Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

No Mike, I've Blown Them Up

Revenge Of The Slitheen, part two

This Alice Troughton woman. Any relation to Pat? Is that how she got the gig as one of the few woman directors in the boys-only club that is Doctor Who (stop sniggering)? Though if that recap is any judge, she tutored under Lovett Bickford rather than Fiona Cumming. That was a long one for twenty-five minutes of programme, wasn't it? I'll wait a couple more weeks for the jury to pronounce on whether it was blatant padding or not, but I'd have been slightly narked if I copped all that at 5.30 last week on digital right after the first episode like I was some kind of lemming.

There is something glorious about the OTT antics in Sarah Jane Adventures, a quality that Doctor Who itself (don't even think of asking about Torchwood in this lifetime) doesn't quite seem to grasp. The same quality that makes the Slitheen far more at home in this show than they ever were in Aliens Of London / World War Three, that makes the headmaster's Kenneth Williams performance a delight when much the same New Earth larking on Tennant's part was an embarassment. The same quality that lets you accept turning off the sun without a second thought when you know it's the biggest load of cobblers the Whoniverse has ever seen. And it's hard to put your finger on exactly what that quality is. It's not the demeaning 'kid's programme' epithet in which anything automatically goes. It's more than the juxtaposition of the outrageous with the everyday, since we were sick of the suburbia angle by the end of Eccythump's fifth episode. Maybe it's the way that only the main characters are aware of the goings-on, that makes it an exclusive club to which the viewer is invited. Perhaps it's the audience connection to the script giving the cast things to do that the watching child fantasies about every day ("I blew up the headmaster!"), while Doctor Who remains resolutely out of reach. Maybe it's the Back To The Future music. I don't quite know.

Clyde shone this week, didn't he? Not so swaggeringly cocksure that you'd hate him, just the right amount of brains to earn his own self-gratulation with honours, nor so utterly useless that the Mickey alarm goes off. This is also fortunate not only for the makings of an appealing character the kids can really get behind (STOP SNIGGERING, I said), but because with the young-at-heart pseudo-Doctor and three companions in tow dashing about the set like headless chickens, Clyde is nothing like the morose psychic space-princess that would complete the unfortunate group dynamic of Adric, Nyssa and Tegan. So Clyde wins. Collective sighs of relief all round from a blog still trauamtised at the mere sight of a plastic bin - when they sign him on to write for Torchwood, then I'll worry.

"I am a child of the Slitheen!" Bastard offspring of Peter Cook's Superthunderstingcar sketch more like, with those arms continually waving about, looking for all the world like the loser in a game of kiss-chase while the hunt left him for dust. Get knotted, Klout. And I fully supported - nay, endorsed - Clyde's bloodthirsty pragmatism after they blew it at the end with the 'everyone feel sorry for the monster' hokum that I'd hoped Doctor Who had grown out of. They'd better not play the 'human' card with all the aliens in this series, making them seem so much like us in a plea for our sympathy. Maybe it's a reaction to the hardening of the Tenth Doctor's character, who wouldn't bat an eyelid about blowing them all to Slithereens after they pissed their chance for redemption away, but Christ; we got it two years ago, let's move on. If you want to feel sorry for the kid, try the one whose skin they stole in the first place as I pointed out last week.

Still, whatever. With SJA and oh alright, Torchwood, we now have Wholia catering to all tastes, whether you want old school creature features with razor-sharp dialogue, flashy setpieces with plenty of knowing winks or the fap material for your latest bishie three way fanfiction (probably be less embarassing than its source material). Old Who, New Who and Spoo Who. And if you don't believe that last one, you're not paying enough attention to the gushing fangirl love echoed in Sarah-Jane's heartfelt soliloquay to the longing absence of the Doctor.

Maybe if we all shout FREAK WEATHER CONDITIONS! in unison, we can bring him back.

