STORY PLACEMENT

 THIS STORY TAKES

 PLACE BETWEEN THE

 TV STORIES "MONA

 LISA'S REVENGE" AND

 "THE NIGHTMARE MAN."

  

 WRITTEN BY

 RUPERT LAIGHT

 

 DIRECTED BY

 ALICE TROUGHTON

 

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 BLURB

 When the Slitheen's

 latest scheme is

 halted, the

 Blathereen arrive -

 can they be trusted?

 

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19TH NOVEMBER 2009 - 20TH NOVEMBER 2009

(2 EPISODES)

 

 

 

                                                       

 

 

The sixth and final serial of The Sarah Jane Adventures’ third series, The Gift by Rupert Laight, is a startlingly bright and breezy affair for season finale; an hour of unabashed inanity, interrupted only by a few wanton bouts of lopsided moralising.

  

The first episode opens with what might have been the climactic five minutes of any other serial. On the cusp of vanquishing another Slitheen plot to destroy the Earth, Sarah Jane’s sonic lipstick breaks and the Slitheen take Rani hostage. However, just when everything is starting to look bleak, two Raxacoricofallapatorians of a slightly murkier hue appear to make the save, claiming that they represent “The High Council of Raxus Prime” and have made it their lives’ work to bring every member of the Slitheen family to justice.

 

“We Blathereen respect the law.”

 

Over a very messy diner, these “Blathereen” (Doctor Who: The Monsters Inside) then offer Sarah Jane the gift of Rakweed, which they claim will cure world famine, as a thank you for her past attempts to thwart the Slitheen’s nefarious plots. Inevitably though, this Rakweed is soon proven to be an insidiously harmful substance as it infects Luke with its spores before spreading out all across London.

 

The two Blathereen (well, Blathereen-Slitheen, but they like to keep the ‘Slitheen’ bit quiet

for obvious reasons), Tree (Simon Callow) and Leef (Miriam Margolyes), are quite different to the Slitheen that we’ve become used to. Not only are their flesh tones markedly different, but – fiercely dedicated to their nudity - they refuse to wear human skin-suits. They also have a pompousness to them that their criminal cousins lacked; something that I found particularly humorous given that they’re not only as bad as their much-maligned relations when it comes to their unlawful activities, but potentially even worse as they are addicts to boot!

 

Fair dues, the Blathereen’s Rakweed addiction is portrayed more like cutesy chocaholism than it is a brutal vraxoin addiction, but even so it sets them apart from their altogether more businesslike Raxacoricofallapatorian rivals and even leads to the most inauspicious of ends for them as they literally “fart themselves to death”. In a Peter Davison moment, Sarah Jane may have lamented the Blathereen’s ghastly fate, commenting that “there should have been a better way”, but I really can’t see how. The Blathereen’s undoing is hilariously fitting.

 

“Do you know what cynical means?”

 

Turning to the regulars, the real stars of this one are Daniel Anthony and Anjli Mohindra, who are going from strength to strength at the moment. Clyde and Rani’s thread of the plot is by far the most riveting, though admittedly this is heavily buoyed (at least in the first episode) by the mirthful fact that they have K-9 hidden under their school desk so that he can help Clyde with his GCSE Biology test! I shall have to reiterate my colleague Dan Tessier’s comment from a few weeks ago though – Kiss you fools! This clearly infatuated pair are starting to make Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright look positively licentious in comparison, and at

sixteen years old it is starting to stretch credibility just a tad.

 

Further, whereas last week Sarah Jane was trapped inside a painting and the narrative was largely carried by Luke, this week the tables have turned and it is a vinegar pistol-toting Miss Smith that takes the fight to the Blathereen whilst Luke convalesces under the watchful gaze of Mr Smith. It’s a fine performance from Lis Sladen; I particularly like how she conveys the character’s hesitation to trust the Raxacoricofallapatorians at the start of the story, and her subsequent fury at herself for giving them the benefit of the doubt.

