Children of Steel.

Books Martin Day’s Children of Steel is this month’s other spin-off release based on The Sarah Jane Adventures and sees the gang bidding for an unusual Victorian brass head at a local auction which is revealed to contain a futuristic research probe. After some digging they discover that this metal bonce is part of a much the larger robot, a Difference Golum, designed by a turn of the century abolitionist as an alternative to human slavery, the irony being of course that in creating an intelligent being he’s essentially creating a more complex version of the same problem.

In other words, it’s I, Robot for kids. As with other push-button stories, it’s taking advantage of futuristic metaphors to introduce youngster to fairly weighty concepts. Most of the old well rehearsed arguments from Asimov’s original story, Alex Poroyas’ film adaptation and Star Trek: The Next Generation’s Measure of a Man are trotted out albeit simplified (there’s no direct talk of the three laws here) and having repaired the automaton, Sarah Jane etc have to decide whether he should continue his sometimes menacing existence.

Which rather means, unlike the other release, there’s not much here for adults. The dialogue is more straight forward and generic, and there’s more plot than character. If Scott Gray’s Judgement Day is akin to one of those thoughtful Sarah Jane centric stories by Gareth Roberts, this is one of the early Phil Ford efforts, albeit on a much smaller scale with fewer locations. Ironically, Gray covered some of this ground himself, and better in Autonomy Bug, which was part of his classic Eighth Doctor run of comic strips for Doctor Who Magazine.

Daniel Anthony’s reading is good and especially impressive when working sparks of humanity into the Golem, though his pronunciation takes some getting used to after hearing the similarly named but differently spelt character from Lord of the Rings. Simon Power’s sound design also helps bring the metal man to live, the creaking turns of his head and stomping rattling into headphones and out of speakers and there’s possibly enough of that to keep children entertained which is really the point. Sometimes the target audience is king.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Children of Steel by Martin Day is published by AudioGo. Review copy supplied.

Judgement Day.

Books Did you know Murray Gold gave his theme for The Sarah Jane Adventures a middle-eight? It’s here, intact, at the close of Scott Gray’s audio exclusive Judgement Day, its wizzy ethereal register not too far away from Ron Grainer’s version and though it only lasts a few seconds, its existence once again demonstrates the affection of the crew towards this spin-off, under-scoring once again the tragedy that the loss of its star means it can’t still be in production.

But Gray’s play is an excellent tribute. Like its televisual source, it skews a bit younger than traditional Who, and the story’s much simpler but it never patronises its listener and actually offers a really interesting moral conundrum which for various reasons purposefully can’t satisfactorily resolve itself at the conclusion. Potentially, as you’ll see, it could even change our perception of a certain element of stories across the franchise.

As with many SJA stories, Judgement Day begins with Mr Smith sniffing out unusual activity, this time at a newly opened Westfield-like shopping mall and when the gang arrive it seems as though this going to be a Secrets of the Stars inspired investigation in a magician who’s tricks are too good to be true. But as is so often the case in the latter parts of the tv series, the story rapidly takes a left-turn and becomes something rather deeper and quite rightly for this format too broad and deep for the small screen.

And I’d advise you to skip the following few paragraphs if you don’t want to know what happens, but it’s properly worff discussin. I’ll post something else in bold text when I’m done.

We’re introduced to the Veritas, a group of ancient vigilantes travelling the universe punishing beings who withhold certain truths, or more specifically lie. Though they’ve initially set their sights on the magician, they quickly find Sarah Jane and brand her the “worst law-breaker” of all because of her skills, like UNIT, like the Doctor, like Torchwood, in creating cover stories and withholding the existence of aliens from the general public.

This is a world were Journey’s End and its fall out have still been forgotten (retconning the idea that even Clyde’s Dad had heard of the Daleks) presumably due to the cracks or whatever reason Steven Moffat’s cooking up. The action in the mall, in which Clyde and Sky beat back the magician’s power of illusion sets up the idea that anything out of the ordinary will create public panic, fear breeding hatred in a way which is oddly similar to DC’s new attitude to their superheroes.

In a kind of holodeck, Sarah Jane and Rani are shown various instances when the older journalist has undertaking to obscure the truth. In epic, time spinning scale, they’re shown the younger journalist helping UNIT to validate the evacuation of London after the Invasion of the Dinosaurs and whatever happens in Terror of the Zygons (the one classic bit of Baker I’ve never seen and I’m saving for dvd). There’s some obvious poignancy in the idea of the older Sarah visiting her younger self.

For younger viewers, the events of The Vault of Secrets are also rerun from this outside perspective and most specifically the block put on the Chandra’s memories so that they can continue in blissful ignorance about the existence of Androvax and The Men in Black. This is one of the few sections which drags slightly to these adult ears, but with everything else pitched so perfectly, it’s easy to forget that younger listeners might require a more prosaic rendering of events.

Even with their propensity for forgetfulness sometimes either because they were on holiday or due to some Complex Space-Time Event or because they were on holiday, some things clearly have the potential to stick.  In showing them all of these events, the Veritas’s point is this: who is Sarah Jane Smith (and by extension UNIT, the Doctor, Torchwood and C-19 probably), a journalist who should be seeking the truth, to decide what information the people of the Earth should be exposed to?

Sarah Jane’s defence is this: humanity isn’t mature enough to handle it. She points to the events in the shopping mall as an example of society breaking down at the merest whiff of The Other. If humanity was aware of aliens, she says, they’d be looking for them behind every corner and society would rapidly destroy itself (in a way similar to the Veritas’s own planet which became apocalyptic thanks to a lie, hence their moral crusade).

And because of the needs of the story, they accept it, and leave Sarah Jane and friends to go on their merry way. Except this listener at least was left with the question: what does give Sarah Jane and friends the right to withhold this information from the public and doesn’t that put them in the same morally ambiguous position as every intelligence agency in history, and if we want to be tin-hatted about it their expectation that humanity couldn’t handle the grim truth of what we’re capable of?

I don’t know about you, but that makes me extremely uncomfortable. What we have here is a children’s story which is suggesting that it’s ok that underneath the information generally available to the public, there’s a shadowy network in existence of information that someone else has decided to that it shouldn’t be privy to. Replace the existence of aliens (assuming it doesn’t include the existence of aliens) with spys and terrorists in the real world and that’s somewhat problematic.

To be fair, the script does pay lip service to this with Sarah Jane regretting that she effected Gita’s brain, especially after all the knocks her own noggin has taken over the years (“Eldrad must live!”). But the format doesn’t leave much room for dissent. Rani, who Sarah says she’s trying to convince most, ultimately goes along with it despite having spent much of the story lauding Woodstein’s take down of Nixon and his cover up.

What Gray seems to be telling kids, then, is that it’s ok to have cover-up (or just plain flat out lie) if it’s considered to be for the public good (magicians included), but shouldn’t be done for personal gain. I expect the Whoniverse equivalent of Wikileaks might have one or two things to say about that. But the brilliance of the play is that it throws up these questions and inquisitive listeners are having their mind stretched in the in much the same way the televisual version has been capable of.

I’m done. You may now continue spoiler free.

Having not heard any of the earlier SJA audios, I didn’t know quite what to expect and like the Doctor Who exclusives this is an aurally rich experience, with sound aiding the listener's orientation, allowing the text to fix itself on character and dialogue. Simon Power’s music is also well up to standard, thumping away and keeping our attention, but he’s also well aware of the power of silence, knowing when to let Gray’s words drive the narrative.

The writer, who drove the latter half of the Eighth Doctor’s seminal run in Doctor Who Magazine’s comic strip captures all of the characters extremely well, especially Clyde who’s jokes have just the right mix of awful and inspired. As the cover suggests this is also a new adventure for Sky who’s quest to understand humanity creates all kinds of cute moments for the pair, Clyde's given the opportunity to play big brother in a way that was denied during their brief acquaintance on screen.

The best aspect of Anjli Mohindra’s reading is her Gita, which is just uncanny enough that I thought Mina Anwar had been lending some help at the beginning. This couldn’t have been an easy job, especially when reading Lis’s lines, especially since the original version of the script was meant to be narrated by Lis in the first person. But Anjli’s one of the better audiobook readers I’ve come across, and clearly enjoys performing the other characters, especially the aliens, as her treated voice becomes unrecognisable.

In its eighty minutes, Judgement Day retains all of the best aspects of the television series and is as good as a next episode even its central message could be a source of discomfort or comfort depending upon the listener. Which you won’t know about unless you read the spoiler zone. Or actually listen to the thing which I'd highly recommend.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Judgement Day by Scott Gray is published by AudioGo.  Review copy supplied.

The Man Who Never Was.

TV Sob. For much of its duration The Man Who Never Was offers an excellent, fairly typical example of The Sarah Jane Adventures albeit with a slightly subversive undercurrent that allows for geriatric flirting and a nob gag. But then, oh then, the montage with its clips from most of the stories past, a glimpse of Maria, glimpse of K9, shot of the Tenth Doctor hugging again and, well, buckets. The show has always had a poignantly nostalgic undercurrent for fans of the classic series, indeed it was brought into being because of that. But this is about celebrating this corner of the Whoniverse, the attic, the family, and now it’s gone.

But this isn’t just the end of The Sarah Jane Adventures, but the premature end of the British Russell T Davies era of Doctor Who, a project begun when he was given the go-ahead, in a corridor fittingly, to bring the parent show back from the dead. He’s made Torchwood’s Miracle Day since, but these episodes produced before that American folly, albeit executive produced from across the pond, are the final expression of the aesthetic and mood begun with Rose. That’s why the choice of David over Matt is interesting. Even more than Chris, he was Davies’s Doctor. Perhaps that’s also why the episode ends on what could almost be Rose’s opening shot running in reverse, pulling away from the Earth.

