K9 - ''Mutant Copper''

Spoiler Level: High

The Good:

* The story has a very good premise. One of the CCPCs has been implanted with human DNA.  The implantation doesn't take well and the CCPC goes rogue, becoming an unlikely ally to K9 and company.

* We get a good look at the future totalitarian England, as it's announced the CCPCs now have the right to enter homes without permission and to search without a warrant, "to make the world a safer place for everyone who isn't guilty," and we actually see citizens protesting.

* The "mutated" CCPC has some amusing dialogue, as he continues to talk in the stereotypical "English Bobby" style and actually has quite a few amusing scenes.

* New character Marcus, who also believes in rebelling against the system.  He's likable and adds a nice mix to the Starkey-Jorjie-Darius love triangle; it's even nice to see Starkey and Darius allied in their mutual jealousy of the newcomer's closeness with Jorjie.

* We get some explanations as to what the CCPCs really are and how they work.

The Bad:

* Just as I suspected, the people making this show don't understand the difference between a cyborg and a robot. I'm gathering they think "cybernetic organism" means an artificial organism made out of cybernetics, as opposed to a living organism fused with cybernetics. This mistake wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so crucial to the plot.  By infusing a CCPC with human DNA, they really have turned him into an actual cyborg.  The real problem with this is when they keep discussing whether or not to remove the human elements and return him to being a cyborg, which kept driving us nuts, because if you remove the human elements then he's no longer a cyborg!  And this wasn't just one or two lines, this was all throughout the show.  Thorne even refers to K9 as a cyborg at one point. Once I hit on the "artificial organism made out of cybernetics" theory I tried really hard to rewrite my brain to process their use of the word "cyborg" to mean that, but I didn't have much success.  So the lack of understanding basic science fiction terms totally undermined what was an otherwise good premise.  (It also shows a lack of understanding of the term "mutation," but I won't even get into that.)

* The "mutant" copper's voice is on a ridiculously higher pitch, so I had to strain to understand anything he was saying.

* Marcus's eventual betrayal was way too obvious; halfway through the episode I just thought out of the blue, "this guy's going to turn out to be a traitor."  And he was. He didn't do anything obvious to tip the viewer off; it was just the obvious formula. On the plus side, at least he wasn't evil, just more of a hypocrite.

* The biggest sin of all: When trying to decide what to do with him, K9 and crew come to the conclusion that the attempt to fuse human and robot hasn't worked, and they need to make him completely one or the other.  Since they can't make him completely human, they opt for returning him back to a completely robotic state.  (Which of course they keep referring to as "make him a cyborg again."  Arrrrghh!)  Then just as Professor Gryffen is ready to start, Thorne shows up at the door.  Now that the bad guys are here, everyone starts shouting "We're not going to let you take him and turn him back into a [robot]!"  Hello?!?  That's exactly what you were about to do!!!  There's absolutely no reason given for this.  It's this complete and total reversal defying all logic that pushes this episode over the edge.  I could overlook the other flaws in the episode (if I tried really hard, and believe me, I did) but this point just sunk it.

The Ugly:

* K9 laughs again.

This one does have a lot going for it, so I really wanted to put this one in the win column, but I just can't.  So K9's total to date is 11 wins, 7 losses.

---

Sadly, K9 is still not available in the US, but Amazon has now started listing import DVDs. While they are region free, these are in PAL format, so you'll need a player that can convert them to NTSC to play them here in America. Oh, and they're out of stock. But hey, it's a start.

K9 - ''Lost Library of Ukko''

Spoiler Level: Medium

An excellent episode! Thorne is a huge improve- ment over Drake.  Just as his first episode was about prisons, Thorne is still thinking of good ways to lock up those he considers a threat, and he sets up a trap to try out a new one on Starkey.

Darius isn't annoying, Starkey is more of the angry rebel, Thorne is actually menacing, and while K9 is still talking on the casual side he never crosses the line. The alien Librarian from Ukko may look a bit silly with her librarian glasses, but her sharp demeanor makes her interesting to watch. And there's the added revelation that The Department isn't only based in England, but is spread out around the entire world, making it a bit more ominous.

