TV Retrospective - The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 4 Episodes 5-8 - Death of the Doctor/The Empty Planet

Death of the Doctor part 1

Yup, we’re getting this trope, a trope of the Moffat era of Doctor Who, and this is a Russell T Davies script, his first since the opening episode.

We open with an update from Luke, he’s been making friends, including one named Sanjay. In future episodes, we were going to find out the pair have become lovers, but sadly it wasn’t to be. Luke being gay is actually a brilliant idea that would’ve been a natural progression of his character, more on that when I do the lost episodes bit.

Mr Smith alerts the others that UNIT are converging on the house, en-masse for no reason. OK, let’s start with the fact I think Sarah Jane is a little harsh on soldiers, she’s worked with UNIT before, after all, although this display of force is entirely unnecessary. The leader person who’s name hasn’t been revealed yet, the one in the red hat, she would’ve been fine.

Colonel Tia something, informs Sarah Jane the Doctor is dead. How stupid do you think we are Russell? The Doctor isn’t being killed in a spin-off, let alone one aimed at children and not run by the series show runner. Anyway, his body was found by eagle-monsters called the Shansheeth, they gave a notice, they’re intergalactic undertakers. Sarah Jane is uncharacteristically mean, one could it put it down to her being in denial, something she’s absolutely right about. So I’m not going to bother with how they say he died.

UNIT have decided to co-operate with an alien race they don’t know for the funeral, in Mount Snowden. Right… This news brings Rani closer to her father. Sarah Jane tells Luke he thinks the Doctor is still alive, which has Luke thinking he’s crazy. So, UNIT arrive to pick the 3 up and Clyde gets jolt of artron energy.

They head to the blatantly CG base where Tia is ready to greet them. She tells them some protocol, that since the funeral was rushed for some reason, they can’t get the Brigadier, or someone else who’s name escapes me, there are a few missing faces amongst the crowd, I’ll admit but we’ll get to that. So, they have some hired help from aliens called the Groske, they’re like the Graske but blue. Apparently one of them is building a rocket for the funeral. Sent to space in a lead lined coffin. Apparently, the TARDIS wasn’t found, another point of suspicion.

At a gathering of remembrance, a few soldiers the Doctor might have saved. Where are Martha Jones, or Mickey Smith? They’re both alive and on Earth! They all close their eyes and remember their times with the Doctor. Clyde remembers the artron energy, similar to his hand, which had sparked up again earlier.

And we get our other guest appearance of the episode, Jo Jones aka Jo Grant from a the Pertwee Era and her grandson Santiago, who is much taller than her. She’s an explorer and the two greet each other and it’s not a bloody bitch fight. Santiago greets Clyde and Rani, and he’s been kinda busy travelling the world to attend protests. Jo and Sarah talk again, and Jo is somewhat jealous that the Doctor came back for Sarah and not for her. In fairness, Sarah is tracking down aliens whereas Jo is protesting. But they both agree in feeling that the Doctor is still alive.

Clyde reveals to Rani and Santiago about the artron energy and gives us a flashback to what happened in the Wedding of Sarah Jane smith. The Groske seems to know something so they follow him in human size ventilation ducts. And yeah, the Shansheeth are evil, we knew that already, they’re aliens that look like birds. They use a harp to help stir memories of the Doctor among Sarah Jane and Jo. Clyde manages to eavesdrop on the conversation between the Shansheeth, but the artron energy gets him caught out and they have to back up.

They meet up and Clyde beings to speak with the voice of Matt Smith, who’s using a gizmo to swap places with Clyde and thankfully the Doctor is dead bullsh*t is out of the way early. The Shansheeth arrive and blast the Doctor with why the fuck to do they have that ability, how does it make them better undertakers?

It’s a fun episode, with a bit more character without interrupting the story than the Wedding episode, it’s still got issues but now we’ve got the bullsh*t out of the way, hopefully the second part will excel where Wedding stalled.

Rating 8/10

Death of the Doctor part 2

The Doctor and Clyde swap places again and again, saving the Doctor’s life and allowing them to lock themselves in a room. Taking Sarah and Jo’s hand, they teleport away as Clyde returns again. They’re on Planet... Quarry, I don’t care, it’s a Quarry. Rani works out that Tia is likely in league with the Shansheeth, so Tia locks them in the funeral wing. Fortunately the Groske opens a ventilation shaft. It’s revealed now that the Shansheeth have the TARDIS.

The Doctor was lured to a battlefield by the Shansheeth after dropping Amy and Rory on a Honeymoon planet, classic 11^th, Jo laments that becoming married is the reason she left the TARDIS. Jo bears her soul to the Doctor, how she was always waiting for the Doctor to come back. The Doctor reveals that he looked back on all his companions one last time in the extended version of the extended farewell parade of death. Some oil from Jo combined with the sonic lipstick creates a fully functioning teleporter. Except how did he teleport Sarah Jane and Joe there anyway. The Groske offers the kids Pizza as the other discuss their own histories and relationships. But Tia traps them and activates the heating, attempting a distraction for the Doctor.

With the device repaired, they teleport back, the Doctor heads in first to rescue the kids but before Sarah Jane and Jo can come in after him, they’re captured by the Shansheeth. They’re placed into a device called the memory weave. The Doctor rescues the kids and has a brief discussion of the Doctor’s regeneration capabilities, no mention of gender but f*ck it. Anyway, the memory weave can create an object out of memories.

The Shansheeth wants to stop death across time and space because they’re complete and utter abject morons. Also, I don’t recall a single episode where either of them had that much exposure to the TARDIS Key, as for Tia, she wants to explore space, feeling wasted on Earth. So, you remember how I said overloading the system had become kind of staple ending for this show, we haven’t seen it in a while, but we’ll see it here and once more this season. The Doctor tells them to remember everything and ultimately that results in the machine about to explode. We also get her remembering this show to fill up time, along with stock footage for Jo’s story. Sarah Jane and Jo take shelter in the Doctor’s lead-lined coffin and thankfully that wasn’t a prop for show.

