It is with rather mixed emotions that I cast my mind back to this time last year when I wrote about the opening story of the fourth series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. The following line in particular has acquired a prescience I could happily have done without:
I got a strong sense from Series Four’s season opener that… well, not that this show’s future doesn’t look rosy, but that everyone involved is aware that the format has a ticking clock built into it.
Oh, Lis. Had we but known, all the things we would have said to you… Not to be. Not to be, of course. Nevertheless it’s impossible to watch this new series without it being a terribly bittersweet experience. I can’t recall, certainly in Who-world, this kind of situation occurring – a performance by a major actor first appearing after their death. It can’t help but cast a shadow.
And it’s a particular shame because, on the strength of Sky, SJA appears to be on rock-solid form – funny in the right places, scary and thrilling in others. Given the youth of the target audience it doesn’t even matter that much that so much of the plot seemed a little – um – shall we say classic? And not just in the sense of it being classic SF, but in that many of the plot transitions and beats here had been used before in this very show – Christine Stephen-Daly’s panto turn as a malevolent alien matriarch having an awful lot in common with the one customarily given by Samantha Bond as Mrs Wormwood.
Still, for a Phil Ford script it was pleasingly serious even if a lot of the backstory did not appear to be especially coherent (I look forward to hearing from chemists about the plausibility of boron-based life too). Even the recurrence of the more-than-a-bit-annoying man and his parrot from last year’s major dud of a story did not grate too greatly.
What makes it particularly poignant is that the issue I was actually referring to twelve months ago – the ageing of the young cast members and its impact on the format – was obviously on the writers’ minds as well, with the series attempting another of its regular reformattings to address this. Having always found Luke to be the least engaging of the leads I had problem with seeing him supplanted by Sky. This is a show renewing itself with confidence and style and without compromising its values. Given the chance I suspect it could have run for many years to come, its format nearly as flexible as that of its parent.
Except, of course, in one crucial aspect. Oh, Lis.
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