This episode is an unequivocal win, making K9's total score to date 11 wins, 6 losses.

---

Sadly, K9 is still not available in the US, but Amazon has now started listing import DVDs. While they are region free, these are in PAL format, so you'll need a player that can convert them to NTSC to play them here in America. Oh, and they're out of stock. But hey, it's a start.

K9 - ''The Cambridge Spy''

Spoiler Level: High

A very good episode of K9!  Professor Gryffen is playing about with his Space Time Manipulator, and Jorjie gets zapped back into the past, arriving in 1963.  There she meets Darius's great-grandfather (also played by Daniel Webber) who's a very nice stand-up kind of guy.  Unfortunately she interferes with his timeline, so Darius is starting to pull a Back to the Future and fade away.  Starkey and K9 have to enter the Space Time Manipulator, go back to 1963, rescue Jorjie, and try to repair the damage to the timeline.

It works great.  Dairus is brusque but not whiney, cowardly or otherwise annoying, and Daniel Webber does a great job of coming across as a completely different person playing Darius' grandfather Bill.  Most of the dialogue works well, even K9's attempts at 1960's slang.  (Well, most of them.  A few are cringe-worthy, but a few of them work great, especially when he gets them wrong.) And there's even an implication made that Thorne's ancestor is partially responsible for the totalitarian state we see as England's future.

The kids also recognize Thorne's ancestor, who's played by Jared Robinsen, the same actor who plays Thorne.  Since Thorne was only brought in at the end of the previous episode on a viewscreen with Jorjie's mother I originally thought that this episode must somehow be out of order;  but after doing a search on Thorne to find the actor's name I realized they met him way back in episode 2, "Liberation."  So even that works.

So this episode goes firmly in the win column, making K9's score to date 10 wins, 6 losses.

---

Sadly, K9 is still not available in the US, but Amazon has now started listing import DVDs. While they are region free, these are in PAL format, so you'll need a player that can convert them to NTSC to play them here in America. Oh, and they're out of stock. But hey, it's a start.

K9 - ''Black Hunger''

Spoiler Level: High

Back to K9! I haven't been watching K9 as much this last month, because I've been going to the movies instead.  But there's nothing at the theater I want to see this week, so it's back to K9 instead.

This episode starts off pretty well.   K9's dialogue has gotten a bit silly of late, something that in a previous episode was chalked up to his memory banks having been filled up with a large library of movies.  Most of the time it's not bad, but sometimes (such as when he laughs or goes "Wheee!") it's just way too much.  So I was very happy that he was talking very technical and more like his old self when this episode started.

Darius stumbles across an aggressive microcellular cleaning system called "Black Hunger,"and makes off with it.  What he missed was the little fact that it just want wrong and killed one of the workers that was using it.  The system itself is pretty interesting-- it releases a swarm of black alien-augmented yeast that eats up anything organic, and then you suck it all back up into the containment unit.  But when Darius gets caught, he refuses to help return it (what a guy), leaving it up to K9, Starkey and Jorjie.

From there the episode veers off course and makes a fast ninety degree turn straight into the dirt.  K9 and company run into a CCPC, and K9 decides to bluff their way past it by telling it he's taking the kids out for a walk.  Now a dog taking his kids out for walkies is funny, but the kids then start actually barking and jumping around like dogs.  Say what? It's revealed that Black Hunger is a project of Drake's, so Drake orders all the CCPCs after the kids. K9 tries to lure the CCPCs away by yelling "Can't catch me!  Wheeeee!" and flying away.  Uh, oh. Starkey runs into a dead end of garbage and tree brush, so he unleashes the Black Hunger microbes, and then decides he doesn't have time to gather them up again.  What, now?!?  Wasn't he the one saying how dangerous it was? And they finally evade the CCPCs by standing still and hiding behind a twig. Ugggh.