Richard Scarry's Busytown Book Of Aliens has this to say about Revenge Of The Slitheen, part two: plans for the six-inch Clyde with chip sandwich accessory were dropped after they remembered what a flop the previous Chip Action Figure was.

I hope it's Chips, it's Chips!

SJA: Revenge of the Slitheen Part 2

Whilst the first episode was involved in setting up the main threat of the story and setting up the mood and themes, this episode is the one where the plot arrives and everything needs to be neatly tied up in 25 minutes.

There was plenty of running up and down corridors and all of the main characters have a laugh trying to pronounce Raxacoricofallapatorius (which is easier to type then to say - just!) and they manage to come to the same conclusion as the Doctor and Rose did in World War 3 in pretty much the same way as they did, with a little help from Mr Smith, of course, who will, I think, prove a useful tool in the series but could also be relied on a little too much if they aren't careful, but mainly from Clyde's cold chip butty (what is it with chips and the new series of Doctor Who? It seems to be an ongoing theme) and the Slitheen's reaction to it.

The Slitheen looked far more menacing in this episode than they did in the first part especially when roaming around the corridors of a school. If I was a young child watching, I would be looking over my shoulders in the school corridors the next day!

The direction was great again and is quite possible some of the best direction ever seen on children's television ever (Alice Troughton needs to work on Who, as soon as possible, to complete the set of working on all 3 series) and Gareth Roberts provides another excellent script.

The acting of the adult leads (apart from Liz Sladen and Joseph Milson) was hammier than the ham counter at a supermarket in Hampshire. My girlfriend (soon to be wife - 4 days and counting) thought that the baby Slitheen was cute. I am not too sure that was the reaction they were looking for but that was what they got from one adult viewer anyway.

There was also stuff for the original series fans in the episode such as Liz calling on her friends at U.N.I.T. (this series would be a much better place to have an episode featuring the Brigadier than the parent series I feel) and her description of the Doctor near the end. It was also quite heartwarming to see Sarah Jane Smith finally being able to become a mother, something that does seem to be an issue ever since she appeared in School Reunion.

Revenge of the Slitheen was a good opening gambit for The Sarah Jane Adventures, and judging by the trailer for the next episode it looks like it is only going to get better. It might not be aimed at me but I am sure enjoying it. Why should the children have all the fun?

Way of the Exploding Raxacorricofallapatorian

I carried on watching CBBC after The Sarah Jane Adventures tonight so that I could catch the news headlines during Newsround (or nr as it seems to be called now).  I knew that the Burmese horror might not be mentioned but I was interested to see how they’d treat the Tory party conference.  During the seventies, I remember the John Craven version of this stuff being pretty literate and in fact I knew people who would actually get their news from the interestingly coloured shirted one sitting on the brown set.  How times have changed.  Instead there was a shouty young correspondent who looked bizarrely like a girl I knew at university (no not in that way) standing in front of the Houses of Parliament with the camera at a weird angle talking to me like I was four years old. 

Now I know that nr is supposed to cater for a wide youth audience but this was literally ’Gordon Brown is the prime minister.  He may call a general election because he wasn’t voted for by the over-eighteens as Tony Blair who used to be the prime minister y’know handed it to him.  It all depends what happens in Blackpool where the Conservatives are meeting.’  Cut to some VT of Dave, Dee, Dozy, Mick and William Hague sharing some laughs around a breakfast table on the promenade.  I was being talked down to, something I don’t ever remember Craven doing and in fact it was like a kids version of the old Alas Smith & Jones sketch, ‘And now some news for the elderly’ (‘Hello.  Hello, yes.  The prime minister, THE PRIME MINISTER, yes, nice woman, nice woman who runs the country, yes, well she says it’s all going alright basically, yes […] Well take care, I’ll pop ‘round again in the morning’.

