School Reunion
(Series 2, Dr 10 with Rose and Sarah Jane, 29/4/2006, showrunner: Russell T Davies, writer: Toby Whithouse, director: James Hawes)
Rank: 100
'Don't look so glum Mickey, you're not the tin dog at all. You're the shape-shifter whifferdill named Frobisher that got stuck in the shape of a penguin!'
Old and new collide in a story that’s a learning curve for two companions from different sides of the year 2000, one that’s simultaneously a history lesson for fans new to the series about a key figure from its past and a revision lesson to get the old fans up to speed who’ve finally given in to watching the new look show as Sarah Jane is here. Yes Sarah Jane. Even more than Dr Who coming back at all this was a moment we thought we’d never see again – because the return of anything wasn’t really what Dr Who was about. During ‘old’ Who in the 20th century there was an unwritten rule that he series never referred back to past companions – the BBC never quite knew what to do with such a long running series as DW and figured that people watching in the present would be put off by references to the past (let’s face it, until the videos started coming out in the late 1980s there was no way anyone ever dreamed they could actually go back and see old stories, a handful of repeats aside). In the new series, too, that wasn’t what the series was ‘for’. There was one big exception to this rule, when in the goodbye-to-an-entire-era that is ‘Planet Of The Spiders’ Barry Letts allows himself one last indulgence and has Jo Grant unwittingly kick off the events that led to the 3rd Dr’s regeneration by returning a crystal he’d got from Metebelis 3 and once gifted to her. Sadly he’s not with new companion Sarah when he gets that message so we don’t know how she re-acts to finding out there were companions before her; we do however get to see what happens when she bumps into Rose in ‘The School Reunion’, a story inspired by a childhood memory Russell T Davies had of that very scene and being pleased at how Jo was very much a part of the action even in her absence. Even in the modern era up to this point we had no reason to think we would get something like this. Russell The Davies had been cagey about whether this Dr Who was a continuation or a reboot but, with viewing figures proving the series could stand on its own two feet (mostly) and more old-timers happy than not, series two is where Dr Who embraces its past and makes full use of all the many wonderful things available. Including the person frequently votes the ‘classic’ series’ most popular companion. Though a lot of that love comes from the era she was in, covering two of the most loved Doctors and the era when viewing figures were higher, nevertheless Sarah Jane was special for a reason: she wasn’t like the other companions, she had her own life as a journalist, had Doctory traits of inquisitiveness and kindness before she met him and yet still seemed like ‘one of us’, not above making sarcastic remarks or taking The Doctor down to size when he needed it.
Interestingly though
Russell didn’t keep the story for himself to write, nor did he give it to one
of the really big Dr Who fans on the writing team (Mark Gatiss, Gareth Roberts,
Paul Cornell or Steven Moffat – he had no end of choices) but future Being
Human creator Toby Whithouse (who wasn’t not a fan exactly, as he’d seen and
enjoyed most of the Tom Baker run, but he hadn’t done any Dr Who writing
before, be it book, audiobook, fanzine or charity comedy sketch the way the
others had; he got the job after producer Julie Gardner loved a play of his ‘Jump
Mr Malinoff Jump!’ and told Russell they had to have him on Who). Maybe Russell
recognised that a fan would have felt too much pressure writing for one of
their childhood heroes, that the story would become bogged down in continuity
details (although in the end there’s quite a lot anyway, most of it added by
Russell himself in a later draft!) or maybe he recognised that at heart – and
beyond the rather basic alien invasion plot – this is an emotional episode all
about emotions and how people feel when they think they’ve been left behind by
somebody they love, one of Whithouse’s greatest strengths as a writer (and why
‘Being Human’ is as powerful as it is, at least in its original version before
it got a ‘TV Movie’ style American
makeover). The general gist for the episode was always ‘Sarah meets Rose and it
changes how both of them see The Doctor’ though it took Whithouse a while to
get the rest of the plot. The first draft was called ‘Black Ops’ and took place
in a UNIT style army base. It was the whole town that had become ‘intelligent’
and Sarah was an undercover reporter investigating why (it was because aliens
were polluting the atmosphere via a bomb, perhaps a bit too close to ‘The Android Invasion’ – a Sarah
adventure no less – for comfort). It was Russell who added the school setting,
partly to make sure children didn’t switch off when somebody old from the past
returned (with memories of his own pre-Who series ‘Dark Season’, the first
series he created from scratch, about a female version of this episode’s Kenny
working out her headmistress – Jacqueline ‘Chessene who is not at all like
Servalan gosh no’ Pearce – is an alien. A pre-fame Kate Winslet is that series’
’tin dog’, the friend with all the clever suggestions).Russell also got Toby
to add Mickey in at a late stage having better worked out what the rest of the
series would look like.
