Show premiered last week, didn't see a thread for it, so here it is. Russell Davies wrote the screenplay. Sarah is a former Dr Who sidekick who is now an investigative reporter. Instead of a sonic screwdriver she has a sonic lipstick. It's better than the way I'm describing it. The first episode featured Samantha Bond and the actor who played Harley on Footballers Wives and Leo on Hex.

Pretty sure there's a thread in the Dr. Who forum.

There sure is, thanks aiming for yoko!

But that's a UK thread. It's excellent to have a US speed one.

So far I think it's fluffy fun.

OK, so the people one season ahead get their thread in the Doctor Who forum, and we who will remain unspoiled stay here.

I thought the first ep was OK but nothing to go gaga over. It took itself a little too seriously, and I prefer my British sci-fi with tongue in cheek goodness.

I'll watch, but it won't be appointment TV like the Doctor is.

Just wanted to inform anyone on this thread who wasn't aware: Last week's episode was a quasi-pilot, so some things change. Most significantly, the character of Kelsey does not return.

I advise sticking with it, it gets excellent further in.

Good to know!

Tonight's episode is only thirty minutes long. Are future episodes longer, or is this the normal run-time?

And there was much rejoycing!

Normal run time, but all 2-parters, from here on out, so ~1hr ish each story.

After this week, SciFi will air the second half of one story, and then, the first half of the next story during the one-hour block. Each hour will end in a cliffhanger.

This is a real trip back for me. One of the ways I found out about Doctor Who was watching the Tom Baker era reruns, in half hour increments, on the Sci-Fi Channel all those years ago. They usually ended in a cliffhanger. Just like the scheduling for this show.

I've never been a fan of the Slitheen, but if they were ever fit for any show in the DW universe, this is the one.

Did Maria's awful mother say she used to watch Manimal? Ha. Maybe they can bring Simon Mackornidale in as the man she left Alan for.

Speaking of Alan, the way he looked in that tight shirt was the epitome of HotDad. But he's not just pretty, he's also a good father and a saint to put up with that woman he used to be married to.

Loved Sarah Jane's shoutout to "School Reunion", and trying to figure out how to be a mother.

Clyde is a big improvement over Kelsey. I think the actor who plays Clyde is in his early 20's or late teens, isn't he?

Thanks for the thread info. I watched last week, and thought it not so bad, since they kept the K-9 cuteness to a minimum. I do like the idea of one of the companions with a history, and it seems harmless enough.

The Slitheen are much more suited for this show than DW, but it's messed quite a bit with their continuity. As introduced, the species name is Raxicoricophalipitorian (no, I didn't have to look that up. Pray for me) and the Slitheen are just one family of criminals, implying that the rest of the species is more or less good guys with maybe some other criminal elements (though with their form of punishment odds are not many would want to risk it). Now suddenly there's just these totally evil things who want to destroy the world for no apparent reason (even the "true" Slitheen had monetary goals) and just call themselves Slitheen. I hope this gets cleared up in part two.

I'm massively annoyed that Sci Fi US isn't reairing SJA. Not even at oh-dark-thirty or something.

And this thread needs a snarky US-oriented subtitle. Like The Sarah Jane Adventures (US): Sonic Lipstick Now For Sale In America or something.

I watched the first episode (Invasion of the Bane) last week, and enjoyed it. I'm not a long-time Doctor Who fan, so I've only seen Sarah Jane a couple times-- but I really love her. I DVR'd last night's episode but haven't watched yet, but I think it's something I'll try to watch as it airs.

I think we're still to assume it's one family, it's just a bigger family than we first saw. And the first time it was about money, now it's more about revenge. Families get very ferocious at those who hurt their own.

I like this show a lot for what it is. Younger-skewing, of course. I watched the whole series online from the UK airings even though I'm in the US, so I do agree it gets very enjoyable.

The pilot....I was semi-annoyed because it seemed like the bastard child of the Slurm episode of Futurama and the premise of Kyle XY in general. But I still enjoyed it because Sarah Jane just gives me warm fuzzies. It's odd because I know I grew up on Doctor Who during the Tom Baker era but I don't *remember* much. I don't remember Sarah Jane from then at all. But she makes me FEEL good, so I think it sneaked into my psyche anyway. She's a comfortable presence that makes me feel pride for how she's turned out, just like the Doctor does. :)

Rambling! Anyway, glad it's finally airing here.

Yay, Sarah Jane gets her own thread! I still am loving this show. Though true the farting Slitheen are more suited to twelve year olds, most of the aliens on all these Who shows are a bit silly, but that's what DW was all about.

Is there any way to watch the first episode? I did not even know about this series until I saw and advert last night, and I thought it was not going to premiere until next week.