The reason I’m mentioning all this is because it’s in stark contrast as to how well The Sarah Jane Adventures is pitching to it’s audience, packing in enough fun and action and jokes for the kids and actually a fair amount of comedy and … oh hold on I’ve forgotten to do something …

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Revenge of the Slitheen: Episode Two

… what was I saying?  Oh right, a fair amount of comedy, surprises and call backs for adults.  Even if I wasn’t a fan and therefore bound to watch anything the series currently with taxi cab logo is connected to, I think I would still want to tune into this and not be to embarrassed about it.  Only now and then when a point is being stressed does it seem as though it’s anything other than a family show and couldn’t be broadcast in a later timeslot, perhaps on a Saturday night.  Unlike the approach to politics in new new nr (which admittedly won back some of my respect for a viewer piece about eczema) it grants that the viewer has a modicum of intelligence.

The Slitheen youngster, for example, could have been the Scrappy-Doo of the clan, an irritating little shit undermining the genuine menace inherent in these maniacal beings.  Instead as the episode went on, writer Gareth Roberts underlined that this was indeed a family to the point that when the inevitable happened at the conclusion it seemed genuinely shocking that our heroes would let the father and son die despite everything they’d done.  Certainly it’s the same lesson that occurs at the conclusion of the TV Movie when the Eighth Doctor offers The Master his hand, but the explosion of Slitheen matter, a moment which previously in both their debut story and earlier in this episode has been played for laughs became genuinely shocking, the thematic implications of Boomtown taken to its deus-ex-machina-less conclusion, providing an unexpected depth which implies that actually this series isn‘t going to be going for the cute and funny all the time.

Once again the episode was structured in a very old school way, with a ten minutes scene in which the aliens developed their plans and the Doctor, sorry Sarah-Jane and her companions, sorry, young friends worked out how they could be beaten.  Mr. Smith (Blake 7’s fish tank computer Orac with a decent screen) is a useful narrative shorthand, but like K9, he’s not perfect, he can’t give an answer to every question immediately.  As I’d feared last week, we were taken over some old expository ground, but as the infernal machine lost power just as it was about to reveal the Slitheen weakness, I wonder how many kids shouted ‘Vinegar!’ at the screen (I did).  This beat worked either way because in the subsequent scene in which Clyde remembered something which was seeded in the previous episode there was a fair bit of excitement in watching the characters trying to work out the answer, both if you knew the explantion or not and demonstrated once again that Kelsey’s replacement does have a fair few more rocks in his head.  But judging by his interigation of Mr. Smith, he does seem like he’s going to be a bit of a Turlough though with the potential to go rogue before find redemption.

The second half was the race against time, an attack on the Slitheen base with two bottles of vinegar and some wits, no less ludicrous a frontal assault than the kind which appeared in the classic series which usually involved Pertwee rolling up in a milk cart dressed an a cleaning lady or whatever.  Their dash through the street demonstrated that either this series has some clever accountants or it’s not been a victim of BBC budget cuts just yet.  Look -- a street full of cars and people!  Well alright, the cars are at odd angles which is strange considering the power is supposed to have instantly rendered them inoperable and the people look nothing like the kinds of people you find in suburbia (unless those fashions are supposed to be a nod to that fact this series is set in the future, by the Whovian calender).  But look cars!  People!  No quick cut from Sarah’s house to the foyer of the school.  Actually some of the action in this story has been better directed than in the mother series and we haven’t even reached the Graham Harper one yet.

In the Doctor Who Magazine preview Russell T Davies said that he was concerned that the stories might be a bit small scale but in the end they all became epic and the Slitheen’s plan was the first demonstration of this.  How fun that in this adventure, the problem at hand spanned the globe and even led to a dimming of the Sun!  A similar threat in the closing episode of Torchwood seemed overblown and wasted but here it was handled perfectly well (Texan Slitheen!) and logically and in keeping with stories of the past  -- where once it was Earth being crippled by the same three Cybermen now it’s apparently two male Slitheens and their spawn.  Just as you were thinking -- actually Sarah-Jane, there a military organisation you know who could be helping out with this, she’s on the phone to them in the closing moments (’My love to the Brig…’ -- squee).  You could gasp at a conclusion in which the whole plan is scuppered by a blast from the sonic-lipstick, but it gave Luke an important redemptive moment and a neat bit of alien avoiding action to boot (he’ll make a great Rugby player when he gets to college).

