Behind the Sofa - The Collaborative Doctor Who Blog

"Mother do you think she's dangerous to me?"

Sarah Jane Adventures: Enemy Of The Bane Part 2

'Nice one, Mrs.W' as Clyde and Luke are smothered in exploding Bane matter when Wormwood blasts her assailants. The gang realise that UNIT are also on the trail and hide out in Gita's flower shop with Mrs. Wormwood and Lethbridge-Stewart. It's here that Sarah Jane asks the very pertinent question, around which the whole story is built, 'Don't you have any children of your own...?' This aimed at someone who gives herself the title of 'Mrs'. Again, we have some very accomplished playing by Sladen and Bond as the two women sensitively discuss...well...their barreness. Of course it then flips over into bitterness as Wormwood takes a pot shot at Sarah Jane's new found sense of purpose as a result of her surrogacy of Luke. There's a hint at ancient myth and Biblical symbolism with the story positioning both Sarah Jane and Wormwood as barren women, with Luke perhaps indicative of some form of immaculate conception. It's again telling that Wormwood bitches to Sarah about the sonic lipstick being 'very female' and demands 'a more masculine influence' as they go for handbags at dawn in the shop. Of course, the male influence is revealed as Kaagh and the pair of them are double crossing the Bane in order to revive the 'creation figure' of Horath.

Kaagh becomes Wormwood's fawning eunuch which is a rather demeaning role for a former warlord of the Sontaran race and a further reference to Wormwood's power representing a suggestion of anxiety about male castration. Little man syndrome, indeed. Samantha Bond caresses that scroll a little too sensuously for my liking and I'm pretty sure she has cottoned on to what exactly is going on and is camping it up for all it's worth. When Luke asserts himself and stands up to Wormwood she again gets rather aroused and wants to possess him. Her ownership of Luke comes from the need to break the mother/son bond between him and Sarah Jane. However, their passionate declaration of their familial love for one another is something that Mrs. Wormwood would never understand. She simply sees her relationship to Luke as one of sexual and intellectual possession.

...a mother bequeathing her son with the power of life and death

Oh dear. Bloody Gita's back, sticking her nose in again. Except, she stumbles across a rather oddly behaving Major Kilburne and it's at this moment that it becomes apparent that Kilburne isn't what he seems. Not someone you'd invite in for a quick cuppa then, Gita. Meanwhile Luke is dragged off to another desolate factory location where he rejects Wormwood's aspirations for him to be her concubine. Tommy Knight is exceptionally good, getting across Luke's antipathy for the woman's plan of galactic revenge. Bond also gives superb value, managing that tricky balance between sincerity and ham that all good villains need to achieve. Luke establishes that Horath actually isn't a living creature and that he/she/it is a cyborg computer capable of reshaping the universe and 'can destroy worlds and give birth to them in a blink of an eye'. Some sort of interstellar father/mother then, a galactic cradle/grave to which Wormwood compares herself. And with that she hands her 'prince' the glowing dildo of Horath, a mother bequeathing her son with the power of life and death.

Brilliantly, that scene sucks the audience in and just for a brief second you think Luke's fallen under her spell. And then he legs it. What a fantastic twist to a carefully built scene. After a bit of a chase, a couple of explosions and some gloating, Kaagh decides to finish Luke off. However, Wormwood puts him firmly in his place, completing her castration of the warrior and reducing him to the status of slave. Whilst this life/death struggle is played out, Clyde gets all 007 (the look on Lethbridge-Stewart's face is priceless) and the gang have to deal with Major Kilburne. Kilburne is, of course, Bane. But Nick Courtney rises to the occasion and obviously relishes the scene where Lethbridge-Stewart promptly shoots the creature with his walking stick gun! Pity about that appalling 'slimy creep' gag from Sarah Jane, though.

...he simply says, 'I don't want to be a God' when she offers him the universe on a plate.

The climax to all this running around is Horath's dildo opening a big hole in time and space at a neolithic stone circle. Hang on, let me read that again....yeah, that's about the right level of innuendo. And holes are very important symbols when it comes to fertility rites and fertilising power and representing the 'opening' of this world into other planes of existence. Oh, whilst we're at it, it might be useful to flag up that the herb wormwood is often used as a tea to give to pregnant women to ease labour pains. When she prepares to insert the scroll in the hole (I'm sorry, I can't help it) Wormwood even gets a solicitor joke in when Kaagh reminds her of their partnership. But ironically, only the human Luke can enter the circle and open the gateway. I love that moment where he simply says, 'I don't want to be a God' when she offers him the universe on a plate. It's the culmination of a very strong character arc that's been developing for Luke over the series. And Bond's reaction when Sarah Jane arrives and Luke runs to her with a shout of 'Mum!' is beautifully played. She's defeated by very simple human emotions, especially unconditional love, and that resignation is there in her desperate pleading for him.

