Image Credit: Big Finish (Fair Use)

Image Description: The cover of Comeback

By John Salway

With Big Finish recently launching their Sarah Jane Adventures follow-up series Rani Takes On The World, it seems an appropriate time to look back at their own attempt to give ex-companion Sarah Jane Smith her own series, simply  named after its star character. Launching in 2002, about four years before the character’s return to TV screens in School Reunion, it’s certainly more gritty and down-to-earth than both previous and future takes on the character. And sadly, there’s no K9!

Things start off well enough with the first adventure, Comeback. This release has to pack a lot in, establishing the series’ status quo and more adult tone following Sarah’s fall from grace as a journalist. Forced to live life on the run from unknown foes, she also finds time to just about squeeze in a trip to investigate an ominous village. Comeback benefits from a fast pace, ensuring it never outstays its welcome. We’re also introduced to our supporting cast; Josh, a down-on-his-luck young joker with a history of arson; and Nat, an expert hacker who uses a wheelchair. Josh is quite realistically played, reminding me of real people I’ve met, but he’s also annoying, frequently telling weird jokes and making silly voices. Nat, meanwhile, is nice enough, but remains a little unexplored throughout the series despite the best attempts of Elisabeth Sladen’s daughter Sadie Miller. While it comes to a rather abrupt end, Comeback is a good introduction and shows a lot of promise for the range.

Unfortunately the second story, The Tao Connection, takes that promising start and dumps it into a fetid ditch of homophobia and racism. Vulnerable young men, some implied to be sex workers, are being kidnapped and their blood drained from key qi points to produce a life extending formula. None of these men are characters or have lines. If this isn’t bad enough, this scheme is being enacted by a monstrous older gay couple who hate and abuse each other. In fact, all gay relationships in this story are presented as transactional or exploitative in nature, including one bizarre moment where a seemingly straight guard mentions they used to perform gay sex acts for money. If all that wasn’t enough, white British actor Toby Longworth dons a stereotypical accent to play the role of Chinese doctor Wong Chu, explaining the cultural philosophies of qi and tao which apparently underly this blood-harvesting operation. The whole story is ill-judged, grotesque, and downright offensive.

The third adventure, Test of Nerve, is obviously an improvement, but still not great. The story hinges on a single ethical dilemma for Sarah – will she choose to save her friend Nat from a bomb, or millions of Londoners from the release of deadly sarin gas? Though this dilemma doesn’t sound too difficult to solve, the resulting conflict is entirely fudged. First, Sarah chooses to go save her friend – but then finds the traffic is too dense to get there in time, and so defaults to instead stopping the gas, which should definitely have been her first choice! Then, after the situation is resolved and all are safe, Nat has the gall to be angry at Sarah for saving the whole of London instead of her. I’m sorry Nat, but in this case that seems a bit unreasonable!

The penultimate story of the first season, Ghost Town, would be passable but for the very stupid decision to give away a major reveal in the very first scene! The pre-title sequence mentions a sonic weapon that causes sensory overload, hallucinations and death. So what could possibly be responsible for the ghost sightings and mysterious deaths that are occurring at a peace conference in Romania? This bizarre choice results in a very slow paced audio that sees Sarah and Josh travel to Romania, have some spooky moments, and eventually reach the answer while the audience wait for them to catch up.

The season finale, Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre, unfortunately sees Sarah Jane Smith at her most unlikable. Consumed by paranoia, she ditches her friends to follow a lead, and is needlessly horrible to her Indian taxi driver (again, Toby Longworth in a dodgy accent). Rather than being afraid for our hero as she moves further and further into a trap, it comes across more as Sarah Jane receiving her just desserts. Following literally minutes of rising tension, the architect of the plot against Sarah is revealed to be…. Miss Winters. You know, from Robot. While she is probably the only major villain from Sarah’s TARDIS travels to be alive in contemporary times, it’s still a bit weird for her to be promoted to Sarah’s nemesis. Patricia Maynard does an excellent job reprising her role as the villainess, but her appearance is all too brief before Josh appears to save the day. However, Miss Winters is still free, with the battle lines drawn for series two…

The first series of Sarah Jane Smith is, unfortunately, a mess. I can really only recommend the first story, as the following adventures  proceed sluggishly, nastily, and without much spark. Even the music is off – there’s a generic electronic theme for the title music, and a cheesy 70’s style guitar twang seems to end every scene. What’s really baffling is how the series manages to take one of Doctor Who’s most beloved companions and make her quite unlikable. The decision to keep things serious, with Sarah constantly on edge, means Elisabeth Sladen gets little chance to show off the charm and kindness that make her character such a favourite. If you really feel you must listen to this first season for completion’s sake, I would still recommend skipping The Tao Connection. It has no connection to the ongoing plot whatsoever, so you won’t be missing out on any important information.

