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

In the second episode of The Eye Of The Gorgon, the boys are grabbed by the nuns (which is exactly as painful as that might sound), while Sarah Jane and Maria have to look on helplessly as the latter’s dad is turned to stone. In an efficient and economical bit of storytelling, neither plot point is immediately resolved, meaning that the Impending Danger That Will Destroy The World ™ is still hanging over the gang.

This means that Joseph Millson doesn’t feature a great deal in this episode, even though a number of people interact with his character – albeit through the medium of his stone effigy (which leads one to wonder if actors who get artistic depictions of themselves in a film or television programme, get to take home the painting or garden gnome version). Juliet Cowan gets a surprisingly moving scene in which she once again gets to hint at depths hidden beneath the shallows.

When Sarah Jane manages to confront the gang of nuns, she’s firmly told that what’s going on is ‘salvation, not invasion’. This, and the vaguely catholic vibe of the baddies this time round makes them look quite fundamentalist – their methods stink, but they do seem to be acting selflessly for a higher purpose: even their chanting isn’t evidence of any kind of mind control (well, no more than any other church service). Somebody else who seems to be surprisingly in control is Mr Smith: he sends Sarah Jane and Maria off on a wild talisman chase, claiming that he doesn’t have enough information to save Alan from irreversibly becoming stone. Later, when Alan is illogically revived, Mr Smith is able to explain why. Such obstuffocation might become relevant later in the season. 

Even if it isn’t foreshadowing the finale, Mr Smith’s delaying tactics do mean that there are successfully three separate story strands as Sarah faces up to the Wimples, the boys are playing escape room in the basement, and Maria resorts to Plan Bea. Considering that all of that doesn’t even include the mild subplot involving Maria’s parents, and is all neatly folded up within twenty five minutes, it’s an instructive piece of narrative for anyone who thinks that three companions is too many characters for an episodic sci-fi TV show (cough cough).

The Bea of Plan Bea is the ‘dotty old lady’ played by Phyllida Law. (She gets a cheeky time travel reference – listen to the record she’s playing when Maria comes to visit), and she has a chance to wear the talisman at the end, promoted by Maria’s entirely logical but scientifically wonky theory that she could be ‘restored’ to an earlier version of herself in much the same way that her father was. Perhaps surprisingly, the episode makes the correct and respectful decision that Bea’s Alzheimer’s cannot be cured by sci-fi magic (a lesson that the much more recent Class failed to learn when dealing with not dissimilar territory), proving itself once again to be a very mature stable partner to Doctor Who. Indeed, what with the demonic chanting nuns, masked disfigured villains and candlelit stone basements, with only a few tonal and aesthetic adjustments, this could very easily be a story out of the classic era of Who, at least on the level of The Image Of The Fendhal.   

There’s a wordless gag involving Sarah Jane’s sonic lipstick (presumably The Doctor never bothered to tell her it wouldn’t work on wood), and generally she gets to do a bit more climbing and physical stuff than she has previously (no rolling down a gentle incline this time round), and generally this a fast paced and efficient two-parter that even manages to pull in a direct reference to Raiders Of The Lost Ark by the end. Keep your eyes open; you might miss something.

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.