Ultimately though the episode was about the name within the title.  Liz Sladen, given some breathing space, an attic to pace in or the arm of a couch to sit on, mesmerizes and commands in way I‘m not sure we‘ve seen before, even in her earlier ‘solo‘ appearances, the likes of Downtime or the Big Finish series.  Watch the moment when she’s relating her life story to Clyde and talking about traveling in space and time; to some kids it’ll be a revelation, to others it’ll be a confirmation and to the rest of us, nostalgically reliving those old adventures through dvd, it’s a communion because we’ve been right there with her and you almost feel as though it’s Liz herself as well as her character thinking back over those old times.  The character has very much come to terms with her own place in the universe and how the Doctor fits into that; she’s no longer resentful of being left behind, happy to be a defender of the Earth (and lord knows with the Torchwood approach to that, it’s going to need it).  When she says that she hopes the Doctor returns, you wonder if a late season cameo isn’t entirely beyond the bounds of possibly.  When asked about it in the pre-show publicity, Liz cheekily didn’t rule it out …

Next week:  Things look decidedly mid-period Pertwee -- nuns AND a gorgon?

Down with the Kids

I wrote this last week after having watched both of the episodes together, but I thought I’d leave it until now to post it so as not to risk getting moaned at for spoilers and so forth.

I have not been a viewer of Children’s BBC for quite some years now – more than a decade. I just about finished with it at the end of the Broom Cupboard era back in the mid-1990s, so it was obviously quite a while since I had sat down to watch a CBBC drama. Some things never change, though – there are still flashy graphics, loud music, and chatty presenters accompanied by strange puppets. This is still, for now, the stuff that these kids’ years of nostalgia will be made of.

This is still, for now, the stuff that these kids’ years of nostalgia will be made of.

I am sure that many of you will have been struck, as I have, by just what a bizarre thing it is that this show exists at all. Five years ago, who could ever have expected that Sarah Jane Smith, still played by Elisabeth Sladen, would be starring in her own BBC One show? It’s utterly barmy, but at the same time utterly fantastic, and it just goes to show what a strange old world we live in now. What was once not even the stuff of wild fan imaginings is here and being broadcast on the BBC.

It’s fairly well known that CBBC initially approached the Cardiff production team about doing a ‘Young Doctor’ series, an approach that was mercifully cut dead by Russell T Davies lest it take away from the mystery of the character. However, whether by accident or design, I think you can see some vestiges of the idea of a ‘Young Doctor’ approach in Luke’s character. It’s partly because the young actor playing him has such a pleasingly other-worldly aspect to him at times, partly because of his huge intelligence coupled with a somewhat naïve view of interpersonal relations, but mostly I think because of his status as an outsider.

Perhaps Kelsey went to a better school.

The Doctor isn’t like us, and wants to rebel against the system, to not fit in at all if he can possibly avoid it. Luke is also different, but is desperate to conform, so here the comparison is also a contrast. And yet, I think you can well imagine the young Doctor as a bit of a social outcast back on Gallifrey, and being as keen to try and fit in as Luke is here, simply because that’s what young people are like – rebellion in general as a principle doesn’t tend to come along until later. In any case, the comparisons are perhaps only slight, but they hold well enough to add some interest and enigma to Luke.

Unlike Luke, Maria’s other sidekick from Invasion of the Bane, Kelsey, has been completely disappeared without so much as a goodbye phone call. Allegedly – and I stress allegedly because you know what Who fandom is like for groundless rumours – this was because the young actress concerned was a bit of a pest on-set for the first episode, but whatever the case it seems that she has been erased from history, Nineteen Eighty-Four style. Perhaps she went to a better school.

