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Sarah Jane Adventures: Secrets Of The Stars Part 2

Now, I don't mind a bit of sympathetic magic in stories like this. Gareth Roberts' idea of using the signs of the zodiac and the alignment of stars as symbols to directly affect environment and people is a tried and tested fantasy device. Look at the blood control idea in The Christmas Invasion. Go even further back and you'll see a similar set up in that classic children's drama Children Of The Stones. They are all essentially about the same thing - that one can influence something based on its relationship to another thing without any apparent causal link between the two. So the stone circles and black holes in Children Of The Stones are like the zodiac symbols and stellar alignment in this.

All this story can do is position itself within the new religions of celebrity pop culture and 24 hour rolling news.

The star signs and zodiac stuff is all about 'participation mystique' - they are today's version of ritualistic cave paintings. Roberts, however, feels the need to explain why sympathetic magic 'works' in this universe because otherwise it is still the mumbo-jumbo that we associate with pre-rationalist, primitive modes of thinking. He doesn't quite achieve that and perhaps shouldn't have attempted to rationalise it. The notion that a star-sign can be used to hypnotise the populace of Ealing and Acton doesn't quite work because Roberts put in all that alternate universe, pre-Big Bang alien energy/science explanation. It's charming but it's about as effective as trying to rationalise karma, good luck or doing a rain dance. The Masque Of Mandragora has a much better handle on the scientific rationale versus primitive magic discussion because it positioned its debate within the flux of the Renaissance. All this story can do is position itself within the new religions of celebrity pop culture and 24 hour rolling news. It's a nice touch that Trinity Wells of the ubiquitous AMNN service gets possessed. Mind you, it's a wonder the poor love hasn't checked herself into a hospital by now.

I like the ideas but the trouble with Part Two is that there are interminably, lengthy scenes of threat and counter threat between Sarah Jane and Martin Trueman that, quite frankly, commit the cardinal sin of being boring. Abbot's twitchy and arch performance and Sladen's trembly, throat wobbling of the week spends nearly ten minutes of the running time taking place via a television screen in her attic. It is resolved in that quite effective confrontation between Sarah and Clyde but it's static and confined to one set. The pace seriously flags. It only starts to pick up again when the story actually moves to the theatre and the lead characters all split up within the narrative. The scene where Clyde convinces the circle of hypnotised chosen ones to allow him into the theatre again promotes the idea that all the zodiac and stars stuff is bunkum (the chocolate bar jokes see to that) and yet then continues to suggest a power beyond the rational, delivered by astrology.

The threat from Trueman is framed like the false-jeopardy of a run down quiz show. Something slightly tricky, slightly tatty that you'd find on Challenge TV, complete with revolving game board, rather than it actually being about the fate of the universe. It's as underwhelming as the low-rent performance from Russ Abbot. The ending, Trueman and Clyde facing off to Sarah, with Rani and Luke rushing to turn off the power supply, should work. But it just ends up as a bunch of people talking to each other in a theatre. The dialogue between Sarah and Trueman, where he basically explains the whole plot and she puts across a counter argument lasts for nearly two minutes. It's two minutes of director Kerrigan cutting between Abbot and Sladen, desperately trying to make it interesting, and no matter how charismatic you may think they both are this is dull, dull, dull. It's about as threatening and exciting as a lettuce.

Despite a fairly awful performance from Russ Abbot, when it comes to the crunch, it is still very sad when Martin realises that he's been defeated by virgin birth Luke.

It finally gets going again when the astral energy arrives on earth and plunges into the theatre, Rani and Luke literally pull the plug and surprise, surprise (the unexpected doesn't hit you between the eyes) Luke realises that he's special because he doesn't have a star sign. And because he wasn't born in the house of Virgo with Uranus rising it means he can defeat the, by now, totally irritating Martin Trueman. However, something strange happens with Trueman too. Despite a fairly awful performance from Russ Abbot, when it comes to the crunch, it is still very sad when Martin realises that he's been defeated by virgin birth Luke. It still elicits some sympathy which I find miraculous after Abbot's mangled performance.

