Doctor Who - Revenge Of The Cybermen

The Brave And The Gold

Doctor Who -
Revenge Of The Cybermen
Airdate: 19th April - 10 May 1975
BBC 1 - Region 0 Blu Ray Four Episodes

Well... Revenge Of The Cybermen is another Doctor Who story from my youth which in no way lived up to either my memories or my expectations of it. That being said it’s still better than the two stories which preceded it.

Starting off with The Doctor (Tom Baker), Sarah Jane (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry (Ian Marter) swirling in space and still holding the time ring they recovered at the end of Genesis Of The Daleks (reviewed here), the three arrive back at Nerva some thousands of years since they departed, when it was still a manned beacon. However, there is very little crew left because they’ve all died from a ‘plague’ which, in good old Cybermen style from a previous story, is really the little, sneaky, rat-like Cybermats biting and poisoning various crew members.

It doesn’t take long for Sarah Jane to get bitten so The Doctor sends her and Harry down to the planet Voga, where age old enemies of the Cybermen live in a cave system (actually Wookey Hole in real life), to unscramble her molecules and separate her from the alien poison. However, Sarah and Harry get stuck down there as prisoners of one of two opposing factions of Vogons while, on Nerva, The Doctor has to track down a human double agent and then try and stop a rocket full of Cybermen (allergic to gold, as always) from destroying Voga. So there’s lots of running around on stripped down versions of the Nerva sets from Ark In Space (reviewed here) plus the caves on the planet and... it’s fairly entertaining but it’s not exactly a roller coaster, to be sure. James Bond fans take note, the shoe brush transmitter that the double agent uses here is exactly the same one previously used in Live And Let Die... which Roger Moore sold to the props department more by accident than by design, since he was trying to just give it to them.

Okay, so there’s good, there’s bad and there’s ludicrous. The bad and ludicrous being the dead bodies of the plague victims that litter the floors of the corridors of certain sections of Nerva. I mean, I know I’m now watching this on a high definition Blu Ray but, surely, even then people could tell these were shop window dummies which were, it has to be said, badly placed with their faces turned away from the camera and the joints in the wrists, that hang from unnatural angles from their brittle limbs, clearly visible. Note to set dressers... dead people’s heads don’t raise up slightly from the floor because they are connected to a slightly angled torso. This is really not selling things guys... are extras really that expensive?

And if you want really bad... when a rocket is launched from the subterranean caves of Voga, directed at Nerva, the footage use of it taking off looks nothing like it and is, brazenly, stock footage of a clearly marked NASA rocket departing from Cape Canaveral (or Kennedy... or whatever it’s was called in the 1960s/70s).

The good is... the Cybermen themselves. Tom Baker was only the third of the, then, four Doctors, to find himself up against these creatures. Previously, only the first Doctor and, especially, the second Doctor had fought them in the 1960s version of the show, on a number of occasions. This is also the cybermen's only story from the 1970s, since they wouldn’t get another crack at The Doctor, with a shocking and unexpected consequence for viewers of the time, until the 1980s and the Peter Davison story Earthshock (note, the third Doctor did finally get to meet them many years later when he returned for the special anniversary episode, The Five Doctors). They were completely overhauled for Earthshock in terms of their design and, since the costumes from the Troughton years had not survived the ages, they were rebuilt for this story too, although they do look pretty similar to the versions seen in such stories as The Invasion. This was also the first time they were seen in colour but, with the interior set designs on the spaceships pretty minimal, they do look like they are being shot on black and white stock in some shots... which is nice.

There are also some nice little stabs at humour here including a typical see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil moment when The Doctor and two other prisoners are waiting to find out their fate. We also get to see The Doctor spinning his yo-yo when he is being trans-matted down to Voga. Plus... you know... the jelly babies make another appearance, once again.

One of the things I noticed on this story in particular is that, in the replay of the last few minutes before the previous cliffhanger at the start of each episode, some pretty hefty cuts and also additions make their way into the scenes... it’s almost like watching the old Saturday Morning Pictures serials again (not that I’m old enough to have ever seen those actually at the cinema... mores the pity).

Having discovered recently the basic plot of Gerry Davis’ original story for this, I have to say that... although this particular plot line would have been great with Troughton in it, I’d have much preferred to see the previous incarnation of the script filmed, where Nerva is basically a space casino. As it is, though, this would be the last time Davis would write anything for the show.

What this story does highlight, once again, is how good Tom Baker, Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter are together. The dialogue for their characters is excellent and the chemistry between these particular ‘companions’ is strong. Something which wasn’t always a guarantee in the show, by a long shot.

And that’s me about done with Revenge Of The Cybermen, apart from perhaps making the comment that, for a race of cyborgs who have stripped themselves of all emotion... why the heck would they want revenge? They certainly don’t seem to here and that makes a kind of mockery of the title. Interestingly, the last episode finishes with yet another ‘lead in’ to The Doctor’s next adventure which, alas, isn’t on Blu Ray as yet, it’s sad to say.

Doctor Who - Genesis Of The Daleks

The Time Meddler

Doctor Who -
Genesis Of The Daleks
Airdate: 8th March 1974 - 12 April 1975
BBC 1 - Region A/B Blu Ray Six Episodes

Warning: Some spoilers.

Okay, so the next story in my re-watch of Series 12 of Doctor Who is the much acclaimed fan favourite Genesis Of The Daleks. Even Tom Baker cited this as one of his favourite stories but, I have to say, this one always left me a bit cold. Alas, any hopes I had that I might, with age, revise my reaction to this serial as anything other than having to sit through a dull story, faded very quickly as I watched.

This follows on from The Doctor and his companions Sarah (Elisabeth Sladen) and Harry (Ian Marter) using the teleport at the end of The Sontaran Experiment (reviewed here) to return to Space Station Nerva after making the repairs to the system they promised in The Ark In Space (reviewed here). However, this is not to be, as their transmat beam is intercepted by none other than the Time Lords themselves, who have a mission for The Doctor. This is not unprecedented throughout the run of the show but it was with Tom Baker that the Time Lord culture and The Doctor’s place in it were explored a little more thoroughly than their brief mentions and appearances in the previous 11 years.

The mission is simple... The Doctor, Sarah and Harry have been transported to the planet Skaro, back to when the Daleks were first coming into being. Their mission, destroy the Daleks before they become the lethal menace that they become for hundreds of thousands of years (or more). As far as the Daleks are concerned it all starts here with their creator, Davros (played here by Michael Wisher), who we meet for the first time. Despite his ironic death at the end of the sixth episode, he would of course, return to face off against The Doctor many times over the years including Tom Baker’s second and final story against the Daleks four years later, in Destiny Of The Daleks. Out of the two, I’ve always loved Destiny Of The Daleks and not had much time for Genesis Of The Daleks so I hope, if the BBC get around to releasing the latter on Blu Ray at some point in the next few years, the experience of the second Davros story lives up to my memory of it.

Another thing I absolutely hate about this is it kinda changes the history of the Dalek race somewhat. Oh yes... I forgot... some people call it revisionism... I call it meddling with things the original Dalek creator (Terry Nation) should know better than to tinker with. The fact is, before this story the warring race against the Thals were called the Dals. However, from this moment on in Genesis Of The Daleks until the present day stories, their name has been changed into a stupid anagram of their future selves, the Kaleds. This is pretty weak and, frankly, unforgivable... you don’t mess with continuity.

Now, Genesis has some interesting elements and, for a family show airing before the watershed, it’s quite bleak and dark. We see the Thals and Kaleds at war with each other but, this earlier incarnation of the Thals are far from the race of blonde haired, blue eyed pacificistic hippies we meet in both the William Hartnell stories and the first Peter Cushing, big screen adaptation. Instead, they are virtually interchangeable with the Kaleds and, yeah, I did get confused a lot re-watching this as to which set of species I was looking at from one scene to the next.

The bleakness continues as the war combat scenes are very reminiscent of the trenches in World War Two and the Kaleds (and possibly the Thals as well, if I got this right) are all pretty much parodies, in uniform and attitude, of the Nazis. This whole World War Two atmosphere was touched upon again in the 2015 series of the show starring Peter Capaldi as The Doctor, with the early days of the planet Skaro maintaining that pessimistic vision. Here in Genesis, though, it’s a full on blatant set of references right down to a form of Nazi salute and even, in the first episode, Davros’ main henchman Nyder wearing something similar to an Iron Cross (it was ditched after the first episode for maybe spelling things out a little too clearly).