Thankfully, the second season of Sarah Jane Smith is a major step up in quality from the first. There were a couple of years in between, which seem to have been used to examine what went wrong and give the series a bit of a retool. Rather than a series of discrete adventures, series two presents an ongoing serial written by one writer,  David Bishop. This allows for more consistency in the characters across the series, as Sarah discovers she is an important figure in the beliefs of a mysterious cult, the Orbus Postramo, which is divided into two warring factions. One character who doesn’t return, however, is Miss Winters. Despite her return for series two being heavily suggested in the previous finale, she has in fact been arrested, and subsequently killed, offscreen. It sends a clear message – this is not just a continuation of what we did before. We are making changes.

The most important difference that the series makes is that the cast are likeable again! The rough edges of the paranoid, under-attack Sarah Jane Smith of the previous season are gone as she heads into the series premiere, Buried Secrets, with renewed hope and a better relationship with Josh and nat. Perhaps the best example of her change in character is a charming scene that makes a touching tribute to the late Ian Marter. It turns out Sarah heads out to a restaurant every year, where she waits for and remembers her old friend Harry Sullivan, who has been missing for a long time. This year, she meets his stepbrother Will, played by Tom Chadbon, who continues the tradition of Sullivan charm. It’s really nice for Sarah to have a character who is closer to her age to bounce off of, and share an emotional link to – they feel more like peers and equals. In amongst all this sterling character work, the main plot begins, as a death at an archaeological site in Florence leads Sarah to learn about her prophesised destiny. It’s an interesting and pretty tight thriller, once again promising a lot for the rest of the season.

Just like season one, however, the second episode of the series, Snow Blind, is the weakest of this sophomore run – but it’s miles ahead of The Tao Connection. Sarah and Josh head to meet Will at the Antarctic research base where he is working, and find a lot of tension in the air. His boss, played by Nicholas Briggs, is deeply suspicious of Will and fellow researcher Morgane, and has been lashing out verbally and violently. But is his paranoia grounded in reality? It’s a fairly plodding instalment, and with such a small cast of characters, there aren’t many suspects when things start going wrong. While elements of the plot do link to the main story, this functions mostly as a standalone, which I think is to its detriment, as the ongoing storyline is a real strength of this second season.

Events really get going in Fatal Consequences, a story that truly does live up to its intriguing title. Following Sarah’s interference in previous stories, the Red Chapter of the Orbos Postramo are accelerating their plans. In quite a step up from their relatively low key plots so far, they are preparing to release a deadly pathogen across the world. Despite the increase in stakes, however, the focus remains relatively small in scale, with the personal consequences having the most impact. While a little slow to get going, this story doesn’t hold back on important developments and major twists once it gets going, some of which lead all the way back to the range’s beginning. This audio has all the energy of a series finale, and all the cats are let out of the bag Sarah faces deadly danger twice over before the story ends. It never pulls its punches, with cast members killed off in its dramatic ending.

You might think the final instalment, Dreamland, would have to be an anti-climax after the shocking events of the previous part, but its actually my favourite episode of the whole series. While still reeling from the, well, consequences of Fatal Consequences, Sarah is offered a place on the Dauntless, the first commercial space flight. As she travels to America and begins to train for the trailblazing journey, we get some excellent exploration of her character as she considers her purpose. While never believing herself to be the “Herald” of the Orbus Postramo, she does believe the Doctor may have left her on Earth for a reason, and she considers this flight may be part of that mission. There’s such a bittersweet feel to this instalment – you’re desperately wanting things to go well, and for Sarah to find that purpose she’s searching for in space, but you know dramatically that something has to go wrong. And when the Red Chapter make their final move, things go very wrong, very fast. The final scenes here are really intense, consisting of Sarah stranded in space while Nat desperately tries to learn what’s happening in Mission Control. As the rocket heads further out of radio range, and life support begins to fail, Sarah sees something she can’t believe – and then communication is cut.

It’s an exceptionally composed cliff-hanger, but due to production of The Sarah Jane Adventures beginning the following year, there was no follow-up, and I can only imagine what would have happened if a third series were commissioned. That said, I really think it works as a conclusion to the series. After going through total hell, and all hope seeming lost, Sarah finally meets her destiny, whatever that may be.  And it’s a good metaphor for the series as a whole, too. Despite its woeful debut season, Sarah Jane Smith seems to have found a purpose by its end. I really enjoyed the second series and am happy to recommend it. And while I don’t think the first series is necessarily worth your time, later events will mean a lot more to you if you can suffer through it.

Print copies of Tides 49 are, at time of publication, available to buy through this link