There is that sweet coda where Luke does get a birthday date and with once again Sladen and Knight showing just how natural and effective they are, given the opportunity. But in the end, I didn't particularly like this. Definitely the weakest of the stories so far, it's symptomatic of a series plunging into formula, despite the vivaciousness of the lead actors, and this is full to the brim of recycled, standard issue tropes borrowed from the parent series and no scope for adding more dimension to the characters. It'll leave you as glassy-eyed as Martin's hypnotised victims.

"Your friends will remain fiercely loyal in stormy times, You're the kind of spirit who likes to think ahead."

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Secrets of the Stars Part 2

Many rels ago before David Tennant was playing the Doctor let alone announcing that he didn’t feel like it any more (James Purefoy anyone?), Doctor Who Magazine ran a series of four article which dissected the structure of a typical four episode story.  Unlike Luke, I don’t remember everything I read, so right now I can’t recall the most of what (I think it was) Gary Gillatt wrote but I do remember two things.  Firstly that essentially said structure amounts to an episode of set up some running around for two episodes (extended to ten depending on how long the story is) and then the conclusion.  I’ll talk about structure some more later. 

The other observation was that if a story’s rotten at its opening, it won’t improve for its entire duration.  There may some good things about it but – and I know these weren’t Gary’s actual words – you can’t gold plate a dog turd.  But the reverse isn’t necessarily true – there are many Doctor Who stories which begin well but flounder somewhere in their execution – and the series is replete with examples of those as anyone who’s sat through The Space Museum and The Mind Robber can attest.  But we love it anyway for all these flaws, because just now and then it, bucks such trends and like non-league football team working their way through the FA Cup, now and then it repays the faith we have in it.

undemanding fare

Sadly, part two of Secrets of the Stars was interned into the former camp; having begun rather badly with the exception of that lovely scene about Luke’s lack of womb-time, the worst elements of the opening half continued:  Russ Abbott continued to over-act, the kind of cult leader that needs hypnosis since natural charisma won’t do it for him; the inability to trust it's audience's intelligence and over explain everything to the point of not giving the characters enough to room to breath and have a moment unrelated to the plot and a tendency to run away from anything remotely unpredictable should it make to target audience at all confused by what they’re seeing. 

But what really hurt this episode most was over familiarity.  Like the “classic” version of the parent series, The Sarah Jane Adventures has developed a structure which we’re now seeing story in and out.  In episode one, the threat is revealed and in the second episode our heroes go and confront it at its lair, having worked up some kind of plan.  To be frank, there’s only so many times that the gang can turn up at some building/spaceship/house just after the cliffhanger resolution, trick their way in then talk the villain into submission, no matter how entertaining the incidental moment.  This is the third time it’s happened this season and I’d be surprised if even the most undemanding kid would notice.  Here, the approach was even reduced to a quick scoot past the human rope line in the car.

On top of that we’ve the return of incidental imagery;  a hynotised population marching the streets their loved ones close behind looking perturbed (The Christmas Invasion on), the budget saving re-emergence of the juddering CG shot of the Earth from Journey’s End and the hooped tractor beam from The Empty Child, another global catastrophe being commented on by the world’s media (which did at least have that fun moment with Trinity Wells being taken over) and a global catastrophe for that matter, and Luke ultimately saving the day because he’s special, his lack of a star sign, this story’s equivalent of the Doctor’s hand as important plot point waiting to come to fruition.  I’ve pointed out that nu-Who’s repeated tropes too in the past, but not even those were quite as pronounced as this.

frustratingly bland

Which means that in these episodes the series has dipped into the category of “undemanding fare”, the description usually branded on films in the satellite pages of the Radio Times when the reviewer’s on a deadline, only has a couple of lines and can’t think of very much else to say.  The performances of the regulars are still good, there’s some fun dialogue and the music has the requisite drama, it’s well directed, it’s also just so frustratingly bland, and though it’s good that it was brave enough to not to save Trueman and make some general observations about the mechanics of cults, it’s pretty worrying that this was dropped into the same slot as last year’s epic Warriors of Kudlak and rattled out of the fingertips and onto the keyboard of the same writer as Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? which was one of best stories the franchise has produced in any media.