It’s also, and it’s impossible not to say this without some exhaustion, the end of one of the longest chronological unbroken runs of Doctor Who related first run television episodes in living memory, begun on 14th July with Episode One of Miracle Day. And if it feels even longer, it’s because the first chunk of Who season 6 ended just six weeks before. Accepting that gap we’ve been doing this since the 23rd of April and The Impossible Astronaut. That’s ages. That’s almost as long as a classic season, with a similar in built sense of anticipation of what the next serial will hold. I hope we’ve all savoured it, because unless Captain Jack really is back in January, barring a special, there’ll really be nothing of Who on television now until next Autumn.

Luckily, as I’ve already intimated, The Sarah Jane Adventures, the British Russell T Davies era and um, loads of stuff this year have all gone out on a high. Gareth Roberts’s The Man Who Never Was is amazing entertainment from beginning to end, blissfully funny, camp and forever undercutting our expectations in the way the best drama always should. Beginning as a gentle parody of the reaction of Apple fans to the latest e-book of Job from the technological simulacrum, the Steve parody is quickly exposed to be an actual simulacrum, controlled from below by artists of light, only for it be revealed that it’s all work of yet another dodgy human subjugating aliens and their technologies, James Dreyfus on Master-ful form, beard included.

Even before they were revealed as an oppressed minority, it was almost impossible not to find these Skullions (perhaps named for Porthouse Blue’s college porter) too threatening, with their Jawa cloaks and welding masks. But that’s important because we have to sympathise with their plight and the market in alien slaves shows, the earth is still a planet which is not only constantly visited but with the awareness of humanity.  Admittedly, Adriana, the character designed to subliminally hammer the point home about foreign workers being habitually employed in menial jobs, did seem to register some surprise at the appearance of the space ship on the roof so perhaps the effects of the cracks are still being felt. Lord knows what she'll be like when she's working for UNIT.

If this wasn’t planned as the series finale, it made for a fitting conclusion, not least because it also gave the whole ensemble a proper send off, even Luke, back from university for a visit having developed, away from Clyde’s guidance, the hipster look.  Luckily he can now just about carry off the scarf. As with Sky’s first story, this would have been another major turning point as Luke passed his mantle, and the rest of his bedroom on to his new little sister, the production team very carefully underscoring their differences (he’s massively observant and she’s electric) neatly bypassing the short circuit that usually develops whenever K9 and Mr Smith are in the same attic and human ingenuity becomes superfluous.

Good episode too for Clyde and Rani, forever now to be known as Clani (and luckily not Ryde which not only isn’t as catchy but has a whole set of other connotations). Their banter in particular is going to be missed, especially now that Anjli and Daniel have developed into such a good double act. Their chemistry is even voiced in scene here with an unusual call back to last week’s episode. Is Clyde now regretful of his behaviour with Ellie? Not sure. Perhaps in an unfilmed story, Rani’s jealousy was given greater weight and this comment was a bookend. Either way, the business in the attic, the goggles investigating the laptop and infiltration of the press conference another expression of SJA's filtering of 80s kids television for a new audience.

But this was also, and it’s impossible to say this without some sadness, an encapsulation of everything which was great about Sarah Jane and Liz Sladen. Part of the approach of the series has been to turn her into a Doctorish figure (as some clever person has said this week and (I’m sorry I forget who) that to some extent Sarah Jane will have been the Doctor for some kids just as Tom Baker or Peter Davison was for a lot of us). The battle of wills between Sarah and Harrison mirrored a similar struggle between Ninth and Margaret Blaine in Boom Town and infiltration disguised as a cleaning lady an old Third Doctor trick from The Green Death, albeit in a slightly less disturbing way.

Roberts’s episode also gives her the opportunity to flirt with Peter Bowles as an old boss and old flame in a piece of casting that also looks backwards as much to an era of television as Doctor Who itself, almost, like Nigel Havers, the production team taking advantage of the franchise’s new found popularity to take in actors who somehow never managed to appear on the show when it was last in full bloom. Bowles was of course marvellous, and it’s perhaps a pity he wasn’t given more to do, though in the alternative vision of the series, he might have been a returning character, which has to be the only reason you’d employ such a massive acting figure in such a tiny part. Unless you’re John Nathan Turner and trying to get Larry Olivier to essay the role of "Mutant" in Revelation of the Daleks (apparently).

Ashley Way began his television Who adventure at the same time as Roberts with the interactive Attack of the Graske with all of the Tardisodes for the 2006 season (remember those?) close behind. He directs The Man Who Never Was with his usual efficiency, making good use of whichever multiplex was employed for the Serfboard launch and loads of close-ups in the attic giving it a genuine feeling of size (though not that even he could making something of the episode’s one bum moment in which Clyde conveniently sits fidgeting with his hard won pen). The Sarah Jane Adventures was never quite as cinematic as its parent series, but given the tiny budget it’s obviously produced on, it always looked smashing.

Which is the problem. Even if I’ve managed to write the majority of this review in the present tense, The Sarah Jane Adventures is now in the past. There’ll still be the endless repeats on CBCC. The inevitable complete box-set. The spin-off reading. All of that will still keep it in our collective memories, still make it available for kids just becoming old enough to watch, a way for parents to indoctrinate their offspring at an earlier age, an age when they might not be ready for Scaroth and the Bandrills, let alone The Weeping Angels or Daleks.  Who knows perhaps in twenty or so years, those kids will be showing it to another generation.

That we can still think of it so fondly is a tribute to Russell T Davies for convincing the BBC to base a spin-off series for kids around a much loved character from his own youth, our youth, the BBC for financing it in a way which you can’t imagine another television company doing, and Elisabeth Sladen, Lis for starring and reminding us why we loved her back then and still do. Eventually it’ll just become another chapter in the rich tapestry of stories diverging from Doctor Who, some in books, some on cd, and sometimes, magically, on television. The Sarah Jane Adventures may be over, but we fans can take some comfort in that final caption: “And the story goes on … forever …” Because it will.

The Curse of Clyde Langer.

TV "Clyde discovers homelessness" should be the most problematical story concept in the history of The Sarah Jane Adventures, but it’s perhaps a tribute to the production team that a premise which elsewhere might have seemed facile and exploitative didn’t create any sense of concern when The Curse of Clyde Langer was announced. This is a show which in the past has sensitively covered such other difficult topics as Alzheimer's and absentee fathers and one which continues to have sense of duty to it’s young audience to treat them with respect. While it’s true that this was a more sanitised version of homelessness than might fill a post-watershed slab of grimness on BBC Three or a Comic Relief film, there was enough content between the lines for inquiring minds to fill in some of the blanks. Or decide they didn’t want to.

Writer Phil Ford’s mechanism for throwing Clyde onto the streets was the genus of SJA story in which an alien or alien artefact causes reality or perception of reality to bend around a particular character, arguably first seen and very effectively in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? On this occasion for all the utilisation of alien totem poles, the sudden alienation of Clyde’s to friends and family was especially shocking and anyone who has seen those post-watershed slabs of grimness on BBC Three or Comic Relief films or you even real life, cleverly mirrored what can happen in some cases when people become homeless, the perception that everyone they know has turned their back on them, that their lives would be better without them, and the disappointing element of pride involved.

The ever presence of a person’s name in the modern world is one of the reasons this blog’s been relatively monosyllabic in subject lately, but the curse of not being able to be too personal on a personal blog has nothing on what Clyde had to endure. Daniel Anthony was up to the challenge of switching from the light version of the character to one who appreciated the gravity of his situation. The contorted faces of Sarah Jane, his mother and Rani helped to convince us of that hopelessness, Anjli’s Bambi-like eyes shifting into some other level of viciousness which suggests she’d be perfect as a future incarnation of her Whoniverse namesake. Tommy’s absence left Daniel selling Luke’s rejection which he succeeded with quite well, and implies Sarah Jane’s first surrogate,  more susceptible to the curse, is also more human than Sky.

What followed was not as raw as miserablist Cinema du look classic Les Amants du Pont-Neuf or even So-Called Angels, the Christmas episode of My So-Called Life in which Rickie is homophobically kicked out of his house, no Julianna Hatfield hiding around a corner ready to busk her way into our broken hearts. But it was at least sensitive enough to leave the investigation of the fantasy plot elements with newcomer Sky and simply allow Clyde to tour the lifestyle with his new friend “Ellie”, even playing on our expectations slightly with talk of the legendary Night Dragon suggesting a Fisher King-like confrontation, budget permitting. But arguably Clyde was fighting an even greater demon – his capacity to retain his sense of self amid a situation in which even his own name could lead to his destruction.


It would be interesting to know what research writer Phil Ford undertook before writing these scenes, but what was clever about them was that by keeping the focus on a single character he was able to imply so much more at the margins. Certainly the ambiguity of the experience “Ellie” had been through before saving Clyde from the rain suggested all kinds of horrors, as did the intelligent underplaying of Lily Loveless (from RTD favourite Skins). With the exception of a single too on the nose line from Sarah Jane (a touch of the Tasha Yars in TNG’s Symbiosis), this was very good at showing the fragility of our lives, how any of us could let the situation go too far if we’re not careful.

Some might argue that “Ellie” was sprinkled too heavily with the manic pixie dream girl dust. But it’s always important for us to remember that SJA is made for a younger audience and there are compliance issues in bringing in the more hardcore "issues" like prostitution or drug abuse. Emotions here have always been painted in broad strokes and only rarely has a character been portrayed with moral ambiguity. It’s important for “Ellie” to be a romantic, likeable figure for the central themes of the episode to be put forward and Ford et al are also to be applauded for not including the obvious scene in which “Ellie” learns Clyde’s real name and turns against him. Making us love her also deepens our understanding of Langer’s loss at the end, knowing that in leaving her, he’s taking some more of her hope with him.

So many lovely moments.  As Paul Thomas Anderson (and The X-Files) have demonstrated there's nothing more amusing than amphibious life falling from the sky and the shot of a school yard full of fish was an excellent start.   Sky trying to keep her electric personality under control.  The camp-fire scene (see above) in which Clyde is forced to burn his comic book in order to keep him and "Ellie" warm, romance blossoming in the embers.  The casting of distinguished stage actor Ewart James Walters as the wise homeless man at the end explaining the disappearance of "Ellie" to Clyde.  I last saw him as Hymen in As You Like It at Shakespeare's Globe a couple of years ago fulfilling a similar function of gaining our immediate attention through his curiously deep voice and looming height.