I can’t say I’m all that sorry about her absence, as she was one of the more irritating aspects of that New Year special, and her absence has allowed the character of Clyde to be brought in to replace her. In some ways he is simply a male version, streetwise and self-confident, although not nearly so self-involved and with an enjoyable stroke of humour to him. Even from these first two episodes you can tell that the team of youngsters fits together much more comfortably than it did before, and they do actually seem like a group of people who might want to hang around with each other, whereas I could never picture Maria wanting to be in Kelsey’s company for all that much longer.

The problem with having such a strong central trio of teenagers means that Sarah could risk becoming a supporting character in her own programme.

Of course the problem with having such a strong central trio of teenagers means that Sarah could risk becoming a supporting character in her own programme, as some criticised the Ninth Doctor of being in the first series of the revived Doctor Who. I never fully agreed with that criticism, although I could see where those who levelled it were coming from, and I don’t think Sarah will be sidelined here, although there were some points at which you could be left to wonder ‘Whose name is it in the titles again?’ But this is a children’s show, after all – it can’t all be based around an older woman. This isn’t 1981 any more, and it’s not K9 and Company. (‘Thank God!’, come the cries from certain quarters!).

Indeed, you have to say that it’s pretty surprising – and admirable – that in a day and age when we seem to live in an ageist society so much of the time, CBBC were perfectly happy to allow a 59 year-old to carry a children’s show without panicking that it might not be in their demographic. Sladen has seen her chance and grabbed it with both hands and who can blame her – it’s so weird and wonderful that such a series exists, and nobody would have expected such a turn of good fortune would come her way. Back to the bizarreness of it all again. Sarah Jane seems older and colder in some ways, but warmer in others as she gets the hang of this whole motherhood lark, when she would have expected that such things would have passed her by. Sladen does well on the whole, although it’s probably best to gloss over her ‘acting’ alongside the children’s puppet on CBBC when guesting in the studio to answer a few questions between the two episodes. That was the first bit of her I saw that afternoon when I switched on after getting home just to make sure my recordings were up and running okay, so I was a touch worried for her, but there was no such hamming in the programme proper.

The older cast members as a whole acquitted themselves very well. Maria’s dad, Alan, is a very likeable character, although just as Kelsey never seemed like a likely friend of Maria’s, it’s hard to see what he ever saw in Maria’s mother, who seems a right pest. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons Kelsey was dropped – it would be a bit grating to have two such self-involved characters in a programme. Nonetheless, even if they seem hard to imagine as a couple, their insult-trading does make for some good scenes between Maria’s parents, and she does come across as genuinely fond of her daughter even if totally incapable of really looking after her or mothering her properly, hence her being with Alan.

It’s hard to see what he ever saw in Maria’s mother.

One element of the two-parter that really surprised me was the amount of death involved. I have not, as I said above, been a regular viewer of children’s television for quite some years now, and I would have expected that the executive producers and heads of department and so forth would have been a bit more reticent to show actual human beings having been killed, but we got this with the victims of the Slitheen seen at the beginning of the story – and of course the implication that they have killed a child, or a teenager anyway, as well.

But more than this, surely in most other children’s series, the Slitheen child at the end would at least have been spared, as he and his father begged for mercy. But no, not a bit of it – our cold-hearted new Sarah Jane and her crew left them to die. Probably the right thing, on balance, but definitely not what I was expecting, and it gives the show a nice edge.

Another nice edge comes from the mystery and enigma of ‘Mr Smith’, the supercomputer. He is a nice idea, but risks at times seeming like a bit too much of a K9 substitute. However, his scene with Clyde suggests that there is more to come from him and the secrets that he holds, which will doubtless prove an interesting backdrop to the stories.

I am in no way in the target audience for this show, but I enjoyed it immensely, and I think that the opening two-parter has given it an excellent springboard from which to go on to bigger and better things. Certainly if they maintain this quality at least, it could perhaps prove to be one of the best children’s shows of its generation.