In the end we get a story that’s a dead ringer for the ‘Sarah Jane Adventures’ to come, one with a foot in both the real world and Whoniverse camps, far more so than most Dr Who stories, with ordinary children with ordinary emotions in extraordinary circumstances. Sarah Jane, ex journalist turned investigator, has heard about the sudden and unexpected improvement of a formerly failing school and isn’t satisfied with the answers she’s been given so goes snooping, using all her talents The Doctor has helped her grow. It’s exactly what Sarah have done in the UNIT years and all too plausible as an episode of ‘K9 and Company’ had hat series moved out of the suburbs and gone to a whole series. The moment she meets the Doctor again, twice (once without knowing) is one of Who’s most heartwarming scenes, old or new (Toby’s stage directions read: ‘The hearts of every dad in the country skip a beat: it’s Sarah Jane!’) Mickey, too, has noticed the same thing and has been keeping an eye out for strange anomalies that the Doctor needs to know about – partly to help keep the world safe but also, you suspect, so he has an excuse to see Rose again now she’s cavorting across space and time. It’s a clever idea because the two bumping into each other doesn’t seem as forced as it might; the wonder really is that the Doctor doesn’t keep bumping into companions all the time after encouraging them to see the world and do right in it where they can. The moment they work out who each other are is a sweet moment and even though he actually bumps into Sarah all the time, far more than any other companion (see ‘prequels’ below but also ‘The Five Doctors’ and ‘Dimensions In Time’) it’s nonetheless moving. The Doctor is still recognisably The Doctor even in an entirely different body (and David Tennant, filming the first story where he’s ‘awake’ the whole way through, nails his Doctor instantly; Toby, not sure with no other scripts to go on, wrote for a sort of hybrid of the 9th Doctor and Tennant’s role in Russell’s ‘Casanova’, which explains why he’s flirty even for him this story). Sarah is still recognisably Sarah, still plucky kind and funny, but with a harder edge to her that comes from extra life disappointments (such as the Big Finish series Lis Sladen was making back to back with this episode but isn’t mentioned anywhere on TV; that’s the thing that’s really made her paranoid; the kind and considerate kids on Sarah Jane Adventures soften her up again thankfully). At first Lis turned the idea down, thinking she would only have a cameo with lots of other companions but was thrilled to find the episode was ‘about’ her – Russell, sensibly, took her out to dinner before a word was written and took on board all her ideas for where Sarah would be in her life in 2006 (she was adamant, for instance, that Sarah wouldn’t be married or living a ‘normal’ life; Russell didn’t want that for her either, though he did suggest Sarah would have become an alcoholic to fill the Doctor-shaped hole in her life. Lis turned that down flat). One thing that never quite fits though: the Sarah we saw in the 1970s (or possibly 1980s, given UNIT timey wimey dating) was very much The Doctor’s best friend, but now she hints at feelings for him we never saw on screen (because that sort of thing wasn’t ‘allowed’ in a children’s programme – that’s why her comment that she did fancy someone once ‘but he was always travelling’ left a few elder fans scratching their heads a bit).
The 10th Dr doesn’t quite
know what to make of the reunion – he’s overjoyed to see Sarah and the fact
that she’s still righting wrongs, but even before Steven Moffat wrote the line
for River Song he’s clearly bad at saying goodbyes, sad at seeing the people he
loves grow older while he gets older. Sarah is thrilled to see him again too
but also seems triggered that he didn’t come back for her and even more stung
when Rose admits he’s never even mentioned her when she was such a big part of
his life ; the one thing that doesn’t quite ring true is that The Doctor is one
of them: Sarah seems to have convinced herself that The Doctor would come back
for her and she has a right to travel with him, which isn’t at all how ‘The Hand Of Fear’ ends. Theirs is actually a
sweet and affectionate final goodbye, a recognition that they have their own
paths to lead. Something almost none of the other ‘classic’ companions ever had
as, honestly, the old series wasn’t as good at handling this type of emotion.
