The Sarah Jane Adventures: Invasion Of The Bane

To fill the gap between seasons of Doctor Who on my Marathon, I've decided to watch The Sarah Jane Adventures and blog about that. Anyone who reads my DWRTM blogs will be aware that I'm not Sarah Jane Smith's biggest fan. I find her pushy and rude, often quite obnoxious and in the habit of complaining a lot and getting herself into situations which she needs help to get out of - not the independent and assertive character she began as in her first two stories. Joining the show in the wake of the magnificent Jo Grant (who clearly developed as a character throughout her three seasons) Sarah wasn't too bad in Season 11 yet not remotely as likeable as her predecessor, and her negative traits were less annoying when she had Harry to bounce off in Season 12, but once Harry was gone she had very clearly devolved into a damsel-in-distress archetype without the winning personality of her predecessors. Never more so was this obvious than in the failed pilot K9 And Company See here where she spends most of the time being rude and presumptuous to everyone she meets (a clear echo of her behaviour in Robot See here). Russell T Davies managed to partially redeem her on her return in School Reunion but, at the time, it wasn't enough to inspire me to like her nor tune in to the subsequent spin off series. As a result, I watched the pilot, the two stories featuring the Doctor and the story which saw the return of Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart and gave the rest of the series a very wide berth.

So why am I watching this? Basically, so many fans adore Sarah Jane and I've never been able to fathom why. Part of me is hoping that watching the character in her own show might go some way into rehabilitating her. Also, the wait between seasons on my Doctor Who marathon is a fair stretch and I got bored between Seasons 18 and 19 so it's something for me to do. And I've been told by a number of people how good the series is.

So, here goes...

Invasion Of The Bane

I really like the fact that the focus of this story from the start is Maria Jackson, ably played by Yasmin Paige. Her family circumstances are a nice set up and her relationship with her parents nicely sketched. Unfortunately, Sarah gets off to a rocky start and we're back with the rude and spiky character from previous stories. It was something of a relief that, following the Bane attack on her house, some background to her behaviour was given; it didn't make me like her, exactly, but filled in some of the gaps - the fact that nobody could compare to the Doctor in her eyes and that her best friend, K9, is mostly absent sealing up a black hole. Spurred into action following her latest meeting with the Doctor, she's entirely alone investigating and confronting the alien and the strange, and fears getting other people involved will put them in danger. So her rudeness to the Jacksons in the opening scene has context, and is given a nice coda where she welcomes Maria and her dad to the neighbourhood.

The Bubble Shock advert is suitably annoying and cheesy but visually feels more 90s than mid-00s. It gets the point across, though. Kelsey Hooper really annoyed me when I originally saw the pilot, but this time around I actually think Porsha Lawrence Mavour does a brilliant job as the loud culture-victim school kid. She contrasts nicely with Maria and it's a shame she wasn't kept on as part of the main cast. She brings humour to most of her scenes and works well as the main source of exposition. She also comes across as one of the most well rounded of the characters here when Mrs Wormwood reveals what's going on in her brain, and having her regularly returning to a state of denial throughout the episode fits well with the idea that the majority of people in the world don't notice all the alien machinations that have occurred and are yet to come.

As for the Bane themselves, the CGI hasn't aged particularly well, but I recall thinking it a bit shoddy even in 2007. Nevertheless, Samantha Bond and Jamie Davis do a good job of selling the aliens in their Human form. Initially, I found Davis' performance a little over the top (in the scenes where he's guiding the tour of the Bubble Shock factory) but he marks Bond's performance well and makes her archness seem like a species trait rather than scenery-chewing. I don't feel that the Bane's plan was clearly explained, though. They were going to make the Earth into Baneworld and were imbuing 98% of the population with their own essence - for what? Would this have turned Humanity into Bane? Is that how they reproduce? They've got the Bane Mother clinging to the ceiling of their factory like a cross between the Mighty Jagrafess of the Holy Hadrojassic Maxarodenfoe and the Xenomorph Queen cosplaying as a 70s Nestene, and they've created the Archetype/Luke so they can get the whole of humanity to consume Bane, but if a proper explanation was given it was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it line and I clearly blinked. This also feels very close to the plot of Partners In Crime, even though this story came first. It says a lot about the two stories that nobody seemed to notice!

On to Luke. I don't think there's much to say about him. He's well played by Tommy Knight, and he's a nice concept but he's clearly set up to develop beyond this episode. He feels ephemeral, which is pretty much the point, and obviously only there to give Sarah more to do than just investigating and battling aliens. Which brings me to the odd line about Sarah not using weapons to fight when, five minutes earlier, she used a weapon to fight off Davey. It's good to have the lead character of a kids show make this statement, but perhaps don't have her use weaponry in the first place.

The conclusion was nicely played out, with the communication device handed to Sarah at the start of the story being the item which defeats the Bane. I'm not entirely convinced that only Mrs Wormwood escaped the exploding factory, but the implication was there and the explosion was fairly impressive. Overall, it was a decent set up for an ongoing series, certainly a million times better than K9 And Company, and even if it didn't improve Sarah in my eyes it at least went some way to round her character out and make her general attitude understandable. Next week I'll be looking at a story that's entirely new to me, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the characters we met in the pilot are developed.