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.

Back to School

If you had told me a couple of years ago that there would be a new series of 25 minute adventures with Elisabeth Sladen reprising her role as intrepid investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith then I would have looked at you quizzically and thought that you were totally and utterly mad. It will never happen I thought. How wrong was I?

Revenge of the Slitheen Part One

The main difference between this story and the pilot episode was the length. The pilot was a full hour whereas these stories consist of two 25 minute episodes. After watching the first episode I think that this 25 minute episode format works much better for the series than the hour long single episode format.

the majority of viewers will more than likely be in their 30's

It wouldn't work for Doctor Who nowadays but for children's television it works perfectly well and that is, after all what The Sarah Jane Adventure is, children’s television. Well produced and glossy it may be, but it is still mainly written for and aimed squarely at the children's market, as the magazine Doctor Who Adventures is. Of course, despite this the majority of viewers will more than likely be in their 30's (much like the readership of Doctor Who Adventures).

Considering there was only 25 minutes in this episode there was a hell of a lot going on and it seemed to fit it more action and incidence in one episode than in a number of stories from the original run of Doctor Who. It, quite simply, flew by.

the [Slitheen] in Aliens of London were a little more subdued

There are plenty of references for the adults in the audience to appreciate (such as Manimal. I loved Manimal when I was a kid and Street Hawk but I’m digressing) but the rest of it, the pace, the characters etc are aimed squarely at the children in the audience, hence the scenery chewing of the headmaster and the science teacher (the ones in Aliens of London were a little more subdued that they are in this episode).

Elisabeth Sladen was great again as Sarah Jane, as was Yasmin Paige as Maria (who it seems is meant to be the real star of the show – hence her opening narration bit filling in the gaps for those who hadn’t seen Invasion of the Bane - the touchstone with the core audience as it were).

New character Clyde settles in well taking the place of the gobby Kelsey but not being half as annoying. Although how he can stomach cold chip butties, I will never know.

Was it just me or did the Slitheen costumes not look half as menacing as they did in series one of Doctor Who? I wonder if it was something to do with the way they were shot and lit?

The cliffhanger for this episode took its cue from Aliens of London with all of the main characters coming up against a Slitheen revealing their true appearance. I certainly wasn’t expecting a child Slitheen so that was the biggest surprise of the episode for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed Revenge of the Slitheen part one, it wasn’t made for the likes of me, but it is great television and I look forward to the rest of the series.

It's a Mini Adventure!

Well, that was a breath of fresh air. Forget the fact that The Sarah Jane Adventures is more like good-old fashioned Doctor Who than Torchwood ever was, it's also a lot more like good old-fashioned Doctor Who than Doctor Who ever is! And I enjoyed every daft minute of it.

Having said that, the proceedings get off to a pretty shaky start. Earlier in the day I was watching the Ribos Operation documentary and there's a lovely bit where Clayton Hickman admits that the Shrivenzale wasn't everything it could have been. "If only the director hadn't shown the clearly fake claws flapping away like that," he said, or words to that effect, and then, a few hours later, and mere seconds into Revenge of the Slitheen (great title, by the way), we are assaulted by the worst floppy claw in the entire history of the franchise! Then, after laughing myself senseless over Murray Gold's theme tune (is it Harry Potter? or Doctor Who? or perhaps it's Rentaghost?) I was ready to pack it all in for some proper telly, like The Power of Kroll. Thankfully, things rapidly picked up from that point on. And boy, do I mean rapid - the editing actually gave me whiplash!

But first things first. Do you think Sarah Jane's neighbour pops over for a quick flirt before he's had a quiet word with Tommy Saxondale about his exhaust emissions, or after? Or is it just me?

The editing gave me whiplash!