Only Ian/Barbara and Jo get better farewells. Indeed the whole ‘gimmick’ during
‘Hand’ was that fans knew Sarah was leaving so it keeps teasing us with all the
many horrible ways she could die – it’s a sweet ending because we know she’s
safe and well). For her part Rose is distraught: she’s been set up for a series
and a bit as the single most important person in the Doctor’s life and she’s learnt
not to ask too many questions about his past, so the realisation that there
were many many ‘companions’ before her changes everything she thought she knew
about her new life and the alien she ran off with. Her biggest fear is that
somehow she’ll lose him and wind up back where she started, in a small town
stuck in a mindless job, which is why
her undercover job as a dinner lady urks her so much, because she’s worried it
might be her future (it would make more plot sense for her to be the Doctor’s
lab assistant, but aesthetically this works better as a flash of a possible
future). The story looks as if it’s going to turn into a multi Doctor story,
only with multi companions, as they bicker with each other and throw alien
menaces in their face (added by Russell, of course) with the loch ness monster
as the trump card (a cut line had Rose finally admitting defeat when Sarah talks
about the Skarasen’s bad breath), before rather sweetly calling a truce and
ganging up on The Doctor instead (to encourage laughter the makeup lady put a
fake moustache on Tennant for when he walked through the door without telling
them, which is why they’re giggling is bordering on hysterics. He removes it
for the scene where the camera looks at him. Exactly the sort of joke both
Pertwee and Tom Baker would have played). What’s clever about the writing is
that you side with everyone in turn: you feel for Sarah who once felt special,
feel for Rose who finds out that she might not be as special as she thought she
was and feel for The Doctor caught between ‘his missus and his ex, every man’s
worst nightmare’ as Mickey puts it. The
play off between the characters is very clever indeed and it’s lovely to see
Elisabeth Sladen again after so long (she copes well considering she’d broken
sprained her leg early in filming, slipping on the polished floor of the gym, so
doesn’t get to do much of the running down corridors stuff of her youth; and
yes that is a very Dr Who thing for a companion to do). She’s still very much
got it and you can totally see why Russell gave her spin-off series when the
BBC were nagging him for one (their idea submitted to him was a sort of ‘Dr Who
Junior’ set ion Gallifrey, a bit like the ‘Timeless
Child’ arc which he turned down flat). Most of all she feels like Sarah
again: anyone time-travelling from her last story in 1976 would very much have
recognised in both the script and Lis Sladen’s portrayal.
And how you feel largely
depends on who you are watching: if you joined with the new series and it’s
anywhere close to your favourite then the idea that there even are other
stories and other Doctors feels like a betrayal of sorts, so you can get behind
Rose. If you’ve seen them all multiple times (and got beaten up on the
playground because it was ‘unpopular’ like I did) then the fact that the young
whippersnapper generation think they’ve invented it was slightly annoying, so
having Rose put in her place is good. Above all, though, it shows that this
really is the same series whatever age you are and that one day maybe Rose will
come back in another twenty years and be the older companion. I can’t think of
another series with a long enough history that could do this and Whithouse and
Davies really lean into this aspect which works well. It’s also very in keeping
with where Dr Who started as a ‘generational crossover’, one of the few things
parents watched with their children (something Russell was really keen to
happen again in the 2000s). We’ve spoken a lot in the 1960s reviews especially
about how your take on the characters changes depending how many wars you’ve
fought and whether you’re looking forward to the sort of world being run by
your hippieish children or not. So many of those early stories play out the
horrors of the past (WWII) the present (the cold war) and future (any number of
horrible scenarios where another war destroys the world/we get invaded because
the kids don’t have an army anymore, delete according to preference) so to see
that dynamic played out in this episode all those years on is a treat and fully
in keeping with the Dr Who ethos of realising that there are more points of
view to consider than your own. It’s clever, too, the way a story that might
have the kids switching off because of a returning character they don’t know is
set in a school, somewhere they can identify with (only the third, after ‘Remembrance Of The Daleks’ and where it
all began ‘An Unearthly Child’). For
this episode plays nicely into the ‘real’ fear of children: what might happen
to them when they become adults. It’s a shock to most imaginative children that
adults were children themselves once: they seem so alien, with their different
preoccupations that make no sense when you’re little (and don’t make a lot of
sense when you’re big if I’m being honest). After all, why would any adult
still be hanging round a school when they were free and able to go anywhere
around the world? Why come back and put yourself through all that again?
Especially when most seem to hate children on sight. It makes no sense. Almost
every child will have wondered at some point if their teacher is really an
alien – it seems the only logical explanation sometimes (I’m still convinced at
least one of my teachers was a Zygon – and not in disguise either). A bigger
scare to have you scuttling behind the sofa quicker than a Dalek army is the
thought that one day you might turn into the grumpy cynic your teachers are.