Something which really bothers me about the writing on this one is that, for an extremely intelligent Time Lord, The Doctor really doesn’t seem very clever in this at all. For example, in a typical case of the writers painting themselves into a corner for a dramatic situation, we have The Doctor using a detached Dalek gun to destroy some tapes made by Davros, containing information about future Dalek defeats which he was forced to give him in an interrogation. However, straight after this moment, The Doctor and Harry find themselves locked in the room and can’t do anything to shift the lock until they are freed later on in the story. Gee... it’s not like they even thought to use the same Dalek gun which was just laying on the table by the door to blast themselves free?

And... I honestly find the whole reason for Davros creating the Daleks for the good of the Kaled race, because they know what they will mutate into and so need sturdy exo-skeletons to look after them, somewhat ridiculous. Honestly, how can you predict what you are going to evolve into... especially since it’s made clear that The Doctor is the first Time Lord that the Daleks have come across. It just doesn’t make much sense and, good as all the actors are, I just find the action dull, the humour almost completely absent and, iconic monologues and exchanges aside, somewhat hard to sit through.  Maybe at six episodes it’s just too long and could have, perhaps, been better served as a four parter. The music doesn’t seem to help matters either and doesn’t, I believe, give the story the lift it needs to make its points. Maybe a full on military march may have been a better route to go down on this one.

Either way, Genesis Of The Daleks is a story that is much loved and so nothing I say will matter, thankfully. It so impressed people at the time that I remember an abridged LP record album of the show was released by the BBC with linking narrative sections by Tom Baker between scenes, not long after it aired on television. I remember borrowing it from the library at the time and, guess what? That didn’t do much for me either. However, despite the ‘revisionism’, it did give the series a new, villainous character in the form of Davros and people still thrill when he turns up in the show occasionally to this day. So it’s not all bad... just not my cup of tea in terms of classic Doctor Who. Still, I am, very much looking forward to perusing the last of the stories which make up this season soon, featuring what are probably, to this day, the show’s second best remembered regular villains.

Doctor Who - The Sontaran Experiment

Styre Beware

Doctor Who
The Sontaran Experiment
Airdate: 22nd February - 1 March 1975
BBC 1 - Region 0 Blu Ray Two Episodes

So following on directly from The Ark In Space (which I reviewed here), we have The Sontaran Experiment. This was Kevin Lindsay’s second go at playing a member of the Sontaran race following their debut in the previous season opposite Jon Pertwee’s Doctor in The Time Warrior. It was also his last... as the costume apparently aggravated his heart condition, causing his death some months later. However, before he died he really established a performance and manner of speaking as a Sontaran which various actors continue on to this day.

This one is, it has to be said, a mostly deadly dull affair so, thank goodness it only lasts for two episodes. In fact, it’s one of only a handful of classic stories which last that short running time in the first quarter of a century of the show. It’s also one of the few which doesn’t feature the TARDIS in any shape or form since The Doctor (Tom Baker) and his companions are arriving at the future version of Earth (in the year 16087AD) via the matter transmitter on Nerva, so they can make some adjustments to get the crew safely recolonising the planet again.

Alas, a small team of people for a another colony are also roaming the planet trying to survive a lone Sontaran and his highly dodgy looking robot who is running an experiment on the ‘humans’ that he’s lured there, in order to see how they stand up to torture and pave the way for an invasion fleet. Nobody asks why the Sontarans want to invade an empty planet so... I shan’t either. There’s obviously an entirely good explanation of this that the show’s writers and producers decided not to share with the audience.

Sarah Jane was, of course, also involved in the previous Sontaran story so she is shocked at first because... well they all look alike to her and she thought that Linx had somehow managed to survive. Harry of course, played as always by Ian Marter (who also wrote the Target novelisation), has never heard of them which is unfortunate because, the three main protagonists actually spend most of the two episodes apart form each other and all doing different ‘side missions’, so to speak, to do their bit in defeating this lone Sontaran and eventually signalling to his superior officer in space, also played by Kevin Lindsay (it’s not like they’d made more than one Sontaran costume for this production anyway), that the Earth was not to be trifled with.

And it’s pretty boring, mostly. The dialogue doesn’t sparkle and, apart from some charming performances, especially from the well spoken Lindsay, there’s not a heck of a lot to recommend on this one. Also, despite being a family show, the amount of times torture comes up just makes it feel a bit unpleasant with definite shades of Nazi Germany being alluded to in terms of the experimentation of the title, despite the fact that it isn’t really that violent.

Tom Baker apparently broke his collar bone while making this one and, looking at the forest landscape filled with big dips in it (and I suspect it might also have been shot in a quarry too), it’s really not that surprising that somebody broke something. Out of all of the stories in this series, this one just feels like its padding, to be very honest, to help link up the overall arc of that season and bide time until the next, six part and much quoted story Genesis Of The Daleks.

The pacing isn’t great either. Yes, everyone’s got something to do but it all feels a bit lethargic and I did notice at least one or two scenes which kind of didn’t quite make sense and were almost non-sequiturs presented in the order that they were televised. I learned today that at least one scene was cut out after Tom Baker broke his collar bone so I have to wonder if that’s what caused some of the lines and character locations in this to be... I dunno.... slightly out of kilter with what comes before or after them.

Whatever the reason, this was certainly the last two parter in the show until Peter Davidson’s incarnation of The Doctor starred in Black Orchid seven years later. This makes it about as long as one episode of the modern version of the show but, even some of the clunkier episodes these days make this one look bad. Perhaps some of that is precisely because the actors playing The Doctor, Sarah Jane and Harry all such have good chemistry together. Put them all on their own and they can’t bounce off each other the way they did in the previous stories. It really shows here and even Dudley Simpson’s musical score can’t liven this one up. So... sorry for the short review but this really isn’t a story I would recommend unless you are making a point of watching this entire series as one, fairly loose story arc. Certainly the least interesting story of this season.

Doctor Who - The Ark In Space

The Way We Wirrn

Doctor Who - The Ark In Space
UK Air date: January - February 1975 Four Episodes.
BBC Blu Ray Zone 0

The Ark In Space was the second of Tom Baker’s Doctor Who stories to be broadcast, following on from his debut as the character in Robot (reviewed here). Already he seems very comfortable in the role and you can kind of tell from the on-screen chemistry that he really got on well with his two co-stars at the time, the companion Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen, continuing on, in Robot, from her first series in the role opposite Jon Pertwee) and Harry Sullivan (who joined the two for the previous story, played with great fun by Ian Marter). In fact, Ian Marter also wrote the Target novelisation of the story which was so popular at the time.

The plot is about the TARDIS landing on Space Station Nerva, many centuries ahead of our present time, where the last traces of mankind are in suspended animation and waiting for the Earth to become inhabitable again before recolonising it.

You may perhaps suspect, as do I, that Douglas Adams kind of half cribbed this idea for the ‘Golgafrinchans’ in the sixth episode of the first series of his famous radio show, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy... being as he was somewhat associated with writing for Doctor Who himself on occasion. That and The Bible, of course. However, where the crew of Mr. Adam’s ark were all the incompetents who then accidentally end up populating the planet Earth gazillions of years in our past, the few specimens of humanity already awake in The Ark in Space are reasonably intelligent but, alas, they are stuck in a craft which has been invaded by a race of space bugs called the Wirrn. The arachnid-like creatures have laid eggs which will soon be hatching to eat and absorb the knowledge of the last humans alive, before recolonising Earth with their own kind.

Which, obviously, is a problem for everybody. Well, everybody human, I guess.

The sets are cheap, being as it’s all set in the one Space Station and, as you’ll find out in another of my reviews (later this year) the set will be reused again in this same series, with a story twist which makes excellent use of the budgetary limitations.