Still, I’m an optimist and I’m sure all of this is just a blip.  With three more stories to go, including sequels to that alternate reality tale and the pilot there is plenty of time for Gareth, Phil and the team to get their mojo back.  Even if, so far, with the exception of Rani the Chandra family have been no substitute for Jacksons and those wonderful double act scenes between Clyde and Luke have been kept to a shocking minimum, there’s still room for some surprises and a change of tone and how many times have we seen that?  I was about to say something like "Who would have thought the Davison era could produce The Caves of Androzani", but then I remembered what came next.  So perhaps I'd best leave it there.

Next Week:  My love for you is like a truck, berserker ...

"Always danger, Endless talking, Life rebuilding, Don't walk away."

Sarah Jane Adventures: Secrets of the Stars Part 1

When I was about eight years old, I had a nightmare, which was unusual for me because I never had nightmares, I usually slept very well.  In this nightmare, I was being chased around the streets of the suburbs where I grew up, not by Daleks or Cybermen or the Nimon, not even by Darth Vader but by Russ Abbot in his C.U. Jimmy guise, ginger wig, braces and kilt, shouting his catchphrase as he repeatedly almost caught up with me, in the fog.  Years later I interpreted it as my subconscious reminding me that I’m not really Scottish no matter what my surname might tell me, but the image stuck and I’ve always been tetchy whenever I’ve seen Abbot ever since.  Essentially, whilst I’ve nothing but good memories from my childhood of seeing Tom Baker’s teeth and curls and Leela in whatever that was she was wearing (I began young), Abbot’s Basildon Bond guise gives me shivers and I’m thanking whatever it is I believe in that his single Atmosphere has been consigned to history, not even resurrected by TMF during their Guilty Pleasures slots.  Yes, I might not have had a fear of clowns.  But I did have a fear of Russ Abbot.

Watching his performance in Secrets of the Stars, I wonder if my young subconscious wasn’t just afraid of Russ Abbot as the bogeyman but also as a performer.  Now, I’ve only vague memories of the Madhouse, certainly less vivid than that dream, but if he was as appalling then as he is in the first half of this, I’m not entirely sure how that lasted for seven whole series (Barry Cryer's jokes?).  With the exception of that just about ok moment in the opening, when his astrologist character Martin Trueman is being himself and chastened by the fraud he’s wrought on his clients, Abbot offers what might charitably be described as almost the worst performances in the role of a villain in the history of the franchise.  We’ve already established that as a kids series, the acting in The Sarah Jane Adventures will always have a certain pantomime quality; as we saw in the previous story with Bradley Walsh, that can pay dividends in taking the villain in sinister directions.  But Walsh modulated his work, whereas Abbot is going big but not in a funny way, and certainly not in a so bad it’s hilarious way (step forward Joseph Furst); there were moments here, usually whenever he was consulting with his hypnotised assistant, the lovely Cheryl, when I just wanted to rip the skin off my own face.

Did no one give him notes?  Did no one say, actually it’d be more interesting here, Russ, if you adapted your performance, keyed it down a bit, so we can see your thought processes.  At the risk of getting Behind The Sofa hauled in front of the blogosphere’s imaginary watchdog for insulting a pensioner, I know that Abbot’s not known for his dramatic acting roles, that I’ve stunk the place up myself in Shakespeare and that nu-Who has a propensity for hiring comedians and light entertainers and having great success.  But Abbot was never Bernard Cribbins, and you really do have to protect the programme even if it means bringing in a slight unknown.  About the only time Abbot seems comfortable here is on-stage addressing an audience, as Trueman introduces himself and his powers to the public.  This is Abbot the entertainer and he was delightful, particularly when throwing out revelations about the attic crew.  Quite why he felt the need to do his whole performance like that we might never know.  Perhaps if we’d seen less private moments and like Odd Bob he’d simply been a figure our regulars went to, more of the public man in other words, he might have been more bearable.