And never more than in this era, when the press was full of reports about how
kids were badly behaved, with endless reports about some dumb chef wanting to
mess around with your dinners and starve you with food that’s good for you when
the old stuff was the only light relief between p.e. and double maths (so many
of my primary class developed eating conditions after a ‘traffic light’ system
meant teachers breathed down your beck to check your dinner was ‘healthy’ and
it got far worse after my day) or that your school was about to be taken over
by one of those ‘disciplinarians’ the tabloids loved who would stick you in
detention and make your life hell for the slightest thing (adults assume
results are the most important thing to any child at school when they are so
far down the list it’s not funny). The very scariest thing about childhood
though? The fact you are powerless and have no control, that people will always listen to other
adults over you – even when they’re aliens up to no good. Like all the best
children’s TV/literature ‘School Reunion’ digs deep into all these fears
(indeed the plot is a dead crib of ‘The Prime Minister’s Brain’, book two of
Gillian Cross’ superb series ‘The Demon Headmaster’, with children brainwashed
into doing something complicated on computers back when they were new to schools
and not a little scary; 3rd book, ‘Revenge’ is the best by the way
though too expensive to make for TV so everyone forgets about it; (Russell T
must have known about it – he wrote a rather damning review of the TV
adaptation for for TV Zone, odd because it seems like precisely the sort of
thing he would have liked given his other influences).
However that brings me on
to ‘School Reunion’s weakest aspect: where Dr Who always used to identify with
the children (even when it was being written by middle aged men about to
retire) ‘School Reunion’ comes a little undone there. What I’m calling the
‘middle’ draft of this story was better: Kenny was the star who did all the
things Mickey ends up doing, he has far more screentime and sticks to his
principles even when everyone else ignores him or bullies him. He’s clearly the
Dr Who fan in the class, not a natural troublemaker but happy to bend the rules
when they’re wrong because he has morals and is brave enough to use them and
think for himself. He should be the star of the episode and even though he kind
of is, pressing the fire alarm bell that distracts the Krillitane monsters and
the episode ends with his classmates cheering his name and accepting him
(something all of us Whovian eccentric weirdoes dreamed of happening one day
surely) nevertheless he’s not the focal point. He barely gets any lines and
most of the credit goes to Rose, Mickey and Sarah clapping themselves. What’s
more, this episode simply isn’t very nice to quite a portion of the audience
watching. I’m older than the generation seen in class in this episode (and the
age of a lot of children watching at home on first transmission) so I can get
away with saying it: they were so hard done by in this story, the
contemporaries of these school pupils, just as they were in life. Dr Who is one
of the few series around in 2006 that parents watched with children. It’s one
of the few series that, traditionally, takes the children’s point of view over
the adults as a matter of course in most stories, showing that the world is a
far more interesting and kinder place than grown-ups make it out to be and
would be better still if the people in charge were, well, less grown-up from
time to time (think of the Doctor’s showdowns with all those authority figures,
even the ones he’s close to like Harriet Jones and The Brigadier and the 4th
Doctor’s lines in ‘Robot’ – a Sarah Jane
episode no less - about the importance of being childish). What’s more, the
return of Sarah Jane was enough to lure more mums and dads who remembered her
than usual. This story should have been a welcome opportunity to allow children
shafted by their elders like never before to fight back: to put on screen everything
they didn’t see except in Daily Mail columns chuntering about ‘ungrateful
brats’: the long long list of exams their elders never had to face (like
adulthood intruding on your childhood), the changing curriculum that was never
the same two years running, the messed up exam results that seemed to be pulled
out of thin air, the closure of youth centres that gave children nothing to do,
the way they were being told off even at meal times for something that wasn’t
their fault, the endless lectures about how badly behaved and ungrateful they
were (when they weren’t, any more than other generations – particularly the
baby boomers doing most of the complaining). Dr Who should absolutely be on
their side and The Doctor should be bigging them up and making them feel better
about how they can overthrow the corrupt system when they’re older. What do we
get instead? An episode that actually makes their stupidity part of the plot
and where Kenny, the only likeable kid who sees through the baddy’s plan seems
to keep getting under everyone’s feet and being in the way (and even then in
the cut scenes – he’s barely in the actual episode). Even the Doctor dismisses
them as being all ‘happy-slapping kids with hoodies and asbos’ in one scene and
even though he’s clearly joking, you just know that so many adults at home
assumed he wasn’t. This is the biggest chance to see the adult world from a
child’s perspective outside the Capaldi-Clara Coal Hill School episodes (which
are even worse from a child’s perspective!) and they blow it. Had ‘An Unearthly Child’ made Susan out to
be like this there’s no way Dr Who would have lasted longer than the thirteen
episodes it was first intended to run for. Mercifully, after an equally dodgy
first series, ‘The Sarah Adventures’ series really gets this aspect right.