The special effects are also cheap, it has to be said, with a still photograph of some stars and a plastic spaceship dangled in front of it to set the scene. Start as you mean to go on, I guess... this is not unusual for this show. The Wirrn creatures are quite a nice design but somewhat too childish and lifeless to produce the desired horror effect (even when I was a seven year old, watching this when it first aired). When the ‘operators’ try to make them walk it’s not far removed from somebody bouncing them up and down on a bit of string, to be honest.

Ditto for the laughable special effects in terms of the part of the story which is somewhat ‘inspired’, I would have to say, from the original serial The Quatermass Experiment (I review the movie remake of that one here). When the captain of the ship is stung by a Wirrn larvae, he starts transforming into one himself. Did I mention the Wirrn larvae is some guy or gal wrapped in a blanket, crawling along and further bundled up in bubble wrap? So I guess, in a way, it makes sense that when the Captain reveals his hand just like Victor Caroon did, more effectively all those years ago, it should also be wrapped in green coloured bubble wrap. And not a snap, crackle or pop to be heard.

And it’s a story which is, perhaps, a little too long at four episodes for the idea (it would have made a nice extended episode for one of the more modern Doctor Who actors, I think) but, the writers do find things for the main protagonists and the small crew of Nerva to do, involving dodging and deactivating the station’s own defence mechanisms, teleport machines, shenanigans with electrical cables and an ‘oxygen crisis’. So it does move along a bit and doesn’t really have time to get dull at all. And it also has the famous scene where Sarah Jane is stuck in a ventilation shaft and the Doctor hurls male chauvinist insults at her to play on her feminist nature, ensuring she’s angry enough at him to squeeze herself through the narrow tunnel to have a go at him. It’s classic Who and one can’t help but smile as the story unfolds.

And, of course, after the Doctor saves the day, we have an unusual ending with the show going right back to the Troughton days as it leaves it on something of a... well not a cliff hanger but a lead in to the next story. Instead of departing via the TARDIS, something is needed from Earth to ensure that Nerva is able to fulfil its purpose... so The Doctor, Sarah and Harry all exit the ship by dematerialising in a teleportation chamber, leaving the TARDIS on ‘the Ark’, to fetch the required implement from Earth. And I remember this first season has some very unusual ways of getting the characters into the settings of each story so... I just need to revisit them again soon as part of this Series 12 Blu Ray box set and give my memory a joggle. If unjoggled memory serves, the next three stories in the series, which take us through to the end of the season, all have returning villains from Doctor Who history. One set of monsters who had only made their debut in the previous series (and who are still going very strong today) would be followed by two very classic monsters in the next couple of stories after that... although one of them would meet Tom Baker’s Doctor only once, not returning again before the character’s next incarnation.

So, there you are... The Ark In Space is a classic story from Tom Baker’s first season and there’s much to be recommended in it. Next stop, the two parter The Sontaran Experiment... which I don’t have many memories of at all, for some reason.

Doctor Who - Robot

First Of The Fourth

Doctor Who - Robot
Airdate: 28th December 1974 - 18 January 1975
BBC 1 - Region 0 Blu Ray Four Episodes

I would have been two years old when I first started watching Doctor Who. I know this because I remember being laid on a table, for whatever reason... and watching television as the Autons crashed through the shop windows in Jon Pertwee’s debut story Spearhead From Space. So when, in 1974, Pertwee had left the show in a situation which was mostly of his own making (and which I believe he regretted), Tom Baker wrote the BBC a letter and was soon employed, somehow, as the new incarnation of The Doctor. Now I had no idea, at the age of 6, that the character could regenerate and I had to have it explained to me when, at the end of the previous series, Pertwee dropped down effectively dead and regenerated into the new guy. All I knew was that I’d been watching Pertwee’s Doctor and been frightened by such creatures as The Sea Devils and Giant Maggots for, what was then, most of my life. Not to mention reading magazines about the character and doing jigsaw puzzles. So it seemed a bit strange but, I kinda warmed to Tom Baker from very early on. Even had the action figure and accompanying TARDIS (although, unfortunately, the budget didn’t stretch to buying any of the monsters for him to battle... I had to make do with using my Dalek shaped bubble bath). My dad hated him until, of course, he came to love him in the role but... he’s always like that with every new Doctor. He’s going through exactly the same thing with Jodie Whitaker now but, trust me, he’ll really miss her when she’s gone.

Baker’s debut story, Robot, is actually quite good and although he maybe seems a little arrogant at first (as perhaps every incarnation of The Doctor is to some degree) he is also confident and self assured and, I think it comes across very well that the little group of regulars working with him... Elisabeth Sladen as the legendary Sarah Jane Smith (in her second season in the role), newcomer Ian Marter as Dr. Harry Sullivan and, of course, Nicholas Courtney continuing as UNIT Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart... all loved doing the show and it does inject the series with a certain joy which, dare I say it, was somehow a little bit lacking on Pertwee’s last series (after Roger Delgado who had played arch nemesis The Master, had died in grim circumstances while filming in Turkey when his car went off a ravine, leaving all his colleagues heartbroken).

Baker is brilliant and, it has to be said, channeling Harpo Marx just a little bit as, being the youngest actor to play The Doctor at the time, he brings some much needed humour back to the role. Pertwee was , of course, very humourous but he was somewhat drier by the later episodes and Baker’s Doctor is much more harkening back to the days of Patrick Troughton, it seems to me.

The story here is not bad either, if unoriginal. It’s the tale of a political group of scientists who want to take over the world and, by using a big robot,  they steal plans to build a disintegrator gun and eventually take Sarah Jane hostage... the only one who’s been really kind to the robot previously... while they almost succeed in blowing up the world with nukes. And, although, as I said, it’s not exactly original, it does work in a nice tight manner with all the different plot elements and characters all doing things which enlighten certain story elements to the audience while advancing the plot in a way which... I dunno, just doesn’t seem as well done these days.

Of course, you’ve also got some really rubbish stuff too. The Robot itself looks pretty good for a ‘man in suit’ creation but when it finally grows to giant size (the Target novelisation of this one was called Doctor Who and the Giant Robot) the amount of bad, unmatted video screen backgrounds in the thing are really an eyesore. Then there’s the hilarious moment where The Brigadier says he’s got something that he thinks will stop it and the BBC attempt a ‘forced perspective’ shot as they wheel in what I’m pretty sure is an old Action Man tank, into the foreground of the shot. And don’t get me started on the ridiculous, plush puppet which we’re supposed to believe is Elisabeth Sladen, with it’s overly comical dangly legs wibbly wobblying all over the place when the robot supposedly picks the actress up in its giant hand. This looks pretty bad but Doctor Who has always had this home grown, ‘make do and mend’ approach to the special effects on the show and it’s one of the things that makes it so charming (even today, it’s not that state of the art, as regular readers will know I’ve pointed out on more than one occasion over the last decade).

Also, another good ‘I did not see that coming and certainly didn’t remember it from seeing it in 1974/5’ moment is the revelation that one of the ‘good guy’ characters is in league with the villains of the piece. It took me by surprise which, these days, is honestly hard to do. So in that way, at least, the writing is better than it is these days and, since this is Tom Baker’s version of The Doctor, the almost surreal, almost slapstick writing is in abundance and there’s some nice comic interaction going on with all four regular characters (and even with John Levene’s ongoing portrayal of Sergeant Benton of UNIT, too, who does a fine job here).

There is an attempt to inject a little King Kong style sympathy towards the robot at the end, when The Doctor finishes its ‘living metal’ body off with a metal eating virus and I’m not entirely sure this is successful but they do really go for it here and lead up to it throughout the series from the second episode onwards. The music is still very much what you’d expect from the Pertwee era too... which is not a bad thing, I guess.

All in all, Robot is not a bad attempt as the debut of a new and, after not very long, much loved incarnation of The Doctor. I think it would be fair to say that David Tennant is the only Doctor Who actor who has ever come close to enjoying Tom Baker’s popularity in the role and, to this day, Baker is the person most people will think of when they hear the words... Doctor Who. The already, blink and you’ll miss it, out of print Blu Ray set is loaded with extras too and the transfer is actually pretty good for a Blu Ray of a show which never really looked all that great to begin with. Really looking forward to watching the other stories in the season soon. If memory serves, the TARDIS is somewhat jettisoned for a bit and the remaining stories have a kind of thematic link to them after the next story... The Ark In Space. And also, a very budget conscious reason for that link in terms of two of the stories, if memory serves. I’ll get to it all soon. In the meantime... Doctor Who - Series 12 Story 1, Robot, is a good place to jump on if you’ve never seen any before.

