Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?

TARDIS Coordinates: October 29, 2007

Every once in a while, you get a Doctor Who episode where the viewer leans back, puts his feet up, and says to the screen, “Well. How are you going to resolve this one, you smug git?”

“Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane” produces the same effect – the story is so tight and so frightening that at times it seems impossible that there’ll be a resolution without some kind of inexplicable magic to save the day, as so many Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes used. However, this sense is contained within the additional particulars of the show itself: how the hell is “The Sarah Jane Adventures” going to handle this conflict and still remain true to all we find beautiful in “The Sarah Jane Adventures?”

The answer is that it won’t, not neatly, not tidily, not cleverly; it’s going to resolve its plot, but not without sacrifice and pain, and it’s still going to be true to “The Sarah Jane Adventures.”

The Trickster has rewritten time – on a beach outing in 1964, thirteen-year-old Sarah Jane Smith and her friend Andrea Yates were playing on a closed pier, when Andrea fell into the water in a senseless and fatal accident that left Sarah Jane devastated. Now, though, Andrea Yates has bargained for her life with the Trickster and taken Sarah Jane’s place. Sarah Jane is now lost in time, and only Maria remembers her. She never grew up, never became a journalist, never met the Doctor or went to space or acquired K-9 or an attic full of mysteries, and Maria’s investigation forces Andrea to remember the bargain she made – a bargain demanded of a scared thirteen-year-old girl who had no idea what was being asked of her.

Having remembered, Andrea is asked if she wants to dispose of Maria as well, and Andrea’s affirmation sends the Graske to fling Maria into the same Limbo. Now, however, only Alan remembers his daughter. Now it’s not an overwrought teenager trying to convince her Dad that her best friend isn’t imaginary. Now it’s a terrified grown man slowly losing his sanity as he tries to cope with the worst nightmare any parent can ever have – and no one believes him. This is not small, it is not trivial, and Joseph Millson doesn’t play it as if it is.

There is no way out of this without someone getting hurt. Only one life can be lived, and Sarah Jane lived it; a thirteen year old girl is lost and her father wants her back and doesn’t care what it takes. Cornered and terrified, Andrea agrees to renege on the deal, sacrificing not just her life, but the life she’d already lived, to rescue Sarah Jane and Maria and save the world.

This is the Sarah Jane Adventures doing it the hard way. If it’s going to give you the ending that it’s tried to avoid until now, it’s not going to make it easy for you. In the end, there’s an extraordinarily bemused Alan demanding an well-deserved explanation, and we don’t blame him one bit.

Warriors of Kudlak

TARDIS Coordinates: October 15, 2007

One of the things that bothered me about Clyde Langer’s persistent “how to be a socially-acceptable teenager” lessons is that Clyde is just a little bit too much of a jerk to be a role-model. Not that his swaggering arrogance is entirely out of place for his perceived age or his character – in fact, it’s nice to have a character in the ‘Verse who can have his head on straight while still being impressed by the wonders he sees, and even summon the courage for a wisecrack or two, but when he starts showing a naif like Luke how to rock adolescence, my immediate reaction is, “Yikes.”

Clyde takes Luke to a laser tag center called Combat 3000 for a little recreation. What unfolds is a plot used in the film “The Last Starfighter,” as well as the Doctor Who novel “Winner Take All” and even the Orson Scott Card classic “Ender’s Game.” Far from being a cliche plot, though, such stories tap into one of the deeper realities of play, and its importance in education – many games are simulations of adult activities transformed for children, a metaphor that persists in every civilization, whether it’s a game of Monopoly or the march of the little plastic Army Men. Today’s video games offer more than just eye-hand coordination and the occupation of a lively attention span – studies have shown that children who play video games grow up better able to make real-time decisions in dynamic environments. What the stories remove is a sense of awareness – those who play Combat 3000 are wholly unaware that they’re auditioning to be in someone else’s army, which makes the subsequent teleportation a bit of a shock to all involved.

Kudlak, the kidnapper, is eventually convinced that the war is over, but his battle computer wasn’t programmed with a knowledge of “peace,” so it disregarded the message. Kudlak rebels against his computer, frees his victims, and swears to spend the remainder of his declining years finding other recruits and returning them home. One of the most important things this demonstrates, in “The Sarah Jane Adventures’s” quest for the better way, is that it sometimes requires stepping outside the box a bit: were this an ordinary narrative, the heroes would dispose of Kudlak and send all the kids home and that would be the end of it. However, to ensure the survival of the antagonist, they had to give him depth and dimension and conflict, eventually leading to sympathy.

This kind of storytelling is incredibly important, though there’s a temptation to dismiss it as being juvenile, given that it lacks the satisfying final strokes of a well-tempered vengeance. And it’s important that the Sarah Jane Adventures uses it, given the temperament of its audience. It makes the writers work harder, gives us better characters, and presents an alternative to the usual grim victories so prevalent in modern storytelling. It is not simple, it is not juvenile, it’s magnificently complex and nuanced in its presentation, if not its eventual execution. Sometimes Doctor Who forgets that it has that kind of power. I think we need the Sarah Jane Adventures to prove to us that the ‘Verse still has room for it.