It's almost like the episode was written by two different people, and you can tell right where the script was handed off.  (But it wasn't; for the record, the entire thing is credited to Chris Roache.  It's also his only episode of the season.)  It goes from being intelligent, well-thought out and even a bit creepy straight into being campy, idiotic and ludicrous, and it's not a subtle or gradual transition either.  You hit that scene of the kids acting like dogs, and it's like the episode jumped the shark and landed right in the tank.

We do get an interesting ending, as Drake has finally screwed up one time too many, and is now being replaced by Inspector Thorne.  Thorne's one line comes across better than Drake's entire run, so I'm hoping for some good things from him.

So despite a very good start, the whole last half of this episode falls apart too much to consider this a good episode.  K9's score to date: 9 wins, 6 losses.

K9 - ''The Last Oak Tree''

Spoiler Level: High

Another good episode.  I've checked the writers on the Wikipedia List of K9 Episodes, and I've found that I consistently like the episodes written by Jim Noble, and consistently dislike the episodes written by Graeme Farmer.  This is one of Jim Noble's.

While the gang are visiting the last oak tree in a museum (one has to wonder if they paid a dollar and a half to see it),  the tree itself is stolen by aliens.  The gang investigate the disappearance, and discover the tree was stolen by an alien Centurapede -- kind of a cross between a giant caterpillar and a giant centipede -- who needs it for its own purposes.  Things aren't quite what they seem however, as it turns out the Centurapedes have been using Earth's oak trees as a hatchery for centuries, and transform into beautiful, shining butterfly people, who leave Starkey with a gift-- acorns, so the oak trees can be brought back again.  It's a very beautiful, uplifting, Star-Trek-y ending, which makes me happy.

We also get some good reminders in this episode about London being a totalitarian state, with a brief line about how the government controls all communications, and a closing shot of the floating propaganda billboards.  It's an element I'd really love to see explored in more detail, but I doubt will be, for reasons I'll get to in a minute.

On the downside, Darius is back to being a selfish jerk who only thinks of ways to line his pockets.  After last episode's scene between him and Jorjie I was hoping we were going to get a little more development on the romance side of these characters; but no, apparently Jorjie still hasn't asked Starkey out like she planned to, and Darius hasn't tried to win Jorjie over.  What's most disappointing about that isn't so much the way the characters are handled in this episode, but rather that it's become evident these are interchangeable stories, and we aren't getting any kind of story arc.  Which, considering the kind of story arcs I see on the kids show my daughter watches (such as, say, Wizards of Waverly Place), it's a shame that K9 has chosen to take the easier way out.

K9's score to date: 9 wins, 5 losses.

K9 - ''Aeolian''

Spoiler Level: High

Well, this episode wasn't bad, but it wasn't really good either.

The basic plot: weather conditions have gone crazy, and Professor Gryffen determines that the storms are being caused by intense music.  K9 identifies the music as being from an extinct race called the Aeolians.  K9 and Starkey track down the source of the music to one lone surviving Aeolian, who is sending one final desperate mating call out into the universe; she's so distraught about being alone that the fact that her music has the side effect of destroying Earth doesn't particularly bother her.  Luckily, she receives a reply from her husband, who comes to her.  Both leave Earth happily reunited.  Meanwhile, the storm has caused a wall to collapse on top of Jorjie, and Darius attempts to rescue her.

Let's get the bad out of the way first-- the science here is not only bad, it's internally inconsistent. When Starkey and K9 first find the Aeolian, she's set up her music to continue playing on its own, but when she gets stunned by CCPC troopers, the music stops. Now I can be apologist about this and say she switched off the auto-play function when she heard from her husband, because she had to give him a specific reply to let him know her signal was coming from his wife.  But that leads to the second problem:  When she's stunned, Starkey has to take over and K9 has him play a tune that's been in his head all day. "Play anything!" K9 says, in direct contradiction to his previous statement a minute earlier that she had to get every note exactly right.  Although Starkey picked up the tune from K9, who knows how to speak Aeolian, so perhaps the tune K9 gave Starkey was actually Aeolian for "Hold on, she'll be right back."  Which leads me to the third problem:  Professor Gryffen says her husbands reply is coming from 10,000 light-years away.  Which of course means that traveling at the speed of light, it would take 10,000 years for her song to reach him, and then another 10,000 years for his song to get back to her-- but of course music doesn't travel at the speed of light, it travels at the speed of sound, which is much slower.  But I guess you could say that whatever makes this music powerful enough to cause hurricanes also makes it travel faster than light.  And then there's the fact that the only other surviving Aeolian turns out to be her husband, but that could be like a Superman thing-- maybe her husband was able to only save his wife, and she didn't know he saved himself as well.

