The Doctor has visited the City of London many times in Doctor Who, including the very first episode An Unearthly Child. I was born in Bromley, London and I spent the first few years of my life in Beckenham before my family and I moved to Kent where I grew up. I don’t like London and I hate going back there, even though it is necessary to attend the majority of the Doctor Who conventions. In this story, the Doctor and his friends briefly watch Blue Peter in Jackie’s flat. In this episode of Blue Peter, presenter Matt Baker has made a spaceship cake out of jelly babies, which is a possible reference to the Fourth Doctor who liked jelly babies. Doctor Who and Blue Peter have long had a strong connection since the 1960s and have run numerous children’s competitions, one of which I entered in 2005. The Slitheen come from the planet Raxacoricofallapatorius and on its twin planet of Clom, the Absorbaloff (whom the Tenth Doctor and Rose later encountered in Love and Monsters) originates.

Boom Town

★★★★☆

TX: 04/06/2005

Written by Russell T Davies    Directed by Joe Ahearne

The Ninth Doctor, Rose and Captain Jack Harkness land in Cardiff so that the TARDIS can refuel from the rift in time and space running through the city. Mickey arrives to give Rose her passport and so that they can have a holiday together. However, their time in Cardiff is no picnic as the Doctor discovers to his horror that one of the Slitheen has survived and is now the Mayor of Cardiff! Margaret the Slitheen plans to build a nuclear power station, which will meltdown once it reaches capacity. The explosion being on top of the rift would destroy the Earth and propel Margaret on a pan-dimensional surfboard called an extrapolator out into space. The Doctor decides to take Margaret back to Raxacoricofallapatorius, where she will face the death penalty for her crimes. Over dinner, Margaret pleads with the Doctor for her life. However, this is all a ruse as Margaret’s real plan was to trap the Doctor and his friends by using the extrapolator to lock onto the TARDIS and open the rift. Margaret threatens Rose’s life and the Doctor is forced to comply. But before the rift opening can destroy the planet, the heart of the TARDIS opens. Margaret looks inside and regresses back to being an egg. The Doctor decides that they will take the egg back to Raxacoricofallapatorius where Margaret can start again and begin a new life. Rose looks for Mickey but realises that he has gone because he is jealous and crushed that he has been replaced in Rose’s heart by the Doctor. I went inside the Slitheen restaurant in Cardiff Bay (Bellini’s) and I had a meal (carbonara, because steak and chips wasn’t available)! Stupidly, I forgot to take any photos of me in the original restaurant, however I have gone back to the new restaurant and taken photos there.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Revenge of the Slitheen

★★★★★

TX: 24/09/2007

Written by Gareth Roberts    Directed by Alice Troughton

Sarah-Jane Smith’s adopted son Luke and his neighbour and friend Maria Jackson have just started a new secondary school together. However, sinister things are afoot in the school! Maria, Luke and their new friend Clyde Langer discover that their school teachers are all Slitheen in disguise! The Slitheen want revenge for what happened when their attempt to destroy the Earth through a nuclear war was thwarted by the Doctor. The Slitheen have built a capacitor which enables them to drain the power from any appliance. Luke accidentally gives the Slitheen the equation needed to stabilise the capacitor. At full capacity, the Slitheen will use their network of sites across the Earth to disable all the electricity and power on the planet. The Slitheen then switch off the Sun using the capacitor, without which all life on Earth will perish! Sarah-Jane and her gang confront the Slitheen at the school. Sarah-Jane uses her sonic lipstick to disable the capacitor, which overloads killing some Slitheen. Some Slitheen escape however, including Carl the Child of the Slitheen. Sarah-Jane, Luke, Maria and Clyde return to Bannerman Road, where Sarah-Jane explains to Clyde about her old life of travelling in time and space with the Doctor and how she now battles aliens on Earth in Ealing, London.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Lost Boy

★★★★☆

TX: 12/11/2007 – 19/11/2007

Written by Phil Ford    Directed by Charles Martin

Luke is kidnapped by the Slitheen in a plan that involves framing Sarah-Jane as Luke’s kidnapper in the first place! The Slitheen want to use Luke’s genius brain power to help them energise a kinetic energy source called MITRE, kept at the Pharos Institute. However, all of this turns out to be an elaborate plan by Mr Smith, Sarah-Jane’s alien computer, which turns out to be evil! Mr Smith used the Slitheen and Sarah-Jane to get hold of the MITRE headset and with Luke’s mind power he intends to bring the Moon crashing down on Earth. The resultant destruction will free millions of Xylok crystals buried deep beneath the Earth’s surface. Mr Smith is a Xylok and he plans to free his fellow Xylok and release them into space. Sarah-Jane makes it to her attic and gets help from her robot dog K-9, who incapacitates Mr Smith giving Sarah-Jane enough time to download a computer virus (courtesy of Maria’s dad Alan Jackson) onto his server, forcing him to reboot. The Slitheen return to Raxacoricofallapatorius.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Gift

★★★★☆

TX: 19/11/2009 – 20/11/2009

Written by Rupert Laight    Directed by Alice Troughton

Sarah-Jane, Luke, Clyde and Rani Chandra encounter the Blathareen, who claim to be the peaceful cousins of the Slitheen. As compensation for the Slitheen’s bad behaviour on Earth, the Blathareen offer Sarah-Jane and Earth a gift in the form of Rackweed, a plant that could end world hunger. However, under photosynthesis, the Rackweed mutates into a killer plant with spores that are fatal to humans. Luke becomes infected by the Rackweed. The Blathareen are in fact Slitheen-Blathareen and the whole thing has been a deception on their part to turn Earth into a farm for their addition to Rackweed. Sarah-Jane confront the Blathareen with vinegar but they capture her instead. At school, Clyde and Rani discover that the Rackweed can be dispersed by a high resonance, which they observe in the school bell. They return to Sarah-Jane’s attic where the gang are confronted by the Blathareen. Sarah-Jane orders Mr Smith to recreate the resonance in the attic, which triggers the Rackweed in the Blathareen’s stomachs, causing them to explode…