Mastodawn

Watched the first episode of Sarah Jane Adventures for the first time in a while! Turns out yes I still love this show very much. There kept being lovely little morsels of RTD's flavour, very funny and very fun. (And Samantha Bond is absolutely devouring the scenery.) I'm sad that when Maria leaves the show, so will her dad, cuz the guy playing him is kinda great.

I'm really grateful I had this show growing up. It feels so cozy. It's just like, kinda perfectly judged to be the loveliest possible thing. Like, it's for little kids, and also Classic Who fans, and I was both. And Elisabeth Sladen feels like she's rightfully graduated up to essentially being the Doctor, but her Tardis is an attic, which idk to me just feels like the safest loveliest possible place for a kid. A cool attic with a talking alien computer you can play Miniclip on. And Sarah Jane, like from Doctor Who, is there.

Watched Sarah Jane Adventures: Revenge of the Slitheen and Eye of the Gorgon. Even though the Slitheen are kinda even worse in this than they are in Doctor Who, I'm still riding high revisiting these. Seems like the hammy villain dial is turned up to the max a lot of the time, which I am very here for. And the Classic Whoness is on point, especially in Eye of the Gorgon. Totally could've been a 70s Who premise, a group of menacing nuns enacting a ritual for an ancient alien evil.

Keeping my Sarah Jane Adventures rewatch going, just watched Warriors of Kudlak. That was... far and away the best episode I've watched so far! Like, holy crap? The story is great, and incredibly dark for a kids show, but somehow not in a way that ever feels too edgy or out of place. The writing is stellar, with a bunch of interesting scenes and standout bits of dialogue. The performances, especially Kudlak and Grantham, are great. The effects on Kudlak's alien face, especially his constantly asymmetrically twitching insect eyes, are awesome. The laser tag setting feels unique and particular to what's relatable and interesting to a younger audience. Just really excellent TV all round. It's interesting, I didn't remember this as an above average episode from when I watched it as a kid. I don't think I appreciated at the time how much it was doing.

Also this is apparently writer Philip Gladwin's only contribution to Doctor Who, ever! It's a shame, cuz it really has a spark to it to match RTD's level in the first episode.

Just got to the bit in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane where she says "there was some Graske activity on Earth a couple of years back"

and literally I thought "hehe that was me, that was when I helped the Doctor that time"

If you've played Attack of the Graske you are canon to Doctor Who henceforth

Sarah Jane just mentioned having defeated "The Patriarchs of the Tin Vagabond" off-screen. Had a little look on Tardis wiki, and apparently they've been mentioned one other time ever, by the Doctor in The Satan Pit as one of a list of examples of religions.

Never heard anyone bring that up before. That's fun.

Finished Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane! Wasn't so keen on the first part, felt like too much of Maria in the bad timeline going "No this isn't right!" over and over, but was fully brought round by the second part. Feels like a lovely level of respect for the show's young audience, all the heavy moments it doesn't shy away from.

Very funny line in Sarah Jane Adventures: The Lost Boy:

"Paper said it was a temporary reversal of the earth's magnetic something-or-other."

and by very funny I mean Doctor Who fans will say this kinda shit and then look at you like

lmao I had no memory of this Crazy Frog cameo! Crazy Frog is canon to the Whoniverse! I think I *owned* this exact toy.

Also I've noticed before that Sarah Jane has an Ontario license plate on display in her attic and I'm very curious what the story there is

Also: Thing hands from the 2005 Fantastic Four!

Finished Sarah Jane Adventures: The Lost Boy, and with it season 1! Pretty decent villain reveal for the finale, made for a great cliffhanger. And nice to get K-9 back in for a bit, even if it was brief. Liked season 1 a lot overall, and curious to see how the quality standard compares as the show goes on. I don't really remember the seasons distinctly or have any sense of having enjoyed one more than the others at the time.

Started SJA: The Last Sontaran. It feels like the show got stupider between seasons... probably just a wobbly first part though. I've liked Phil Ford's stories before. And I'm still excited for the handling of the Sontaran and the direct tie to series 4, and references to Sarah Jane's previous run-ins with the Sontarans.

I wonder why Kaagh is the only soldier of the 10th Sontaran Battle Fleet to have a retractable helmet. And invisibility powers. Maybe he's a real nerd of a Sontaran, and invents stuff that he does not share with his clone brothers.

Something in me resists the retractable helmet on principle. Idk if it's how clearly physically impossible the retraction is, if I would be into it if it was a plausible mechanism. I think that maybe I just really think helmets are cool and it's a copout when you deny the audience the cool moment of someone taking off a cool helmet.

