Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Sarah Jane Adventures - "Secrets of the Stars" and "The Mark of the Berserker"

You'd think after watching 15 episodes of Sarah Jane Adventures I'd stop being surprised by it, but the show always ends with me saying "That was a lot better than I expected." It's not even just the little touches (such as Mr Smith referring off-handedly to the Draconians) or the more flat-out blatant Doctor Who connections (the villain being able to sense Sarah Jane's long history with the Doctor), although those go a long way towards keeping my excitement up about this show.

"Secrets of the Stars" was a fun story on astrology. I would have liked to have seen Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker in the flashback sequences, but hey, you can't have everything. I thought Russ Abbott was great as the villian Martin Trueman. He has a very strong, theatrical presence.

"Mark of the Berserker" turned out to be a Sarah Jane-light episode (maybe she was busy filming "The Stolen Earth / Journey's End" at the time?), yet it still worked just fine. I think they've struck a nice balance with Maria having left-- while they're not obsessing over her being gone like they did with Rose on Doctor Who, they haven't totally forgotten her either. It was a nice surprise to see Maria still have such a strong presence in this episode. And poor Clyde. You can feel his father's desperation to be everything to him, all the while doing things to earn him the Worst Parent in the UK award.

And did anyone else wonder if Rani was going to end up opening that amulet to become The Rani...?

1 comment:

greatplaidmoose said...

I know what you mean about the Tom Baker and Jon Pertwee appearances. It was very cool to see David Tennant but I think they could have shown her original farewell in The Hand of Fear with Tom Baker. They probably feel it would look dated but I think they could have pulled off a brief clip.