The Sarah Jane Adventures 3.5-6 – The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith (parts one and two)

You know, the kid just does not like bad guys as much as I do. The third and final duel between Sarah Jane and the Trickster had him grumbling even more than usual – after the lights were turned on, happily – about his antics, with the interesting caveat that he just doesn’t think the Trickster is all that much of a villain. He says that the Trickster doesn’t really do anything villainous, he just lets people make the decision to stay alive instead of dying. We parents protested that changing the future can be pretty amazingly evil. This time, in the guise of an angel, he saves the life of a man named Peter Dalton and plays matchmaker, because a happily married Sarah Jane won’t go saving the planet all the time.

And see, I think this is remarkably and delightfully evil, because the Trickster can only ever be defeated by people agreeing to die. Victory over him demands sacrifice, every time. How wretched is that? He’s a great, great villain, and happily, as I discussed when I was talking about the Replicators in Stargate the other day, the law of diminishing returns never sets in for him. Gareth Roberts used him three times and he’s been retired, which is good. One more appearance would be too many. At least he gets to have that standoff with the Doctor he threatened when we met him.

Oh, yeah, the Doctor’s in this! Bizarrely, because of the complex filming schedules of the Who shows back when they were making three of them, this was actually made after David Tennant’s last Who installments. The Doctor gets to run around with the kids and K9 in a situation that is remarkably like Sapphire & Steel‘s final case, trapped in a lost, repeating second in a building with nothing outside it. They have a completely grand second part to the story with Tennant doing all his running around and shouting and Doctor things while Sarah Jane and Peter get to have the emotional showdown with the baddie. Peter’s last words, if you have a heart, will break it.

Also, for those of you who really like the Tenth Doctor, I’m pretty sure you can slot Panini’s terrific collection The Crimson Hand just perfectly in between “Planet of the Dead” and this story. It’s been a while since I read that; I should dust it off again soon. Wow, it just struck me that we’ll reach the end of Tennant’s run before September. Time flies.

Anyway, all the Doctor stuff is terrific fun, and it makes for a great balance, because he doesn’t dominate the story. The emotional core is happening elsewhere, a second away, in another room. I love it to pieces, without reservation. Anybody who binges Tennant’s run as the Doctor who doesn’t detour here to enjoy this is seriously missing out.

The Sarah Jane Adventures 2.9-10 – The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith (parts one and two)

It’s not as though every installment of Doctor Who and its spin-offs can proudly boast their originality. Never mind the frequent homages to other fiction, the show repeats itself sometimes. So you get a Peladon story that’s a whole lot like the previous one, only longer, and you get Terry Nation writing the same Dalek adventure about three times, and you get this, which is the Christopher Eccleston story “Father’s Day” again.

In its defense, the Trickster remains an interesting opponent, and the clothes in 1951 are nice. But this story doesn’t have Shaun Dingwall to carry the emotions and Sarah Jane has to be written as breathtakingly, criminally stupid to fall for this. It’s a badly-timed story anyway, coming as it does right after Clyde dealt with his abandonment issues in the previous adventure. The direction by Graeme Harper is as good as ever, but this isn’t Gareth Roberts’ best script, and it’s definitely the weakest of the three with the Trickster.

Although there is a little moment I found interesting. A year previously, some critics complained about a scene in Roberts’ “The Shakespeare Code.” Then, Martha was reluctant to leave the TARDIS in the 1600s, fearing the racism and bigotry of people in the period, but two women of color walk by in nice clothes and that settles that. The past just isn’t racist for forty-five minutes and she didn’t have to deal with anybody being ugly toward her color until “Human Nature” later in the season. Here, Rani walks into the all-white village fete and every head in the building turns, leaving her to dismiss them as quickly as she can by saying “yes, ethnic person in the 1950s,” and trying to get down to business. I like “Shakespeare Code” much better overall, but this scene feels much more honest.

Our kid, again, wasn’t very thrilled. It’s too simplistic to just say “he’s seen it all before,” but that’s a big part of it. He’s seen enough to know – from “Father’s Day,” from Star Trek, from Stargate SG-1 – that Sarah Jane should not be interfering in her past. So he shook his head and he scowled and rolled his eyes with an “oh, no” a few times. That’s three in a row that he didn’t enjoy, which I didn’t expect. Hopefully this run will end on a high note for him!

The Sarah Jane Adventures 1.7-8 – Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? (parts one and two)

Blindingly brilliant. Gareth Roberts’ “Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?” introduces us to a fabulous villain called the Trickster. The entity fades in and out of history, causing chaos and creating alternate timelines. In his first gambit, he causes thirteen year-old Sarah Jane to switch places with a friend who died in 1964. It was Andrea Yates, played by Jane Asher, who gets forty more years of life, and the house across from Maria. One day, Sarah is just gone, Luke never existed, Clyde has no idea why Maria has his number, and Maria is the only person on Earth who knows that this party-loving artist across the road is in the wrong time.

Graeme Harper directed this one. I’ve praised him several times in this blog and this is among his finest hours. The tension is unbelievable and everybody’s performances are just amazing. I’ve never said much about Joseph Millson, who plays Alan, Maria’s dad, because there’s not always room in this little blog, but he’s on fire this time. He spends part one afraid that something’s wrong with his daughter because she insists in this story about Sarah Jane, and then once Maria vanishes and only he can remember her, he’s cold fury. And I love how the soundtrack plays with our emotions with snatches of the Kinks and Sandie Shaw. There is not a better choice in all of music for this story’s tale of memory and inspiration than “Always Something There to Remind Me,” so somebody thank Bachrach and David for writing it, would you?

The kid loved it, and was about to explode with excitement in the end, although he was quick to qualify that the Slitheen story is his favorite. I correctly guessed that he would really hate the Trickster, which is a shame, because he’s going to have to put up with him a few more times. I can’t wait.