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17TH NOVEMBER 2008 - 24TH NOVEMBER 2008

(2 EPISODES)

In my view Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? was without a doubt the finest

story of the first series, and I understand from reading the musings of others that this view

is shared by many. However, to me it did not seem to be a story that automatically begged

a sequel – after all, what else could you do with the Trickster other than have him screw up Sarah Jane’s history all over again?

Happily though, The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith works far better than I feared that it might. Here writer Gareth Roberts has seen off what could have been a nasty case of the sequelitis by making this story a much more intimate one than its forerunner, yet with the stakes still every bit as high.

“The one time and place that she cannot resist…”

This story has much in common with the popular 2005 Doctor Who episode Father’s Day

as it puts Sarah Jane in the position of being able to alter history by saving the lives of her parents, Eddie and Barbara Smith, who we learn died on 18th August 1951. And, just like Rose in Father’s Day, Sarah Jane cannot stop herself from preventing their deaths, and in doing so, unleashing a malicious force upon the world.

“The Trickster walked through the Abbott’s gateway and sucked the life out of the world.”

What sets The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith apart from Father’s Day though is that Sarah’s dilemma is a manufactured one; a trap laid by the Trickster. Realising that the deaths of Eddie and Barbara Smith lay on a weak point in the web of time – a “fault line”,

if you will – the Trickster knew that if the fact of their deaths was altered, the web of time would be weakened to such an extent that he could manifest himself fully in our plain of existence and then enslave the world.

“Can that really be the fashion in the Punjab?”

What I enjoyed the most about this story though was that, despite the emotionally-charged content, Roberts’ script is laden with lots of levity. I found Sarah Jane and Luke’s aliases

(the Beckhams!) extremely amusing, and the whole Police Box gag in the second episode was sublime. Predictable, if you are over the age of six and understand the boundaries of certain television series, but sublime nonetheless.

But be that as it may, come the end of the second episode I found myself just as choked

up as I was at the end of Father’s Day. The resolution is pretty much directly torn from Paul Cornell’s earlier script, but that does not stop it being every bit as sad. Rosanna Lavelle,

who plays Sarah Jane’s doomed mother Barbara, gives a particularly warm and emotive performance, making her ultimate fate all the more gut-wrenching.

I also think that this story also packs more of a punch than it otherwise might have done simply because it is about Sarah Jane, as opposed to any other companion. On telly, we never learned anything about Sarah Jane’s past save for that she was raised by her Aunt Lavinia (although thinking on, even that might have been an expanded universe thing), and so giving her a picturesque little hometown and a set of doting parents only to tear them away again is really quite brutal.

“What if this is it? My reward?”

All things considered, my only gripe with this captivating story is a fairly subjective one - simply put, I don’t think Sarah Jane would be daft enough to take the Trickster’s bait. After all, she is not a new kid on the time-travelling block like Rose was in Father’s Day; she’s a grizzled veteran. Then again, there would not have been much of a story if she would have maintained her “I can’t, I mustn’t and I won’t” attitude! This story was supposed to be about temptation, after all…

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2009

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