For many more Doctor Who reviews, classic and modern, go to the index link top right and then scroll down to the TV section.

K9 And Company: A Girl’s Best Friend

Dog to Who?


K9 And Company: A Girl’s Best Friend
UK Airdate: 28th December 1981
BBC Region 2

When I was 13 years old, the pilot episode of the proposed Doctor Who spin-off series K9 And Company, which would follow the further adventures of Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker companion Sarah Jane Smith (as played by the inimitable Elisabeth Sladen) and a brand new K9 Mark 3, played by the same prop as the previous incarnations of the character... was what my “Christmas 1981” was all about! I was in eager anticipation of the “television event” of the year, still in blissful ignorance that Tom Baker would soon be leaving the regular Doctor Who show just a few months after.

Conceived by uber-producer John Nathan Turner, the series was definitely pitched to run as a TV show if the ratings were good. I even heard that there was going to be a twist at the end of the first series when the audience finds out that the K9 Mark 3 sent to Sarah Jane in the pilot film (the Mark 1 K9 was left on Gallifrey with The Doctor’s companion Leela and the Mark 2 K9 was left in E-Space with the second incarnation of the timelord companion Romana) turned out not to have been sent by The Doctor, as it had first seemed, but by his arch enemy The Master. Interesting stuff.

Alas, the TV show never came to pass... but not for any critical reasons I might highlight in this review and certainly not for want of trying. My understanding is that the pilot certainly didn’t fail and that the ratings were quite high and on track for giving the show a regular time slot. But these were troubled times for the BBC... or at least for Doctor Who at the BBC. A new controller came in and I think this is probably when the bizarre agenda to clandestinely kill off Doctor Who, one of their most succesful TV shows, first started to raise its head and the lack of budget would finally take the show from our screens less than ten years later. We all know what happened after this and the woefully inadequate TV movie which aired between the demise of the show and the “sparklied up” (aka given an adequate budget) regenration of the show in 2005.

The K9 And Company show, however, never stood a chance in this kind of hostile, early 80s climate... although it certainly wouldn’t be the last we saw of Sarah Jane Smith, of course... nor her titular robot companion.

I have to say that, having watched this pilot show again the other week, that K9 And Company: A Girls Best Friend is... well... it’s just not very good. It doesn’t hold together at all well nowadays and I personally feel that both the script and the shooting schedule were to blame. Elisabeth Sladen said as much, if my memory circuits are not malfunctioning again, in her recent autobiography, published posthumously. To be honest though, you can kind of see all the problems right up there on the screen so easily. I’d have to say that, at the time of its original transmission, I certainly didn’t have any problems with it so perhaps the tolerance of the average 80s viewing public was a lot more robust and less sophisticated than the average viewer these days. I don’t think they could have gotten away with airing what’s in this episode on TV these days all that easily.

The dialogue in this one is really not so bad and Sladen, while possibly having a hard time with some of it (I don’t think there was time for rewrites) does a lot better than she subsequently gave herself credit for in managing to inject at least a little of the Sarah Jane Smith character into the written script. It’s not noticeably a vastly different Sarah Jane to the one we’d been so used to watching in the 70s... although I should probably point out that I haven’t been in a position to rewatch any of her 70s episodes in recent years. Maybe before the year is out.

The story, however, is an altogether different kettle of time travelling space fish. It... well... the set up is okay but nothing is ever that clearly established in the name of trying to preserve some sense of mystery over the 50 minute running time and it has to be said that... it kinda jumps around a bit. The transitions between time settings is bloody awful with the characters one minute running around in the scare laden darkness (well, not so scare laden actually) and the next scene you’re back in broad daylight before traipsing back into “night shoot” territory again. I’m not sure if it’s just bad transitioning between scenes that is to blame or slap dash editing or, more likely, a lack of getting all the necessary footage to make some of the scenes work next to each other and keep it down to the prescribed running time.

The acting from some of the cast is way over the top and pretty non-naturalistic, especially when it’s pitched in juxtaposition against some of the more noteworthy actors in the cast like veteran Bill Fraser and, of course, Elisabeth Sladen herself. Although, having said that, there is some really wooden work from Sladen in the title sequence, talking of which...

Wow. I remember that title sequence being really cutting edge and fantastic in the early 80s... unfortunately, it has to be said that the title sequence now looks very dated and reveals itself as a phenomenon contemporaneous to the good old days of the BBC Micro (I was a Spectrum kid myself but still). The “too long” held frozen expressions and other ridiculous shots of Sladen in this sequence look... well... lets just say they look the opposite of inspiring and it really buggers belief that re-shoots weren’t taken because I’m amazed anything this slap-dash was allowed to be broadcast outside of a non-terrestrial channel showing Topless Darts and The Spanish Archer. I believe Elisabeth Sladen's autobiography had a very good reason as to why she was looking so unenthused during these sequences but I can’t quite remember what they were (although I suspect she possibly thought she was doing test shots for focus etc at the time and didn’t realise the camera was running).

But... at least I still like the inane song with John Leeson’s familiar tones singing “K9” over the titles. A bit silly but it has a certain charm to it.

Although I personally didn’t have as good a time as I was expecting from rewatching this old episode, I am still dissapointed that the show was never allowed to get up to running speed with its own regular time slot. Of course, this would not be Sarah Jane Smith’s last appearances in Doctor Who related programming over the years (The Five Doctors is set sometime not long after K9 And Company by the looks of it) and when she returned, with K9s Mark 3 and 4 to make the first of a number of appearances in the regenerated Doctor Who show of recent years, her popularity ensured that she finally got to have her own regular TV series. A show which turned out to be a real corker at times, in fact.

I still miss coming home to see new episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures on TV in the void left by Elisabeth Sladen’s untimely death, but she will live on in peoples memories for generations to come and, clunky or not, it’s really nice to have this little piece of British television history preserved on DVD. I’ve just bought a copy for my firend’s daughter’s birthday as she loves The Sarah Jane Adventures. She’ll be a fair bit younger than I was when it was first aired and it’ll be interesting to see if she takes to this earlier version of the character as she does in her recent portrayals. I hope she likes it as much as I did when it first aired... and not through the cynical eyes of a more sophisticated viewership.

Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

Good Bye Sarah Jane...

Elisabeth Sladen - The Autobiography

Aurum Press. ISBN: 978-1845134884

You know, from when I was a young ‘un, my earliest memories of Doctor Who are from the first Jon Pertwee serial Spearhead From Space. I was two years old.

His assistant in that story was Liz Shaw (played by Caroline John) but it wasn’t too long before Jo Grant (as played by Katy Manning) came into the series and I’d have to say that, with all my earliest memories of Doctor Who, come the ones of getting a Jo Grant badge from Selfridges at the time and assembling jigsaw puzzles with The Doctor, Jo and the Daleks on them. I was very little and this stuff used to keep my mind agog.

I remember when Lis Sladen started in the show during Jon Pertwee’s last haul and I remember her being there when he regenerated into Tom Baker and continuing her adventures and, in some ways, Sarah Jane never really left me over the years as one of those companions you just remember and who sticks in your mind as one the anchor points of the show. One of the things you’d look forward to while having to hear Basil Brush sing that damned Bulldog Basil song for the umpteenth time before the show started.

And when you think about it, it’s really not that surprising that Lis Sladen is one of those companions who endures the most, almost becoming a national treasure in the process. Since leaving the show she’s made loads of returns as the character. First there was the pilot film spin off for a TV show that never got picked up, K9 And Company, which I remember loving and I was always cross that they didn’t make any more of them at the time. This was where The Doctor sent her a new model of the Leeson voiced robotic dog and Sarah Jane and K9 go around solving mysteries together.

