Potato waffle

The Last Sontaran, Episode 1

OOOH look everyone, woods. We haven’t had woods in nu-Who before. Russell probably has one of his funny rules about it – “when you’ve got an actor of the calibre of David Tennant, you can’t risk him walking behind a tree”, that sort of thing. But here we are, deep in the forest with Sarah Jane and a lone Sontaran. Takes you back, doesn’t it? And it’s by no means the oddest thing about The Sarah Jane Adventures – which, by all the normal rules of the universe, shouldn’t really exist, let alone be a hit – that nostalgia for a 35-year-old event is one of the central attractions of a show aimed at eight-year-olds.

This is basically Predator for pre-teens

Not that the rugrat demographic don’t have plenty to squee about themselves: towards the end, this episode dissolves into total continuity porn, revealing itself to be a direct follow-up to this year’s Sontaran two-parter and even including clips – clips I tells you – from The Poison Sky. None of them feature Tennant, of course, as it’s the first law of the Spin-off Limtation Effect that The Doctor must never, ever appear, even though everyone stands around nattering about him all the time anyway. Sarah briefly touches on the ATMOS saga herself, before going back to talking about The Time Warrior, in recognition of the fact half this CBBC show’s audience are actually grown men guiltily setting the video for 4.35 in the afternoon. (And for those lifers really paying attention, we even get a bit of that green goo from The Two Doctors. Surely the Ark In Space bubblewrap isn’t far behind.)

With its lone warrior and snazzy invisibility effect, this is basically Predator for pre-teens. The single enemy concept works well – not just because of the CBBC budget, but because it’s just instinctively more dramatic. It’s the reason Dalek is a lot scarier than Journey’s End, and the reason no-one ever looked at King Kong and said “You know what this needs? More monkeys”* And the scarface is a nice touch, plugging into Who’s long history of deformed wretches, from Magnus Greel to Sharaz Jek to Midshipman Frame. (Sorry, that’s cruel – I really just wanted an excuse to use this picture of RTD’s choice for the 11th Doctor.)

Baked potato as audience signifier

As Kaagh, Anthony O’Donnell clearly takes his cue from Christopher Ryan’s recent reinvention of the Sontarans as more frustrated middle managers than merciless killing machines – a shift in tone reflected by the number of baked potato gags, which the people who wrote that Dissertations in Time In Space book would no doubt refer to as “reflected audience signifiers,” or some such bollocks. (More bizarrely, at one point Clyde also calls Kaagh “kettle-head”, which would only really work if you happened to have a novelty Sontaran kettle - and don’t think we won’t by Christmas.)

Sure, some of the acting’s a bit stage school, and Lis Sladen has developed a habit of getting all teary-eyed at the slightest provocation (maybe it’s The Change) but, on the whole, The Last Sontaran is a neat, economical run-around that only occasionally reminds you (specifically in lines like “That’s 100% creeped-out to the max”) that you’re watching children’s telly when you’ve still got those box sets of The Wire to work through.

*Dr Desmond Morris writes: Yes, I know apes are not monkeys. I just really like the word monkey, okay?