At least Kenny’s loss is
very much Mickey’s gain and he shines this episode, moving on from the moping
whiner of series one to a more rounded character, having adjusted to the fact
that his girlfriend is running around time and space with a bloke he can’t
compete with and realising how much of a part he can still play in keeping
Earth safe. It’s him that calls The Doctor in, correctly guessing this school
is not quite right and him that drives a car into the school to evacuate the
pupils (another childhood daydream right there!) You feel for him, too, feeling
like he’s been ‘regulated’ on his own story with the very telling line hinting
at a troubled past ‘sent to the back of the class with the safety scissors and
glitter’. Especially as this comes after
a scene where The Doctor has picked on him (again) for screaming after being
attacked by a cupboard full of vacuum-packed rats (I’d scream too; this
apparently happened for real to the sister of Who script editor and future
writer Helen Raynor working as a substitute in a lab full of rats ready to be
dissected. Oh and even though Billie Piper is playing a little younger she
herself is only two months younger than me and we totally had rat dissections
at my school. Though I ended up doing extra boring work from textbooks after
invoking my inner Kenny and refusing to do it). School is tough on clever kids,
but it’s even worse on those who struggle (you sense one of the reasons Mickey
was so pleased to date Rose was the self-worth it gave him being with someone
who was at least head girl material. The part of The Doctor that aggravates him
the most is how naturally bright he is – Mickey’s clearly lost girls to people
like that before, despite hints that he’s been with Rose since they were both
fourteen and the age of the kids at this school. One other odd thing: they
apparently went to the same school yet don’t share any memories here of ‘remember
that time e got detention for snogging behind the bike sheds’ or something
similar). There’s even a brief but heartwarming cameo for K9 Mark III; Mickey’s
realisation that his technical knowhow makes him ‘the tin dog’ of the Doctor’s
current party is a very telling line, one that’s both funny ‘cause its true (he
does all the computer stuff – though I’d love to be compared to K9 and take it
as a compliment) and part of the overall series arc as it spurs him to be more
and more heroic. You wouldn’t think, seeing him a gibbering wreck in series
one, that Mickey would ever be brave enough to travel in space yet it makes
sense after the events in this episode.
Russell also finally
manages to make the new-look Who even more his beloved ‘Buffy: The Vampire
Slayer’ by bringing in its English cast member at last, Anthony Head (Giles),
after oh so many nearlies (Head once auditioned for the 8th Doctor
in the TV Movie – but didn’t everyone
with an equity card it seems? - narrates
two series of ‘Dr Who Confidential’, the radio behind-the-scenes of its
comeback ‘Project Who’ and was a voice in the webcast ‘Death Comes To Time’ –
see ‘The Scream Of Shalka’ for more – while
he’ll go on to be the baddy in cartoon ‘The
Infinite Quest’, as well of course as playing Uther in semi-sister series ‘Merlin’).
He’s very good, especially when squaring off against Tennant, believable both
as a cruel ruthless alien and the sort of person who can turn on just enough
charm for parent’s evening. Though I for one was sorry he didn’t turn out to be
The Master in disguise as rumoured (‘Anthony Head playing a Head...Master!’
After a 1980s spent looking out for Anthony Ainley’s name in anagrams in the
Radio Times, surely it had to be...but sadly it wasn’t; strange as it seems for
two such long-running characters The Master only ever met Sarah briefly in ‘The
Five Doctors’ and we really needed a matchup, but alas it wasn’t to be). Alas
the rest of the cast are a bit wasted and forgotten: we needed more of The
Doctor talking to Mr Parsons and Mr Wagner in the staffroom while the children
barely feature in their own school (a side effect both of giving Mickey more to
do and the limited hours children can spend filming, despite this story being
made in the school Summer holidays deliberately).
The Krillitane are an
interesting if undeveloped race. They look impressive, everyone having learned from
series one what can and can’t be done with CGI and they’re one of The Mill’s
better creations, bat-like with teeth yet very different to the last time Who
tried this (the Tetraps from ‘Time and The Rani’).