As expected, as Sky, Sinead Michael’s ably relaxing into the role of filling in for Luke who in similar stories was usually the person who’s alien make-up was unaffected by whatever’s befallen the gang. As expected too, the brotherly friendship scenes between Clyde and Luke have now transmuted into sisterly conversations at school with the sweet moment over school dinners. It’s a pity we won’t ever enjoy the scenes in which Sky tries to integrate with the other kids, not really understanding anything they’re saying. Never mind Mels, Sky’s also an unearthly child redux, and we’re really going to miss the episodes when Haresh exasperatedly attempts to put her on the academic straight and narrow.

Then the tears. The sense of loss. A more melodramatic version of this story would have not have just turned Sarah Jane and co away from Clyde but made him their antagonist outright, chasing him down like some common Weevil. Instead, they morn even if they know not what for. Tears of grief. That’s more dramatic somehow because it’s about Sky’s ability to persuade her Mum and friend to change their mind, overcome their mental conditioning, about discovering the source of those tears. That’s another, still more subliminal message about realising who your loved ones are and cherishing them. Remembering them. That can’t have been an easy few hours on set. Lots of hugs. It’s a triply difficult scene to watch now too, for obvious reasons. The Doctor Who Magazine tribute is out next week.

Once again we’re left with the disappointment that a show this entertaining, that’s reached the zenith of its powers can’t be made any longer. The Sarah Jane Adventures continues to be branded as just a kids show even by Doctor Who fans, and especially fans without kids. I don’t have kids but even I can still see it for the show that it is, still being made with the care which seemed to desert some of its creators when they made the US-based series that followed. True, I’ve been critical of it myself in the past, and especially Phil Ford’s writing, but he’s delivered his best script here and that needs to be said. One story to go and it’s by Gareth Roberts and reports suggest it’s the show going out on a high. Well good. It deserves to.

Sky.

TV Deep breath. The final three stories, final six episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures were always going to be a difficult watch simply because it’s impossible to quite believe that the vital, vibrant star running about on screen, still saving a fictional universe, can’t any more. A perfect tribute, they’re gifted to us through a quirk of budget and scheduling and should have been part of a typical length season and would have done if Lis hadn’t been taken from the real universe so soon.

Phil Ford’s Sky is doubly melancholic because it's pinioned around the introduction of its titular tweenager to the gang, a sign of the production team realising that with the show entering its sixth year and its young cast ageing, the bottom end of its target audience is starting to lack a character to identify with.  To that end, Sky is well thought through, an alien child who, like Luke way back when, and like the clever children watching, only has a superficial understanding of the world and a questioning nature.

Parents will no doubt smile at just how many questions Sky asks. Everything is new to her, even pizza, which also makes her the cunning new addition to Sarah Jane’s gang who’re now somewhat versed in the kinds of excitement that can fall to Earth. She’s excellent companion material because her entire existence built on the five Ws, an exposition sponge who genuinely doesn’t know anything rather than seeming so for the benefit of the audience (even though that’s exactly what she’s for).

Sinead Michael is very good as Sky, catching the wild-eyed innocence of someone who's burst up to the age of twelve within the space of a couple of hours. She's very reminiscent of similar figures in all the kids dramas I grew up with in the 80s, even with a hint of the Why Don't Yous during the Davies era of that show. Some have already signalled their annoyance which seems a bit heartless given her limited screen time. Her rawness is part of her charm, surely?

It would have been nice to see how Sky might developed over the longer term with the Ranipedia as her big sister. When Trojan companion Katarina was fatefully brought in as a successor to Vicki and Susan on 60s Who as a change from those two futuristic girls it rapidly became apparent that because she was so lacking in understanding of the basic essentials of modern life that she was impossible to realistically write for. Everything had to be explained to her. Hopefully Sky will be a faster learner.

Sky's introductory story was a superior example of SJA, with pantomime villains, massive wars occurring elsewhere in the galaxy and the Chandras representing Earth’s bewildered if very human reaction. In my experience of having worked in a local authority call centre, there do seem two types of people. Those who’ll phone at the first hint of trouble and those who simply put everything down to being just one of those things, or that someone else has phoned already or just assume the council won’t do anything anyway.  Or is that four types?

Aptly, given Sarah Jane’s address, Sky was like a free jazz cover version of Delta and the Bannermen, but with a baby bio whose nature was to die and destroy a civilisation rather than save her own people simply by living. There’s also an inadvertent similarity with Melody Pond who was equally bred to kill and also aged through a comparable burst of energy which also saved poor Sinead from being covered in green splatter or some such.

Of the two episodes, the first was perhaps the more enjoyable simply because of the reactions of the regulars to the baby. For all the spin-off fiction written about Sarah Jane, only a single short story (Lily in this anthology) even hints that she might have a grandchild and so otherwise this is the first time we’ve seen Ms. Smith with a baby and quite rightly she’s not sure how to handle it. As I think has already been said, before Luke came along she’d not thought of having a family; now she’s fostering another one.

Ford’s writing of Clyde and Daniel Anthony neatly observed the difficulty of keep a baby happy, especially a baby you’ve suddenly been given the mission of keeping occupied and who you don’t really know. We always resort to humour though in my case it never works, so intimidating are my unfortunate features. Fortunately his mime routine was hilarious, even if jokes went over the poor little thing’s head. We all thought it was funny though. Russell. Ha!

Incidental pleasures also included Floella Benjamin giving her best performance as the familialy named Professor Rivers, now mildly channelling Lee Evans in Ford's co-written Planet of the Dead and Peter-Hugo Daly as the fan of The Archers turning what could have been a one note character into a tour-de-force, a Pigbin Josh for a new generation. That’s something I will miss about The Sarah Jane Adventures, the layering it often gives to characters that other kids series might otherwise bland out or stereotype.

Then we have the sub-Rani (the other one) majesty of Miss Myers, another in SJA’s list of arch-milfers along with Mrs. Wormwood and Ruby White. As is usually the case with these villainesses, Christine Stephen-Daly gave it some real shoulder pad and was entirely in the spirit of the piece even if hers was not the kind of character for whom its entirely possible to communicate emotional depth, just one moment of vulnerability hinted at a motherly connection.

Researching that paragraph, I was astonished to learn that before appearing in most of the UK’s sort of soap operas like The Bill, Holby, Cutting It and Casualty, Stephen-Daly was in one of my favourite films, indeed the film about film school students which was one of the reasons I studied my post-grad in film, Love and Other Catastophes along with Radha Mitchell. That information’s by-the-by but it does give me a reason to watch that again, if only so I can try and spot her.

The climax was pure Classic Who, companions shutting down nuclear reactors without any technical knowledge whatsoever (I’d be worried if colour coded fuel rods really how it works especially given the lack of interest from other government authorities) and a stand off between the Sarah Jane and the villain. Notice that Sky has the choice as to whether she should fulfil her utility made for her. Before that moment hadn’t she decided to become a suicide bomber?

Whatever weighty themes that might suggest are probably unintentional but with The Sarah Jane Adventures we can never be sure.  What we can be sure of is that the final scene offered another example of the show looking to the future with a reappearance of The Shopkeeper, hinting perhaps at an arc plot that's now another loose end that may never be resolved.  In my imagination he's a renegade from The Trickster's lot in the same way the Doctor ran away from the Time Lords.  But now we'll never know. Sniff.

This was a strong opening for this short series and a great introduction to a new character.  Writer Phil Ford's work on the series has gone from strength to strength and his script for next week's episode looks like another belter on the Bannerman too (sorry) (I’ve been trying to work that since the start of writing this).  Just one more story after that and it's gone.  But we'll always be fond memories, which Sky has now added to.

Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith.

TV Back in the distant past, in mid-October when I was still exactly in my mid-thirties, it seemed as though the production team were taking the brave step of writing out Luke and K9 in an effort to move away from the too easy deus ex machina style story conclusions which have tin-dogged the series from the start. Luke may have stuck around as a dismodied head and shoulders on a flatscreen, making fleeting appearances to justify his continued presence in the introduction ("Boy GEEENIUUUS"), but the stories since have arguably been more thrilling because, with one obvious exception, the remaining attic allies have needed to rely somewhat on their wits, putting the clues together without too many easy answers (even to the point of taking Mr Smith out of the equation for this or that reason) and a fair bit of trial and error.

Which makes me wonder whether Clay and Gareth, in crafting the conclusion to Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith and this season are being entirely serious when offering a solution that requires the combined effort of Luke, K9, Mr Smith and newbie electronic soap tray Mr White and a return to the worst excesses of previous stories: the kind of easy research leaps Lisbeth Salander would be proud of, action sequences lasting what seems like mere seconds piled one on top of another in which characters shift geographical area in moments and not always through teleportation and a villain that requires the emotional fallout from a fake global terror to be destroy. Epic concepts like Clyde trapped in the orbital golfball which would have been explored over whole episodes in the old Doctor Who (and did in the case of The Space Pirates) are ushered in and out all too soon.

As ever I was simultaneously elated and appalled, especially since the first episode is actually a quite sensitive (well sensitive for this panto) portrayal of Alzheimer’s or at least the stresses of watching a trusted friend or family member getting old. Who of us hasn’t forgotten something or witnessed someone else forgetting something really rather major like the current residency of their son and wondered – are we or they alright? Lis wonderfully demonstrated first the denial to friends, denial to oneself before acceptance and the decision on whether to fight or relent and let nature take its course.

Of course, in the real world none of this is brought about by a milfian temptress in a red sports car with matching couture. Like Samantha Bond and Suranne Jones before her, Julie Graham senses rightly or wrongly (it oscilates) that this isn’t the place for subtlety though she manages in the first episode to just about convince us that Ruby could be a potential replacement for Sarah Jane, cleverly approximating some of Lis’s business (the walk, the stance, the flick of the hair). By the cliffhanger, the needs of the show kick in of course and it's as though Kate O’Mara is in the room (not least because Ruby’s plan, to steal people’s life essences wasn’t a million miles away from the real Rani’s in her first adventure, if you squint).