So really, with a little tighter writing and a few more explanations, it could have worked.

Now for the good:  The design for the Aeolian is pretty cool.  I like that K9 has very alien-looking aliens.  The scenes between Jorjie and Darius were actually pretty good; Darius thinks that he and Jorjie are coming clean on their feelings for each other, but it turns out that Jorjie is admitting her feelings to Darius about Starkey.  I think most people can relate to that having happened to them at some point. Darius isn't annoying this episode, he's actually rather sympathetic. And it's nice to see the CCPCs actually do something positive for once, such as when they lift the plasterboard-- er, I mean the wall and support beams-- off of Jorjie.

So the final verdict is that this episode --barely-- makes it into the win column, making K9's score to date 8 wins, 5 losses.

K9 - ''Alien Avatar''

Spoiler Level: High

This episode starts off really well, with Starkey on his way to go fishing and trying to explain the concept to K9, who of course doesn't get it.  They run into a pair of CCPC Robo Fuzz, and K9 has a humorous moment with them in their mutual incomprehension of humanity. It's a great opening scene.

Sadly, from there the dialogue takes a nose dive.  A lot of it was very reminiscent of "Liberation," in that it was cliched, predictable and fairly tedious.  Which is a shame, because the plot itself is pretty decent.  The fish are all dead, poisoned by something which can also affect K9, and everyone's started seeing alien ghosts.  It's all connected of course, and in a way that makes sense and works well.  It's a shame that the story is dragged down by so many cliches.

To be fair, there are a few other good lines in it.  Starkey tells Darius to be a man, and Jorjie quips "He doesn't do impressions."  That was witty.  K9 gets a great line in when he comes across Darius trying to untie Jorjie.  And Professor Gryfen hollers "Blood of Pythagoras!"and "What the Heisenberg...?!?"  I don't know if those are good or bad, but either way they made me laugh so I'll go with good.  Actually, there are quite a few good bits in here.  But it flip-flops between good moments and tiring moments in the same scene, making the end product come across as unbalanced.

An interesting note, K9 refers to the CCPC as cyborgs.  So are there actually organic parts in there, or are the writers just confused between the difference between cyborgs and robots?  It's something I'd like to know more about, but I suspect this show isn't going to go into depth into the CCPC's origins.

So while this episode does have some good qualities, overall I just didn't enjoy it. So, K9's score to date: 7 wins, 5 losses.

K9 - ''Oroborus''

Spoiler Level: High

Another episode in the plus column.  Not great, but not bad, and definitely enjoyable.

Everyone is experiencing time distortions.  Once the distortions have passed, the people affected by them have lost a small bit of time.   K9 can tell the distortions are happening, but since he's being affecting by them as well he can't figure out the details of why they're happening.  Starkey seems to be the only one who can remember the missing segments of time. Professor Gryffen discovers it's because he's received alien immunizations, something only done by a controversial married scientist couple who disappeared years ago. They discover the culprit to the time distortions is an Oroborus, a snake that can eat time itself.

It's nice to get some clues to Starkey's past.  Darius is his usual antagonistic self, but doesn't come across as a jerk this time.  K9 doesn't get to save the day this time, but instead plays a great role as Starkey's friend and confidant, which makes him more endearing. (Although I hope he doesn't make laughing a regular thing; it doesn't really work on him.)

K9's score to date: 7 wins, 4 losses.

