Warriors of Kudlak (Part Two)

TV Appearances can be deceptive. One of my favourite television series is Gilmore Girls whose premise is that a teen mother has grown up and now has a teenage daughter who's become her best friend and they have to deal with dating and life in a small town in America. It sounds dreadful, the stuff of television movies with Jane Seymour which climax in a rush to a hospital for whatever reason. Except it’s written with all the wit of The West Wing and the screwball comedies of the 1940s (particularly the rapid fire dialogue), acted superbly and has an indie sensibility which constantly raises it about the premise – the scenes at the prep school the daughter attends are like seeing Alexander Payne’s film Election in slow motion.

Similarly, if you’d said that …

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Warriors of Kudlak: Part Two

… the second half of a story which features laser tag, pantomime villains and the alien child discovering girls would turn out to be one of the best bits of Doctor Who related storytelling ever, I really, really wouldn’t believe you and suspect you were trying to trick me somehow – perhaps there would be lights involved and a prodding stick with a large stuffed pointing rubber glove on the end of the kind they use of Facebook to give you a poke.

This could have been the same kind of runaround that we found in both of the previous stories and superficially it did mirror those climaxes in that it featured some kind of an assault on the villain’s lair in order to save whomever’s been captured this week. Except on this occasion there was an extra emotional kick because it was the kids first experience of what Sarah’s life was like amongst the stars and her apparent first trip off world in twenty years and being reminded once again of the old days. Both also had that vital look of awe which is often lost in the pace of drama these days, each moment first with the toy soldiers and then with the former companion and her mini-companion taking the time to underline that they’re in space, the convincing shot of Earth being its best digital rendering yet.

But then it becomes apparent that the whole story doesn’t just reference Iraq through Lance’s father’s death during a tour of duty there – the whole story is about the war. On the one hand, there’s Kudlak kept in a perpetual state of war by his digital commander engendering a sense of fear in an opponent whose in not position to really fight back (the standard Doctor Who two dimensional alien adversary who turns out to be really a two dimensional alien adversary who’s surely Koquillion from the 60s story The Rescue for the new age). On another the pulling of the kids to the space ship so that they can be transported to the theatre of war (which is revealed to not really exist either) on the basis that they’re good at playing the game version when it’s clearly different and could lead to the combatants treating the real thing as though they’re playing Medal Of Honor.

There’s also such a confidence to the production. Every great series as a moment when it becomes apparent that the programme makers have realised what they can accomplish and are entirely comfortable with what they’re doing. In old Doctor Who that was The Daleks (or The Mutants or whatever) and in new Doctor Who, that was Dalek I think and for SJA, it’s this episode. The performances are top notch-- even if one or two of the guests are a touch over the top – all of the regulars have become utterly comfortable with one another as though this is the twenty episode they’ve worked together let alone the sixth. Clyde and Luke and Sarah and Maria were excellent double acts, the former in particular graduating from the Geordi/Data analogy to Bones/Spock as the human making fun of the alien throughout but still showing loyalty and friendship when it came to the crunch.

It had an epic quality too. This may have been a disused gasworks doubling for the interior of an alien spaceship again (which is rapidly becoming nu-Who’s quarry cliché) but it created a scale which I suspect isn’t often seen in shows in that slot on a Monday night. I’ve said it before but this show has a filmic quality which in some places mirrors or supersedes the mother series. Look at those gorgeous lateral tracking shots during the scenes amongst the crates where the kids all discovered one another and the use of a version of deep focus so that we could see action in both the fore and backgrounds of shots. Listening to the dvd commentaries for the classic 70s stories, the production teams from the time often note how much better the show would have looked if they’d been allowed to do the whole thing using single cameras and here is a show which is superficially similar in terms of its storytelling doing that and proving them right.

The series is currently averaging a million viewers in its current timeslot, which is apparently massive in comparison to what’s usually shown there. But that still means there are masses are people who enjoy the main series but are missing out on this even though in places its just as entertaining as that and in others even more so. Perhaps they’ve looked at that timeslot and decided that it is just for kids in which case they’re like the people I’ve spoken to who haven’t seen Gilmore Girls because they’ve seen the rather cheesing dvd box art or heard about the hokey premise. Perhaps they’ll catch up on dvd or if the BBC decide to give it a Sunday night repeat. For now though, it’s their loss. For now, the rest of us have a weekly half hour treat which is fun, exciting and makes you think and is amazingly y’know for kids.

Next Week: A brim full of Asher.