Review: The Sarah Jane Adventures 2×10

Is this a TARDIS I see before me?

The Sarah Jane Adventures

Time to talk about Father’s Day part 2. Oops. Sorry meant The Temptation of Sarah Jane Part 2. Follow me.

Plot
Luke and Sarah Jane return to the 1950s to try to stop the Trickster from taking over the world. If only there were some way to stop it that didn’t involve forcing Mr and Mrs Smith to get into a car and drive to their deaths…

Meanwhile, Clyde and (the) Rani are stuck in an alternative future where almost everyone’s dead, and her mum’s stuck on a chain-gang working for the “never pronounced or spelt the same way twice” Graske – who really doesn’t like the Trickster. The Gratske agrees to send (the) Rani back to the 50s to defeat the Trickster, provided he gets to keep Clyde as a hostage – and their Lament Configuration cube when everything’s done and dusted.

After much to-ing and fro-ing and wandering around with a bleeping device, Sarah Jane, Luke and (the) Rani find the Trickster but can’t stop him. Instead, Mr and Mrs Smith have been picking up on the very obvious hints by Team Sarah Jane that SJ is really their daughter all grown up. Realising that the wibbly wobbly Trickster is going to destroy the world and with a surprising willingness to suspend their disbelief and commit suicide, they jump into their nearly repaired car, leaving baby SJ behind, and have a great big crash.

The Trickster, half-materialised, dies. Team SJ return to the future, the Graske gets his cube and SJ spends most of the evening staring morbidly at a picture of her dead parents.

Was it any good?
Overall, a good two-parter. Okay, the Trickster spends most of his grimacing and threatening, rather than doing anything bad – he’s also caught monloguing in the future by Team SJ. The Graske also turns out to be a hard done by little villain, rather than anything truly scary. The convenient embrace of their destiny by Mr and Mrs Smith also seemed slightly unlikely as well as entirely inevitable.

All the same, while not packing quite the punch of Father’s Day, mainly because we’d seen it all before, it was emotive stuff, with SJ’s parting scenes with her parents likely to move just about anyone. I’m not sure how much the kiddie audience would have been interested by it, but good for the older ones I suspect.

Plus what’s this? After a bedroom scene last week, (the) Rani and Clyde are kissing now, are they? Strongly worded letter to the Daily Mail I think.

Next week: The Brigadier’s back! Yey!