Ultimately ranking about a seven on the Zaroff scale you still have to applaud the determination with which Graham sells the Katesh’s gastroschisis state and the boggle eyed notion of a stomach which exists outside an alien’s body, the writers sadly failing to have Clyde suggest it as useful alternative to a gastric band. What I would have liked to have seen would have been a proper battle of wills between Ruby and Sarah Jane the latter having already lost her wits before the former reached ascendancy. Would I be wrong in suggesting that the title character has been even less present this series, mostly falling into her old form of having to be rescued? In nearly ever story this year she seems to have been zapped or put through some sort of mental torture.

Which brings us back to doe in which I also expected the Doctor to arrive for good measure. Whilst its true that both Rani and Clyde also have a hand in the solution, there’s always something slightly unedifying about a character who’s previously had little input on a story charging and saving the day. Perhaps Luke’s still ill-advised scarf is meant to hide the chord which is being used to dangle him in like the original gods that would be brought in at the close of a Euripidian Greek tragedy. Aristotle hated this approach to drama and said so in Poetics where he proposed (radically for 335 BCE) that the resolution of the plot must always spring from the internal actions of the play, a model which has worked for much of the rest of the series.

Or as Hitchcock says, if you show a gun in the opening reel it has to have gone off by the end. What just about makes it saleable (other than the fact that Luke did at least put in an appearance in the first episode) is Tommy Knight’s burst of adolescent vitriol, his character bawling out Rani like a refugee from a John Osbourne play, as though what we’re actually seeing is the result of some whole other unseen narrative which is happening at Oxford, with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as the main villain (a tricky bugger once you’ve reached the middle section). When he later clumsily tells Rani that he loves her, it begins to seem almost exactly like my university experience.

But predictably amid all the shouting and running, the best scene is the quiet moment between Rani and her mum, in which Gita describes quite logically the jealousy of seeing her daughter palling about over the road with this second mother figure and the secret they clearly have between them, Mina Anwar perhaps suggesting, just as she did with the alternative version of the character in The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith that the feckles, flowery, “HELLO SARAH!” version of her character is an act or defence mechanism and that, eep, Gita might have hidden depths which is quite a contrast to Graham’s gurning from across the road. It’s this contrast which has, on the whole, made this series such a joy.

Next Time: I don't know. Time's caught up with us.

Lost In Time.

TV One of the story ideas for the new series of Doctor Who which I’ve coveted over years but is unlikely to happen is for a good old fashioned pure historical, one in which the only sci-fi element would be the Doctor and his plus one. I know these were largely curtailed in the 60s due to poor ratings, but the contemporary twist would be that the TARDIS team and the audience after decades of conditioning would assume that a monster or some other fantasy element is the cause of whatever mischief is, but in the end historical truth would assert itself. In other words, a reverse of The Time Meddler.

While we wait for Moffat or his successor to come to his or her senses, Lost In Time is an entertaining stop gap, with enough historical exposition to keep Lord Reith’s ghost from haunting Mark Thompson for a couple of nights at least (or at least until Strictly’s on and the poor John’s grave rolling begins again). It’s also one of the more blatant homage’s to the classic series, The Key To Time season retold in just over fifty minutes. Oh how Russell and Rupert Laight must have chuckled as they made sure one of the objects was an actual key. It’s just a pity Lalla Ward wasn’t available or willing, probably.

But this is an episode filled to the brim with homages of one form or another not least in the figure of the Shopkeeper, who appears from Mr. Benn, casting the team out to the various points in time, albeit without a new choice of fancy daywear. Cyril Nri tries his best with a part that mostly replicates the cast of Trial of a Timelord in standing around commenting on the stories and offering some much needed cliffhanger acting when required. Who is this mysterious figure, one of the Trickster’s lot or something else? Perhaps there's another Shopkeeper out there holding the balance of power, their constant Sinden/Davies-like rivalry a cosmic version of Never The Twain (but fighting over the health of planets and moons rather than a cheap bit of Carltonware or a mahogany table).

Each of the three yarns also looks towards other fictions. Rani’s story, though based on fact has the beating heart of a Philippa Gregory novel, putting a recognisable human face on a historical queen. Demonstrating that a quite complex drama can still be told on the BBC in a couple of rooms, a cast of few and some entertaining corsetry, this neatly describes the events leading up to the scene in Paul Delaroche’s painting The Execution of Lady Jane Grey which hangs at the National Gallery, actress Amber Beattie sympathetically portraying the doomed young monarch rather misused for religious point scoring.

Given that for some younger viewers the second world war is as distant a memory as the Nine Day’s Queen, perhaps we should be cautious in welcoming Clyde's story, Theories abound on whether the Nazi’s did indeed land on England’s mainland shore as depicted here and in its anticedents Went the Day Well?, The Eagle Has Landed, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, um, The Curse of Fenric. But the exposition is clear enough to explain that Thor's so-called Hammer is changing history so instead let’s just give a cheer for what is a really ripping boy’s own adventure of the kind which seem all too rare now and no I didn’t see that coming. I did indeed yelp.

Sarah Jane’s segment is almost pure Sapphire and Steel, with just a pinch of Moffat magic and a public information film from the 70s. Arguably the weakest of the three, it does still have a peachy performance from Gwyneth Keyworth as a Charley Pollard alike and the random casting of Lucie Jones from last year’s X-Factor as the kind of figure Princess Superstar warned us about. The problem is perhaps that this the story with the least direct jeopardy for the main character (apart from returning hime obviously), though at least kids might get the message that its dangerous to play with matches.

The editing challenge of running these three distinct stories next to each other is carried off well, even better perhaps in cutting between distinct timeframes than The Hours or Julie & Julia and without their direct plot connections. On reflection, both of those films would have clearly benefited from a fez wearer offering a running commentary to his parrot ("She's running out time! There's no way she'll manage to cook all of those recipes in a year! Why do they all look like Meryl Streep?" "Sqwark!"). The trick is in giving Clyde the majority of the action beats, balancing the pacing and having using the old hyperlink cinema trick of matching the shapes of shots in different locations.

What also ties the episode together is the willingness to, for want of a better phrase, “go there”. In both of their stories, Rani and Clyde are the victims of discrimination. If Rani’s is the same kind of euphemistic public school insult endured by Martha Jones during Human Nature, the Nazi’s description of Clyde is absolutely shocking, especially for this timeslot. The strong way that both of them deal with it is how role models are made, both Anjli and Daniel motivated to give some of their best acting of the season (last week’s near two-hander accepted). Too late sadly for forthcoming dvd documentary Race Against Time, but a welcome detail nonetheless.

Another excellent story then in what’s turning into what might be the best series yet, despite the Fordist Rentaghost influences. Continuity buffs will also be pleased to see, thanks to that newspaper clipping, we finally have a date for when these episodes are happening, contemporaneous with broadcast and so definitively after The Big Bang and so confirming the reset of the extra year which was a legacy of Aliens of London all those years go, although as I’ve just discovered it's all a bit of a mess anyway since The End of Time is apparently supposed to have “happened” in 2009 before Planet of the Dead and The Eleventh Hour in 2008 when Saxon was in power (breath). Yes, I know, the silence, the cracks, the time war, the Faction Paradox ...

Next Week: Speaking of which, the Earth wasn't as defended as we thought judging by the weaponry.

The Empty Planet.

TV Since the first series of The Sarah Jane Adventures, one of the “motifs” repeated across the stories (other than parents are good) has been the lack of people on the streets or stories occurring in locales that don’t require too many non-speaking extras shuffling about, improvising silent conversation or walking a dog, with entertaining expository reasons from the cast such as “Well, it is a Sunday” or “The fairground closed?” Now finally, we have a story which turns this budgetary weakness into a strength in a way which will no doubt become the model as the license fee is squeezed.

The Empty Planet offers the same bracing images of peopleless streets familiar from the likes of 28 Days Later or the various versions of I Am Legend in which the mass of humanity is just gone and those of us who ironically like people but hate gatherings can fantasise about going to the cinema without being disturbed by the rest of the audience (once we’ve worked out how the projector works), break into the National Archive and see what’s really been covered up under the seventy-year rule and having the run of the expensive food isle in Waitrose. Or is that just me?

True, with just a roof shot of the London skyline to sell the absence, much of the action takes place on the same few empty streets, but as with the best of this franchise, the non-diagetic implication of what’s happening beyond the main characters field of vision can be just as chilling as endless shots of a deserted Trafalgar Square. These are the best scenes in the story, Rani dashing about suburbia to a soundtrack of nothing other than the low hum of the electricity supply showing off her inquisitive nature as she checks her neighbour's houses for signs of life. And what a messy bunch they are.

Except in such narratives, once the main character has twigged that they might be alone, often the scariest notion then is that they aren’t. Luckily for Rani, especially since all she had to defend herself with was in the dull end of tv remote control, that meant Clyde and luckily for us since writer Gareth Roberts replaces the silence with some really good character moments as the kids come to terms with their isolation and also their responsibility to discover what’s been going on despite being the zeppos of the group.

Like Sarah Jane, like the Doctor, like Xander, they’re so caught up on this life that they run towards the danger rather than away from it unless they're told not to and even then. For once, Daniel Anthony and Anjli Mohindra were allowed some meaty scenes (that's two stories on the run) in which their characters considered their place in the world (of the kind usually reserved for Tommy Knight) and what they might mean to each other and they were mostly up to the challenge providing some useful chemistry, Anjli offering her now trademark dreamy doe-eyes.