Kaagh does the honourable thing and with a shout of 'Sonta-ha!' he pulls himself and Wormwood into the black hole. The episode ends on a delightful coda that embraces true friendship, including Sir Alistair of course, and the series de rigeur visual motif of star-gazing wonderment at the universe. A great conclusion to the story and a script that gets the series on track again after a run of uneven stories that took liberties with character development at the behest of recycled ideas. Clyde and Luke did get some terrific episodes, Sarah went somewhat out of character in the penultimate story and I'm afraid Rani and her family ended up as the major casualties this year. Rani is great but there needs to be some serious work done to make Gita and Haresh more appealing. But at least this is a high note to end this series on.

"Zaglabor astragard hootrimansion bambriartoo…"

And so The Sarah Jane Adventures have come full circle.  In writing about Revenge of the Slitheen I commented on how brain-splitting children’s television is these days with its fast cutting, bouncy graphics in primary colours and music which sounds like a cut up remix of a Disaster Area concert.  In places it makes the promotional film for the London Olympics with the rubbish logo look like a genius piece of sedate modernism and that’s just the bumpers and idents between the programmes.  Now, during ...

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Enemy of the Bane (both episodes)

… everything in the programme itself is brash, loud and disjointed, powered by a kind of atomised storytelling which has replaced such incidentals as logical plot structure and coherent character motivation and by the end of the two episodes I was left in a grumpy old mood desperately muttering like a jilted lover “Was it me?  Was it something I did?  Did I not see the signs?  What does he have that I don’t?”  Well, perhaps not the last bit, but it’s ages (well a few weeks at least) since I felt so angry about a piece of drama.  Not just because as a finale to what's been a half decent series its so disappointing, but because it was let out of its cage by the same people who brought you so many sublime episodes of Doctor Who this year.

Kermodian rant mode engaged.

If there’d been a camera in the room I suspect the expression on my face would have been somewhat like John Lyman’s during that brilliant episode of The West Wing in which he’s woken up with a hangover and Joey Lucas’s translator Kenny is shouting in his face.  He looks rotten, his eyes desperately trying to focus on something, anything, coherent until in the end he has to admit “I have no clue what is happening right now.”  That was me during Bane II as the convoluted plot convulsed into the kind of inherent ramblings which tend to give our favourite genre a bad name.  It’s an alien doodah which when combined with a thingy could bring about the end of the universe.  For the first time this series I did finally, genuinely felt like a teacher trying to look cool listening to The Jonas Brothers at a school disco. 

There’s little point in me listing all of the irritations – we’ll be here all night – so I’ll just offer two. 

Firstly, there’s the treatment of the Brig.  I’d quite looked forward to his return to television, though for some of us he’s not really a character that’s been away with his appearances in the novels and Nick Courtney’s frequent visits to the Big Finish studios for this and that, notably his appearances in the U*N*I*T spin-off mini-series as well as the, I think, underrated video Downtime which also featured Lis Sladen briefly as Sarah-Jane.  It seemed like an odd fit that he’d be resurrected for The Sarah Jane Adventures anyway considering the target audience, but the SJS connection is strong enough and it might well be a pre-cursor to his re-emergence in the mother programme, where the details of his mission to Peru might yet be revealed. 

His dislike for the newer, vastly more militaristic UNIT is a welcome continuation of some of the themes begun in those spin-offs and is extrapolated well in his opening scene, as he wipes the monocle from fake Major Cal’s face.  The reunion with Ms Smith was just ambiguous enough not to render any of those spin-off stories non-canonical.  Nick Courtney has a ready gravitas which makes you wonder why he’s not employed more often (though watch out for him playing the Archbishop of Canterbury in this thing soon).  He obviously relished the chance to be back on tv and a through line to the man we loved so in the seventies and eighties.  It’s nice introduction for viewers too, he’s an old friend of Sarah-Jane who used to be in UNIT and knows how to get into the spooky Black Archives.

The problem is, because the kids are rightly supposed to be the stars, The Brig predictably gets sidelined and unlike School Reunion, the episode isn’t about the meeting of old friends and before long it becomes apparent that the man is rather incidental to the story.  Courtney spends most of the following episode and a half standing or sitting around reacting to whatever’s happening and though he does get a couple of action beats including some nice cane work, he’s essentially a bystander to the main story, which I know was often the case in the 70s but seems like wasted opportunity here.  Would it be so wrong for him to have a moment where he imparts some wisdom and be allowed to offer some impression to the kids watching as to what makes him so brilliant that the Doctor would name drop him at a time of crisis?