I still wish we could have seen their ‘earlier’ versions with long giraffe
necks though. We don’t get many animal-like monsters in Dr Who and they make a
welcome change from the talkier ones, while the idea that they’re on earth to
harvest DNA and add genetics to their database to make them ‘invincible’ (or
nearest offer) is certainly amongst the more interesting monster motivations in
Who. I am puzzled by their plan though, which is to solve the ‘skasis paradigm’,
the ‘universal theory’ made up of the building blocks of life. Their plan, to
improve children’s IQ’s by dosing them with chips coated in an alien goo every
lunchtime. Why got to a school? Why not go to a night class for quantum physicist
or something? The Doctor says that they need ‘imaginative brains’ which is
apparently meant to cover this plothole, but no – kids are pretty much told to
leave their imagination at the door in schools. They should have gone to an
arts group or a youth centre. Schools are also the most regulated places going.
There’s no way they could suddenly develop this many maths geniuses in one go
without someone noticing beyond a reporter and a timelord’s ex-in-law. There’s
no way, either, they could lose thirteen members of staff in one go without an
investigation and the Doctor and Rose end up undercover remarkably quickly for
an evil scheme they’d want to keep quiet (it would take months for a crb check
alone; did the Doctor nip back in time and speed this process up?) And what happens
to the kids that don’t eat chips? In most schools at least half of kids eat
packed lunches – why would this one be different? With all the love in the
world too, why make hero Kenny the school fat kid when he’s the one most likely
to eat the chips? We also get perhaps the weirdest plot resolution of all: the Krillitanes die when The Doctor pours
their own body oils back over them. Eh? How does that work evolutionarily?
There ought to be a mass extinction every time they accidentally swallow their
own bath water or bite their tongues (and with tongues like that I’d bite mine
all the time). How do they mate and reproduce if each other’s oils are poison
to them? The mind boggles. And even accepting this quirk of fate why make your
plan to take over the world revolve around a substance that happens to be toxic
to your own life-form? That’s just asking for trouble! As Dr Who villains go
The Krillitane really are bottom of the class in so many ways.
There are a few other
issues too. Probably without knowing it Whithouse comes very close to
re-writing ‘Remembrance Of The Daleks’
only with Krillitanes instead of Daleks and Mickey driving care and Rose with
her gymnastics bronze rather than Ace with a baseball bat. Sarah really wasn’t
just Rose senior as this story implies: she had a life before The Doctor in a
way the Rose never did (Sarah was a good five years older when we first meet
her), while in character she’s actually more like Mickey, enjoying banter and
sarcasm and eye-rolling rather than agreeing with everything The Doctor says
and looking at him with googoo eyes (that was Jo). Alas this never feels like a
‘real’ life school with actual pupils (something they got so right with the
very first story of Dr Who in 1963). Somehow blowing up the baddies means the
kids revert back to normal, even though Krillitane oil is still in their systems
and they ought to be acing maths for the next three terms at least. You can
tell that it’s actually two different locations stuck together from two very
different buildings that suggest the architect had a stroke and/or regeneration
while designing it: the ‘normal’ school is Fitzalan High in Leckwith and the
more eccentric looking school Duffryn High in Newport, which also provided the
fifty child extras. The story was made in something of a whirlwind rush and hit
by multiple obstacles that needed solving: the roof of the entrance that Mickey
crashes Sarah’s car into was found to be covered in asbestos so the school had
to be evacuated (it was clearly similar vintage to my high school which was
riddle with the stuff; who says your schooldays don’t kill you?) Other delays
came from fitting round Noel Clarke’s busy schedule, Lis Sladen’s recording
dates for Big Finish, Noel accidentally breaking one of K9’s ears, the usual
delays with getting K9 to move across uneven surfaces (he’s the old prop, still
owned by Matt Irvine, refigured), the
sheer amount of onlookers who turned up (and wondered who the skinny bloke in
the pinstripe with Billie Piper was) and a changed panned ending where a nearby
disused BT building had been commandeered for the ‘ruins’ of the school
(dropped when it turned out someone had messed their dates up and the place had been demolished; a real shame
as seeing your school destroyed is about the only childhood daydream we don’t get
in this story!) Really, though, this story’s biggest obstacle is time: there are two at times very different stories competing for space here and
they both miss out with having to share the running time. We need even more
emotions – out then we also need The Doctor to solve the plot in a more
interesting way than calling the headmaster out and tipping over a vat of goo.
The story we thought we were getting from the pre-credits sequence (The Doctor
is your teacher, fabulous! Although there ought to be at least one girl in that
class openly in love with him – it happened in mine with far uglier teachers!)
is also a far more interesting and intriguing ‘The
Lodger’ type story about the Doctor being hopeless at fitting in than
anything we actually get in this episode (series ten will finally make good on
this – and the 12th Doctor’s lecturing style is surprisingly like the
10th’s). The Doctor blows his cover (to both Sarah and Mr Finch) at
the weirdest times simply because the plot has to keep rolling forward.
