The Last Sontaran (Part Two)

TV If we’ve learnt anything this past few weeks, through The Writer’s Tale (my review) and the extras from The Trial of a Timelord boxset, it’s that Doctor Who isn’t easy. Eric Saward says as much at least twice in the documentaries, and the agonising that Russell T Davies went through at three in the morning whilst writing series four confirms it. People have fought battles over it, shouting to get their voice on screen, their impression of what they think the franchise is supposed to be like, making it all the more remarkable that anything of quality turns up on screen. To some, Who is seen as being as less complex a show to write than, for example, Battlestar Galactica, because it's for a family audience, usually has fairly linear plotting and only two main characters.

Actually that makes it even more difficult, because you really do have to care about tone and balance and getting a man who despises guns and violence (unless as a last resort) from one end of a story to another. Russell himself realised that the Bad Wolf Bay scene in Journey’s End was a mistake in hindsight and did what he could to suture the wound despite running out of time because of other commitments, just as Saward ended up hiring Pip & Jane Baker to write Terror of the Vervoids and in both cases the solutions, whilst not perfect were still far more interesting than anything else going on in television at their respective eras.

Rose’s choice is all the more heartbreaking because like many of us she does choose second best, not the person she really wanted, but someone as close as possible. You can agree with Open Air's mini-Chris Chibnall (first time for everything) that Vervoids is vaguely derivative of what’s gone before with a whodunnit aboard ship (not that it stopped Agatha Christie), but gives us a sixth Doctor acting like proper hero, a companion who’s proative and adventurous for the first time in ages, is the most all round entertaining story of that season and watching it the other night I couldn’t help thinking that it was The Caves of Androzani of Colin’s era, in that we finally saw what a sixth Doctor tale should be like. Why is this relevant to …

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Last Sontaran: Part Two?

Because like those episodes scribbled in difficult circumstances, it had to write out a well loved character and her whole family in the opening story of a season, whilst offering much the same formula seen before in making it palatable for kids, as well as a sequel to a yarn from the mother series. Assuming Phil Ford did write all of this, setting aside your envy that he’s getting a chance to work in the inner circle, you can imagine him sitting in front of his electric typewriter with note book full of ideas, buzzing with potentially scenes and speeches and trying to put them down on paper in a coherent order including how to fit in a line about "small man syndrome" without it sound dodgy (he failed).

Perhaps as he's replacing the ribbon, he's pondering: "At what point do I disclose that Maria’s leaving? How to I give the titular character something to do in a story which needs to foreground the younger characters without constantly making her look like she’s holding something back? Where do I put the exposition scene explaining the plot? Where do I put the reveal of the probic vent as a solution to immobilising the Kaarg the Sontaran – do I wait until episode two? Who should I get to do it – would working out a way for Maria’s mum Chrissy however cute to do it be too reminiscent of the Donna scene in the other story and making her forget similar to Ms Noble’s non-demise? Would a final scene in which our remaining characters look into the sky imagining that Maria’s doing the same thing be too cheesy?"

You might agree or disagree with his choices, but given what he had to produce, you can’t criticise the writer for at least trying his best. The main story was about the only weakness, far more simplistic in design than most of last year’s stories. This is, we assume, is SJA’s equivalent of the romp, with plenty of running, being captured now and then and trying to outfox an alien using his own raw materials. On reflection, though Kaagh wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination (to quote Ford) "the best Sontaran that we've ever seen in the Doctor Who world", Anthony O'Donnell was certainly enjoying himself and like The Time Warrior’s stranded example, it was nice to have a member of that race who didn’t simply want to conquer Earth just because; his rational at least from a Sontaran’s point of view was perfectly sound, even to the point of almost quoting from the great Zaroff. Unlike Revenge of the Slitheen, his ultimate defeat didn’t offer any kind of moral question, or room to ponder speed with which Professor Skinner was brandishing a gun (am I reading too much into this?) (probably).

Still, there were plenty of great scenes such as Alan having to deal with the process of getting Mr Smith open and the computer’s reaction (helped by Alexander Armstrong finally giving a proper performance, always a problem last year) and the chases through the forest, Ford giving loads of ammunition to director Joss Agnew who seemed to enjoy the opportunities to pretend he was lensing a Vietnam war film, with that fantastic deep focus shot of a foregrounded Clyde hiding behind a tree, with Kaagh on the hunt in the background; it’s a beat which has appeared in numerous other places, but it shows the ambition of this series that it should appear here. That was all back up by a flamboyant musical score that was, or at least sounded, orchestral, giving the proceedings a scale which even the classic era of Who couldn’t muster.

Presumably by design we’ve not been clued in too much about Alan's big US job (no doubt so they can return later in the series, Sarah-Jane’s contact stateside) and Ford could have overwritten the scenes in which Maria revealed her emigration to her pals, but in the first episode he used to it to say something about Sarah-Jane (who suddenly realised what it must be like when a companion chooses to leave the Doctor) and here in which Luke was devastated as a piece of his universe wasn’t going to be there anymore. The girl’s final scene, driven off in the back of the car, was clearly a homage to a hundred similar moments in Neighbours, the taking one final look at the neighbourhood before being whisked off to Brisbane (or in this case the colonies, which is, in a way, the same thing).

And if all that sentimental final scene lacked was the theme song to the Don Bluth animation An American Tail (“And even though I know how very far apart we are / It helps to think we might be wishing on the same bright star”) (still makes me cry that) (I’m a softy) it understood that kids might need a buffer into the next adventure, a thinking period as Maria left the series (and giving us adults a nod to the period where Sarah-Jane hadn’t a clue where the Doctor might be).

The character will be missed, which is credit to Yasmin Paige who brought charisma to Maria which could have been inherently whiny and annoying; unlike some actresses her age, she was/is understated and real which is not something you see often in this genre of television. I hope she does well with her GCSE's. It's ultimately very cool that she's put her qualifications ahead of her career in this way, realising that acting isn't the most stable of professions and that its good to have something else on your CV, even if it means leaving a plumb role like this. Yes, she will be missed, along with the rest of the family who are necessarily going with her. Especially Chrissie. Predictably, since it might be her last, this was her best episode yet.

Next Week: "Leave the girl, it's the clown I want."