Kicking off the series with a gently reheated second helping of School Reunion made a lot of sense to me. It's certainly an appealing conceit: this could all be happening in the same school as the target audience; all schools smell terrible and serve up horrendous food, don't they? It's a bit like Terror of the Zygons meets Grange Hill - and I mean that in the nicest possible way - and there now exists a bona fide sub-genre of Doctor Who that features evil IT blocks taking over the world (anyone remember Downtime?). But the most striking (and disturbing) moment occured when one of the evil teachers went a bit "Langham" on Maria as she cowered under the table. Am I the only one who felt they were beginning to stray into dangerous territory here?

It's Terror of the Zygons meets Grange Hill!

Alice Troughton's direction was excellent - and fast! - and anyone who can make the Slitheen look merely stupid rather than laughably abominable deserves some sort of kudos. I can just picture Gareth Roberts chuckling away as he punched out every line of ultra-ripe dialogue delivered by his villains, and while the Slitheen family are still ridiculous beyond words, it doesn't really bother me that much anymore. And, just like Turkey Twizzlers, the kids love 'em.

Liz Sladen was utterly MILFtastic and I'm smitten with her all over again, while Clyde, the new, and less annoying addition to the group, really helps to cement the Scooby dynamic. The only weak link is Maria; despite being flagged up as the central cog in the group (especially if her Buffy-esque voice over is anything to go by) she doesn't really do all that much.

It's impossible to watch Luke without thinking about Martin Fowler...

But what really struck me about the episode was just how keen they are on turning Luke Smith into a mini-Doctor. He's nearly, but not quite, human; he has a super-fast, hyper-intelligent mind; he's a tad eccentric and enigmatic; he adopts the name Smith; and he, er, wears a shirt and tie. It's all very interesting, and the "call me mother, don't call me mother" subtext will keep Freudians happy for hours. Unfortunately, it is impossible to look at Luke without thinking about Martin Fowler. This inevitably means that images of Sonia playing the trumpet are never far from your thoughts. Talk about being hamstrung from the get-go. More on this next week - yeah, I succumbed to temptation - and since it's all starting to blend together now I'd better stop there. Great cliffhanger though, with the mini-David Mitchell unzipping his noggin like that.

Pah! Kids today have it far too easy: Doctor Who merchandise by the skip load, illicit spin-offs to keep 'em interested, all-singing all-dancing web sites, and, most important of all, social acceptance. And now they get this: a superbly constructed and executed sugar rush of Who-flavoured excitement! And Facebook, too! I was lucky if I got an episode of Chocky or Children of the Stones and a copy of Look-In. And if you tell that to the kid's today, they won't believe you.

The Manimals Inside

As a partially religious man I rarely take the lord’s name in vain, but Jesus Christ, children’s television is loud.  When the presenters aren’t shouting at you, there’s a retina searing barrage of shapes and colours, cg baubles bouncing around to a soundtrack which in the late nineties would have been described as hard-core and that’s even before the opening episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures begins.  My reaction to all this is probably much the same as when adults saw what we were watching in the eighties and looked wistfully backwards to Watch With Mother.  Anyway, there’s a job to be done and with all the eye patch references threatening to consume this place, it’s best that for the first time ever I write the title in bold to save confusion:

The Sarah Jane Adventures:  Revenge of the Slitheen: Episode One.

Well quite.  In this month’s Doctor Who Magazine, during the 2Entertain interview one of the captions reads ‘The Trial of a Timelord will be a future DVD box set’ which sounds too much like a threat for my liking and the title of this episode is in much the same vein.  Episode director Keith Boak not withstanding, the Slitheen were something of a lead weight around the neck of the first run of the new series, a bit too bash and loud and amused with themselves to be effectively scary, with only Annette Badland’s later turn in Boomtown hinting at the darkness inherent in their ability to scoop out the insides of their host and using the skin as a disguise.  The potential was for this particular revenge to be of the Montezuma variety.

