After a quick recap of
last week’s misadventures. Rani and Luke do the logical thing, and attempt to
ring Sarah Jane herself for help – leading to a cute cameo from Lis Sladen
who’s turned her phone off in accordance with the rules of the hospital in which
she’s alien-hunting (apparently the ward is OK with all other sonic devices).
When they can’t get in touch with the lead of the show, Rani and Luke begin to
call up the rest of the supporting cast, leading to another cute cameo from
Mariah and her dad, who manage remarkably quickly to hack into the secret files
of UNIT and find out the history of this week’s Scary Alien Artefact.
Meanwhile, Clyde’s dad is
fulfilling his function as Typical Nightmare Weekend Divorced Dad by getting
his son lots of new clothes and driving around in a flashily expensive car
(yes, it’s all stolen, but that’s almost beside the point).Clyde has renounced
his friends and any degree of interest in ever saving the world again. It
reminds you of what the style of the Doctor
Who universe was when it was being overseen by Russell T Davies – OK, fine,
have the world about to end, but if you can’t push that crisis into the
background in order to concentrate on a family dispute, then the story isn’t
worth doing.
In this, the script is
subtly economical too, never taking half a page of dialogue to achieve what can
be delivered in just a few words: as soon as Carla discovers that Paul’s car is
heading towards the marina, her reaction is absolute and immediate: ‘He’s
taking my baby,’ she cries, terrified. We’ve said it before, but in many ways SJA, via its script, very often proves
itself to be somewhat more mature than its parent show (no, we’re not even
entertaining the possibility that one might call Torchwood ‘mature’ – not without smirking, anyway).
By the
end of the episode, everyone is gridlocked into an immovable position – how
exactly can you defeat a force that can bend everyone to its will? This is a
story that has very little of Sarah Jane in the episodes, which is a trick that
the concurrent seasons of Doctor Who
used to do. But – with the exception of Turn
Left – those stories were not particularly concerned with the absence of
the title character – indeed, in Love
& Monsters, or Blink, the
Doctor still prowls around the edges and influences the plot. This double of Sarah Jane Adventures goes a little
further, suggesting that as powerful and resourceful as the supporting cast
are, the story cannot continue without Sarah Jane, and the day can be won only
by bringing the star of the show back into the mix: which is exactly what the
episode does, with a quick handwave of exposition to explain why she’s suddenly
in the right place at the right time.
By the
time we get to the epilogue, Clyde gets to talk about his ‘found’ family –
Sarah and friends – indicating that he is who he is because of knowing them –
while Ms Smith gets to briefly mention her own parents, which is so incongruous
it can only be a plot seeding for a forthcoming episode ..
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