To an extent it’s a shame that as a kids rather than teen show a plot rather than just puberty has to assert itself; a real format buster would have had the two of them trailing about the streets of London (or Cardiff) coming to terms with the loss of everything, especially their parents, the true horror being that Clyde’s joke about him and Rani being the new Adam and Eve might come to pass with the loss of innocence that follows. Humanity would then have popped back in for some unexplained reason after an hour, along with the disappointing return of their hierarchical place within the family unit or some such.

Not that this necessary plot isn’t entertaining with plenty of moments for us to match our wits with the main characters as we um and aha along with them. Kids who’ve just finished watching the release of the third series were no doubt shouting about Clyde and Rani’s grounding by the Judoon and I was especially pleased with myself when I realised what kind of air, the robots were really thinking of, with its shades of Raymond F. Jones's pulp novel The King of Eolim and Lance Parkin’s Father Time, even if the number of choices isn’t exactly huge.

Following which we were gifted that gorgeous shot of an alien world reminiscent of the Boeshane Peninsula and Gallifrey. If only the budget could stretch to us seeing one of these places for longer than a few seconds. How do these robots fit within that society? Is this a Naboo affair were a small child is the one thought best for high office with Ketchup and Mustard or whatever they’re called as nursemade and coup-repellers? Perhaps if Big Finish’s licenses is relaxed a bit – as is rumoured (I read on the internet) – we’ll be gifted with a ten cd series by way of explanation.

Either way, The Empty Planet is brill entertainment, certainly the best story this series that doesn't feature the Doctor, making the most of the need to give Lis Sladen a holiday. It's also surprisingly interesting in mythology terms; the reactions of Haresh and Prince Gavin almost confirm now that Journey's End and The End of Time have effectively been rebooted out of everyone's memories. Again I ask (because I'm fishing for suggestions) are we to assume that its simply RTD taking advantage of the cracks or feeding into the ongoing main Doctor Who storyline in relation to the silence (whatever that is?).

Next week: That guy who played thingy in whatitsname.

Death of the Doctor.

TV The Green Death was broadcast before I was born, Jo Grant leaving the Doctor before I was even conceived. Yet seeing Katy Manning clumsily burst through the doors on the fake funeral presided over by the Buzzie, Dizzie, Ziggy and Flaps from The Jungle Book, I'm still filled to the brim with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia, giggling at the sight of this older version of the girl who broke Mike Yates’s heart now breaking a vase, words spilling out of her like the Doctor himself with post-regenerative verbal diarriah, a young endogenous mix of her own husband and The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles at her side.

Jo If nothing else, Death of the Doctor is a successful demonstration of the power of merchandising, the ability of the videos then dvds, novels and audios to keep a character alive, pickled in amber at the age she was when she originally appeared in the programme and making her important and much loved even to those of us whose first identifiable memory of the programme is Leela and K9 tracking through a corridor in some story or other (The Sun Makers?) so that when she does re-emerge “baked” our hearts leap on greeting an old friend.

Still waiting for my own Doctor Who girl so that we can make some, I don’t know what Jo’s significance is for any children watching; it’s a few year since School Reunion and even though that story will probably still be present to them for much the same reason Timelash is unfortunately to us, it’s not a bad idea that a new set of youngsters discovering the franchise for the first time should be introduced to the concept that the Doctor had a different face and companions and history before the new married couple, that same story should be roughly retold from a slightly different perspective, with some different chaps with wings.

My guess is that at least initially a lot of this material will head on over their heads except for the useful information that Amy and Rory are on a honeymoon whilst this adventure is going on, the youngsters giggling instead at the Muppet vultures and hiss at another dodgy authority figure whilst the adults are enjoying a meditation on memory, of old and new adventures, of finding a stimulating place in the world even after you’ve done what could have been the most exciting thing in your life. In this script, Russell T Davies proves that it’s possible to write for both age groups without resorting to dated Terminator references.

And both adults and kids can agree that Matt Smith’s version of the Doctor has now clicked, the actor inhabiting the skin of the character with supreme confidence, the weight of a millennia travel gathered across his shoulders. What we have here is (along with the climax to his first series) evidence that he’s clearly consolidated his approach, so much so that in places (aided it has to be said by a writer who’s clearly enjoying the opportunity to write for a Doctor he didn’t initiate) he almost manages to unseat the title character from her own series. When Matt suggested in a recent DWM interview: “You’ve got to bed into this part. I’m going to get better. I’m going to push the part to its limit”, he wasn't lying.

So well does he capture the mix of dottiness and sober reflection and fiery danger at the heart of the timelord, that it's almost impossible to tell how accurate Davies’s dialogue is in relation to the Eleventh Doctor; rather like Paul McGann reading Tom’s previously abandoned words for the audio Shada, Smith's able to make the words his own. Davies could just as well be giving him the full Tennant and I’m not sure would noticed. Not that it stops the ticks of relevant previous Doctors from seeping through, a Tenth like growl when faced with a decision in an air duct, a quite Pertweesque “yes” in agreement at the relief of a still living Smith and Jones in a lead lined coffin.

With so much else happening, it’s also a pleasure to see the kids being given to emotional weightlifting too; whilst some might find it difficult to care for the plight of a teenager travelling the world as part of a family tree that seems to have an abundance of disposable income, albeit aiding worthy causes, there must be children watching who for various reasons have also been farmed off to older relatives losing contact with their parents. With Davies offering a rare occasion when Haresh isn't simple straight man and genuine father figure to Rani, the writer's big theme in this secondary storyline that parents are good, something most of us can agree with.

Death of the Doctor is, then, one of the few occasions, blue little man group accepted, when Sarah Jane Adventures genuinely aspires to be more than programme just for children. Sam Watt’s music brings an epic quality to a story, which like some of the best classic Who, is ultimately told in about three rooms, a corridor, some ducting and a quarry. Ashley Way’s direction favours the close-up, all the better to capture the obvious chemistry between Lis and Katy born from years spent on the convention circuit together, the former graciously seceding the focus for a couple of weeks to a fellow actress reliving her youth.

In the final scene, Davies offers his equivalent of God's Final Message to His Creation, retconning the thematic undercurrent begun in the first season of nu-Who of the Doctor’s positive effect on the people he touches, essentially clearing up the grey skies, brushing off the clouds and cheering up a range of classic companions, taking off the gloomy mask of tragedy fitted on them by spin-off authors in the wilderness years, at least the ones still alive on Earth in whatever year this season of SJA is set in (sorry Dodo) which for some of us was rather more potent than the Doctor’s apparent publicity baiting new regenerative cycle.

On first inspection this seems like the writer disregarding even criticising the very merchandising that gave his returning character the life and relevance which made this story psychologically intelligible to most of us of a certain other age. But in fact, he’s been rather more sensitive. Glance through the relevant wikia pages and we discover that with the exception of Ace, whose timeline is a mess anyway, he’s simply adding to their on-going stories and in the case of Ben and Polly inadvertently offering a third act happy ending to love story told across decades via short fiction in the style of When Harry Met Sally. In other words, returning me to the merchandise that led me to this story in the first place.

Next Week: Challenge of the Gobots.

The Nightmare Man.

TV Bye then Luke.

Nm As you discovered, heading off to university is a scary business, especially since you’re barely old enough to know that checked hipster scarves are problematical at best. It’s all about change, though I’m the last person to give you any advice other than if a heavenly looking French girl invites you into her room on the second night, you go no matter what K9 says, you go. Honestly. You do not say, “Well I’m feeling very tired” or “That’s not something we do…” or whatever else might emanate from your lips bypassing your alien brain. Otherwise you’ll spend the next three years imagining what would have happened. Not that such a thing ever happened to me. Obviously.

To break out of the metafilter, largely because I can’t work out how to sustain it for the next however many paragraphs (I'll try to be brief), it’s quite brave of The Sarah Jane Adventures to introduce the concept of university to its young audience. True, many of them will have older siblings who’ve already driven the yellow beetle down the driveway and it’s treated like an extension of school (we’re not even told what he’ll be studying in “Oxford” though if it’s maths he should have gone to Manchester) but nevertheless it’s a reminder that our heroes aren’t getting any younger and that they’re now of teen drama age. What happens with Clyde and Rani finish their A-Levels?

Writing out Luke was one of the The Nightmare Man’s three main functions. I don’t know the ins and outs of Tommy Knight’s departure, though the in-camera appearance for Maria's photo might hint that like Yasmin Paige it’s for educational reasons. But the loss of the character and K9 does have something of the destruction of the sonic in The Visitation about it; even taking into account that this is a kids show, the convenience of having a Doctor-lite super-genius on hand to “solve” the central mystery in each story as earlier identified by JNT does mean that too often the dramatic tension ebbs away.

The second function was of course to scare us witless. As our avatar in the dreamscape, Tommy very effectively communicated his fear, not just of nightmares, but of having nightmares for the first time, lacking the emotional props that most of us have to deal with them. The sight of him, lost in the void, his head shifting backwards and forwards was a horrible image, piercing our child-like anxieties about being totally alone, and if we’re young enough, without our parent’s care, home sick. Sorry, bare with me, I’m having another fresher’s flashback. Oh, that phone call.

That probably would have done the job even without Julian Bleech’s stunning turn as the villain; if Toby Jones’s similarly hewn Dream Lord was all about psychological terror, TNM’s power was in his elastic body, the Milliband-like boggling panda eyes and the voice, which like his previous emergences as Davros and in the even earlier The Ghostmaker, had the capacity to nip into your soul and poke about a bit. Even if budgetry concerns seemed to halt his passage into the other residences on Bannerman Road, Bleach demonstrated (just as the late Heath Ledger and countless other Jokers did before him), the scariest villains can be easily achieved with some face paint and utter unselfconsciousness.

The final function was to reconfirm what makes the show work. Despite the various mentions of the timelord here to foreshadow his appearance in the next couple of weeks, with the main show now in other hands, and Torchwood in production stateside, SJA could be viewed as something of an orphan, a continuation of the Russell T Davies years. But really what we find are the same elements: the willingness to experiment with storytelling structure, the sense of fun not least the rather wonderful exchange between Mr Smith and K9, the budding screwball chemistry between Clyde and Rani and Liz Sladen still bursting with energy even after all these years (the older dream-like version of her also demonstrating the actress's often untapped comic range).