Then there was her reappearance opposite Pertwee’s Doctor in the anniversary special The Five Doctors, which carried on the continuity established in K9 And Company and also, briefly, reunited her with Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart from her UNIT days again. There was a long gap after that when anyone who is right and proper in the head would have assumed that this particular assistant would never see the light of day again but, when the new reincarnation of the series had hit its stride, spearheaded by Russel T. Davies, he brought Sarah Jane (and K9) back for the David Tennant episode School Reunion... and it was a big hit with audiences. This paved the way for more appearances in Doctor Who (the last two episodes of Catherine Tate’s regular run on the programme and, of course, a brief scene in the final David Tennant story... but more importantly, it spawned her own regular show, The Sarah Jane Adventures, some of the episodes of which are reviewed on this site (check out the index by title in the top right hand corner and scroll down to the TV section).

This show was a really great childrens TV programme (especially for us so-called adult children) and in some ways was more similar to the way the old Doctor Who stories were put together “back in the day”. It was a roaring success too, so when the news came that Elisabeth Sladen had died from cancer without a heck of a lot of warning during the shooting of Series Five, the fans (including myself) were somewhat shocked to say the least. It was like another link from my childhood had died for me... even though I’d never met her.

When her autobiography came out shortly after her death, it was a chance for me to find out more about the Doctor Who assistant that I’d always just relied on being there without really stopping to catch my breath and take a proper interest in her while she was alive. Having read her book now, I have to say that I wish I’d gotten in line just once at one of those fan signings because, frankly, she seems to have been quite a special lady.

The book is well written and fleshes out little bits of her life without ever really straying too far in the text from Doctor Who. Although her early life before Doctor Who, acting alongside her husband in various “actorly” engagements is certainly recounted, quite a lot of the book is given over to her time in the original TV shows. I guess this is what she thought most people would be interested in reading? But, to be honest, the whole lot will hold your attention once you make a start on it.

The lack of faith, or perhaps that should be financial and creative support, from the BBC in the show in the early days comes through clearly enough and it’s no real surprise (a lot of ex-Doctor’s have shared similar viewpoints), but there’s loads of interesting snippets of information here to keep most fans of her work and her most famous character engrossed. Her working relationship with Jon Pertwee was less bubbly than I’d expected (I have heard a few things about Pertwee over the years) but also not unfair and certainly she had some good times with him and his wife in later years. Her brilliant relationship with Tom Baker is also recounted and there’s some real nuggets of information about her time on the show which I suspect some people at the BBC in the old days may not have expected (or wanted) to come out... but I’m not going to tell you what those things are, you’ll have to read it yourself to find out.

I was glad to hear that she got on so well with Russel T. Davies... enough to email him about choices on what to wear for awards shows and the like... but I was a bit surprised at how little there is of her time working on The Sarah Jane Adventures in the book. I suspect there would have been more to come by way of interesting anecdotes if she’d have lived longer. The end of the book where she speculated as to where the show might be going in the future is poignant and sad to read when one realises that she had no idea she was dying. By the time I read the last little end piece by her husband and daughter, I was pretty much crying too many tears onto the page to be able to read the text properly. I must be getting old.

This was a much more emotional read than I’d expected and Elisabeth Sladen comes off as nothing but an absolute professional when it comes to her working life. An absolute gem of a book and something any longtime fan of Doctor Who, and of Sladen, will not want to miss out on. Definitely pick this one up if you want to be entertained and moved.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Man Who Never Was

Never Ending Story

The Sarah Jane Adventures

Season 5 Episodes 5 & 6:

The Man Who Never Was

Airdate: October 17th and 18th 2011.

UK. CBBC

Warning: There never wasn’t any spoilers here... in abundance.

Okay then. I suppose it’s time for me to write up the last ever story of The Sarah Jane Adventures... unless, of course, you’re reading this article from 40 years or so into the future, in which case it was the last ever story of The Sarah Jane Adventures to be broadcast starring the timeless Elisabeth Sladen in the title role, before Dakota Fanning took over only last year. :D

This is a fun packed little story. Predictable, yes.. but ever so fun and, to boot, it starts touching once more on raising awareness of social issues like the previous story... this time though it’s the exploration of slave labour which is lobbed at right thinking kiddie audiences like a hand grenade of questions targeted straight into the brain. But it’s also got other things going for it...

The Luke-like character of Sky was only introduced into the show as a new regular at the opening of this final half a series but already she’s integrated nicely into the chemical make-up of the show (I forgot to mention this in my previous Sarah Jane review but Sky was absolutely brilliant in The Curse Of Clyde Langer and in some ways saved the day... plotwise that is). There’s just one more form of acceptance they need to work into things and that is the question of how she’s going to get on with her virtual sibling Luke. Well Luke comes back from University to share in this adventure and is “teamed up” with Sky so the two can bond in quality pseudo-brother and sisterly ways so the audience will be happy that the two have accepted each other. Alas, Luke does not bring K9 with him and so, apart from a few old insert shots at the end of this story, this marks the first and last season of the show to not actually include K9. I’m sure they would have worked him back in for the “planned” final episode but... well, we all know what happened. It’s a sad ending to a great TV show and the great person that TV show revolved around.

The plot on this one is basically a comedy romp as the planet is hypnotised by a holographic projection into buying crappy new computers called SerfBoards and this holographic projection is controlled by a group of alien slaves pulling levers to get the man to talk, twitch, walk etc... if you remember that old strip in The Beezer comic called The Numbskulls, you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.

The man behind the whole thing is doing everything purely for money, has bought himself some alien slaves and has a push-button collar punisher system at work to keep the aliens in their place. Much is made of gaining possession of the controller for this so that the aliens can go free and while Sarah Jane and a cleaner from the studio from which transmissions of the hologram are being broadcast are locked out of the way... Luke and Sky investigate the aliens while Rani and Clyde come to the rescue. This basically is a great comedy romp which includes, towards the end, the scene you just know is going to happen of Luke and Sky having to control the hologram all by themselves and making a complete hash of it. This, of course, gives rise to much enthusiastically comic acting from the gentleman playing the hologram guy.

It was nice to see Peter Bowles still working in a supporting role too! He only as a couple of walk ons but still, nice to see the old geezah!

There’s also a nice comic moment when Sky has her mobile phone crushed under foot by the bad guy. When she starts to protest, Luke steps in to say something along the lines of “Welcome to the club! I’ve had seven phones in the last couple of years!” This kind of acknowledgement of the actual “real world” toll of cheap throwaway, formulaic scripting gimmicks such as this destruction of people’s communication devices to get rid of easy solutions out of a dramatic situation is a quite sophisticated element of self-awareness on the part of the writers and it’s just another point one can use to demonstrate how great this series had become, once it got itself going.

It’s a shame that it’s all got to end but... end it does and in the last five minutes, after the main resolution where Luke has “officially given approval” of Sky having his old room, we get a little sequence of clips from old episodes narrated by Sarah Jane (I think this voice over comes from a similarly styled sequence in a previous series) and which ends, more or less, with a shot of her hugging David Tennant’s incarnation of The Doctor from the Series Three episode The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith. This is followed by a zoom out of the planet earth and the words... “And The Story Goes On... Forever.” I warn any parents who are planning on watching this with their kids now... if any of your kids know why this is the final episode of the series, then this admittedly short sequence is gonna be a real tearjerker for them. I know it almost was for me... yeah, I know... whatever! I’ve been watching Liz Sladen play Sarah Jane on TV since the early seventies so I’m entitled to be missing her a little now she’s been taken by cancer. I’ll get over it... eventually.

So that’s it then. No more Sarah Jane but I do hope that some of the young actors who have played the leads in the show go on to do other things and don’t just disappear... they’re all quite talented and, at the very least it seems to me, good “work-a-day” performers. Hope this show opens some doors for them.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Curse Of Clyde Langer

The Ballad of Rani & Clyde

The Sarah Jane Adventures Season 5

Episodes 3 & 4: The Curse Of Clyde Langer

Airdate: October 10th and 11th 2011. UK. CBBC

Warning: This review is cursed with spoilers.

Well I know this review is a few weeks late but I have to say that I’m just getting more and more impressed with each new series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. It’s been far more consistently entertaining than the show it spun off from of late (Doctor Who) and it’s modestly been collecting its usual top spot ratings for children’s TV in the UK, ousting the competition by a wide margin still.