K9 - "Curse of Anubis"

Spoiler Level: High

Chalk up another one in the "win" column!  This episode of K9 is a classic alien invasion story.  The Anubians arrive on Earth in their spaceship pyramid, and immediately fall down in worship of the Almighty K9, who liberated them many millennia ago against another race that was enslaving them.

K9 of course has no memory of this, but since his memory has been scrambled ever since arriving back on Earth he thinks there might be something to their claim, especially when they provide their Book of Anubis as evidence:

I for one was very happy that the K9 pictured in the Book of Anubis was the classic K9.  I was afraid it would end up being the new K9, because (a) the producers of the show might not trust the audience to remember that K9 originally looked different, or (b) while Bob Baker may have co-ownership of the K9 character, this likeness of K9 is owned by the BBC, so this show might not have been allowed to use it beyond the first episode.  Not that it couldn't have been explained away if it had been the new K9 in the book; you could say that the regenerated K9 would end up traveling back in time or some other timey-wimey thing.  But thankfully, they didn't do any of that.  The pictures of K9's past were of his original look, as it should be.  So major points to a story that was already going well for that touch.
 
Upon seeing this, K9 immediately starts burying himself in trying to restore his memory, to the extent of tuning out everyone else.  In the meantime, the Anubians start their takeover of Earth, starting with Professor Gryffen.  Their mind control over him is subtle at first, but when he banishes Darius from his home, Starkey and Jorjie immediately realize that something's wrong.  Which is good on two levels; firstly, because they didn't miss the obvious like they did in "Jaws of Orthrus," and secondly, because all I did was cheer, I didn't particularly care if the Anubians had done something to Professor Gryffen if it meant that Darius got kicked out.

So Starkey and Jorjie swipe the Book of Anubis to get a better look at it, and discover-- no, it's not a cook book-- that after K9 freed them, the Anubians went out into space and started taking over other races.  Including Alpha Centauri!

Now is that awesome, or what?!?  How's that for connecting this show to the Doctor Who universe?!?

So of course the Anubians catch Starkey and Jorjie, and it's up to the banished Darius to save the day.  Which he does quite nicely, and not in the least bit annoyingly.  I mean that in all seriousness.  If the show would flesh out his clever side more like they did here and toned down his annoying side (which they didn't do in the first half of the episode), he might become a likable character.

Another thought occurs to me that the reason K9 doesn't remember the Anubians might not be because of his memory being scrambled; he might have never met them.  Perhaps that happened to K9 Mk II?  (K9 Mk III or IV are more unlikely, since they seem to have never left Earth.)  Probably not, since this show is supposed to be following the adventures of K9 Mk I, but it occurs to me as a possibility.

So if you're keeping score (and I am), this makes 6 good episodes out of 10 for the new K9 show.  That's over half, and I'm willing to forgive a bumpy start if the quality keeps up like it has for the last two episodes.

K9 - "Dream-Eaters"

Spoiler Level: High

Hurray!  Another good episode of K9!!

In this episode, a recently uncovered monolith is emitting a signal that's put all of London to sleep and feeds off of their nightmares.  The monolith's avatar assembles an army of yawning, sleepy zombies to stop the only ones who haven't fallen under its spell-- K9 & Company!

It helps that this episode is played for laughs.  What's the best way to keep the signal from putting the gang to sleep?  Why tin foil hats, of course!  Jorjie wakes her mother by sharing a dream with her where she's gotten a tattoo with Darius's name on it.  K9 takes great delight in Darius's nightmares of clowns, which, let's face it, is pretty funny in its own right. And the sleepy zombies are just great.  And yes, when K9 does get to dream, he dreams of electric sheep.  How cool is that?

I realize the quality of this show does change dramatically from episode to episode, but really, I'm surprised it's not more popular.  It is a Doctor Who spin-off after all, and even if the BBC doesn't have any involvement it's still the same K9.  John Leeson still delivers a great performance for his voice. The effects are decent.  I've heard people complain about the acting, but it seems fine to me.  The character of Darius may be a bit annoying, but I rather like Starky, Jorjie and Professor Gryffen.