Now we await the return of Jo and the appearance of the Doctor and the first full script by RTD in ten months (Can you believe The End of Time was only in January? Doesn’t it feel like ten years ago?) and it’s mark of this story’s quality that didn’t simply feel like treading water. What we had here was an above average script from Joseph Lidster with some genuinely funny moments, clever direction from Joss Agnew and if the climax seemed to drag a bit, the methodology for final demolition of The Nightmare Man not quite clear, its philosophy, that friends who stick together can do anything, are brilliant, is generally a good thing. Until the second week when you realise that not everyone in the student hall is your friend.

Sorry, there it is again.

The Gift.

TV There was a rather good episode of The Thick of It a couple of weeks ago (I know they’re all rather good, but this was especially good) set at the party conference which pinioned on a physical altercation between the descendent of Fires of Pompeii’s Caecilius and Glenn being leaked to bloggers via Twitter. It felt very now. As I think someone in the unpopular press said, it made the show even more contemporary because it sounded like something that has already happened, which is hasn’t as far as we know, at least not in the political sphere. Twitter doesn’t seem to have made it into the Doctor Who universe yet, which means …

Sarah Jane Adventures: The Gift

… lacks a moment in which Clyde and Rani huddle over some client software like Tweetdeck watching words like “weird”, “plant”, “flower”, “splotches” and “twilight” trend in the TwitScoop while the All Friend column is awash with detailed eyewitness reports (well as detailed as they can be in a hundred and forty characters). This would have been the nu-Who equivalent of the railway station scenes in Doctor Who and the Silurians. Instead, they were watching BBC News via the iPlayer which whilst a brilliant expression of a governmental programme to get decent broadband into schools also seemed somehow, rather dated.

But The Gift overall felt very old fashioned, but in a good way. I complained last year that Enemy of the Bane, the climax of the second season was “brash, loud and disjointed, powered by a kind of atomised storytelling which has replaced such incidentals as logical plot structure and coherent character motivation”. The Gift couldn’t be more different. Perfectly paced, with a simply plot structure and mostly useful characterisation, it offered the chance to stop and think about the themes being offered up and to laugh at the hijinks of the kids, and concluded with a scene that was about as close to the conclusion to Children of Earth or The Waters of Mars as this adolescent franchise member is likely to have.

After the kind of chase through a warehouse which has all the hallmarks of a typical climax to a story in this series, Writer Rupert Laight (whose previous franchise credits have included some excellent short stories for the Doctor Who website, the novelisations of previous SJA stories and most interestingly one of the stories in Big Finish’s Sarah Jane Smith spin-off series) unexpectedly drops us into a homage to the Stanley Kramer’s film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (or when wet Nicholas Meyer’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country) with the Blathereen standing in for Sydney Poitier (or the Klingons). The dialogue between the kids before hand is very on the nose; airing his suspicions, Luke says that it doesn’t matter what colour they are, they’re from the same planet as the Slitheen, as the camera pans across the kitchen to reveal Clyde and Rani.

Then, uniquely, a good ten minutes of the episode are spent at the dinner (in an empty Rani’s house, the parents conveniently at a conference apparently) with the kids enduring the table manners of their guests, their potentially racist remarks cleverly making us sympathetic towards the Blathereen, so that we understand when Sarah Jane takes them into her trust. The message until this point is that you can’t take people at face value; as I think Rani says at one point, there are bad people on the planet Earth as well. But it’s genuinely amusing, aided by some supreme voice work from Simon Callow and Miriam Margolyes of all people, demonstrating the benefits of getting proper actors in for such roles. Alice Troughton really enjoys stepping up to the challenge of filming the always difficult table scenes, my favourite shot between Sarah Jane and Rani at the sink as the mayhem of the meal plays out behind them.

The rest of the story is like that. There aren’t that many big action sequences, no speedy runs through corridors or shouting and not a lot of intercutting in the editing actually, with the story quietly playing out in refreshingly long scenes allowing the actors room to act which also benefits the characters, with a return to the neat bits of screwball comedy which were the hallmark of the first season, in this case between Clyde and Rani. If it didn’t quite work in the attic scenes were Sarah Jane seemed strangely listless initially at the prospect of her perfect (yet soon to be narratively sidelined again) son Luke somehow being ill which is an impossibility and should have tipped her off that something horrendous was in progress, the later scenes in which she enjoyed the reverse of her own domestic dinner party in the Blathereen ship were hilarious messy, bringing to mind the likes of Tiswas or Fungus The Bogeyman. That right there is how to entertain kids.

A fair use of CGI too. Though the production team couldn’t stretch to a Slitheen reveal this time, the unveiling of the vivid red petals of the flowers was very effective and the shots of the spores flying through air, though cartoony, had the same disturbing power as the virus droplets in those scenes in Outbreak as we watched them hover over our heroes and their classmates. Of course, in a perfect world there would have been dozens of these scenes with populace fleeing as the spores degraded even further the air quality of London, but as is always the case in SJA, even if the moon is falling to earth, it’ll be viewed through the eyes of our heroes, the catastrophe being left to our imagination through reported speech. Perhaps, just as we’ll never know what happened to these kids during Children of Earth, there’s a version of this story were Prime Minister Denise Riley is staring UNIT out across the cabinet table and asking them if they have any good gaseous pesticides.

If there’s a problem with the thematic heart of the story, it’s that having passed on to kids the anti-racism message, the needs of the narrative to have a villain leads to the reveal that the Blathereen were villains all along, a turnaround which is fairly dark stuff for something in the CBBC slot. People who aren’t like you are ok – oh no wait, no they’re not, they’re bastards after all and they want to take your land. Laight does briefly leave the possibility hanging that perhaps the Blathereen are set up, but it’s not long before they’re shown chomping their way messily through another meal. Anyone who’s read the spin-off novel from which they’re sourced, Stephen Cole’s The Monsters Inside, will know that they really are as bad as the Slitheen anyway, I suppose.

B3 Viewed through the prism of recent franchise editions, the conclusion of this story is also fairly challenging. Having spent the best part of three years saying that sentient beings deserve a second chance, and third, and fourth, and … with the whole conversation about the execution of Margaret in Boomtown having already seen much of her family destroyed by a missile, with whole stories which talk about the orphaning of aliens, Sarah Jane uses Mr Smith to destroy the Blathereen couple, splattering their remains across the inside of the attic in a moment that inappropriately reminded me of the Marvin scene in Pulp Fiction, and like Tarantino’s best scene (!) it’s played for laughs and is very, very funny.

The final moments of the episode demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the series. The scenes in which our heroes are huddled together amid the orange goo, the actors clearly trying not to laugh, like the earlier were Clyde is trying to hide the tin dog under the table much to Rani chagrin are adorable and demonstrates as I’ve already mentioned over and over and over again that when the characters aren’t simply spouting masses of exposition at each other we like spending time with them. That's what ultimately made this episode so entertaining. Plus Clyde's one liners. And the continued rivalry between Mr Smith and K9.

About the only thing really wrong with the story was the coda. The perfect end to the story and the season would have been a pan away from the group in that attic wiping Blathereen remains from their eyes, having saved the world and enjoying the consequences. That final montage which is supposed to bookend the series and may be trying to be as depthful as an Angela’s philosophy montage from My So-Called Life but ends up being as anodyne as similar monstrosities in Heroes or Defying Gravity (“Some people say that life is a dream. It could be a dream. It depends if we dream and when we dream and what we dream about etc”).

Good god, I hope they never do that again.

Mona Lisa's Revenge.

TV There aren’t that many aspects of Doctor Who that could be considered sacred ground. The geography of the series is such that any idea, item and even historical events have been run across over and over again, be they the sinking of the Marie Celeste, volcano day in Pompeii or visits from Shakespeare. Not even the mythology of the series is immune to being written and rewritten, crossed out and written over again until it resembles the order slip in our local takeaway when I’m trying to decide what to have for dinner and I’m not sure if I’m in the mood for sweet and sour or a curry. It tends to depend on the original story the object featured.

City of Death is just such a story. Written by a proper writer and the nation’s favourite until Steven Moffat wrote Blink, Douglas Adams’s Paris runaround is about as perfect a story as you’re like to find in old Who and the reason I visited the city (this was in the time before I discovered the French New Wave). To grasp my love for the story, I’d suggest you read this, and this but suffice to say that my eyebrows were nestled firmly in the arches of my receding hairline when I heard that The Sarah Jane Adventures were going to have the audacity of producing Mona Lisa’ Revenge.

Me Sacrilege. Sacrilege! I was in the curious position of being on the theological side of the Life of Brian debate from Friday Night, Saturday Morning and like Mervyn Stockwood, then Bishop of Southwark, I was rubbing a religious talisman, in my case the keyring in the shape of the Eiffel Tower I’d bought when I was in Paris (clip here). But unlike them, I was willing to watch with an open mind. I quite like Suranne Jones usually and well it is the Sarah Jane Adventures, so what’s the worse that could happen?

At least the version of the Mona Lisa used wasn’t the charming GCSE-level slap job that appeared in City of Death. And the National Museum of Cardiff, a refreshingly different idea for a "base under siege", looked suitably grand doubling as the “International Art Gallery” even if the dressings in the room from Temple of Peace in which the painting was displayed could only partially hide it’s first appearance as part of Platform One in The End of the World. The performances of the regulars couldn’t really be faulted either, the scene between Lis Sladen and Alexander Armstrong in the opening episode more than making up for Sarah Jane dropping out for most of the rest of the story.

Otherwise Mona Lisa’s Revenge was a tedious bunch of old cobblers, easily as bad as Enemy of the Bane and nudging towards Secrets of the Stars. At the risk of sounding like a prosecuting lawyer in kids television equivalent of The Hague, it’s one of those examples of a drama whose awfulness slowly occurs to you over time until you reach a point when you realise you can’t quite believe what you’re watching and if you’re like me you start shouting. It happened for me at about the time Lisa began flashing her blaster around and with relatively few anti-lulls I sat slumped wanting it to end and knowing that it wasn’t going to for many, many, many minutes.