 

“Will you accept the claw of friendship, Sarah Jane?”

 

However, Sarah’s self-recrimination does beg the question as to the kind of message that The Gift is sending out. After all, lessons in pragmatism are all well and good, but wouldn’t

it have been nice if – just for once – the monstrous, clawed aliens from outer space weren’t trying to destroy the world? This patent cynicism wouldn’t have been quite so glaring had Laight’s script not had Sarah Jane beat herself so much up after the event, but as it stands The Gift seems more concerned with telling children not to cheat in their exams than it does encouraging them to rise above prejudice. Not that it matters all that much when all’s said and done; this story is such flagrant silliness that it defies close scrutiny.

 

All told then, The Gift is a thoroughly entertaining hour of television; the farting, belching and utterly iniquitous Raxacoricofallapatorians truly the perfect villain for this show’s target CBBC audience. And on the whole, I think it’s fair to say that The Sarah Jane Adventures’ third run has been its best. I just hope that it will still work next year when we’ve got a bunch of angsty six-formers on our hands…

 

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.

 

 

 

                                                       

 

It’s been a while since we’ve seen the Slitheen, so it was a good time to dust off

the old costumes and bring the green meanies back. They’ve become more identified with The Sarah Jane Adventures than Doctor Who now, and I still feel they are more suited to the kids’ show format. Nonetheless, they skirt the line in each appearance between humour and annoyance. The problem is mainly in the performance – the aliens here are played in pure naff kids’ telly acting mode, and end up being very tiresome. Everyone loves a silly voice, but not for long.

 

 

It’s a nice touch having a pair of villainous Slitheen arrested and dragged off in the early moments of the story, by a pair of Blathereen – or, as we later discover, double-barrelled Slitheen-Blathereen. Seemingly from a noble family, Leef and Tree Blathereen, with their reddish skin, are of a slightly different stock of Raxacoricofallapatorian to those we’re used to. We learn some fun trivia about the Raxan system – assuming we can believe nay of it – and it’s nice to have the new mythology of the series broadened further. Yet, for all this, it’s just another Slitheen plot in all but family name. There is some nice interplay between the regulars, unsure whether they can trust these newcomers. Sarah Jane is particularly torn between her desire to find friendly alien life and her experiences with aggressive creatures.

 

It isn’t long before the Blathereen’s gift – a rakweed crop – begins to wreak havoc. Far from the solution to world famine that they claimed, it is in fact a highly addictive vegetable which produces spores deadly to human beings. Cue normally-resilient Luke coming down with

the lurgy. Tommy Knight does his best here, but there’s no way to make a slight cough and some dodgy, painted on red spots seem like a serious affliction. While Sarah confronts the Blathereen, Clyde and Rani take centre stage in solving the problem of the weed. As usual, the pair work brilliantly together, and it doesn’t take long for them to discover that really loud ringing is the weed’s weakness. Naturally, it’s one of those illnesses that is instantly cure (the kind that only appear on television). K-9 also gets more to do than usual, thanks to Clyde’s smuggling him into school for test cheating purposes. The metal dog has been a bit wasted since he was brought back. I’m not sure there’s really enough for both him and Mr Smith to share between them.

 

 

Sarah Jane takes a hard line against the aliens. Is marching into their lair with a Super Soaker loaded with vinegar really any different to going in carrying a loaded gun? If they were humans being threatened with a spray of sulphuric acid, it would be horrific. Later, Sarah uses amplified sound the destroy the weed in their systems and blow them to tiny pieces. There’s a moment of painful justification – “there should have been a better way” – but essentially, we get a comedy murder in which “they farted themselves to death”. Hilar-iously, our heroes have to wash the greasy innards of their enemies of themselves. The

story seems to be trying to show us not to judge all races by the poor example of a few,

but falls back on bloodthirsty extermination. A bit of a mixed result then, for the end of the season.

 

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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