SEASON PLACEMENT

THESE STORIES TAKE

PLACE BETWEEN THE

DOCTOR WHO NOVEL

"MILLENNIUM SHOCK"

AND SARAH JANE

SMITH SERIES 2.
  
 

WRITTEN BY

TERRANCE DICKS (1),

BARRY LETTS (2),

DAVID BISHOP (3),

RUPERT LAIGHT (4),

& PETER ANGHELIDES (5)

  

DIRECTED BY

GARY RUSSELL

  

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BETWEEN JULY 2002 AND NOVEMBER 2002.

 

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JULY 2002 - NOVEMBER 2002

(5 70-MINUTE EPISODES)

 

  1. COMEBACK     2. THE TAO CONNECTION

 

3. TEST OF NERVE      4. GHOST TOWN     5. MIRROR, SIGNAL, MANOEUVRE

 

 

                                                                                   

 

 

Now that we have just a handful of half-finished Sarah Jane Adventures left to look forward to, I suspect that an increasing number of us will be turning to Big Finish’s less-celebrated Sarah Jane Smith series for our Sarah Jane fix. Those of us doing so, however, should be mindful that Sarah’s audio series is markedly different to the successful children’s series that would follow it. The former is a bitter and brooding audio drama, its stories borne of human corruption and folly; its cynical heroes victims of the same. The latter, conversely, would be teeming with multi-coloured widescreen monsters and heavily-embroidered panto villains; its wide-eyed heroes wrestling with pubescent angst almost as often as they do the show’s alien antagonists. And so whilst both Sarah Jane spin-off series share an inimitable heroine, each has a very different appeal.

 

Sarah’s opening audio adventure, the prosaically-titled Comeback, does a reasonable job of introducing the key players and setting the tone for the rest of the season. Penned by the legendary Terrance Dicks, who oversaw Sarah’s foundational season in Doctor Who during his time as script editor, this episode reacquaints the listener with Sarah Jane – or “SJ”, as, much to her chagrin, she appears to have been re-christened – following her fall from grace. In recent times a renowned investigative journalist with her own Watchdog-esque television series, SJ is now washed-up, discredited, and living hand-to-mouth under a rotating series of aliases – but the old girl is far from broken.

 

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Dicks’ depiction of SJ is interesting, particularly when looked at from a 2011 vantage point. Whilst she’s discernibly as dogged as ever, there’s an uncharacteristic whiff of resentment about her that Lis Sladen seizes upon brilliantly. In many ways, this SJ has stepped into the Doctor’s shoes (“...the world-savers have gone. I’ve stepped up a rung...”), often appearing cold and detached, not to mention more brutal to her enemies than she would be following her Bannerman Road renaissance. Even SJ’s friends aren’t immune to her derision – she’s constantly pulling them up on grammar and minutiae, wounding them whenever she gets the chance, and in a few blazing moments even using rude words. It’s like hearing your favourite teacher swear.

 

SJ’s associates are a suitably motley crew of treehuggers and arsonists. The wheelchair-bound Nat Redfern, played by Sladen’s daughter Sadie Miller, fulfils the K-9 “man in the van” role, while New Age Traveller Ellie Martin (Juliet Warner) serves as the catalyst for many of the season’s plots. Ellie was originally envisioned as eighth Doctor companion Samantha Jones, who remained on Earth with Sarah in Lawrence Miles’ Interference, but after two of the five plays had been recorded Gary Russell had a change of heart and opted to rename the character, reasoning that two former companions might be over-egging the pudding just a tad. Ultimately the change made little difference though as Ellie is still Sam in all but name, and the character lives and dies as such. The most interesting player is Ellie’s former lover, “swampy” ex-con Josh Townsend, played by Jeremy James. At first, the listener could be forgiven for pegging SJ’s only male foil as a heel, but as matters progress and he forges his extraordinary bond with SJ, he actually becomes far more likeable than the series’ out-of-sorts heroine.

 

© Big Finish Productions 2002. No copyright infringement is intended.