All that said, is it any
good? Affirmative! This is one of those stories where for once you don’t care
too much about the plot and its kind of good that its such a simple one it can
stay in the background while we see our friends reunited. Whithouse is one of
the funniest of all Who writers and he doesn’t disappoint: he’s particularly
good at the timing of screams of taken-over teachers/dinner ladies/school nurses
(‘An ambulance?’ asked a Krillitane-possessed teacher ‘No need’. [Loud scream]
Oh she does that’ or when Sarah says to The Doctor ‘I can’t believe it’s really
you’ only for a scream off camera ‘okay, now I can believe it’s really you!’) It’s
perfectly in keeping with the old days, too, that we finally find out how far
away from home Sarah was when the Tardis dropped her off in ‘Hand of Fear’ –
Aberdeen (570 miles from home to be exact!) There’s more than enough action to
keep things moving, lots of moving emotional drama, there are some really sharp
and witty scenes too (Rose’s frustration at ending up a disguised dinner lady,
feeding chips to other people, only a few stories after complaining that a life
without the Doctor was only full of eating chips, is superbly under-played and
maybe Billie Piper’s funniest scene) and this is one of those stories where
there’s always something mad going on to catch your eye, without the usual dull
lulls midway through. Most of all, though, it does an old friend justice. The
ending with Sarah heading off into the sunset having found ‘closure’ from her
time with The Doctor works too, being very sweet ending without falling into
saccharine and what could have been a very indulgent story about old times ends
up being quite an uplifting one about the very Who theme of second chances. It’s
the rest of the plot that doesn’t quite take fire. Most school reunions are
miserable affairs, reminders that the world that once lay at your feet has now
buried you up to your neck, but this story is one of series two’s real success
stories, a very memorable and sweet little story about how you are never too
old to care or to learn. This was a popular episode across the board too so it
was a surprise they never tried it with other companions, though equally no
surprise it led to ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’, which get really good in series
three and four when Rani joins and everything knows what they’re doing. Even
the title is clever and sweet (added by Helen Raynor after no one liked the
working titles ‘Old Friend and ‘Friends Reunited’). A lovely episode, very
flawed in so many ways but one that for all the clumsy mistakes fairly glows
with a warmth and nostalgia only this series can give you.
POSITIVES + I love the
way story is written so that, if you’re a fan who grew up on the classic series
you automatically side with Sarah Jane. A lot of series one has been about
Rose’s relationship with the Doctor being ‘special’ but for us oldies we’ve
mostly been shouting at our TV screens that we know better. Sarah’s return is
sad in so many ways (she’s not done half the things with her life both she and
the Doctor thought she would) but she’s turned her life around independently
from him and proved she doesn’t need the Tardis to make a difference. If you’re
a newcomer then you automatically side with Rose: it’s not her fault she wasn’t
told anything about her predecessors and besides, this Doctor isn’t the same
person he was back then – this one is much more of a ‘people’s person’. Rose
has had quite enough of living that boring existence thankyou; she’s not
letting this Doctor go for anything and she’s not dependent on the Doctor to
live her best life the way Sarah still secretly does. It’s a fine but very
clever balance that doesn’t upset either side. This episode is the equivalent
of listening to Cat Stevens’ song ‘Father and Son’ – they’re both somehow right
and they’re both somehow wrong and the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
PREQUELS/SEQUELS: If you
haven’t already you might want to pay a visit to the first Dr Who spin-off ‘K9 and
Company’ (1981) which despite the
title is more of a showcase for Sarah Jane. It was hoped it might be popular
enough to go to a full series but didn’t (by popular request for most of the
fandom).