In this month’s Doctor Who Magazine, during the 2Entertain interview one of the captions reads ‘The Trial of a Timelord will be a future DVD box set’ which sounds too much like a threat for my liking

But as this episode proves it's all a matter of context; like the Autons in Rose, this is a new series being launched with the return of a familiar alien and within the setting of this kids show, with apparently smaller plans (which aren’t yet completely revealed) the big green lumpies work far better particularly as they fart and gurgle their way about, mixing perfectly into the teaching staff who in my day not only imparted knowledge but were veritable One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest of irritating habits, the bizarre turns of phrase, the plastic tubing they’d (disturbingly) give us a smack on the bum with, the bit of saliva permanently hanging out of the corner of their mouths, they all seemed to be aliens frankly and we all wished they’d embarrass themselves by passing gas once in a while too.

Here they frightened because of they way they were shot, director Alice Troughton (any relation?) selecting to shoot them from the floor, a child’s point of view, their imposing mass often filling the screen, a corridor or stairwell, their taunts exactly like those you’d here from a school bully.  It helped too that the suits have obviously been augmented, much greener and far less static than in their first appearances, no cutting to non-matching CG required as they bounded about, their mouths far more flexible as they spoke, the offspring at the close of the episode, a wonderful creation.  These are the aliens of London as they could have been, a reflection of what the various teams making Doctor Who have learned in the past couple of years.

These are the aliens of London as they could have been, a reflection of what the various teams making Doctor Who have learned in the past couple of years.

Like Invasion of the Bane, this story flashed by at a lick but amazingly somehow managed to fit some neat characterization inside as Luke tries to come to terms with being human.  As hinted at in that first episode, he’s on a Data-like path of discovery trying to work out the nuts and bolts of what fourteen year old kids are supposed to be like, far brighter than his classmates and inevitably being picked on because of it.  There’s more than a chance he could be the break-out character, poster-boy for all the gifted youngsters stuck in the state school system, breezing through quadratic equations when what they really want to try is some quantum physics.

Much of the taunting oddly comes from Clyde, a better fit than Kelsey, far wittier than his predecessor and more complex; he’ll hopefully mellow as the series goes on.  Understandably its these characters which were at the forefront of this adventure, but Sarah Jane did get some nice material related to becoming a mother, with Liz Sladen still succeeding in developing the character even within the staccato scene length of the episode.  Maria also had less to do but she’s was already well established in the pilot and it is still early days; it’s interesting that she already seems very comfortable with her ‘companion’ role to Miss Smith implying that other adventures have been happening since Christmas.

It is amusing though how structurally the episode somehow managed to fall into the trap of the classic Doctor Who series, with twenty minutes of plot followed by five minutes of running (or sitting) around until the cliffhanger arrived.

It is amusing though how structurally the episode somehow managed to fall into the trap of the classic Doctor Who series, with twenty minutes of plot followed by five minutes of running (or sitting) around until the cliffhanger arrived.  How despite having their name in the title, said cliffhanger largely revolved around the reveal of the Slitheen something most kids will have been aware of having watched the dvds a hundred times?  I suspect it’s all part of some meta-reference, the production team producing new Doctor Who in the style of the old and they’re purposefully dropping in these quirks so that old fans will feel right at home.

This, then is a series largely defining its own path but still looking and sounding far more like a Doctor Who spin-off than Torchwood despite so far having less continuity references, with the exception of the Judoon and Blathereen (which, as Paul notes in the comments to this review, along with the mention of Justicia in Boomtown, makes the spin-off novel The Monsters Inside about as canonical as any of those things have ever been).

Certainly in the second half, as we’ve seen from the rather too long preview (which should be put at the end of the credits surely), some of the discoveries from the Slitheen's original adventure will be made again, and it’ll be up to writer Gareth Roberts to make sure that the climax isn’t simply a rerun of what we saw there but a development.  The key is to provide enough magical moments such as the candles popping back on by themselves after the power cut, and to be simpler than its mother series without becoming simplistic. 

So far, it’s right on track.