The explosion unseals the door and kills Tia and the Shansheeth, probably also causes another redesign of the TARDIS. Also, Smith and Jones ‘joke.’ So they bring them all back to the attic, Mr extends apologies from the less evil Shansheeth. Jo mentions the Time Lords and… And we get another trope of the Moffat era, the Doctor aggrandising himself. They do this so much that the whole of series 6 is dedicated to him going quiet, except he goes back to being loud in 3 seconds.

We get some resolution for an arc I didn’t bother mentioning for Santiago as the characters say their goodbyes. Sarah Jane rattles off some companions she knows of. Tegan, Ben and Polly, Harry, Ace and Ian and Barbara, all fighting the good fight in some way or another.

This, for me, is the perfect crossover. The story’s well-paced but it allows for plenty of character interaction and development. Unlike Wedding where the story meandered about in its second half until it’s rather predictable conclusion with exposition preventing the story having any meaningful character interactions. This story does still have flaws, usual Russell T Davies bullsh*t really, but they’re not episode-breaking. . Also, Russell writes the 11^th Doctor pretty in-character, not bad for his first and only time writing, pity his next work in writing is Miracle Day, f*ck that show!

Rating 9.5/10

The Empty Planet part 1

Mr Smith is scanning for an alien energy trace he’d briefly picked up earlier. He doesn’t find it but Mr Smith is told to keep scanning. Rani gives Clyde some notes and we see he’s behind on homework, unsurprisingly without Luke to keep him in check. Haresh tries to talk to Rani as she catches up on her reading. Clyde’s given up on reading the book, unsurprisingly as he shows off his drawing skills. His mum compliments him on his work. The pair head off to sleep. The next morning, Clyde and Rani are woken up, Rani can’t find a signal on the radio, and finds her mother isn’t around, and neither is Haresh.

She heads outside and sees no-one, she enters Sarah Jane’s house finding Sarah Jane missing and Mr Smith missing as well, Rani takes the sonic lipstick. She can’t call Clyde as there’s no reception, she enters the house of someone we don’t know and finds it abandoned. She finds a dog but that leads nowhere. Her TV has no reception. She hears a knock on the door and… it’s Clyde

They head into town, finding no-one around in the entire area, it is a bit of s sh*thole anyway. Rani remarks that all the moving vehicles have been taken as well, else there’d be cars crashed everywhere and planes falling out of the sky. They think about Luke but decide not to go after him because of reasons. He’s probably quite confused right now. A box from a local market falls over and something enters the Bon Marche, it leaves and they pursue on bikes to a tower block, they see someone in the window. The run after him, his name’s Gavin, and he’s just as confused as them.

They try and Patronise him and eventually show him the sonic lipstick, and tell him about the aliens. OK, so Gavin’s backstory, his mum died, he’s dad left him and he’s been living with his aunt and Uncle, who despite living in the Universe of Doctor Who, where aliens have been public knowledge since before the show even started, don’t believe in aliens.

They hear something outside, but as Clyde and Rani investigate, Gavin runs off, they hear the noise again, leading him back to town. Clyde thinks there’s something up with Gavin, having noticed several clues in the house. Clyde and Rani flirt for some time, talking about their experience with Sarah Jane. The screen and Clyde and Rani’s phones begin receiving a message, they soon see it on every screen. They follow the noise again. Rani spots Gavin as Clyde sees what looks kinda like a cyber-mat, Rani is backed into a corner by a red robot, whilst a yellow one spots Clyde.

This is an intriguing mystery and it’s good the answers aren’t all given, so we can have plot progression in part 2

Rating 7.5/10

The Empty Planet part 2

Gavin manages to rescue Rani using a trash can whilst Clyde makes a run for it and hides as a dummy in a display, this works. The trio meet up and agree to follow the robots, hoping they’re lead back to the base. But they can’t find them and end up back at the café they’d been using as a base. They think of something that applies to them and not Sarah Jane, being grounded by the Judoon. Last I checked, Luke was grounded too but whatever. But none of this applies to Gavin, so why he’s still here is still a mystery. The robots attack and the trio split up to draw them away. Clyde ends up cornered and is scanned. Rani thought she lost the robot but ends up caught and scanned as well. But of course, neither of them are the robot’s target, Gavin is. I worked that out about 5 minutes ago.

Clyde is followed by the Red Robot back to the café. They manage to teach the robots English through a newspaper and they reveal a countdown clock is what all the language, a long-winded way to make a countdown clock if you ask me. Anyway, they want the heir, but Clyde and Rani think they want air. Rani and Clyde eventually work out what the robots want, I worked it out 5 minutes ago. They want Gavin, he’s the heir to some planet or another, his father was an alien.

Clyde and Rani begin investigating Gavin to find out where he went, Ealing Circle nature reserve. The robots can’t see him, it’s a bio-damper. They eventually convince him to remove the bio-damper, allowing the robots to show him the message they were trying to beam to him earlier. He elects to go with them and orders them to restore humans and take him home.

So the humans are restored and presumably no-one has a clue what happened in the past 90 minutes. Haresh tries to convince Rani to tell them what’s going on, and Sarah Jane turns up because she’s contractually obligated to at this point. Sarah Jane congratulates them on working it out and we get more of the same stuff from earlier about their growth with Sarah Jane more flirting. The end.

There really isn’t much to say about this episode, not that it’s bad but it is heavily dialogue based. The robots helped keep up the tension of the episode but ultimately this two-parter isn’t as memorable as the last one.

Rating 7.5/10