My Review of Wizards Vs. Aliens 2x01: "100 Wizards"

Written by Phil Ford
Directed by Beryl Richards

Tom: "You belong with us now."
Chloe: "I've never belonged with anyone before."
Tom: "You do now."

The first season of Russell T. Davies and Phil Ford's joint venture of Wizards Vs. Aliens was certainly something of a mixed bag but as the series progressed, the writing did improve a bit. With the opening story to the second series, there's still some room for improvement but there's also a lot here that really should be praised as well.

First of all, the addition of new wizard and love interest for Tom, Chloe Martin turned out to be a great new character. In the space of this opening story we saw Chloe use her 'telekinesis' for some TV fame before learning that she was a wizard and eventually she suffered a rather unfortunate fate at the hands of the Nekross just as she was bonding with Tom as well.

I've never really found the Nekross that threatening or interesting and I kind of feel that their continued presence on the show is somewhat holding the series back as well. Aside from their malicious dealing with Chloe at the end of this opening story, their scheme to drain a hundred wizards in a TV studio was easily the type of plot that could've been done within the first series.

It was fun to see Tom and company best them for the millionth time again but it's a reminder that this show really does need some new enemies if it stands a chance of making any further progress though. It's not that they're terrible antagonists but aside from the odd bit of conflict of interest with Lexi and Varg, there's not a whole else that can seemingly be done with them I think.

- Katie dumped Tom in this episode and the latter thinks that Chloe is no longer interested in him. At least he's still got Benny for now.
- It was nice to see some new wizards with Miranda and Nathaniel. I thought Ursula's crush on the latter (even if he threatened to endanger the Neverside) was a little sweet.
- Jodie Prenger played Chloe's guardian, Mrs Meeks. Did anyone else think she came across as a tad similar to Gita from The Sarah Jane Adventures?
- I liked that Michael had a bit more to do in this story than he did in the first series. I hope that's a sign of more character development for him. I also enjoyed Benny's geek off with Jathro as well and seeing the likes of Chancellor Kooth as well and Varg in human form.

For an opening story, "100 Wizards" did a good job of returning the show. The writing is still not entirely perfect but there was a lot of fun in this story and the twist with Chloe at the end was a nice stinging moment as well. I think there's definitely a sign of improvement here.

Rating: 8 out of 10