Sontaran helmets are cool because they're a thing. When a Sontaran removes his helmet and reveals the mask/prosthetic makeup underneath, the illusion is perfect. We believe they look like that under there all the time. When the helmet is disappeared with CGI, we're invited to think of it as a CGI thing, not a real thing.

In the same way, I feel like I don't totally register CGI sequences of Dalek casings opening as solidly canonical displays of what a Dalek looks like inside, because they haven't shown us a real prop opening up and showing us what's inside it.

(They probably have, right? and I'm not remembering? I just know when I try and call to mind sequences of Daleks opening, they're sequences where they go all CG.)

But at the same time, there is something appealing about that shot of Kaagh's helmet, just because it's unusual. I might be kinda down with one Sontaran having a high tech helmet, even though I think it's categorically worse than if we saw him take off the helmet.

I like idiosyncracy.

There's also definitely a part of me that likes when things look like good toys. A toy with a helmet that comes off is exciting. Lego Iron Man coming with a helmet that pops open sorta like you see in the movies was exciting. When his suit became nanobots that just magicked away, that felt like BS because you can't make a toy do that!!!

I'm trying to think of any modification that would make the retractable helmet acceptable, and nope

Where does it go? Why do Sontaran helmets from the future not do this? Why are there no seams on the helmet if it's constructed from separable pieces?

Finished SJA: The Last Sontaran. Bit let down, I remember this one fondly from when I was little but didn't like a lot about it this time round. One thing I did like was Luke figuring out the Sontarans use base-6 for their number system because they have 3 fingers on each hand. Other than that, uhhhh... it did have a Sontaran in it. So that's neat.

Started listening to the first of the BBC Audio Sarah Jane Adventures audiobooks last night. Found it very lovely! Glad to have some more new Elisabeth Sladen out there to discover.

aaaaand started watching SJA: Day of the Clown! Was worried at the start it was gonna be a very cliche "ooh aren't clowns scary" thing, but actually I'm quite impressed with how this is written. The Pied Piper connection especially is a cool reveal. Also, funny that not one but *two* actors who were later in Doctor Who are introduced playing different characters in this.

Deka Black 1h ago

@Euan Brad Walsh was one,right?

@DekaBlack Yep! The other is Rani's mum, Mina Anwar, who was in the episode Smile.

Deka Black 54m ago

@Euan :DIn the end, everyone vists the Doctor in a way or another ^^

Deka Black 1h ago

@Euan I think there's an audio drama series starring her out there. But i can't remeber if it is from Big Finish or not.

@DekaBlack Yep! It's Big Finish, and I think it might not be available for purchase from them anymore? (I do have it all though. Only listened to the first episode so far.)

Deka Black 55m ago

@Euan Thanks!
Being honest, something i would love to hear is the new seaons recored by Big finish of the Tomorrow People

Deka Black 1d ago

@Euan The base -6 is a nice touch. I mean:They're aliens. Why they should use a decimal system like us?

Deka Black 1d ago

@Euan Maybe Kaagh was the one chraged with testing new gear? Maybe the helmet and invsibilty were prototypes.

Deka Black 1d ago

@Euan I only remember a casing already open.The one with that mad dalek inside

Charnock 1d ago

@Euan Back in the time warrior the whole idea of the helmet was that there was an assumption that under it would be something else, not a head that just fitted that helmet. That reveal I suppose only works as a surprise once. I remember being delighted when that helmet came off the first time when it was on tv originally. CGI never captures that sort of practical prop effect.

@Printdevil My version of that moment would've been while watching The Sontaran Stratagem as a kid (or rather, probably the next time trailer for it. They hardly ever seemed to have much restraint in those! So I had approximately 11 seconds to wonder what the Sontarans looked like under the helmets.) Some kids must have had it during Sontaran Experiment or Invasion of Time. Some poor souls have probably had it watching Shakedown.

Charnock 1d ago

@Euan reveals were always better simply because of the lack of fore knowledge in those days

Deka Black 1d ago

@Euan Please,say there's references to The Time Warrior!

Deka Black 2d ago

@Euan K-9 returned to watch over tat black hole?

Sean Kleefeld 3d ago

@Euan K-9 went on a road trip 😁

Deka Black 3d ago

@Euan Theory: Is from taht time she went to Canada as a journalist to an astronomy Congress.

She end having to deal with a very very stubborn zygon.

Deka Black 3d ago

@Euan Maybe Crazy frog is an Auton Spy? is made of plastic?

Mandrake 🐎2d ago

@Euan Honestly, I was distracted by all the Chelsea posters on the wall, because *of course* the aliens would think that all human boys would be into football and that they would support the team which had won the Premier League twice in a row