Look what has dropped on the doormat with today’s mail. A fitting if unintentional tribute to the late and ever so great, Elisabeth Sladen. Your reviews and thoughts in the comments as usual please, although I think I will wait awhile before reading.
Tributes, of course, continue to pour in and I have been updating the links in my previous post withe the best of them.
12 Blogs of Christmas: #5
I was going to spend blog number five in my sequence of twelve reviewing the year for the Sarah Jane Adventures. A year in which series four hit our screens and half of series six also got filmed. It was a year that re-introduced us to Jo Grant, let Matt Smith’s Doctor meet up with Sarah Jane and let us know that Rani and Clyde were going to go a little “Hermione and Ron” on us. However, I just read Dan Berry’s review in the latest DWM and he said everything that I was going to say, except he did it more comprehensively, more coherently and with much more panache than I could wish for. Anyway, it’s late and I am feeling the need for an early night. Go read DWM 429 and just imagine me saying “ditto” on the bottom. See you tomorrow for more.
[If the muse takes me, I come back and update this blog in the morning]
Better Late Than Never
Apologies, I should’ve blogged something sooner but have completely failed to talk about episode 2 of the delightful Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith. I am such a bad blogger. Even in the cold light of fanboi negativity, it remains a really rather lovely story and I promise I will speak of this further when we get to the series three round-up post. However, if you missed it, go and find a copy on iPlayer and catch up… it was brill. Even Nigel Havers.
Doctor in the House
All the build up to Series 3 of the Sarah Jane Adventures was around the fact it would feature a fully fledged appearance by none other than the Doctor himself, David Tennant. I’m thinking that this is probably the first time the Doctor has featured in a programme that is not Doctor Who. Someone will probably throw “In a Fix With The Sontarans” or the “Prime Computer Adverts” or some other quasi guest spot back at me but I’ll happily disagree with them all. This was absolutely canonical Doctor Who. We had to wait for an awful long time through episode 1 before the becoated one made his perfectly timed entrance but it was certainly worth the wait. Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t You Think She Looks Young?
Well, I completely forgot to blog about part 2 of this excellent Joe Lidster penned Sarah Jane Adventure. Frank Collins has posted a fine review over on Behind The Sofa, and managed to capture almost all of what I wanted to write but added another layer of acedemic analysis through his insightful thoughts about the portrayal of the feminine characters. Another good review can be found here, which takes a slightly more negative view of proceedings, stating “…there was so much going on that it became an unnecessarily tangled web…” Read the rest of this entry »
Seeing Red
Joe Lidster seems to have penned a cracking story of the Sarah Jane Adventures if Part One of The Mad Woman in the Attic is anything to go by. A more creepy and less manic outing than the knockabout Judoon romp of last week, this tale focussed heavily on the character of Rani. An interesting twist was put on the scooby gang’s relationships as we found that the aforementioned Rani still felt like a bit of an outsider since her relatively late arrival after the departure of Maria. While in a bit of sulk about things, she got an email from an old friend asking her back to the town of Danemouth where she used to live, so she headed off to prove her independence. It appears Read the rest of this entry »
What Happened Next?
In the new, series three style of the Sarah Jane Adventures, part two of the stories are being shown a mere 24 hours after part one so, after sneaking out of work a smidge early, I arrived home yesterday to catch the start of part two of Prisoner of the Judoon in all its high definition glory. Anyone who didn’t think the cliffhanger would be resolved with just one second left on the digital countdown has obviously never watched any television before but the production team did manage to make the first 60 seconds really exciting. After that, the action in this second part was pretty much all set in the nano technology factory. Gita and Haresh were there on behalf of Read the rest of this entry »
Review of Sarah Jane Adventures: Prisoner of the Judoon, Part 1
Series Three of the Sarah Jane Adventures debuted on BBC1 and BBC HD this afternoon and it was as good as we’re all used to. Much to the credit of all concerned, they managed to cram an awful lot of material in to a 30-minute episode. The eternally young Lis Sladen began with a little narration over a seemingly innocuous scene where she was investigating a nanotech corporation, which served to (re)introduce the essential elements of the show but it wasn’t long before the strands of the plot began to be woven together. A Judoon captain escorting a prisoner crash landed on Earth and the prisoner, kind of inevitably, escaped. But this wasn’t any old prisoner, it was a “veil life form” known as Read the rest of this entry »