Neither The Doctor nor Sarah Jane mentioned it but
it’s really not been that long since they last met even after her last
on-screen appearance ‘The
Five Doctors’ (I’m happy to assume ‘Dimensions In Time’
is a fever dream if you are too!) – back when he was small, Scottish and
carried an umbrella and happened to bump into Sarah twice in two stories from
opposite extremes of the Dr Who canon. ‘Train-Flight’ is a very silly comic
strip from the pages of Dr Who Magazine (issues #159-161, April-June 1990) in
which the 7th Doctor meets up with Sarah at a concert by jazz
musician Oscar Petersen he’s arranged at the Royal Albert Hall (years before
the Dr Who Proms took place there for real!) She’s rather frosty with him,
wondering why he’s alone (Ace is busy un-attended in the cretaceous period –
The Doctor is oddly unconcerned at this!) Rather wonderfully they travel by
tube, Sarah not trusting the Tardis! Only their train is hijacked by an insect
race known as the Kalik who look like anaemic Zarbi with really long tongues
who, in good Dr Who tradition, just happens to choose that moment to invade
Earth (I blame the jazz, even though Sarah is apparently quite a fan. Which is
news to us. Then again The Doctor suddenly being a fan in ‘Silver Nemesis’
was news to us as well). The Doctor chooses the moment they’ve been stranded on
an alien planet with no hope of rescue to admit ‘The day I bundled you out the
Tardis I had no choice you know. I changed the rules about outsiders when I
became president’ before Sarah interrupts him with a hug: ‘It’s alright Doctor,
I miss you too sometimes’. Best gag: ‘Don’t worry the Kalik are
vegetarians’ a split second before one
tries to eat poor Sarah! In case you were wondering The Doctor saves the day by
changing the frequency of their radio signal, just like the olden days.
Goodness knows why Sarah’s forgotten it by the time of ‘School Reunion’ as it’s
not every day you get nibbled by an insect, even for Sarah!
Not knowing that she was about to come back on TV
Elisabeth Sladen recorded two series for Big Finish, titled simply ‘Sarah Jane
Smith’ (2001/2005); technically the last four episodes were recorded after
‘School Reunion’ but she didin’t know about it when she first said yes. They’re
very different to The Sarah Jane Adventures and in some ways more like
Torchwood (but without the sex) as the plucky journalist uncovers stories that
are bigger than her and still haunted by a lot of her past Dr Who adventures
(particularly the descendents of the cult from ‘The
Masque Of Mandragora’). Sarah starts off the same friendly,
brave, inquisitive soul we know from TV but what I love about this series is
that, if you listen to the episodes in order, she slowly becomes darker and
less open as the people around her either betray her, hurt her or are killed
indirectly because of her. By the end of it (and an epic two part finale in
both Antarctica and Space) she’s a survivor clearly suffering trauma and shock
(it doesn’t fit in with ‘School Reunion’ very well but it explains a lot about
why she’s the recluse in ‘The Sarah Jane Adventures’). With the added benefit of years of living and
acting Elisabeth Sladen gives her best performance in these shows, especially
the further she’s pushed out of her comfort zone. There were nine stories in
all, mostly written by David Bishop who understands her character and
motivation well (Sarah’s still kind but she’s less sweet than some writers make
her, driven and ambitious) although one story ‘The Taoist Connection’ was
written by old friend Barry Letts, his last work for the Whoniverse (and not,
alas, his best, although it’s far better than ‘Paradise Towers’ it has to be
said). For my money ‘Snow Blind’ was the best, a tense claustrophobic story
full of shocking twists and turns with Sarah stuck in an Antarctic base with no
hope of escape, but this is one of those series best heard as a set, story by
story (the two-part finale is a bit of an anticlimax after that). Sadie Miller,
Lis Sladen’s real life daughter, appears as her ditzy friend Natalie though
it’s Josh Townshend as Jeremy (not the ‘Paradise/N-Space one, thank goodness)
who all but steals the show. Though overshadowed by the TV series it’s just as
good but in a very different way and all in all one of the better Big Finish
ranges.
‘Code Of The Krillitanes’ (2010) is something of an
oddity. There had been no ‘Quick Reads’ for children new to reading at all
across series four and we all thought the series had been quietly dropped, but
no. This book became the last official 10th Doctor anything,
released two months after the regeneration into Dr 11 and a month before Matt
Smith’s debut which meant it got rather lost at the time. Justin Richards’ book
makes no mention of this or the darker melancholy feel of the ‘specials’ and
instead makes this one last hurrah in the ‘business as usual’ mode with the 10th
Doctor happy and madly rushing around saving the universe. The hundred page count means this is very much a
short story though that barely gets going, with a simple plot about some crisps
dipped in Krillitane oil that have become the latest fad and altered the
nation’s intelligence. To work out what’s going on The Doctor goes undercover
to work at a supermarket which is quite fun (with shades of ‘Closing Time’ as he thinks he’s adapting to ordinary human life
really well but is actually causing chaos) but the threat is a little too
easily defeated in the end and the plot more lightweight and bland than a
supermarket own brand of fish fingers and/or custard.
Previous ‘Tooth
and Claw’ next ‘The Girl In The Fireplace’
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