The Curse of Clyde Langer is one of the best installments I’ve seen in the show and it’s really a shame this half series is its last hurrah as I’ve noticed that the writing has just started to address social issues more with this episode and this helps to give it another edge over some of the lesser things we’ve seen passing for quality TV entertainment this year. This is a stance which seems to have carried on into the next (and last ever) story in the show and it just makes it all the more poignant that the wonderful Elizabeth Sladen died when she did... not only is it a great loss of a well loved human being, she was also someone who was doing quality and (dare I say this dirty word in modern society) educationally enlightening work and bringing it to the masses in a show which has now started posing questions which will hopefully make the younger viewers (that’d be the viewers who, unlike me, can remember seeing Sarah Jane the first time around when she stormed onto our screens opposite Jon Pertwee’s incarnation of The Doctor back in 1973) start to think a little more about their everyday lives other than what new video game is coming out and when the next meal is.

The Curse of Clyde Langer does, to be fair, feature some typical formulaic Sarah Jane plotting in that some of it is set in a museum, while featuring an ancient and probably “alien” evil entity changing the way characters relate to a certain regular character etc. For all that though, it is carried off with the usual panache that you would expect from a typical episode of the show and the boy who plays the comic relief/streetwise character Clyde Langer, Daniel Anthony, demonstrates what a great little actor he can be with this kind of material and I fully expect to be seeing him on TV screens in all sorts of roles for the next 40 or so years.

Another great thing about this particular show is that, unlike Doctor Who for instance, there is time taken to re-establish and then progress the characters in a particular direction... Luke has left and is now at University with K9 for instance... and this is demonstrated nicely again in this episode where Clyde continues to pursue his interest in drawing and writing comics and this becomes very poignant when, after being ostracised by all his friends in this episode, he befriends a homeless girl and uses the pages of his latest hand drawn and inked comic to burn for a fire.

During an early sequence in the episode, Clyde gives a girl who is begging in the street some money and so, when Clyde is rendered homeless and persecuted by a curse caught from a living totem pole in the local museum, the younger audience can learn the lesson of “give unto others and ye shall receive” when the same girl takes him under her wing and begins to develop a romantic attachment to him. And actually, the relationship which develops between the two characters is actually quite heartwarming and helps give the episode a real sense of edginess when Clyde has to temporarily abandon the girl to sort his life out, only to find she has been “taken by the Night Dragon”... which may not be as sinister as it sounds but leaves two characters broken hearted.

Part of me wonders if we would have been seeing more of this homeless character had the series progressed past episode 6 as planned. If so, it would have been another excellent way of continuing the well woven thread of continuity throughout the show and adding a sense of tension and release to the drama. Especially since everyone knows that Clyde and Rani are supposed to end up together... aren’t they?

Either way, I’m still saddened that the series comes to an end after the next story. It would be nice to see some of the characters spun back off from this guesting in Doctor Who (as they did during David Tennant’s reign as The Doctor) but I suspect there’ll not be much time for these periphery characters given the current climate of the “mother show”, what with all those great, long, muti-season story arcs. Still... one more story to review and that’s the end of my The Sarah Jane Adventures reviews methinks... unless any readers want me to grab the DVDs and rewatch/review the ones which aired before I started writing this blog. Any takers?

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Sky

Sky-Fi

The Sarah Jane Adventures Season 5 Episodes 1 & 2: Sky

Airdate: October 3rd and 4th 2011. UK. CBBC

Warning: A skyful of spoilers

Back in November of last year I finished off my review of the last two episodes of Series Four of The Sarah Jane Adventures with the following paragraph...

“Looking forward to Series Five next year and hopefully by then we will have seen the new series of the other two shows in this particular family, Doctor Who and the US continuation of Torchwood.”

As the number one rated UK children’s TV programme, I thought this great show was just going to run and run until the lead actress decided it was finally time to retire and quit in a blaze of glory. Sadly, this was not to be the case.

Looking at that last paragraph now I realise how much I was in for some bad knocks when it comes to Doctor Who related product in 2011. The main flagship show is still a bit hit and miss in the quality/entertainment stakes since Russell T. Davies quit producing the show and the show Davis did produce this year, the Americanised Torchwood, was really not the success story we were all hoping for (yeah, alright it was dire and a chore to find new things to say about when it came around to writing the reviews of the individual episodes).

Plus we had the death of two major members of U.N.I.T to take in. Nicholas Courtney who played The Brigadier in Doctor Who starting from when he was a Colonel in the Patrick Troughton days (the actor also starred opposite Hartnell but not as “The Brig”) and who had the last proper appearance of the character in The Sarah Jane Adventures, tangling with the Sontarans again, died and left a void in his wake.

More shocking, though, was the news that actress Elizabeth Sladen, who played the popular Doctor Who companion Sarah Jane opposite Jon Pertwee, Tom Baker, Peter Davison (in The Five Doctors) and in her own shows K9 and Company (only the pilot was made) and The Sarah Jane Adventures, passed away unexpectedly of cancer. People were shocked, devastated and the Doctor Who community on-line collectively mourned her passing.

Then came the news that the first half of the fifth series, six episodes comprising three stories, were already in the can and would be shown later in the year. That time has now come and I find it hard as a reviewer to be really critical of something which I know makes up the last performances of a wonderful actresses body of work... especially since I had a lot of time for this series... but found these opening two episodes to be a little less than what I’ve come to expect from the show.

Sky is an introductory show for a new character, called... um... Sky, who starts off as a baby left at Sarah Jane’s front door but grows up to a twelve year old suddenly at the end of the first episode and the whole feel of this character is that she’s very much a repeat of the Luke character in that they needed a non-human character to give the show the missing element now that the Luke character has gone to College (He's in this first episode a little, seen on-screen talking to the extended Sarah-Jane family. This doesn’t give me much hope for seeing K9 again this series as I bet they were holding him back until episodes 11 and 12, which were never filmed). Instead of being super-smart like her predecessor, however, Sky is a living bomb who is defused by Sarah Jane and company but who obviously retains some of her alien powers of “electrickery”.

We have a new supervillainess in the form of Sky’s test-tube “mum” and a metal based alien race who look a bit like stainless-steel versions of Batman. However... nothing feels really new here. In addition to the Sky character who, I’m sure given time, would have been a strong cast member on the show, her “alien mum” just feels like a repeat of every other super-villainess they’ve had on the show and the metal aliens are mostly just there to check all the boxes it seems to me... although the pre-credits sequence with them in the first episode is almost a classic Jon Pertwee opening and certainly helps lend the series the tone of the old Doctor Who which it does have quite a lot of the time throughout the show's entire run.

Don’t get me wrong... there are some really good things going on in this opener... the return of both the mysterious and magical shop-keeper (plus his parrot) and Floella Benjamins character from previous series’ demonstrate that the writers really are trying to push the show into having a very coherent universe of its own with recurring regular characters... which makes the death of the lead actress doubly poignant when you can see how they are trying to progress things.

However, the comedy element of the show, which was always very broad but which worked pretty well, is way over the top and really dumbed down on this one (so broad it falls off the humour scale into something a lot less than funny) and I can’t help but think the comedy element is also being heavily pushed when, really, it was perfect the way it was. Clyde Langer is such a strong character in the show... he doesn’t need to be made any less subtle, thanks very much.

Ultimately, this is a fairly weak couple of episodes but they certainly more than hold their own against some of the weaker episodes of Doctor Who this year... which means this show is still wiping the floor with this year’s Torchwood as far as I’m concerned (and, to be fair, that’s not really hard). Looking forward to the remaining four episodes in this series and keeping my fingers crossed that the show will somehow, cut off mid season, go out with a bang rather than a whimper.

Acid Stomach

The Sarah Jane Adventures Season 4

Episodes 11 & 12: Good Bye, Sarah Jane

Airdate: November 15th and 16th 2010. UK. BBC1

Please note... danger of spoiler ingestion beyond this point.

Another year nearly over, another series of The Sarah Jane Adventures ends. Although not as good as the last few stories I didn’t mind this one so much, especially since those last few have been quite exceptional. This one did have some problems with it though.... not least of which are some loose ends in terms of character exploration which it would have been nice to have had tidied up. I suspect the shows creators might well have ended up with more footage than their alloted time on this one... either that or perhaps they’ve just elected to tug at those particular ends a little more in the next series.