Of course, the reason the episode isn’t about Alistair is because it’s about Luke and his mummy dilemma and it’s how he fitted into the story which is the other thing which really got my goat.  We’ve watched the bond develop convincingly between Luke and Sarah-Jane over the past couple of seasons and it’s interesting to see the show attempting to address the emotional apocalypse an adopted kid his age in the real world might have to address when the real thing wanders in either at the supermarket, home, or as is most likely these days on The Jeremy Kyle Show.  Perhaps these kids in the real world might think that underneath these people are giant calamari desperate to steal them away from the life they know, with Spain the destination instead of the universe, but Luke’s not really the role model the adopter would want to hold up as an example of how to deal with the situation.

It’s just a pity that after an excellent showing in the last story, Luke spends most of Enemy of the Bane being psychologically shoved about so easily by his ‘real’ mother Mrs Wormwood.  You can just about see the reason behind busting her from the protective shielding, but after that’s gone so well and he’s essentially been kidnapped and tried to dash off with the cosmic doodah, why does he then go and take it to the centre of the stone circle knowing the consequences it’ll have for humanity?  The reason is because writer Phil Ford needs him to.  Having logically written Mrs Wormwood behind the shielding he needs to get her out so that the next bit of plot can be dealt with.  Equally, there isn’t a big special effects climax if Luke isn’t somehow compelled into doing the dirty even if the status quo hasn’t changed that much since five minutes before when he ran off with it. 

I should say here that if Samantha Bond wanted me to do anything for her, anything at all, I’m there – her hypnotic voice has driven me absolutely crazy for years and her rather arch performance was one of the few highlights in the these episodes.  Except she’s so clearly still evil, still mental, and still untrustworthy, that it undermines our belief in Luke’s intelligence that he persists in doing pretty much everything she says even when the results have proved to be so disastrous.  I know there’s an argument to be made for the series being for a younger age group where writing has to lack most of its ambiguity and there’s bound to be a certain panto elements, as we’re constantly frowning in disbelief at the stupidity of our heroes, but when Jack (not Harkness) sells his cow for some beans we get watch a giant beanstalk grow and meet a giant, and I’m not sure any of the results of the over complicated bit of fantasy on offer here was as relevant or immeditately exciting as that.

Now, I know this is harsh commentary for what is essentially a production with its heart in the right place and it could just be a pre-christmas bit of malevolence before my usual festive benevolence descends.  All of performances were excellent; Anthony O'Donnell’s Commander Kaagh in particular worked much better in this context than in his own story, seeking honour through freelance work rather than the usual Sontaran oaths.  And it scores marks for not also somehow involving the Chandras in the solution to the alien story as a counterpoint to the still lamented Jacksons; clearly if Haresh is up to anything dodgy they’re saving it for the next series – I also hope they could find something more interesting for Gita to do than apparently get Sarah-Jane’s name wrong and have her in some state of catatonia. 

I just wish that after generating what has been a very good drama series the finale hadn’t been so relentlessly mundane and predictable and exactly the kind of thing children’s television is criticised for being.  Then again, I’m willing to admit its possible that I’ve just had a sense of humour bypass for a week and I’ll rewatch this in the future (as we fans always do) I’ll be less harsh and grudgingly see it’s good points – it’s happened recently with Planet of the Ood which I absolutely hated on my first po-faced viewing.  Plus, I am thirty-four years old.  If I was about ten, I’d probably think this was the most exciting fifty minutes I’ve ever, ever seen.  At least until Christmas Day.

Mother And Child Reunion

Sarah Jane Adventures: Enemy Of The Bane Part 1

I don't know how many of you remember Les Dawson and Roy Barraclough and their double act as fishwives Cissie and Ada but it struck me at about ten minutes into Enemy Of The Bane that, in similar fashion, Mrs. Wormwood and Sarah Jane had started how they meant to go on. And on. And on. As the highly camp Samantha Bond and our Lis traded insults in a disused factory I did imagine them leaning across their garden wall as they bickered at each other about the Archetype, Bubbleshock and Bane. And no, that's not a firm of solicitors. Mrs. Wormwood's elaborate calling card - pretending to buy flowers, subduing Gita (permanently I'd hoped) and leaving a cheque to pique Sarah Jane's interest - seemed a tad on the excessive side but who cares when Bond and Sladen take the crackling dialogue and run with it, trading bitchy insults whilst running away from monstrous CGI blobs. You could tell director Graeme Harper was savouring this in the way he shot the sequence of Mrs. Wormwood and Sarah Jane belting down the corridor to get out of the factory. A frenzy of close-ups, medium shots and some great low angle stuff are joined by a quick flash of Samantha Bond's high heels clacking along very camply. A bit of utterly gratuitous shoe fetish that reminded me of Chrissy's high-heeled magnificence back in The Last Sontaran.  I'd also like to know Mrs. Wormwood's tips for keeping a violent purple hood permanently stuck to her head too.