 

As Dicks handled SJ’s big comeback, it is fitting that his former producer, Barry Letts, was selected to script its follow-up. However, whereas Comeback is scarcely recognisable as the work of an eminent children’s author and founding father of the Target novelisations, The Tao Connection carries all of its author’s signature traits. The title of the piece betrays the customary Eastern influence on the proceedings, and just as true to form its subject matter has something to say about contemporary culture – this time its the celebrity-idolising ‘look good and live forever’ crowd that take the pasting. Letts also makes the piece a little more ‘now’ by making his principal villain homosexual – a blow for equality if ever there was one – but The Tao Connection still doesn’t sustain itself very well over its seventy-minute runtime. Indeed, save for an artificial snog between SJ and Josh, there isn’t any development of the regulars until the final act, when SJ’s newfound distaste for mercy rears its ugly head once again.

 

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The third instalment is by far the season’s best. Penned by David Bishop, who had recently handled Sarah very well in print, Test of Nerve is far edgier than the episodes either side of it. For the first time the human evil that SJ is fighting feels tangible, and what’s more it feels inevitable. This hour is wrought with almost as much tension as an entire season of 24 as events inexorably draw towards a rush-hour terrorist attack and a life and death decision that, to her horror, SJ finds herself not only able to make, but defend. The performances of Sladen and her daughter towards the end of this episode were, for me, the season’s clear highlight.

 

© Big Finish Productions 2002. No copyright infringement is intended.

 

After the frenetic anxiety of Test

of Nerve, soap scribe Rupert

Laight’s soft Romanian sojourn

feels extraordinarily measured.

With SJ and Josh ghost-hunting

in an old mansion deep in the

Carpathian Mountains, Ghost

Town is broadly similar in form

to a Sarah Jane Adventures

serial, perhaps explaining why

Laight would be the only audio

series writer to go on to write for the CBBC show. However, had the television series billed

an episode as “Ghost Town”, you could guarantee that it would have been abounding with

ghoulish spectres, but this tale only offers yet more earthly vice, intrigue and misdirection.

This isn’t necessarily a criticism; if anything well-drawn characters such as Abbotly (perfectly

played by Sladen’s widower, Brian Miller) and McElroy (Robert Jezek, or Frobisher to you

and me) are probably more compelling than the Raxacoricofallapatorian and temporally-displaced protagonists found in Laight’s television scripts. Shame about the lacklustre plot that they inhabit.

 

© Big Finish Productions 2002. No copyright infringement is intended.

 

The season’s final instalment, Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre, is duly grand and climatic, tying together many of the mysteries that have unified the season, but leaving them open enough to beg further adventures. Turning to one of SJ’s strongest Who appearances for inspiration, Peter Anghelides brings back Patricia Maynard’s cold-hearted radical Hilda Winters, whose sinister shadow has overcast the whole season. This time around though, rather than turning to a giant robot to bring about her insane new world order, Miss Winters has put her stock in biological weapons that date back to the 1940s and a little good old-fashioned psychology too.

 

As its title suggests, Anghelides’ story is the most reflective of the season, focusing on how Miss Winters skilfully turns SJ’s anger and paranoia against her. This story makes explicit what has become more and more evident as the season has progressed – this SJ is not the Sarah Jane that we once knew. She’s a woman who’s become so wary and obsessed that she’s started to ignore what’s right in front of her, and as a result she nearly loses what’s left of her reputation, her friends, and ultimately even her life. It’s an harrowing hour, but a most worthwhile one.

 

© Big Finish Productions 2002. No copyright infringement is intended.

 

And so despite Gary Gillatt and Clayton Hickman’s lobbies for a continuation of the ill-fated and oft-derided K-9 and Company, Big Finish’s Sarah Jane Smith series couldn’t be any farther away from it. For many, its adult themes and gritty pragmatism will stray too far from the colourful charm that many of us now associate with The Sarah Jane Adventures, but for those eager to look at “SJ” in a darker, much more meditative way, then Sarah Jane Smith certainly warrants inspection. Just don’t expect Bubble Shock or Slitheen.

 

Copyright © E.G. Wolverson 2011

 

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

 

 

The dates given in the dialogue suggest that these episodes takes place on or around their respective release dates, placing them (from Sarah Janes point of view) between the events of the Doctor Who novel Millennium Shock (set 2000) and the Doctor Who television episode School Reunion (set 2007). The latter supports this series’ assertion that Sarah’s K-9 unit has been out of action for some time.

 

Sarah’s yellow Volkswagen, “Ethel”, would feature in the later Sarah Jane Adventures episode The Nightmare Man, in which Sarah would give it to her son Luke as a gift.

 

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'Sarah Jane Smith' series copyright © Big Finish Productions. No copyright infringement is intended.