Like Secrets of the Stars, the awfulness of the story can be largely traced to the central performance within the guest cast. Suranne Jones, like Russ Abbot before her, seems to have been under the impression that the thing to do in children’s sci-fi is to go BIG and indulge in the very worst campery no matter what the rest of the cast seem to be doing. She was loud, she was brash and she sucked the air out of every scene. Jones can be a capable actress, except instead of the camp joy of Kate O’Mara, her keystone seemed to be Geoffrey Orme’s Zaroff in The Underwater Enemy, the rest of the guest cast caught in the crossfire.

Jones wasn’t helped by the ripeness of the dialogue and characterisation gifted to her which didn’t rise above a register much higher than “Nothing in the world can stop me now, ducks”. Writer Phil Ford does seem to have a problem writing his adversaries. With the exception of Day of the Clown’s Old Bob they really are a set of one-dimensional ravers, which as Gareth Roberts shows in The Trickster doesn’t necessarily need to be so. In Mona’s case, with the exception of her serpentine seduction of Jeff Rawle’s curator, much of her action consisted of empty threats and declarations of what she was about to do if she could just do something else.

There was one scene that suggested the possibilities for the character; when faced with the outside world she (for some unexplained reason) found she couldn’t step i’th’sun lest she become oil paint again. But the melancholic implications of that weren’t full explored because Ford was too intent on replicating some of the story points about being trapped in pictures from sources as diverse as Roald Dahl’s The Witches (Solveg, pictured), Justin Richards’s Demontage and Matthew Graham’s Fear Her, a corner he was presumably painted into when coming up with the mechanism for Mona being released from the painting in the first place.

After Mona Lisa’s Revenge, we’re now expected to believe that in an already convoluted Whoniverse, when Leonardo Di Vinci painted the original Mona Lisa, he used some paint from his weirdo neighbour, made-up artist Di Cattivo, which with its alien properties led to Mona becoming a corporeal manifestation with a Mancunian accent. Di Vinci was then kept a prisoner by the splinter of Scaroth that was Captain Tancredi (“Captain Tancredi?!?”) and forced to paint six copies of the painting all with “this is a copy” marked on the canvas by the Doctor. Where those six created using the same paint? Was there a small army of Mona’s waiting to be released?

The story’s whole attitude to art was fairly suspect. The veneration of the Mona Lisa was a good idea and the painting was presumably chosen by David Fisher for much the same reason when he was writing his first draft of City of Death. It’s recognisable, iconic. And there is some Reithian merit in explaining something of when Di Vinci created the work (even if, like City of Death, it forgets to mention that the painters ironically worked on the thing in France during the revolution). But made-up artist Di Cattivo’s work looked entirely out of period to me and I say that not because I’m trying to be a farty-farty-Sewell-pants but because it breaks the authenticity of the story.

The selection of Clyde’s painting too says a lot about the judges they’d choose it above whatever else was submitted by the other students. It’s part of the cranking out the plot, of course. You have to place the kids in the gallery and the only justifiable reason they’d visit would after winning a competition. Rani’s had her episode, Luke’s is coming up so it has to be Clyde. What kind of art would Clyde do? Well we’re not going the Pushing Daisies route and working against type (no knitting) so it has to be a sub-2000 AD daub instead of anything too challenging. Nothing too witty, please.

The requisite soap element seemed old hat too (as old hat, in fact as using the phrase 'old hat' to describe something as being old hat). The material about Luke becoming more human and leaving his room untidy was the kind of thing which motored the first season culminating in The Lost Son and it seems out of character for Luke to leave his room untidy anyway. Is he doing it on purpose, is that the idea? What kind of message is that to send kids? The loss of Sarah Jane for much of the story is also a disappointment, especially since the reason was a rerun of the aforementioned Fear Her, though probably understandable if it was a production requirement. Was Lis taking a well earned break or filming her scenes for The Marriage of Sarah Jane Smith?

It's also fairly ironic that Fisher and Adams wrote K9 out of City of Death for precisely the reason he was deployed here to vanquish the enemy. True, his appearance was part of Luke's plan and he wasn't the real K9 (somehow having knowledge of his masters and mistresses despite having originated from a drawing which means he might as well equally be wondering where Romana, Leela, her K9 and the rest of Gallifrey have got to). But as the writers in the original series soon realised, you have to use the robot dog sparingly otherwise your audience will be waiting around for him to save the day, each and every week. After set up the creepiness of this monster from the painting, the writer effectively capsized his good work by making him easily beaten with a laser beam.

Having worked on accession databases in art galleries, I could also take against the idea that this museum would have cellar full of work which hasn’t been looked at since Victorian times and which the curator doesn’t have much of an idea about I’m genuinely making myself angry thinking about it which is not what you want on a Friday night and was the least of the story's problems. There’s only so much you can say against a thing before you become tedious yourself and I suspect I’m outstaying my welcome and best get out before I start making unfair direct comparisons with Douglas Adams and going into the usual tat about the decline of television in general. Suffice to say I didn’t like this. At all. And it’s probably spoiled City of Death for me, which is its worst crime of all.

Next Week: The finale. Yay!

The Eternity Trap.

TV One of my current guilty pleasures is The Well, a short form haunted house adventure produced by BBC Switch, the slightly hazy department brought in when it was decided that the BBC Childrens shouldn’t cater for anyone over the age of twelve to offer something to older teenagers, in this case one of those 360 degree productions that also includes a computer game on the website.

Karen You’ve probably heard of it before because it’s also the very horror drama Karen Gillan recorded before moving to Cardiff and though its slender plot-based running time (the episodes are about eight minutes long) doesn’t allow for much in the way of poetic dialogue or revelatory performances (The Kevin Bishop Show was a better expression of Karen’s charms), there are some truly disconcerting moments as the four central teenagers become enveloped in The Well’s mystery and it’s particularly sinister because it was filmed just round the park from where I’m sitting.

It provides an interesting contrast for Phil Ford’s "haunted" house adventure The Eternity Trap which is obviously focused on the younger age group. The Well also has its fair share of torch-lit dark corridor moments but is dealing in psychological horror as each of the characters finds themselves becoming part of “whatever’s down there” in some cases almost killing them in the process. In this Sarah Jane adventure, though the regulars are often captured and lots of threats are made against them, all of them are in a kind of implied danger and none of them really got hurt – only Enrico Casali from The Wheel in Space, sorry, Commander Ridgeway from The Sea Devils, sorry Erasmus Darkening was hurt in the end (though given we knew nothing much about him and he was only sucked into a portal I expect even that’s not true). The rule seems to be – kids tv – no hurt the regulars – hazy teenage tv – hurt them plenty.

Yet The Eternity Trap does mange to be properly unsettling in places and not just because of Adam Gillen’s (no relation) performance (which seemed to pitched somewhere between Richard Pearce giving us his Jeremy Fitzoliver in The Paradise of Death and Dustin Diamond giving us his Screech in Saved By The Bell). For once, the budget constraints of the series work for the story, cutting Sarah Jane, Clyde and Rani off from most of the fantastical elements which usually aid them in their adventures, Mr Smith, K9, the Attic and Luke (Tommy Knight probably off doing his GCSEs or filming a Luke heavy episode for later in the series) and conveniently their mobile phones and putting them into a single scary location (assuming this wasn’t recorded in about five different locations like these things usually are). Aided only by a sonic lipstick, tricorder wrist watch and some not-ghosts with a keen eye for well paced exposition, means that easy answers aren’t always forthcoming providing some genuine mystery.

Ford and director Alice Troughton work their way through the haunted house playbook from top to bottom, but in a fairly knowing way, in that way that Tom Baker refers to when he says "Doctor Who is watched at several levels in an average household. The smallest child terrified behind a sofa or under a cushion, and the next one up laughing at him, and the elder one saying 'sh, I want to listen', and the parents saying 'isn't this enjoyable'.” We know that the books moving about, doors closing, wind in a still room, random sourceless noises and presences appearing and disappearing and the monster we can only see in eye of terror of its prey through point of view shots or red eyes in the darkness are clichés hoary and old but we can giggle at the fact that this could be the first time some kids are exposed to them knowing that they’ll graduate to Poltergeist, The Blair Witch Project and Halloween later. They might be cliché’s but they work.

When Troughton stops us from being able to see what’s going on outside the televisual frame by not providing obvious cutaways and calls on composer Sam Watts to layer in some deathly inhuman sounds on the soundtrack it’s difficult not get a slight chill, especially if like me you’re watching it in a cold room (and can’t be arsed to get up and put the radiator on). And we can tell that Ford knows what he’s doing because in the opening episode, when, and not for the first time in the Whoniverse, he invokes Nigel Kneale; this isn’t a couple of kooks investigating the phenomena in the house but scientists from the Pharos Insitute on a research trip, a trope that Kneale consistently used, and it’s suggested that the ghostly activity might be a way of proving the Stone Tape theory, which the Quatermass writer of course turned into a tv play in the early 70s that also revolved around a haunted mansion (and not using the inverted commas that have to surround the pile at the centre of The Eternity Trap).

As a threat Erasmus Darkening was a little bit disappointing. The trapping of those poor people in a nether dimension was a bit non-specific (certainly less clear than in Big Finish's The Chimes at Midnight) and with the exception of that wonderful shot of the multitude on the stairs had all of the hallmarks of an Ainley Master special, lots of tell, not much show, plenty of giggling, lots of tricks. Rather like Torchwood’s Bilis Manger he promises much, has volumes of personality, is a bit creepy, probably frightening enough for a generation who missed out on The Demon Headmaster, but is also somehow aireless. It’s the timeslot perhaps which stops this leather-pated scoundrel from turning up to eleven; Sumpter constantly seemed forced to hold something back, as though he was expecting the next line to be filled with some black language that would open up the gates of hell and he didn’t want to go too far just in case. Perhaps another time (editor, please insert a funny joke here about European exchange students. Thanks).