...the Tunguska scroll looks...well...a bit like an ornate dildo

It transpires that the Bane are out to get their revenge on Mrs. Wormwood for the Bubbleshock affair but Sarah Jane's having none of it. After Clyde's priceless, 'But I thought you said she was an ugly bug-eyed squid thing' and Mrs. Wormwood's exasperated retort of 'Children!', the first hints of what writer Phil Ford is actually wanting to talk about in the drama start to emerge, even after the rather tongue in cheek one-upwomanship between Sarah Jane and Mrs. Wormwood as they mark out their territory in the attic. This is about family. Yes, the major theme of this second series is brought out again for another airing. It's clear from Luke's reaction to his Bane mother/creator that there are issues a plenty lurking under the surface of this witty and rather arch episode. Both women squabble rather broodily over the confused Luke and there's a whiff of a strangely skewed Oedipal love-hate undercurrent emanating from the relationship between Luke and Mrs. Wormwood. In fact, I'd go as far as to say she displays a certain amount of sexual desire for Luke, with her purring, 'I made you rather handsome, didn't I?' One could also argue that the displaced bits of Horath, a sort of dismembered father-figure, represent the absence of mature masculinity in a world populated by brooding mothers and immature teenagers. It's also significant to note that the Tunguska scroll looks...well...a bit like an ornate dildo.

Sladen and Courtney play the reuniting of Sarah and Lethbridge-Stewart to perfection

And the dildo is kept in the Black Archive. That mention of UNIT and their stash of alien artefacts neatly swings the script towards the highlight of the episode. The return of Nick Courtney and Sir Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart. Even before we meet him, UNIT is posited as another symbol of the story's play on the role of the masculine with Clyde getting scolded by Sarah Jane for thinking the use of guns will solve all problems. Still, it is a delight to see him back and Courtney is in fine form as he dresses down the rather annoying Major Kilburne who prattles on about 'homeworld security' in front of a living legend who has dealt with his fair share of what he charmingly refers to as 'space thuggery'. Kilburne's an odd one and Simon Chadwick's performance is angular and brittle, indicating that he's not quite the full shilling, especially with that unsettling moment where he peers at himself in the metal lamp. And Sladen and Courtney play the reuniting of Sarah and Lethbridge-Stewart to perfection even though it's purely a fanboy pleasing moment and the kids watching won't have a clue who the hell he is. Perhaps this will usher in a cameo in the parent series for good measure.

The brief moments between Clyde and Luke, discussing Clyde's dad, leads us to the inevitable scene where Luke's confusion about his parental stock will necessitate a confrontation with Mrs. Wormwood. Clyde recognises that without his dad he wouldn't be alive and this spurs Luke into demanding to see her, despite Sarah's wishes to the contrary. It's a nicely played scene, showing off both Daniel Anthony and Tommy Knight to great advantage. The following scene between Knight and Bond, as Wormwood turns on the charm to escape from the attic, is also a triumph and again emphasises the themes of children and their relationships with their parents that's been running through this series. Here, it is Luke's turn to shed some light upon the woman that created him within the context of nature versus nurture in the development of adolescent social orientation. 

Universal domination and the sweetness of revenge are on the menu once more.

We get to see the Black Archive but I was slightly disappointed and had hoped for a few recognisable objects littering the place as a little treat for us older fans. All we ended up with was a nod to Raiders Of The Lost Ark and mention of Queen Victoria. A shame really. The episode's cliffhanger mixes Sarah and Rani stealing the dildo of Horath and causing a security breach at UNIT intercut with Wormwood's battle against one of the Bane that hilariously turns up on the doorstep posing as a pensioner collecting for charity. Ah, but then there's the bluff and Wormwood it seems is in league with Kaagh, the Sontaran seen off by Sarah at the beginning of the series this year. Universal domination and the sweetness of revenge are on the menu once more. A good opening episode, well directed by Harper and full of wonderful performances, especially from Bond and Courtney, and a reminder of the sheer fun this series can be.