Beyond The TARDIS SJA: Eye of the Gorgon by Andrew Allen

So here we are then: the first episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures.  For those of you keeping score at home, it should be acknowledged right off the bat that this isn’t precisely true: The Sarah Jane Adventures  has delivered a pilot episode, followed by a two part season opener that was bolstered by some guest aliens from parent show Doctor Who. But it’s important to note that Invasion Of The Bane operated very much like a second pilot, and that its style and tone bear very little relation to anything that comes later in the series proper. That opening story is very much what we might have expected from a spin off series that’s largely populated by kids, showing on CBBC: adventures set in a school, coupled with lots of fart gags. What begins in Eye Of The Gorgon – and is continued throughout the rest of The Sarah Jane Adventures until the very last episode – is something altogether more mature, and it’s here that Russell T Davies (and episode writer Gareth Roberts) very much draw a line in the sand: SJA is going to be delivering significantly more meaningful themes, albeit wrapped up in a monster-of-the-week type run-around. 

Since we’re talking about the true DNA of SJA, it’s worth pointing out what the heritage of this story seems to be: quite aside from the fact that killer nuns driving around in hearses might just be the last great joke that Robert Holmes never got around to writing, (compare and contrast to Auton policemen) Eye Of The Gorgon revels in classy old Brit actors guest knocking around in a classy old British stately house (and, yes, killer nuns running around in hearses). This, paired with the treat of having Liz Sladen star in spin-off series teaming up with a bunch of youngsters to save the day, feels very much like a natural progression from, of all things, nothing less than 1970’s funfest The New Avengers. Here, Sarah Jane gets to be John Steed, Maria and Clyde doing the run and tumble stuff that was usually assigned to Gambit, therefore leaving Joanna Lumley’s job of having Purdey looking wide-eyed and getting captured by the villain to Luke. Clyde, by the way, is narratively the victim of a sly joke that hints at the age and attitude of the average resident of the care home: note how often he wordlessly gets handed an empty teacup or is expected to do basic household tasks.

While this episode has lots of fun with a scary taloned thing lurking under a cowl and sneaky references to old Doctor Who monsters (and indeed, old horror movies starring Patrick Troughton), it’s clear that right from the start, The Sarah Jane Adventures is setting its sights on much loftier aims than mere kid’s sci-fi. There are, you see, some evils in this universe that simply cannot be fought: the scene where Maria angrily denounces her parents’ divorce as irrelevant (because Chrissie will always, inescapably, be her mother no matter where she is), will to many kids watching be a lot scarier and upsetting than any number of invading aliens. This is coupled with the nagging realisation that Bea’s (guest star Phyllida Law) encroaching Alzheimer’s is a brutal, banally earthbound villain that will likely not be defeated by the end of the story. It’s these sort of real life preoccupations that set out firmly what sort of focus The Sarah Jane Adventures will preoccupy itself with.  

This happens in all sorts of subtle ways throughout the episode: Sarah Jane’s wordless protection of a saddened Maria – which in turn goes some way to justify Chrissie’s paranoia of her – is a moment that is barely noticed by the other characters (and indeed, if you’re not paying attention, it just looks like simple shifting of the characters to the next location to serve the plot), but crucially, it leads to the episode’s cliff-hanger being well earned: while the average viewer can be fairly certain that the main cast are mostly safe from everlasting death (it would be a very short series otherwise), the supporting characters don’t have that safety net. And so, writer Gareth Roberts is careful to ensure that the victim of the gorgon’s gaze is the one that we are going to be most upset by, and at this early stage of the series, one that is not necessarily guaranteed to survive. It’s a great cliff-hanger, and it’s impossible to tear our eyes away.