Thursday, 4 July 2019

Beyond The TARDIS SJA: The Last Sontaran by Andrew Allen



Episode One

This pair of episodes has a lot to do – namely, providing an exit for Maria and her family, and stealthily setting up the introduction of a companion who, if the universe had gone another way, could well have one day become Bannerman Road’s top alien hunting roving reporter. But Rani won’t be here until the next story, so in the meantime we have The Last Sontaran. This feels like it should have a lot more weight than it eventually does, if only because it was the Sontarans that first introduced Sarah to a world beyond the stars way back in The Time Warrior.

And to give Elisabeth Sladen her credit, she does give a similar ‘no it can’t be’ vibe to that when she was confronted by the voice of Davros over on Doctor Who just a few months earlier, giving the gravitas to Kaagh that he needs (it’s notable that that the Sontaran voice appears to be softer here than on the parent show, perhaps recognising that CBBC can’t be quite as scary).

There’s a quick recap of last year’s monsters from Sarah and Maria, if only to remind audiences who the stars are, because for the rest of the pre-title sequence, the action relocates to a radio telescope facility (one thing SJA is excellent at, is invoking warm fuzzy memories of almost any Doctor Who story between 1970 and 1974) where there are strange lights in the sky, and the sudden invasion of a mystery villain. In the best Terry Nation tradition, the identity of the secret returning villain is rather spoiled by the title. There’s a nice bit of linking to Doctor Who itself, including, for the first time, use of actual footage from that show (in this case, The Poison Sky).

The start of this second series has taken Mr Smith’s reboot (and, presumably, the lack of K9’s copyright being resolved) to give Sarah’s supercomputer a sense of humour (he even smuggles in a obscure Hitchhiker’s Guide reference), although generally this story is slightly more sombre than others – nobody is really allowed to play to their strengths: Clyde’s natural charm is a bit quashed, and the righteous hope of both Maria and Luke is set aside as the impending departure of the former looms heavily. Even Chrissy’s comedy chops are somewhat diluted.

Really, this is all much of the same problem that the opening story of the first season had, and essentially for the same reason: moving a major companion around, and putting them out of the narrative so that someone else can come along. The presence of a sontaran is flashy enough to distract from the fact that not much else is going on (yes, we’re now at the point that we’re cynical enough to say that the end of the world in 45 minutes is ‘not much else going on’), but it’s somewhat surprising that there’s a relative lack of theme going on in this duo of episodes. SJA had always had a particular skill in linking the appearances of its Monster Of The Week to an underlying motif: loneliness, fear of aging. That’s not really present here, which is somewhat surprising, as Luke, Maria, and Karrg all share the DNA of being oddities who are cut off from a family that makes any lick of sense.

Not that there’s a complete lack of humour: there’s a passing visual clue to Alien, and nice banter between Sarah and Clyde: ‘I thought I told you to stay out of the woods.’ / ‘I know. But did you really think we would?’. In addition, the concept of a sontaran seeking revenge (as opposed to being on a military offensive) is a genuinely interesting take on the race. Plus, the episode manages to juggle a triple cliff hanger adroitly.

Episode Two

Throughout this season opener, Kaagh makes repeated fascinated references to the fact that Sarah Jane is female, which is a nice throwback to Linx in The Time Warrior. Also giving us nostalgia vibes is all the running down corridors that opens episode two. The Doctor himself gets a shout out in this episode, as Kaagh makes clear his intention to take Sarah Jane back to his home planet Sontar as a trophy, to make up for the embarrassing defeat of The Poison Sky.

Sarah gets trapped in a room bemoaning her lack of sonic lipstick (‘Your what?’, her new companion demands, which is exactly the correct response). Meanwhile, Chrissy is not well served by her dialogue in this episode, struggling to comprehend that Alan may have a new job. That conversation is cut short anyway by a phone call from their teen daughter – not, as they may have been hoping, because Maria needs rescuing from the park because some bigger girls have shoplifted some cider, but because the world is about to end. They jump into a sports car to save her (the sports car is oddly inexplicable. It shouldn’t matter in a story where, essentially, all the characters are simply being moved to a logical position for the finale, but as we’ve indicated, we’re used to SJA having at least one extra layer. The sports car is apparently just a sports car. It doesn’t even appear to be a deliberate riposte to Sarah’s own jaunty little number. Yes, we’re probably overthinking this.

All the same, there’s still moments of genuine charm: Alan’s initial inability to call up Mr Smith with the usual expected greeting is, however inadvertently, a sly joke on male ego. It’s frustrating, however, in an episode that at one point manages to successfully spool out five different story strands, does not in Maria’s final episode find anything more impactful for her to do than scroll through her memories of season one. You’d hope in her departure story, she’d be given the saving the world moment, although it’s cute that the honour goes to her mother in a gag that really belongs in Jurassic World, albeit around ten years too early. There are other clever beats (Luke makes what should be a much more obvious and oft-repeated observation that this week’s visiting alien race will have a different countdown system simply because they have less digits on their hands).

Chrissy gets the most interesting moment that is also the most tantalisingly frustrating when she reveals she knows Sarah Jane’s secret. Although we expect to see no more of the character, it does feel like an opportunity to deepen her personality has been missed.

All in all then, a fairly safe season opener: the appearance of a classic monster gets us to glide across the fact that not much else is happening, although you can’t help thinking that a stronger, more typically Sarah Jane Adventures story was waiting to be had here: one where Maria was front and centre of the plot, and that it was her actions that saved the world. But, in all honesty, a standard runabout with team SJ is still very much worth a hour or so of your time, and if the ‘Next Time’ trailer is anything to go by, this new character Rani could very well get everyone to up their game

No comments:

Post a Comment