I've been getting quite a few hits for my reviews of K9, mostly because my screen captures seem to be some of the only ones on the web.  I had a tough time picking which picture I wanted to use this time, so in the spirit of giving this show a boost, here's a gallery of all the other K9 screen captures I made.  Enjoy!

K9 wakes Starkey

Can't sleep... Clowns will eat me.

Darius... Still Strange

Darius Acting Strange

Sleepy Zombies & Future London

Sleepy Zombies

Well, this would scare ANY parent.

Yes, Androids DO Dream of Electric Sheep.

Tin Foil Hats!

The Whole Gang with Tin Foil Hats.

K9 Flies Over Future London

K9 circles in for a landing

K9 on the ground

K9 Shoots

K9 Hovering

BONUS: K9 Growls at Darius

Starkey's Shirt Design

K9 - "The Jaws of Orthrus"

Spoiler Level: High

Another mediocre offering from K9.  This one is better than last episode ("The Fall of the House of Gryffen") which was better than the previous episode ("Fear Itself"), so the show is on an upward trend.  However it's still not as good as episodes 1 ("Regeneration") and 3 ("The Korven"), so there's still a lot of room for improvement.

At a protest rally, Drake is zapped by K9.  A portion of K9's memory has been deleted, so he can't prove his innocence. As his friends attempt to keep an eye on him, there is also an attack by K9 on Darius's car, where he even goes as far as to mark "K9 WOZ 'ERE" on the windshield.  So the big question becomes, has K9 gone rogue without his even knowing it?

It's a decent premise, and the show does attempt to have logical explanations for his inability to prove himself, but it suffers from the major flaw that no one ever thinks to suggest the obvious:  maybe the K9 doing all of these things is a fake.  Which of course, it is.  That was the first thing to cross my mind in the opening sequence as we're seeing K9 attack Drake, and it's 100% predictable.  And come on, no one thinks to question that K9 has suddenly forgotten how to spell, and is in fact spelling using the accent that the robocop CCCPCs use?  I realize this is intended for younger audiences, but I think even when I was 10 years old that would have been my first guess.

But there's a lot of nice character scenes with Professor Gryffen giving advice to Starkey and Jorjie, K9 is his usual charming self, and they even had a very good scene where they play on Darius's being unlikeable, as Drake tries to draw him over to his side.  Plus we get to see the two K9s fight it out.  So this episode has its redeeming moments.

K9 - "The Fall of the House of Gryffen"

Even ghost kids can't resist booping a dog's nose.

Spoiler Level: High

It's a dark and stormy night.  Starkey manages to beat a robot dog with a computer brain at chess, but that's because the robot dog is partnered with Darius.  Suddenly, a loud noise rings out, and Professor Gryffen sends Starkey to investigate.  He's rather surprised when Starkey returns alive.  (Oh waitaminute, that last bit was us MST3K-ing.)

The storm has somehow triggered the Space/Time Manipulator, which has allowed ghosts to enter the house, which take on the forms of Professor Gryffen's family to try and sway him over so they can suck up everyone's life forces and stay in our world.  At least that seems to be what's going on.

On the plus side, I'm glad to see the show following up on Professor Gryffen's family.  It's the character's main motivation, after all, so I'm glad it's not being pushed to the side.  And K9 gets in a few witty lines when he feels he's being ignored.

On the negative side, the whole "I'm so glad to see my family again that my brain has been addled to the point where I can't tell and/or don't care that they're not normal" approach, and the clichéd resolution of Jorjie, Darius and Starkey pleading "But Professor Gryffen,we're your family too, snap out of it!" wasn't very interesting.

Overall, this episode is an improvement over the previous one ("Fear Itself"), but not by much.  Rich and I discussed it afterwards and pretty much agreed that if K9 wasn't in it, this show would have lost us by now.  But I like K9, and I like how he's portrayed in this show, so I'm sticking with it.

K9 - "Fear Itself"

Spoiler Level: High

I enjoyed this episode enough as I was watching it, but even when Rich asked me "So what did you think?" after it ended, I wasn't sure what to answer.  When I think back on the episode now, it feels like kind of a mess.