It’s certainly the regulars who made this episode worth watching and even writer Gareth Roberts seemed more comfortable writing for them than his villain (which isn’t me trying to spread the blame by the way).  Though he made Luke the bearer of exposition, explaining what horoscopes are with the help of Mr. Smith for any kids who haven’t been sneaking a look at the local paper, he also gave him that really quite wonderful scene calling back to Robert’s first story, Invasion of the Bane, as he realised he was never born, has never had the childhood his friends lived through.  Tommy Knight was extraordinary here, perfectly underplaying this small tragedy which had clearly been bubbling under, with this incident acting as a trigger for him to have to deal with it.  And once again Liz excelled herself as we saw Sarah-Jane again dealing with much the same issues she experienced in School Reunion of a life lost, though she’s obviously come to terms with these feelings and I wonder if in the next episode Trueman’s mistake will be to assume that he’s hurting her with emotions she’s already buried.

The fact that it’s possible to talk about it in these terms suggests that despite Abbot’s supersizing, Secrets of the Stars wasn’t/isn’t a dead loss.  The rest of the regulars were/are very good and I really enjoyed the production design details within Trueman’s own top room, including the signs of the zodiac painted haphazardly on the walls.  Abbot certainly looked the part in his white suit that obviously had certain evangelical cues.  And despite not starting well with a direct quote from the other Rani at the cliffhanger of Dimensions In Time (and why would we want to be reminded of that?) there were some interesting ideas at the core of Roberts’s story which wouldn’t have disgraced the mother series – our universe being infected by the laws of the horoscopes so that someone can’t just predict the future but know for sure how it will turn out and even take measures to affect it.  So far, that’s only really resulted in some parlour games, hypnosis and magic hands but who knows what might happen next week.  It’s just one of those curious occasions when one element, in this case the boggle eyed performance of the main guest star, almost derailed the whole experience.  Truly, the stuff of nightmares.

The Trueman Show

Sarah Jane Adventures: Secrets Of The Stars Part 1

Ensuring we don't forget the 'destiny in the stars' theme that seems to be dominating the series this year, the first part opens with an atmospheric pan down from the stars in the heavens to the shadowy, moonlit house of Martin Trueman. It's a really strong opening, visually accomplished, setting out the themes of the story, with Trueman (the clue is in the surname, folks) becoming not the true man but a poor con-artist possessed by astral forces. Gareth Roberts' scripts postulate that the signs of the zodiac are in fact the remnants of of some pre-Big Bang force out to conquer our universe. It's about belief in something that can't be defined. But for those of us who are familiar with Russ Abbot's light entertainment career (that can't be defined either) it has a bizarre subtext about loss of celebrity and celebrity obsession with the occult and fame. Think Sally Morgan, Star Psychic meets The Christmas Invasion and you'll perfectly get the measure of this.

...when I was a teenager you wouldn't find me dead at anything remotely to do with star signs, psychic readings and Russell Grant

Abbot is actually very effective as Trueman in the pre-titles sequence. He starts out as a slightly downtrodden nobody and once irradiated by an astral fireball he's transformed into a scenery chewing, fame grabbing monster as he plonks a hand on customer Cheryl's shoulder and turns her into his henchwoman. All one can say is that Russ certainly believes in method acting. A great opening but it's later undermined by his rather, shall we say, enthusiastic approach to acting in the rest of the episode. Now, I don't know about the kids of today but when I was a teenager you wouldn't find me dead at anything remotely to do with star signs, psychic readings and Russell Grant. So, I find it puzzling that three intelligent people like Clyde, Rani and Luke had nothing better to do than go and see a psychic show starring Russ Abbot. Er, don't they go to Slipknot gigs like the others in their peer group? Gareth Roberts is asking us to believe these three characters would go to something as naff as this. Next, he'll be telling me the star signs and zodiac shit is, like, real. It's a horribly contrived set up, and you know the whole business with Luke not having a birthday will be the lynch-pin to the story's resolution but it does give us some nice interplay between Knight, Mohindra and Anthony as they enter the theatre. All three are engaging as ever.  May I also just say that a lot of this is bigged up by Sam Watts' lovely music score too and it manages to give the episode a little bit of edge where it's really needed.

