Wednesday, 5 June 2019

Beyond The TARDIS SJA: The Lost Boy by Andrew Allen



  
Episode One

In November 2007, the universes of Doctor Who reigned supreme. Martha Jones had saved the world in Last Of The Time Lords, team Torchwood (while getting mixed reviews) had got decent ratings and were heading back for their second series, and here, The Sarah Jane Adventures was wrapping up its inaugural season. Everywhere, there’s a sense of confidence and verve that makes compelling television.

So confident is SJA in fact, that it decides to make its closing two-parter of this season about making Sarah Jane the untrustworthy one – at least to start off with. After a piece of marker dialogue that recaps the season for Maria’s dad’s benefit (in which the Slitheen are helpfully mentioned – pay attention now, that might become important later), and where there’s a threat that Maria might be dragged out of the postcode for safety, tensions ramp up fairly quickly when a national news story breaks that a couple of distraught parents are desperately looking for their lost boy, one who turns out to be Luke. It had clearly been a mistake when Sarah had said ‘The universe is smiling on us tonight’: obviously things were going to go wrong. Mr Smith tells team SJ that he has run DNA tests to prove the point, stating that the results are conclusive: ‘I don’t make mistakes – that is a human trait,’ he says, rather snottily.

It’s not long before the police are knocking on Sarah Jane’s door (Maria’s mum gave them the tip off about ‘Calamity Jane’), and Luke is returned to his ‘real’ parents. This neatly inverts a mild fantasy that many kids are likely to have had at some point in their lives: the idea that the grown-ups they live with are not their own parents, and a ‘real’ mum and dad will one day swoop in and rescue them. Of course, when it happens for Luke, it’s a nightmare – it’s not exactly a humdrum life he’s being released from, and even worse, he’s not in his new home two minutes before he’s been threatened with a football match.

Sarah is swiftly released from police custody without questioning (a bit of UNIT paperwork greases the wheels of that particular plot stumble, which is as it should be when there’s less than thirty minutes of screentime to play with, but the real-life implications of that are horrifying: Sarah might be one of the most respected alumni of UNIT staff, but surely even they would want to take a pause if one of their own appeared to be involved in some kind of child trafficking ring. Anyway ..). She then takes the reasonable decision to shut the kids of her life, arguing that it’s not safe for them. She then appears to give up for a morose moment, before Mr Smith turns up uninvited without his usual fanfare (‘Perhaps you don’t realise you need me’) nudging her to an investigation of the Pharos Project (apparently not the same one that did for the fourth Doctor), where they’re  doing all sorts of things that come with the prefix ‘tele’, specifically telekinesis. When Flollella Benjamin speaks of harnessing the power that lies dormant in the minds of all humans, it feels slightly like we’ve wandered into a Barry Letts produced episode of Doctor Who.

Clyde becomes convinced that Luke really is Luke, and that his parents are lying, simply because ‘Mum’ claims that he’s good at skateboarding despite all evidence to the contrary. Maria tries suggesting that Luke’s lack of skills are fallout from the Bane (way back in the pilot episode), leading to Clyde’s actually quite sweet rejoinder that ‘you don’t lose something like that; it’s instinct.’

There are actually two child geniuses in this episode – the lost boy of the title, and Nathan Goss, with an I.Q of 195 (Sarah smirks at that: Hawking and Einstein never got that far), and it soon becomes clear that Nathan is part of the masterplan. When the true identities of Mum and Dad (and Nathan) are revealed, it’s a pleasurable moment of things clicking into place, but the true cliffhanger is saved for a villain behind the villain. There have been some clues seeded throughout the season, but’s still a very decent shockeroo that deliciously threatens to destabilise the set-up of the entire show ..

Episode 2

So, who saw that coming? Mr Smith being the Big Bad! It’s a very neat trick for The Sarah Jane Adventures to pull off in its first season: usually genre series have to reach into the back pocket of extended history to get the adrenalin rush that only an old time villain can provide. With only a few episodes to draw on, SJA had to be a bit smarter – and using Mr Exposition Console is a supremely clever way of doing it – and helps ease the sensation that The Sarah Jane Adventures are having to settle for the unwanted cast-offs of the parent series (which, in all fairness, the target audience of SJA don’t even remotely care about).

