Our Slitheen's A Wardrobe

She does not look fifty-eight. Really, she doesn't.

And I guess that's down to the essence of what makes this such a treat to watch. It's a programme perfectly in tune with its audience - childlike, without being childish; bright and breezy, oh-so-painfully modern (dayglo orange and now Speccy Magenta paint? bleurrrgh), and packed full of infectious charm. It's like a Silver Age Marvel comic compared with Torchwood's po-faced Crisis On Infinite Earths with all the fun surgically removed from it (and worse). What's wrong with fun? Somebody's got to take on the otherworldly extra-dimensional entities that keep the Chuckle Brothers employed, and long as Liz Sladen looks younger than him, there's hope for CBBC yet.

RTD has delegated the writing duties, but his watchful eye is all over Gareth Roberts' opener which builds upon the sterling work of the pilot, displaying all the style and strengths that made Russell a key player in children's drama in the first place (whatever Doctor Who scripting issues we may have with him now). From the opening narration to the cliffhanger, the episode is told in the direct, matter-of-fact, good old adventure yarn fashion that mirrors exactly how a young'un would relate the same story to us. Cruddy schoolfood, Beanoesque worldview of adults as mad, incompetent or hopelessly out of touch, and pantomime villains that revel in being big kids themselves. Bleepy bloopy whooshy tech things, security cameras with whirry motors, and to top it all off, the IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIVE Frankenstein lab with sparking generators that Helen Raynor's Daleks were too lazy to bother with. Bonus. I love it.

"Between Manimal and Bannerman Road, I don't know who's more apologetic for their childhood tastes"

The reason why Maria suddenly takes a back seat partway through the episode is simple; it's because her job as audience hook is over, and now it becomes Luke's role. You have to keep in mind the age group of this show; most schoolkids will start a new school no more than twice. But everyone goes through several years of puberty, and just as the Silver Age Spider-Man was the perfect metaphor for adolescence, so too is Luke's naivety and growing pains, for whom everything about himself and the outside world is unknown territory. In a sense then, Luke is the 'normal' one, magnified about a hundred times. What I suspect the series is doing is using Luke as a focal point to demonstrate a different aspect of growing up each week - in Bane, it was the sense of wonder at experiencing new things; in Revenge, it's that making mistakes and learning from them is a normal human function. It's not half a whopper though when he hands over the stabiliser equation just because he doesn't know any better yet and it's always the companion that cocks it up. Neil thinks of Luke as a mini-Doctor, but I think Luke is more like Hobbes to the Doctor's Calvin; the Doctor knows all about common sense, he just chooses to ignore it. And as for Clyde, you know as well as I do that TV sci-fi has never been 'cool'. Ever. So that's him stuffed.

Speaking of Archetypes: being a Whovian/furry/Asperger makes me a three-time loser in the stereotype 'fan virgin' stakes. So this needs explaining to me. Are all ex's really that spitefully shallow and bitchy? I thought Catherine Tate was supposed to be in another show? Way to twist the knife there with the single duvet. And while the furry in me should be celebrating the shout out to Manimal... it was Manimal. Three months of Letterman material from the arse-end of Glenn Larson. Between that and Bannerman Road, I don't know who's more apologetic for their childhood tastes; Gareth Roberts or myself.

"How do the Slitheen keep their human skins fresh, supple and durable enough to wear over and over again? After all, they can't pickle them"

Who else got fooled by the cliffhanger? The sneaky sods went and used the show's own message - celebrate diversity, be true to who you are, whatev - to pull a fast one when the equally excrutiatingly 'normal' fat kid, put down by classmates and aliens alike, reveals himself to be the new Japanese economy model. I commented on how Invasion Of The Bane, to its kudos, pulled no punches on the subject of death. And while you may not immediately realise as it's offscreen, the plot as written had the aliens murder a real schoolkid in order to use his skin - which only highlights the special uniqueness of the parent franchise since there aren't many shows of any stripe that can comfortably run that one past a parent in this Maddyfied media climate. I'm half-expecting a body to turn up whenever I see that garden being dug.

Somewhere out there, Roald Dahl is cracking open a celestial Taff End bitter.

With only half the runtime of the parent show to fill, part two will inevitably resort to the 'hero-pulls-vital-information-out-from-own-arse' syndrome which which the Tenth Doctor shows off with all the time. Well, why not? A prize snoop of Sarah Jane's calibre should know already about the Slitheen and their weaknesses, if she's done her homework following the School Reunion tip-off from Billie about "Slitheen in Daaaahnin' Street". Next week's trailer predicts the stakes will be raised a lot higher with more Slitheen than the present four still to accounted for; there would have to be, to build so many generators worldwide in the time given. You don't want to scrutinise the plot too closely though: what do these particular Slitheen want 'revenge' for, since they operate in families rather than as a race, and the clan from Eccythump's gap year were all eliminated? Why hide your alien tech in a set of bases all built to the same iconic design template, if you're not trying to draw attention to them? What were Health & Safety doing instead of investigating not just the food, but the number of mysterious staff disappearances from every completed site, once the Slitheen overseeing the construction work had moved on? And a question left unanswered from two years ago that springs to mind: how do the Slitheen keep their human skins fresh, supple and durable enough to wear over and over again? After all, they can't pickle them. Now I'm left wondering what Slitheen skin care ads must look like.

One final note of appreciation: Sarah Jane Adventures finishes at 5.30pm, making it the last CBBC programme of the day. So not only does it leave the kids with an exciting cliffhanger in their heads for the rest of the evening, but Murray's end theme is left intact and not gabbed over by braindead CBBC invertebrates, so it's win/win. If this is also Russell's idea, my respect for the man has just jumped threefold.

Richard Scarry's Busytown Book Of Aliens has this to say about Revenge Of The Slitheen, part one: the episode was written as a means to offload Andy Cunningham's leftover mashed potato, last seen on TV around 1999.

Comments

[Stu]

Good god that's a great review. I'm wondering if every episode is going to be dredge up a title from a Glen A. Larson series. If Automan, The Fall Guy, B.J. and the Bear, Quincy, Alias Smith and Jones, Magnum, P.I. and Battlestar Galactica aren't all name dropped by the close of business I'll be very disappointed.