Cheryl's husband Stuart turns up and his worries about what's happened to her help to build up the mystery. I half expected him to turn up again but he just flounces off to call the police and we never see him again. Did he call the cops? Anyway, in the theatre, our Russ makes his entrance in a dazzling white suit and slips perfectly into the role of cheesy host (or is that milky? Certainly got the right colour suit on for it) and he's coming over as the perfect piece of casting for this, so it seems. It may be somewhat implausible that our teenage gang would spend their Friday night at such an event but all the stuff with Russ...sorry...Trueman (so hard to tell them apart) talking to Rani and her family is quite charming. And when he gets to Sarah Jane we even get a flashback to School Reunion into the bargain. Sarah smells a rat, of course, and Team SJA start their investigation into this too good to be true-man. (See what I did there...oh, please yourselves)

World domination through television broadcasts. Now, where have we seen that before.

Oh, dear. The Celestial Deirdre has had an accident and Trueman gets an offer of ITV3 proportions, or would Psychic Planet be on Living, do you think? I do hope we get to see Deirdre in some kind of sequel, because it sounds like she's had enough of Ken Barlow and divides her time between Weatherfield and Acton in a side career as a celebrity psychic. And then Gareth Roberts uses that rotten joke about people falling downstairs in bungalows. Do they even have bungalows in Coronation Street? Where were we...oh, yes. World domination through television broadcasts. Now, where have we seen that before. Whilst Russ Abbot commences his plan to devour the entire scenery, there is time for that very sweet little scene where Luke frets about not having a birthday, not enjoying a childhood. Tommy Knight is just heartbreaking in the way he handles that scene and he's always superb playing against Lis Slden too. A nicely wriiten and performed scene that makes a bit of a mockery of the rather overblown stuff that follows and keeps the development of the Luke character at the forefront.

The problem at this point is that we're getting slightly too much info dump and not enough actual drama. All the stuff about the zodiac and stars as Luke natters away to Mr. Smith is hardly compelling stuff. And Abbot goes and carves himself a massive slice of ham when he locks horns with Lis Sladen. 'Oooooh, scan away', he says with an overt flourish of theatrics. I know he's supposed to be this hyper light entertainment figure but this scene is the key moment when 'hyper' becomes the style of his performance and, for me, the exaggerated and mannered acting destroys any belief we had in the character and the way ordinary old Martin has been transformed. He was doing so well but from here Abbot keeps the stage persona going even when he's off stage and in scenes when you'd expect him to perform the role with far more subtlety. It's a big performance but it's not a particularly good one. 'And, pooooooooorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr liddddddddddddddlllllllllllllllllllle Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaani...' gets loads of twitching eyes and a very restless jaw just for emphasis. It makes Richard Briers performance in Paradise Towers look like a fucking Robert De Niro masterclass.

Clyde falls under Trueman's spell and is sent off, possessed, to kill Sarah. Get the mad eyes on Russ Abbot as he gifts the ancient lights to poor old Clyde. Even his optic nerves are munching their way through Upper Boat. Meanwhile, that clever Rani reckons the ancient lights are from another universe with different laws of physics. Or is that a universe with different psychics? Maybe, that's where Doris Stokes went. Physics, psychics...all starting to sound the same to me. Lots and lots of info dump again that isn't particularly dramatic. Never mind, we get the Psychic Channel, Trueman throwing energy bolts and a direct challenge to Sarah. And then Clyde turns up to carry out Trueman's instructions. Director Michael Kerrigan puts together a fantastic cliffhanger, rapidly intercutting between Trueman on the telly, Clyde going all messianic, Mr. Smith doing a number from Silence In The Library and Team SJA caught in a force ten gale. Phew. Hats off to the cast and Kerrigan for making such a lumpen script workable and could someone now give Russ Abbot his tranquilisers and get him to calm down in time for Part Two.