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.)

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