So this one starts off with Sarah Jane starting to “lose it” with symptons which look mightily like accelerated alzheimers while, simultaneously a new “Defender of the Earth” is in town known as Ruby White (played by that brilliant TV actress Julie Graham who seems to be turning up in everything these days... you may remember her from the failed TV show Bonekickers, the remake series of Survivors and, on closer inspection of the IMDB, from one of my favourite TV shows of years gone by, Brond).

The set up fo this episode, backed up by a pretty blatant title, is that the BBC obviously want you to think that Elisabeth Sladen is going to be leaving the show sometime very soon and that this is some kind of handover story. This might well have worked and provided the necessary tension except that the writers kind of overplayed their hand just a little bit on this one. For example Sarah Jane’s mental deterioration was way too quick for the audience to really assume that anything other than some kind of alien, “mental facuties sucking device” was being used. I think the producers may have agreed because instead of using Sarah Jane’s tearful farewell and handing over of all her alien-busting gadgetry to Ruby White as a real cliffhanger to the end of the episode, they kept going and revealed Ruby to be a “soul sucking” evil alien who traps the heavily weakened Sarah Jane in her cellar with only her soul-eating, alien, giant sized acidic-gurgling stomach (it looks ust like The Blob) for company, while she monologues on her plans to... well, you know, destroy the world again.

The second part picks up straight after with Clyde getting marooned in an orbiting prison ship with hardly any air left in it and it’s up to Rani to save the day... which she does by calling in Luke and K-9 to help change the course of events, reverse the polarity of the neutron flow (figure of speech) and all go out for a night on the town at the end of the day... but not before setting up Ruby White as a probable returning super-villain for a future series (I’m guessing we’ll be seeing her next year).

All in all, not the best of stories but, like I said, certainly by no means the worst one to round the series off with. This fourth series has mostly been a real blast and there’s a reason why it’s now the highest rated children’s TV show not just currently... but ever (I’m guessing the Doctor Who ratings must be classed as “family” rather than “children’s” viewing to magic up those figures for this show).

Looking forward to series five next year and, hopefully, by then we will have seen the new series of the other two shows in this particular family, Doctor Who and the US continuation of Torchwood.

The Earth Dies Softly Murmuring

The Sarah Jane Adventures Season 4

Episodes 7 & 8: The Empty Planet

Airdate: November 1st and 2nd 2010. UK. BBC1

Ok. That was pretty good. Just seen what was the best Series 4 story so far... which is kind of odd considering that the actress/character who is the main reason I watch the show, Elisabeth Sladen’s timeless portrayal of Sarah Jane Smith, was hardly in either episode with just a few minutes of screen time in each.

The first episode starts off less strongly than it could have with a very linear set up to arm the viewer with enough information to help get them through the story proper (I would have been tempted to start the show off with Rani waking up and running through empty streets and then going into flashback, but what do I know) but then the episode gets all The Earth Dies Screaming and we are given an almost identical premise as that wonderful 60s British sci-fi/horror b-movie in that the population of the entire world has been eradicated (killed in the 60s movie but only “snatched” here) with only a few people left to wander the deserted streets and wonder what the heck is going on.

In the case of this particular variation on a theme, the sole survivors are the two characters Clyde and Rani who are, to be fair, very strong characters in the show. On their travels trying to come to terms with their new status as the last two humans on earth they come across a third survivor, Gavin and by this point it’s pretty obvious that Gavin must be the key to the whole thing... it’s just that he doesn’t know it yet. At the end of the first episode we are left with a great cliffhanger as two large robots chase after our two heroes and strike threatening poses with hand-gun thingies which you just know are going to turn out to be scanners but, hey, they needed some way to leave the episode on a cliffhanger (of sorts).

And yes, you guessed it, the robots in question are very much reminiscent in general tone to the ones in The Earth Dies Screaming. Which is a good thing because that particular Terence Fisher movie is very atmospheric and this story does capture this to some extent, bearing in mind that this is a children’s programme.

It’s also a neat reveal that the reason that Rani and Clyde have not been removed from the earth along with the rest of our species harkens back to a previous episode of the show concerning an alien species which have been an established part of recent Doctor Who continuity. By which I mean that in a previous Sarah Jane story, the inter-galactic police race known as the Judoon (remember them from the first Martha Jones story in Doctor Who?) had grounded Rani and Clyde on planet earth under penalty of... well death I imagine. Of course, if they’d been kidnapped from earth and moved elsewhere the alien race pulling the strings in this story would have been in trouble with the Judoon and so I’m pleased that the writers have managed to tap into old plot points and make use of them in fresh stories. Very impressive.

What’s less impressive is the fact that it is revealed that the only species absent from our planet is the human race and that all other animal life is left to run amok. Alas, only a token dog and a pigeon are our witness to said signs of amokness but I would also be interested in knowing why, if when the rest of the species of the planet earth are all fine and dandy, is there no birdsong as Clyde and Rani search the streets for clues and people? Probably because it wouldn’t have sounded half as eerie enough is my best guess on that one.

And of course, unlike the Fisher film, you can’t leave the majority of the human race dead at the end of the story... so humanity is restored thanks to Rani and Clyde’s new friend Gavin.

Still, all in all a real good story that proves that the show can operate at a fair crack on it’s own terms even when the main protagonist (and principal reason for watching it in my case) are absent for the majority of proceedings. And not only that but, for the first time ever in an episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, I found myself really drawn to the musical score of this show on it’s own terms. Usually this only happens when it’s a reference to a Doctor Who score (such as last weeks riffs on Murray Gold’s U.N.I.T music) but in this case Sam Watts has done a really terrific and hauntingly appropriate score for the show and I hope that this sees some kind of CD release some day.

A real corker of a story if this show is your kind of thing. Miss this one at your peril.

What Katy did...

The Sarah Jane Adventures

Season 4 Episodes 5 & 6:

The Death of the Doctor

Airdate: October 25th and 26th 2010. UK. BBC1

Woohoo! And now I get to review a kinda historical event because these two episodes of the show features two different Doctor Who companions (gosh... I really miss the days when we used to refer to them as assistants) who have never met each other in the history of the show before and, to top it off, they both get to meet an incarnation of The Doctor they’ve never met before. How cool is that?

Ok... so this episode started off with a bang right from the start with a load of military U.N.I.T types led by Colonel Karim converging on Sarah Jane’s house to inform her that The Doctor has been found dead and that there will be a funeral held for him at a secret U.N.I.T base at the foot of Mount Snowdon... Now before I go any further I just want to have a bit of a rant here!

When the hell will these people stop getting U.N.I.Ts abbreviations all wrong? U.N.I.T has stood for, since the sixties and until recent years, the following: United Nations Intelligence Taskforce! What the hell is all this UNified Intelligence Taskforce? It doesn’t even make sense properly as an acronym! When are the modern writers going to admit they’ve got it all wrong, stop fooling with a bedrock term of Doctor Who history which has been around since Patrick Troughton’s time and get the damn thing right!

OK. I feel so much better now. Vented.

Anyway, Sarah Jane obviously doesn’t believe in The Doctor’s death but she attends the funeral with the kids anyway and, of course, one of the guests who turns up at the funeral is none other than... the incredible and fabulous Jo Grant! Yes people, Katy Manning is back. Remember her from her white suits, fur waistcoats and thigh high boots? Of course, she’s Jo Jones now... remember when she went off to be with Professor Jones at the end of The Green Death back in 1973? Anyway, she’s back and, woohoo, Russel Davies who wrote these two episodes (good thing too, it needed a defter touch than the regular series of Doctor Who has been giving us just recently methinks... but don’t get me started... we just need to give Moffet a bit more time) has written her like the throwback to the hippy she always was. Thank goodness some things never change.

The funeral is being held by the Shansheeth, a race of Undertaker Vultures (which is a neat way of reinforcing the death motif) and it doesn’t take long for Sarah Jane and the kids to realise that The Doctor is still very much alive and that Sarah Jane and Jo have been targeted so that their memories of The Doctor can be harvested and harnessed to make a new key to gain access to the T.A.R.D.I.S which the Shansheeth have stolen from The Doctor... That’d be Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, by the way. Does any writer feel the need to have a go and alter that particular acronym while they’re at it? Oops. Sorry. Forgot I wasn’t supposed to be ranting anymore. :-) They want to use the T.A.R.D.I.S to travel around the history of the universe obliterating death... which is a fairly bird-brained scheme if you ask me... but they are giant vultures so I suppose that’s acceptable.

