‘All the wasted years leading to this moment. But somehow I always knew I was different.’ The only problem with this is no fault of the script, but a sequencing failure that placed two stories that involved Michael Kerrigan directing crowds of zombified people to wander through the streets – even the doors to the theatre look like the doors to Spellman’s clown museum in The Day of the Clown.
‘What if astrology is true?’ This is almost entirely built around Russ Abbot’s performance as Martin Trueman, a fraudulent fortune teller given genuine powers by the Ancient Lights. It’s a stock Doctor Who villain role – Heironymous and Lucius Petrus Dextrus are other astrologers gifted with true abilities by powerful aliens – and in many respects this is the first Sarah Jane Adventure I could see working as an episode of the parent show with only minor tweaks (Cheryl would have to be a friend of the companion’s mother, I suppose). But the parent show probably would have got a bigger name than Abbot to play the villain, and there it would have missed a trick.
‘Today, just for you, Miss Smith, I will chill the blood of a nation. A thousand families will ache with loss.’ A surprisingly contemplative Part Two, with less running around than usual and a correspondingly more significant role for Elisabeth Sladen, who gets to play Sarah Jane’s fear and emotional vulnerability as she recalls her haunted childhood. In one sense this is just setting up a story later in the series, but it comes naturally from the drama here, and leaves this feeling a richer experience than Ford’s previous Sarah Jane Adventures.
‘I see clowns that don’t exist.’ Stephen King’s IT reimagined for a family audience, but there’s enough to make the parallel undeniable (the children being kidnapped; the sinister floating balloon; the clown’s ability to change shape; the old pictures and woodcuts depicting it through history; its identity as ‘Odd Bob’ which echoes Pennywise’s name Bob Gray; Clyde, as the ‘joker in the pack’ referencing the wolfman – the monster that menaced the similarly jokey Richie).
‘Try my size fives, Humpty.’ As usual in The Sarah Jane Adventures the pay-off involves a lot more running about than the set-up. For the CBBC audience I think that’s absolutely fair enough, but it does make it a bit more difficult to find things to talk about. Instead, my mind wanders to vague inconsistencies like why Kaagh with his high-gravity musculature can’t force open a door that the kids have just closed (or why he doesn’t just blast it open with the gun he’s just been liberally firing). There is one surprise: Lucy Skinner turns out not to be Maria’s replacement – with her warring parents and her science skills (and Clare Thomas’ CBBC acting credits), it looks like that’s the direction the show is taking.
‘I met your people a long time ago. And some time off yet.’ What a great idea: pitting Sarah Jane against her first enemy and connecting it to the year’s big Doctor Who UNIT epic, ticking boxes for both old and new series fans. The call backs to The Time Warrior (including the crashed Sontaran sphere that needs to be repaired, and Sarah Jane revealing Kaagh like the third Doctor using his rhondium sensor) are very pleasing. But equally, this makes good use of repurposed footage from The Sontaran Stratagem.
‘Oi, get out of my TARDIS!’ A sweet scene written for the 2008 Proms, with the Doctor interacting with an audience of fans and families. The plot – a Graske invades the TARDIS to discover the Doctor composing a symphony based on the movement of planets, as a pretext for escaping to cause havoc on Earth – is essentially a pretext for Tennant to communicate directly with the audience.
‘This is my final victory, Doctor. I have shown you yourself.’ The cliffhanger resolution sets the tone for the episode. The Doctor regenerating into himself is a neat trick that cleverly avoids having to deliver on the implication of the previous episode. And all the way through, RTD pulls off similar feints: ‘Everlasting death for the most faithful companion’ becomes “Donna gets a mind wipe”; Rose is reunited with the Doctor forever – except it’s a meta-crisis duplicate. The Children of Time come together at the end, only to stand around and watch while the Doctor/Donna saves the day. There’s something vaguely unsatisfactory about this – not exactly the audience being cheated, but being given less than expected.
‘Someone tried to move the Earth once before, a long time ago…’ The closest Doctor Who has come to one of the Marvel Avengers movies, as the ‘Children of Time’ assemble. At the time, this was true event television – possibly the last time my whole family watched TV together. Even my mum, permanently sniffy about the series, was drawn in. Years later, it’s easy to pick flaws with this. The TARDIS zipping about gives an illusion of movement that’s not really present in the script, which unfolds as a series of scenes on the guest stars’ stock sets: Sarah Jane in her attic, Torchwood in the Hub. Martha at least gets to teleport from New York to her mother’s front room, but this is a way from the vertical chases of Army of Ghosts, or the thriller elements of The Sound of Drums.
‘You’re the most important woman in the whole of creation.’ Another Doctor-lite episode that becomes a series stand-out. The benefit of Turn Left against Love & Monsters or Blink is that the companion is present throughout, and so this becomes Donna’s own Father’s Day or Human Nature, as she has to hold the line without the Doctor’s help in her own version of The City at the Edge of Forever plot.
Next Time... 