The first run for this excellent series. So basically we have Doctor Who for the family audience, Torchwood for adults and then SJA for he kids! Perfect! It is hard to believe that these three shows exist in the same universe sometimes though.
We rejoin Maria and Luke who are still getting to know the mysterious Sarah Jane and finding out more about her life fighting alien threats. Maria's annoying friend Kelsey has mercifully disappeared and in her place we are introduced to a new main character of the series, Clyde Langer. Clyde is an excellent addition to the team. He's the character who is initially sceptical of all the goings on and is therefore a good way to introduce new viewers to the show who may have missed the pilot episode.
One of the running themes throughout this series is family. This is explored in various ways such as Maria's relationship with her divorced parents and Sarah Jane's relationship with her new found son, Luke. Even the Slitheen, who are the enemy in the first story of the season, add to this theme with a really annoying child Slitheen. Luckily when this character returns for the finale of the season he is played by another child who is probably only about 60% as annoying.
This season also introduced one of the great villains to the Doctor Who pantheon of baddies, in the form of the Trickster. This villain will crop up in pretty much every Sarah Jane series from now but this isn't a criticism as I think he's fantastic. He's basically a bad guy who lives off the chaos he can cause. In this series means he erased Sarah Jane from history at just the right point in time so that she is not there to prevent an asteroid from colliding with the Earth. Now when I first saw this I thought it was a bit badly thought out as Sarah Jane had prevented many alien invasions so why not use them as a way of causing chaos but the thinking behind it is that the asteroid is just random bad luck and therefore the destruction of the Earth for no good reason whatsoever, pure chaos.
The Trickster can only use his powers by convincing another human to enter into a deal with him. In this case it is Sarah Jane's childhood friend, Andrea. Andrea died when she was younger by falling off a pier. It's at this point that the Trickster appears to her and tells her he can save her life if she will agree to swap places so that it is Sarah Jane that falls. I like the idea of the creature appearing at that moment before death, when we will all be scared and using that fear into tempting us to do something terrible.
During the course of this first season we also see Clyde's many failed attempts to turn Luke into someone "cool". Luke is still getting many normal human things wrong and in fact its some of these mistakes that cause some of the bad things to happen in the first couple of stories.
Overall I really loved watching this again. For the first time in a while I was really wanting to watch more than one episode each day. That's got to be a good sign.
One of the running themes throughout this series is family. This is explored in various ways such as Maria's relationship with her divorced parents and Sarah Jane's relationship with her new found son, Luke. Even the Slitheen, who are the enemy in the first story of the season, add to this theme with a really annoying child Slitheen. Luckily when this character returns for the finale of the season he is played by another child who is probably only about 60% as annoying.
This season also introduced one of the great villains to the Doctor Who pantheon of baddies, in the form of the Trickster. This villain will crop up in pretty much every Sarah Jane series from now but this isn't a criticism as I think he's fantastic. He's basically a bad guy who lives off the chaos he can cause. In this series means he erased Sarah Jane from history at just the right point in time so that she is not there to prevent an asteroid from colliding with the Earth. Now when I first saw this I thought it was a bit badly thought out as Sarah Jane had prevented many alien invasions so why not use them as a way of causing chaos but the thinking behind it is that the asteroid is just random bad luck and therefore the destruction of the Earth for no good reason whatsoever, pure chaos.
The Trickster can only use his powers by convincing another human to enter into a deal with him. In this case it is Sarah Jane's childhood friend, Andrea. Andrea died when she was younger by falling off a pier. It's at this point that the Trickster appears to her and tells her he can save her life if she will agree to swap places so that it is Sarah Jane that falls. I like the idea of the creature appearing at that moment before death, when we will all be scared and using that fear into tempting us to do something terrible.
During the course of this first season we also see Clyde's many failed attempts to turn Luke into someone "cool". Luke is still getting many normal human things wrong and in fact its some of these mistakes that cause some of the bad things to happen in the first couple of stories.
Overall I really loved watching this again. For the first time in a while I was really wanting to watch more than one episode each day. That's got to be a good sign.
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