But all in all, I’m quite enamoured with The Eternity Trap. It’s certainly Phil Ford’s best script since The Last Sontaran and like that season two opener, really benefited from being set in one location and with a tiny group of characters, far away from the multiple location large cast stories in which the needs of production have a habit of overwhelming the story. I’m not sure why Floella Benjamin plays Professor Rivers like she’s still narrating the documentaries on the Black Guardian dvd boxset all strange intonation and wild line readings but on the upside story also features Callum Blue, the Fitz Kreiner I have in my head and the best Doctor we’ll never have because he’s too much like David Tennant. Despite a floppy wig Callum gives a knock out performance as Lord Marshwood, yet another apparition after a year and a half on (the not quite as good after Bryan Fuller left) Dead Like Me. There’s a nice screwball relationship brewing between Clyde and Rani with the former’s habit of joking about everything he sees like a demented comedian's Twitter account and roving hands clearly getting on the latter’s wick and it’s nice to see Sarah Jane not treating a threat like it’s the scariest thing she’s ever seen, remembering that, to paraphrase a different franchise, she’s flown from one end of the galaxy to the other, and seen a lot of strange stuff.

Next Week: The series risks stepping over sacred ground. Will Mona have a tattoo on her back that reads "This is a fake"?

The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith.

TV Before the gap year, one idea I wish they’d thought about was to have the Doctor crop up in other shows, but only ever in the background, rather like the knitted toy from Harry Hill’s TV Burp. So we’d see the timelord, screwdriver in hand, running down the corridors of Holby City, chatting with the gardener in Jane Austen’s Hartfield, looking slightly annoyed as part of the studio audience on Strictly (presumably keep an eye on her sagacity) and the TARDIS sitting once again in Albert Square (finally canonising, once and for all Dimensions in Time). A scheduling nightmare for David Tennant perhaps, but a great way of keeping fans watching the BBC when their favourite show isn’t on television.

Eventually it would become apparent that all of these appearances aren’t simple cameos but connected together to form a story, the various bits and bobs eventually becoming part of a slightly larger drama leading into one of the specials perhaps or standing alone. Great as I thought this idea was, I had feared that the Doctor’s appearance in The Sarah Jane Adventures would just be a miniature version of it, a vague appearance in the middle of the story, perhaps to sort out the cliffhanger ala Angel turning up at in the last couple of episodes of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Silly me. For months this crossover had been trailed as a proper adventure for the Doctor and so it was, in a brilliant, brilliant way.

Don't expect this review of The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith to be the most coherent piece of writing you've ever seen. I'm too excited. There will be repetitious use of prop words, tiresome hyperbole and as many synonyms of the word excellent as my word processor and synonym.com can muster.

More than the first two stories this series, each of these episodes had a distinctive flavour. The opening instalment, the set up, was a funny, sweet, tender in place and hilarious. By spreading the story out over a couple of weeks, we were finally able to see the attic team within a rather more realistic context, instead of the artificially short timescale bursts of action that make up much of the rest of the series. There’s something about this kind of experimentation that immediately makes the drama more substantial, more like a family series and it’s a credit to writer Gareth Roberts that he felt that he could sustain it within just twenty-odd minutes.

The scenes in which the kids were curious about Sarah Jane’s new man but had to hide the alien elements of their lives were hilarious, the potential double bluff of the package which we might presume would be a Graske turning out to be a cartoon alien, a good choice. Well directed too, with the clever use (patented by the Zucker Brothers) of slapstick occurring behind a perfectly reasonable conversation happening in the foreground. During a story in which characters like Clyde or Rani could be sidelined and might have been in other series, Roberts was careful to keep them in the story from the off and remained active participants right through of the conclusion (even if we missed out on a double take from the Doctor in relation to her name).

I also love the way that the two “novelty” characters with essentially the same narrative function (what was Mr Smith if not a K9 substitute?) bickering about who gets to engage the catalytic plot converter. It’s certainly brought out the best in Alexander Armstrong, who began playing his character in a disconcerting monotone but has brought a sardonic deadpan quality to his lines of late. The integration of K9 has been less of a jolt too, the robot dog becoming an extra confident for Sarah Jane on those subjects she can’t talk to the kids about. This is K9 and Company done properly and certainly preferable to the moribund K-9 which is looking more horrific with every new preview clip (tag line "WHO's a good dog?" -- ugh).

The episode clearly had some money spent on it. Look! People! In cafés and streets! The kids running around places that don’t look like they’ve experienced a 28 Weeks Later zombie clearance! Nigel Havers mustn’t have been cheap either, but worth every Flainian pobble bead. Who else but Havers could turn his character, beige Peter Dalton, into the kind of man this older version of Sarah Jane could convincingly fall in love quickly without any suspicions that he was some alien terror bent on sucking out her brains etc, but that some of the kids might be a bit apprehensive about because he’s so charming?

There were some beautifully played moments between him and Tommy Knight, who excelled as Luke tried to come to terms with the possibility of a having a proper father figure, something he didn’t even have in the Bane. But everyone raised their game here as though, with the impending appearance of the Doctor, they realised that their series finally had a proper shop window for their wares and they’d better get themselves in order, dust down the wooden brushes and plastic fruit. Sam Watt’s music was some of the most heartfelt the franchise has produced – has K9’s theme always been the middle-eighth?

And what an appearance. The extra million who bothered to turn over from the repeat of Midsomer Murders on the other side might have been a bit perturbed that the Doctor didn’t appear straight away, but the grunt and growl of the distressed TARDIS whispering through the episode perfectly teased his emergence, even if there was a certain panto element to us kids shouting “It’s the Doctor, he’s trying to get through…” to our heroes, going about their business, unaware of what the Type 40 even sounds like.

Even so, with all the build up, these two episodes had a lot to live up to, and in a way it would have been, like Christmas and World Championship Boxing in Las Vegas, completely understandable if it didn’t quite live up to expectations. Then to have the Doctor burst through the doors during “lawful impediment” was just perfect. There’s that word again. Perfect. But it was, it just was. I applauded right through the credits, which I know is perfectly possible these days since they last about three seconds, but totally unheard of at The Sarah Jane Adventures.

The intellectual exercise of writing the Doctor into this story must have been immense. As we’ve been told time and again, and we’ve seen, he’s an all powerful wandering god and in the person of David Tennant one of the most famous people on television at the moment, an immense presence who if you’re not careful could like Sean Kingston in that leaked Sugababes track overpower your regulars and make them look stupid. But then, if you deliberately try and handicap the character so that he’s around but isn’t really much use in the story and doesn’t have some part in the resolution even though he’s the most capable one there you’re going to look stupid.

Dr3 Gareth Roberts’s intricate solution was indeed to handicap the Doctor somewhat with one of the main sources of his power, the TARDIS phasing in and out, but to have the character himself voicing the fact that he needs the kid’s help to succeed, saying how important they are to the whole processes of saving the world or more specifically their place in it once again, and then turning them into his companion figures for the duration, offering them hints to the situation so that they could work everything out for themselves, which in production terms meant that they weren’t just standing around being lectured at by the all knowing timelord buzzing about. The climax recalled the original first series of nuWho (Moffat is renumbering), in that the Doctor, and in this case Sarah Jane, convinced the not necessarily as special Dalton to sacrifice his potential happiness for the good of the universe.

It must have been quite weird for Tennant to complete filming on his final story chronologically, The End of Time (or whatever his last episode is called), with the regeneration. But it wasn’t noticeable in the episode, and he simply seemed to be relishing the opportunity to take the character around the block one last time (his final recorded line as the Doctor was "‘You two – with me. Spit spot!"). All of the ticks that most of us know and love were there, the bit were he talks epically in a lower voice, the shouty friendly introduction, "K-niiiine!", and the stuttering. He was even gifted a proper stand-off with the Trickster (Key To Time. Squee. Eternals. Squeeeee. Hmm, that was a good one.) with a bit of foreshadowing for the future specials (what’s this about a gate?).

Budget wise (not that I'm obsessing) trapping the regulars in second long pockets of time meant that the wedding extras didn't need to be around for most of the shoot but also lent these scenes an justifiable and plausable intimacy (unlike, say, pretending that it's a Sunday). This kind of time trap is actually a fairly untapped sci-fi concept as far as I know -- only Star Trek's Wink of an Eye springs to mind (though a couple of other Treks featured pockets of time being sped up and down) -- and the rendering -- the repeated shot of a horse race -- tastefully concise if slightly surreal.

From a film studies perspective I was very impressed with the way that, while the Doctor remained an active presence in his scenes, the point of view mainly stayed specifically with the regulars. I was also pleased that Sarah Jane wasn’t simply relegated to companion status in her own series, realising herself that the ring was the source of the Trickster’s power and that Dalton wasn’t all there. There we odd moments in there in which we saw a return of the character as an independent figure with proper moments of wit rather than mumsy musings, and when the emotional suckerpunch came in knowing she was going to have to sacrifice her man for the good of the world Elizabeth Sladen was just devastating.

As if you hadn’t realised already, I’m fairly convinced this was the best story The Sarah Jane Adventures has produced since the first series and, yes, the perfect expression of what the series is capable of when it stops worrying about trying to keep down with its supposed target audience and just tells a proper story. I would be interested to know what kids made of the climax with Havers the one to properly beat the trickster and Sarah Jane’s teary march from the altar. I was in tears. The Sarah Jane Adventures never does that either.

I complained that after Children of Earth that the production team didn’t seem have brought the same sense of occasion to the kids spin-off. The Wedding of Sarah Jane proved that it is possible, but instead of the darkness of Torchwood, this spin-off can be infused by a sense of wonder, the wonder in the eyes of the kids as they toured the console room at the end (a perfect commemoration of the soon to close Blackpool exhibition where thousands of children in the real world must had the same expression as they stepped through the TARDIS shaped door for all these years).

Now, let’s keep it up shall we?