And then, of course, who should pop up but Who himself... err... that is to say The Doctor, played by Matt Smith himself as his 11th incarnation. The lack of companions is quickly explained away with the explanation that he’d left Amy Pond and Rory on their honeymoon before getting his T.A.R.D.I.S nicked. After The Doctor arrives, of course, the pacing of the episode gets even more frenetic (which is playing to Matt Smith’s strengths) but, you know what? For a little while there everyone pauses to take a few minutes and we have an absolutely beautiful scene played between Matt Smith and Katy Manning which is somewhat similar to the one between David Tennant and Elisabeth Sladen in Tennant’s second season where The Doctor explains to Jo how things are when he leaves a companion behind. It’s played very movingly and it continues to maintain the slightly darker edge The Doctor seems to have these days. Matt Smith gets much more of a chance to shine here when he’s not being too overshadowed by the ever brilliant Karen Gillan. Really great stuff and Katy Manning more than holds her own in contrast to him... as does Elisabeth Sladen of course.

There’s some nice stuff in this story. The plot concerning the harvesting of memories allows for a few fair flashbacks of old Doctors and their enemies. David Tennant, Tom Baker, Jon Pertwee, Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell (the last two from the Jo Grant story The Three Doctors) all get a look in although I didn’t spot Peter Davison... who Sarah Jane would have met in The Five Doctors.

The only real let down in this episode (and thanks to Gullane 2 for the reminder), is that the character of Colonel Karim (who is in league with the Shansheeth) seems to hint at a deeper connection to the Doctor Who universe via a previous untold tragedy and with her (seeming?) death at the end of the story, it looks like it was a bit if an unnecessary throwaway for someone who is actually a quite good character.

Anyway, what does it matter? Jo Grant is back. Rejoice and let’s hope that they give her some future appearances on either Doctor Who, Torchwood or The Sarah Jane Adventures at some point in the future... preferably all three!

Spare MIBs

The Sarah Jane Adventures Season 4

Episodes 3 & 4: The Vault of Secrets

Airdate: October 18th and 19th 2010.

UK. BBC1

Ok... second story of Season 4 of Sarah Jane is a solid chase-a-thon... one of those fast moving shows they do so well for kids with lots of action and comedy in equal measure.

It’s a sequel story to one from an earlier season with an alien life-form who jumps into and controls peoples bodies. Said alien is dying from the bite of a swamp snake he got on a prison planet and he has come to free his people who have been “put on ice” by Men In Black... yeah, actual Men In Black (that’s MIBs to you) tying in with all those 50s - 70s sightings but the difference being that they are portrayed here as androids with handy, detachable hands which allows them to turn the dead socket into some kind of laser pistol. Now the trouble with said alien, Androvax, is that he is also a notorious destroyer of worlds (hence the prison thing) and by turning on his ships stardrive, once he has gained access to the underground hanger which houses it and hundreds of other stray vessels, he will be destroying the earth as he rescues his species.

So there you go... a chase story with a handy moral dilemma at the end of it. Do you let him save the last members of his species but destroy earth in the process? Fortunately another, rather obviously set up, solution is found and the earth is saved once again.

Once this episode gets going its a good old rollicking chase story but the episode starts off more settled with a neat little reference to the old Doctor Who adventure Pyramids of Mars (which also starred Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane in it). Also there is an “on screen” video phone call from Luke who left two weeks ago. Hmmm... since I know now he’s supposed to be showing up later in the season, I’m beginning to wonder if the actor didn’t just need some time off to do other things.

That being said, the fast paced episode does well to, mostly, distract you from problems like this as the action really doesn’t let up... although I got a bit worried that the comedy is coming more to the foreground now. If they’re not careful it’s going to end up looking more like Rent-a-ghost than The Sarah Jane Adventures. Hope that trend doesn’t continue too long. Especially when we’ve got an appearance by The Doctor and the return of Katy Manning as Jo Grant to contend with... which airs today as of the time of writing this review (yeah, okay, so I caught up with this one on I-player... it was the first chance I had, give me a break here).

So... a short, sharp blog post for a short, pacey story. Next up... Jo Grant! Yay!

'sarah Doctor in the house?

The Sarah Jane Adventures Season 4

Episodes 1 & 2: The Nightmare Man

Airdate: October 11th and 12th 2010. UK. BBC1

Okay. So the successful Doctor Who spin-off featuring one of his most popular companions, Sarah Jane-Smith, who has been in shows with quite a few of the Doctors now but was primarily a companion to the third and fourth incarnations, returned to our screens this week with the first of a series of two-part episodes.

Now I have to say that I always liked Elisabeth Sladen’s character. I was always a Katy Manning guy and would have happily spent an eternity watching her Jo Grant character but Sarah Jane was no let down in the hard transition period between companions and then between Doctors back in the 70s. I even liked the failed pilot film for the proposed K9 and Company show teaming K9 and Sarah Jane which was shown in 1981 and would have gladly watched more of them if they’d made them (although I suspect it must look pretty creaky nowadays... will have to investigate the DVD). I suspect that one of the reasons The Sarah Jane Adventures has garnered the huge viewing figures it currently has for a children’s programme is because there are also a lot of people my age who grew up with the character in the 70s watching it too... probably watching it with kids of their own but I’ve unfortunately not been blessed with that opportunity.

Another reason why I think the show works really well is because the episodic nature of some of the stories coupled with some genuinely frightening stories give it a much closer feel to the old Doctor Who shows of the 60s, 70s and 80s than the new Doctor Who shows have (and I’m not knocking those because I really like them for the most part... the last season could have done with a little more oomph perhaps). It’s certainly a lot more terrifying at times than the new Doctor Who.

The first story of Season 4 is quite a dark one as it mostly takes place in the nightmares of the alien born Luke (Sarah Jane’s adopted alien son) and so the spook element is fairly present but perhaps just a little dulled down on this one. For a while now the writers have been using the stories as a backdrop to play out teenage social issues and this story is no exception as Sarah Jane, Clive and Rani have to come to terms with the fact that the extra clever Luke is leaving school early and going to Oxford University instead. And since he’s given K9 to take away with him, the writers have managed to get rid of both their “crutch” characters in one hit by stories end. They’ve obviously decided that having a robot dog that can do pretty much anything and a smarter than average teenager who is also alien and therefore not susceptible to the same diabolical plot devices as his human companions is too much fro them to write around and have presumably gotten rid of these characters in an effort to be more creative in the way they get their characters out of jams. This has been an age old problem for characters like DC comics Superman... as his powers grew in number and strength over the years he’s become something of a weak character to write for because, well... how do you place him in jeopardy?

The writers of Doctor Who tried to do a similar thing in the Peter Davison era by destroying the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver but I can’t say the stories at the time got any better as a result. Luke I could probably live without (and I say that with no disrespect to the young actor who plays him as the cast in this show are all actually really good) but I think getting rid of K9 is a bit of a stupid idea since he’s such an iconic character. I think it would have been better if the writers had just gotten better at coming up with cleverer problems for “our heroes” to solve rather than take away the characters who are more likely to solve them quicker... but we’ll have to see how it plays out.

This episode starts with the recurring Slitheen exploding and covering the cast with its internal organs joke which seems to have been going on for a while now. I was already sick of the Slitheen since their first appearance on The Sarah Jane Adventures so I really hope we won’t be seeing them again for a while now.

The lead villain in this one is the surprisingly dark Nightmare Man and his make up and general over-the-top behaviour make him seem like a not too dumbed down version of Heath Ledger’s excellent take on The Joker in the last Batman movie... I guess kids these days are less scared by stuff like that than they used to be.

Not the greatest story we’ve had in the show so far but not exactly one of the best either. Am looking forward to the much promoted Death of the Doctor story in a few weeks time with Matt Smith as the Doctor and the long awaited return of Katy Manning as Jo Grant. The next story looks like it could be a good one too... with some Men In Black looking robots of death in it.

Will let you know how that one works out.