Sarah rocks up the Old Dark House of the Pharos Project in the middle of the night to steal a MITRE headset (cool name), and gets a thrilling escape sequence packed with speeding motorbikes, security lasers, and sonic devices. It’s like David Tennant meets For Your Eyes Only era Bond. Meanwhile, Clyde has been zapped off world by Mr Smith as Maria tries in vain to hunt him down (judging by his answerphone message, Clyde either only gives out his number to girls, or is genuinely very open about his dating interests). Clyde finds himself in the classic version of the BBC Villain’s Lair (dark room, bit of what looks like the graphics of the title credits in the background).

Maria’s dad is – as he has been all season – remarkably patient in trying to cope with what sounds like an outlandish X-Files type story. He attempts to invoke Ockam’s Razor to the situation: it really is more likely that Luke is a lost kid with memory loss, but he’s willing to dissect the problem with his daughter (indeed, he’s the first to suggest that Luke’s ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ may not even be real people). It’s not long before he gets dragged along by Maria to investigate exactly what’s going on at Luke’s new home.

Meanwhile, Mr Smith dismisses Clyde’s accusation that he’s suddenly turned into a villain – ‘I haven’t gone bad, I’m fulfilling my purpose.’ Clyde manages to find a backdoor to send messages to Alan without Mr Smith noticing, who then runs across road to warn Sarah Jane. It should be mildly annoying that it falls to the supporting male character to save the lead female from being shot, but this episode just about manages to get away with it largely because it’s more about Alan himself accepting and surrendering himself to the Scooby Gang.

Clyde’s actions are soon discovered by Mr Smith, who rages ‘You’re not as stupid as you pretend to be,’ which is an importantly different line from, say ‘You’re not as stupid as you look,’: Clyde’s DNA  is based on him appearing to be carefree and easy-going. For him, heroism is something he does without witness or reward (sound familiar?), and he is soon knocked out by Mr Smith – who repeatedly invokes the completion of his ‘purpose’, without ever being particularly clear as to what that purpose is. The Slitheen’s purpose is slightly clearer – as Maria points out to her confused father, ‘It’s like Only Fools And Horses with green skin.’

The second part of the episode is essentially finale, although Alan is concerned that they’re not armed with laser guns. Sarah Jane has to assure him that the Slitheen are combatted by simple vinegar. ‘Sure,’ he responds, munching on a chip, ‘Why not?’ Later, he gets to deliver a cute Jack Bauer style move while holding a bottle of chip shop malt. After some scrambles and grandstanding, Sarah Jane and the Slitheen are forced to work together against Mr Smith as the moon is dragged towards Earth, upsetting gravitational pull (one wonders if Russell T Davies ever thought about nixing this script, considering what he had planned for the following year’s Doctor Who finale). The amount of planetary destruction delivered in this episode is arguably bigger than anything nu-Who had so far dealt with (a news report suggests that this might be the ‘end of the world’). Chrissie rings Alan to attempt to make peace – which is impressive, if only for the fact that she might be the only person on the panicking planet to make a successful phone call.

Mr Smith argues that he’s not evil, but effective (‘Am I not merciful?’) and explains that the existence of the human race is irrelevant to the survival of the universe (not actually difficult to argue with that). In the closing few minutes of the episode, Sarah Jane is able to draw on thirty-odd years of backstory (and a certain copyright agreement) for a final rousing – and funny – guest appearance from a girl’s best friend. After the dust has settled, there’s a hint that Chrissie might be invited into the fold (there’s clearly been an off-screen conversation where she’s been able to relax slightly about Sarah Jane). In the closing monologue, Sarah Jane tells us she’s found the one thing on Earth she never expected to: a family. And that’s what we have here – a strong group dynamic, ready to save the world. It’s just a shame that the family is going to be broken up at the start of the next series ….



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