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12TH NOVEMBER 2007 - 19TH NOVEMBER 2007

(2 EPISODES)

after thoroughly enjoying Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane?, a story that had all the weight and all the gravitas of a season finale, I have to admit that my hopes for The Lost Boy were not high. However, once again The Sarah Jane Adventures proved me wrong.

The Lost Boy is pretty damned heavy for what purports to be a children’s television show. Some of the plot threads that are tied up here, for instance, are every bit as ‘adult’ as many that you would find in Doctor Who, and at no time does Phil Ford patronise his viewers. The Lost Boy is full of twists and turns, pathos and action - even K-9 turns up for a brief but none-theless memorable cameo! In short, it is everything that you could want of a tea-time and more.

The story sees Sarah Jane give Luke up to whom Mr Smith advises her are Luke’s real parents. Unfortunately for her though, these parents turn out to be Slitheen, and Mr Smith – the same Mr Smith that had drawn an embroidered sigh from me each and every time that he appeared, smugly basking in his grossly disproportionate fanfare – is revealed to be a double-crossing Xylok who has been in league with the Slitheen all along!

And whilst all of this is going on, we have Alan Jackson struggling to come to terms with the fact that his daughter is regularly battling aliens with a fifty-seven year old ex-time traveller (who, it has to be said, is looking bloody good for her age). Quite a lot to squeeze into fifty minutes…

And so after sitting through approximately three-hundred and thirty-eight minutes of teenage kicks, have I reached any conclusions? The answer is yes, and it is quite a harsh one: I’m an idiot. I set my face against this show without every really giving it a chance, and as a result I am now twelve episodes behind the rest of the world!

The Sarah Jane Adventures is just as wondrous and just as enchanting a corner of the Whoniverse as Torchwood or Doctor Who; the only real difference is that here, the bulk of the regulars are puerile teens, as opposed to cynical Welsh twenty-somethings with death wishes or even nine-hundred odd year-old Time Lords.

And so if you are like me and have missed out on the first two years of The Sarah Jane Adventures, do yourself a favour and pick up the first series on DVD today. It is seriously worth every single penny.

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2009

E.G. Wolverson has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

As a resolution to the ongoing series, The Lost Boy works splendidly, building on the sense of family that has been the theme of the previous stories. The set up concerns the revelation that Luke is in fact not a creation of the Bane, but the lost son of another couple. This strand of the story is excellently played, each actor involved portraying their desperate situation convincingly – Luke’s confusion and alienation, Sarah Jane’s fear of losing him, Heidi and Jay’s apparent joy at recovering him, plus Maria and Clyde’s refusal to accept the situation. Alongside all this, Alan has to learn to accept the bizarre new life he has found himself in, while Chrissie uses any opportunity to score points. It’s great to see the show once again tackling a sensitive subject, but in spite of the performances, the situation never convinces – we never believe that Luke is truly Ashley with his memory wipes. Thankfully neither does Clyde, and the truth is soon revealed with part one’s marvellous cliffhanger. We’ve guessed that the fake parents are aliens, but it’s still a big surprise that they’re Slitheen with extra-compressing skin suits that let them appear as thin humans. Alongside that, we learn that none other than Mr Smith is behind it all, as he reveals all to Clyde before zapping him into some kind of cyberspace limbo.

Running along this is a subplot of telekinetic research at the Pharos Institute, seemingly the work of child genius Nathan Goss (a marvellously obnoxious turn by young Ryan Watson). But no – he’s none other than the Slitheen child from Revenge of the Slitheen, back and

out for his own vengeance against Sarah Jane. The Slitheen plot to use Luke as a psychic battery is a novel one, as they intend to use his unparalleled neural energy as a money-making resource. But no – they’re being duped by Mr Smith! Turns out he’s not a computer after all – Sarah believed him to be the fragment of a starship’s computer core recovered from Krakatoa (so that’s where she got him), having built himself a computer interface. He

is in fact a fragment of a Xylok, a crystalline collective life form that has been buried under the Earth’s crust for sixty million years. Alexander Armstrong is terrific when he gets a turn

as an evil alien, wearingly deprecating of human intelligence. His plan is to use young Luke’s unprecedented psychokinetic energy to pull the Moon into collision with the Earth, cracking the crust thus releasing the Xylok. Luckily for humanity, Alan’s computer skills are up to the task of rebooting and reprogramming Mr Smith, just in time - with a little help from K-9, in

the series’ most cheer-raising moment.

Series 1 is, in all, a triumph, showing that a character from over thirty years ago still has the ability to lead a show and charm a new generation of kids. The series’ real asset is not its alien monsters or clever gizmos, or its world-threatening plots (for one thing, the world really does come under threat from cosmological phenomena once too often) - it’s the sense of family that the show’s cast cultivates that has you rooting for them every step of the way, regardless of the threat to the Earth.

The DVD box set adds little to the show – the extras are serviceable, but nothing special. The first disc is simply the original release of Invasion of the Bane, repackaged, and thus comes complete with a two-year-old trailer for the 2007 Doctor Who series. Still, the Sarah Jane timeline, complete with classic series clips, is a treat. On the remaining discs we get the usual trailers and fact files – always rather pointless once you’ve watched the episodes themselves – plus some clips from Blue Peter, which are entertaining enough. The short excerpts from audio adventures The Glittering Storm and The Thirteenth Storm are also welcome. Overall then, a worthy purchase just on the strength of the show itself, which is the important thing. This is a series that deserves to run and run, just like its parent show.

Copyright © Daniel Tessier 2009

Daniel Tessier has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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