Darius is locked in an old, abandoned wardrobe by two incomprehensible hobos.  But it's not just any old, abandoned wardrobe... this is the Old Abandoned Wardrobe... of FEAR!



Not only is the fear affecting all our lead characters, it's causing all of London to riot.  K9, being a machine, doesn't feel fear and therefore is having trouble understanding what's going on.  So of course, his friends try to take it on themselves to teach him how to feel.

On the more rational side, K9 does consult Professor Gryffen about altering his programming to be able to experience emotion, but then declines to go through with it when he realizes the full implication of how difficult having feelings would be.  But when K9 enters the Old Abandoned Wardrobe of Fear, he finds himself feeling emotions after all, which at first puts him in danger but then saves his life.

Then Drake comes along and punches the Wardrobe and makes it go poof.  A bit anti-climactic, really.

The concept of K9 experiencing emotions doesn't bother me in and of itself, but it's probably something done better in a story arc than crammed all in to one episode.  While some aspects of it were handled well here, most of it was just... well, messy.

And since Drake's fear is aliens, he thinks there's an alien in the Wardrobe creating the fear, and since that's what the show was about I thought he was right, but no, he's wrong, there's just fear itself in the Wardrobe, just like the title says.  Which is a good concept, but felt like it was carried out kind of... well, messy.

So how do you get rid of it?  You can't just lock it up, it's fear incarnate f'r cryin' out loud, and besides, it's already reaching all of London from a warehouse.  So the show wraps it up by having Drake punch it, of all things.  Which is ridiculous all on its own, but also leaves me feeling like, "Gee, if he had just done that right away he would saved everyone a lot of trouble."

Although I did find it interesting that Drake turned out to be a cyborg.  I noticed the whirring noises when he was grabbing Starkey (who still gets the best scenes), which was nice foreshadowing for the ending when he reveals his cyborg hands.

So it's a better episode than "Liberation," but certainly not up to par with the rest of the series to date.

K9 - "Sirens of Ceres"

Spoiler Level: Medium

Another decent episode, this time focusing on Jorjie.  Darius is still annoying, but K9 growled at him this time which gave me a good laugh.  K9's POV screens continue to delight-- click on the image to enlarge it and follow K9's thought patterns trying to understand the concept of "Sunday fun."

In this episode, Jorjie finds herself sent to the Magdalene Academy because she's becoming too much of a dissident.  It seems the Magdalene Academy is using alien stones to turn the students into Stepford Children, perfect and obedient.  It's a decent storyline that surprisingly felt like it was over rather quickly.

I also rather like the fact that this show keeps expanding on the concept of London being a totalitarian state-- a pretty big concept for a kids show, and they're not shying away from it.

I'm also really falling in love with K9's new look.  I always thought it was a decent update, giving K9 a more modern look while still having all the key components of his original look.  But having watched 5 episodes I'm now starting to really find him just so damn CUTE.  And I'm not even a dog person!

K9 - "The Bounty Hunter"

Spoiler Level: Fairly Highish

Not the picture I wanted to use, but my computer's acting up and it's not letting me install the codecs I need to make a proper screen capture.  This will have to do.

Another good offering.  Darius is still a whiner, but the other characters have still been decent.  The "Bounty Hunter" in question is a man named Ahab, who I believe said he was from the year 500,000.  Apparently both he and the Jixon followed K9 through the time stream, which implies that K9 was not escaping Gallifrey and the Time War after all.  I figured the whole memory loss thing was simply because they weren't allowed to use the Doctor Who mythos, but it looks like it's actually being built up into its own story arc.  Which would also explain why K9 survived the Time War, if he left Gallifrey before it happened.  I wonder if they're allowed to use Leela?

K9 - "The Korven"

Spoiler Level: Low

Now THIS is more like it!!  This episode had good dialogue, some great character moments, was well paced, had a cool looking monster, had some awesome shots of "K9 Vision" where we get to see how K9 views the world, and some fart humor.  K9's scenes with Starkey were very endearing and felt just like the old K9 we know and love.  A big, big improvement over the last episode.  (Perhaps that's why Disney XD UK skipped that one and went straight to this episode?)

