The fourth series of The Sarah Jane Adventures continues to be bold and thrilling, with a genuinely charismatic ensemble.
Elisabeth Sladen is a true leading lady, delivering everything with honesty and integrity, making everything believable because she herself inhabits the role entirely and with utmost respect for both the part and the viewers. Although, of course, that’s less a review, more a banal statement of truth.
There’s a strong opening with The Nightmare Man; featuring Julian Bleach – who had recently been the most recent incarnation of Davros in Doctor Who, and here seems hell-bent on giving little kids, well, nightmares as a twisted version of Rumpelstiltskin (a story strand suggests his power is tied up in people being unable to say his name). The main nightmare of this story centres around what’s really the defining theme within this show – the importance of love from friends and family, and how terrifying it can be if that is ripped from us.
Obviously, it’s Death of the Doctor that will, on first glance, be considered one of the biggest draws for any audience members above the age of fourteen, and it’s a great adventure, although not necessarily for the reasons you may have been expecting.
Sure, Matt Smith is a treat, but such is the chemistry between Elisabeth Sladen and Katy Manning (meeting onscreen for the very first time within the series’ chronology) that the Eleventh Doctor is pretty much an irrelevance: Sarah Jane Smith is no longer simply the Doctor’s best friend: she’s very much her own woman.
The Empty Planet is a ‘Sarah Jane lite’ story, and manages to subtly develop the burgeoning romance between Clyde and Rani. This is done very well, since, if we’re honest, there isn’t a great deal of on-screen chemistry between actors Daniel Anthony and Anjili Mohindra, and such hints that a deeper relationship might be on the cards is achieved purely through neat turns of phrase and the actors own individual performances. At the end of the adventure, however, they conclude that a world without Sarah Jane isn’t much fun at all.
With that in mind, the Series 4 finale is honestly involving, and in its own way, much more emotive and moving than any number of Amy Pond babies lost in time and space. The fact that it deals with Sarah Jane coming to terms with the likelihood of her own impending mortality only adds to the poignancy, although it’s worth noting that it was just as affecting when none of us knew that we were soon to lose Elisabeth Sladen herself.
In many respects, it recalls American series of the 1970s, where the hero had to come face to face with an evil – but charismatic – version of themselves, before realising that they had a right to the life they had created for themselves.
And, indeed, Elisabeth Sladen had created a wonderful life for her counterpart, rising far above the faux-feminism clumsily written for her in 1973, to become a character who had transcended much of the rules of television (try pitching a kids’ sci-fi/adventure show, fronted by a woman – and a woman who’s past the age of fifty – these days, and see how far you get), and a character honestly beloved of many generations of kids and their parents.
Extras: A very welcome bonus feature included here is the 1975 Doctor Who adventure, Pyramids Of Mars. As a gateway story into ‘classic’ Who, you couldn’t do much better: you have Tom Baker being grouchy in a tightly constructed story with minimal cast and setting, gothic tropes and one of the most iconic villains in the series’ history.
Add to that Elisabeth Sladen at the very top of her game, whose response to Scarman’s exclamation that her talk of time travel is impossible is a simple shrug and a ‘sorry!’, and Sarah Jane Smith truly is the companion we would all like to have in our own lives.
What did you think of Series 4? Let us know below…
Watch the Series 4 trailer…