 I'm also growing very fond of K9's new look.  I'm sure most of it is CGI, but it generally blends in very well, and the new articulation with his head (and especially his ears) make him much more expressive.

The only down side:  K9 keeps getting knocked out or powered down in each episode.  I realize we don't have much of a show if K9 just bursts in and zaps the monster, but really, there should be some other way to make it more of a challenge then just knocking K9 out for a while.  But as complaints go, this is a very small one in a much, much more improved episode.

Incidentally, is there a consistent way to spell the name of this show?  Traditionally, the character has been spelled "K9," but I've seen other sources calling it "K-9."  But what's printed on his side and in the show logo is "K·9."  So I'm going to stick with the traditional spelling for now.

K9 episodes 1 & 2: "Regeneration" and "Liberation"

Spoiler Rating: Medium

Back in the late 90's when I was working conventions, Joy & I were sharing a table with a local anime/comic shop.  During one of the quieter moments, one of the guys from the other shop and I got to talking about Doctor Who, which somehow led us to talk about its attempted spin-off, K9 & Company.

"I've seen all of those, too..."

"Well, they only made one episode," I pointed out.

"Oh no, no, they made 65 episodes.  The PBS stations in America only aired the first episode."

"No, it was a pilot.  They never made anymore."

There was a pause while my friend mulled this over.  Then he gave his head a firm nod.  "...No, I'm pretty sure I've seen all 65 episodes."

Well, what do you say to that?  It's not like he was a jerk or being pompous... he was just a really nice guy who genuinely thought he'd seen them, and I couldn't push the issue without being a jerk myself.

And only now, some 15 years later, do I truly understand.  He was watching temporal television!  Somehow this show was transmitted back through time, and he was lucky enough to actually see them before they were made!  Or perhaps, just like there are many lost Hartnell and Troughton episodes, these are K9's "Lost Episodes," only now being recovered!

So, now that we've got that mystery solved... how were the episodes themselves?

"Regeneration" was a very decent start.  The series is set in a dystopian future London, where we meet a batch of teenagers (all of which came across better than the kids in the pilot for Sarah Jane Adventures), and a scientist who's been trying to recover his lost family via time travel.  What he gets instead is K9, plucked out of time and dropped into their world, where he regenerates into a slick new model.  K9's memories are gone, presumably by whatever crisis he just escaped from.

Now, K9 (the series) is being made by Bob Baker, one of K9 (the character)'s co-creators, without any connection to the BBC.  Thus, the show is not allowed to use anything directly from Doctor Who.  But Bob Baker has stated that the K9 in this show is the original K9 Mk I that stayed behind on Gallifrey.  So the viewer can then presume that he was upgraded with regeneration technology while he was there, and that his escape and memory loss are from his escaping Gallifrey during the Time War.  It all makes total sense, but of course is never directly stated (or even implied) in the show itself.

As a pilot, "Regeneration" worked a lot better than Sarah Jane Adventures "Invasion of the Bane" pilot.

"Liberation," on the other hand, was a bit of a chore to get through.  The first half spends most of its time having the two lead teenage boys bicker with each other.  Which wouldn't be so bad if it was witty banter that gave us insight into the characters... but these writers are no Joss Whedon.  This is just annoying, like over hearing kids in the park while you're trying to read.  You can tell exactly what the next comeback line is going to be each time.

The second half, however, was pretty good, and actually felt like it had a lot of story exposition crammed into it.  If they had used more time from the first half to work on the exposition and less of the bickering boys, I think it would have worked much better.

And it's worth pointing out that John Leeson, the original voice of K9, is back for this series, giving K9 his classic personality and making him the K9 we know and love, no matter how he looks!  And I'm willing to forgive a shaky start;  after all, Sarah Jane Adventures just got better and better, and K9 looks like it has the potential to as well.