When I saw that the first non pilot ep was going to be 30 minutes I was thinking, well I guess because it is for kids (even more than Original Recipe DW which was billed as a kid's show) they'll have really simple stories they can do in a half hour. As the clock ticked down and the Slitheen were still kicking I got more confused. I don't know HOW I could have missed the obvious, that they were doing chapters like Old DW. I rather enjoyed that aspect of it. I agree with the poster above in that it adds to the nostalgia.

Liked the kid Sletheen. Made sense they'd have youngins.

Like somebody above I also took these guys to be more Slitheen family and that it isn't a mistake. If it were just Raxi(blahblah) they wouldn't be looking for REVENGE. You need a personal stake and a history to want revenge. They want to destroy the earth because a whole bunch of thier kin got killed here. The one thing I don't get and didn't get from the DW eps is whether the Slitheen are unusual in thier "hunt." You'd think wanting to eat humans would be a genetic not a family trait. Unless they are supposed to be the Raxyi equivalent of the wierdo family from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Because if the Raxi hunt and eat humanoids/humans/sentient beings, would the Slitheen be all that criminal and wouldn't the entire planet be a threat the Doctor should do something about?

Always like SJS but I'm not sure why. By today's standards origianal DW SJS while attempting to represent feminism really wasn't all that good at it, but somehow I remember her fondly anyway. I think it is because she at least tried. I think it also helps that older SJS looks a heck of a lot like Laura Roslyn's identical cousin from England(or am I the only person who remembers the Patty Duke Show?) She's also a lot better at being effective nowadays. Wonder where she got the ultra computer.

Lastly, the fact that an etheral alien poet would give somebody an intergalactic cell phone in case they ever need help with thier prose or something, is just awesome.

I'm all a-squee that it's come to the US Cable net period, never mind which channel snagged it as long as I get it with my basic cable package! My best bud is a hard-core DW fan and he got me into the New Who (Eccleston bringing the sexy and Piper's character being not annoying (unlike some of the previous companions I've seen...) got me over to the Drak Side and then Tennant showed up looking all 'naughty librarian' in those glasses...rowr!) so I actually saw the pilot a good while ago via the magic of the intarwebz, hee! I thought it was a cracking good start (What's in your soda pop, eh?), laid out the characters and basic premises, left you wanting more. Don't mind a good cliffhanger, don't mind a good cartoony villain or two, don't half like the looks of that Alan Jackson bloke, HotDad indeed! Saved the world today, home by tea time, no guns please, there are children present!

Tom Baker was my first doctor, so seeing photos of the Brigadier and Harry Sullivan in Sarah Jane's attic made me smile ... and the fact that the first two possible names she threw out for Luke were Harry and Alistair warmed my cold, cynical heart.

My first Who experience where I paid attention was with the Fifth Doctor and his group of companions, but older siblings watched the Tom Baker version on sporadic airings on PBS when I was growing up (my town only had one TV channel, so scheduling of programs was odd; wonder if they have satellite now..or cell phones?), and I vaguely recall Sarah Jane. Still, the idea that traveling with the Doctor would have both deleterious and wonderful effects on the companions long after is such a cool concept, and the actress is engaging enough that I like the series quite a lot thus far. The supporting cast is pleasant enough, and is it wishful thinking that SJ might make time for the Dad from next door (what could the ex-wife have been thinking?)?

That he's not the 12-year-old she married back when? Seriously, it throws me that he's supposed to be old enough to have a daughter Maria's age. Though I do lament that the For Kids nature of the series means Sarah Jane most likely won't be breaking herself off a piece of that. (Yes, I wanted Roslyn and Lee to get together, too.)


And how. I don't think I've taken less of a shine to a child character since Short Round.

Yes!...and no. Maybe that's why I like her so much. (For me it's Laura and Bill all the way)

Is Ex-wife pregnant?

She totally does! I don't quite see SJS airlocking someone, though. *LOL*

The Slitheen are a large criminal family. Whatsherface (who's name I can't remember) told Nine that there were other members of her family out there she could go to if she could just get off Earth. And anyway, there were only three in the original plot, and apparently only three here. It was one female to two males both times, too. Hmmmmm... Maybe that's the traditional Raxawneln;abf;bja;-ian hunting pack or something.



Yeah, Maria's dad is a total DILF, and way too young-looking, even compared to the ex-wife. I so hope SJS gets a piece of that, even if it's off-screen so as not to scare the kiddies.

Well, I'm pretty sure that Sarah Jane and the DILF will eventually fall in love as the show goes on. Luke and Maria are delightful, which surprised me since I often find child characters poisonous.

The mother is one right horror, in't she.

The inference I took from the book Doctor Who Monsters and Villains was that all Raxicorricofallapatorians [sic, most likely] engage in ritualized hunting, but Slitheen family are marked out by conducting hunts with sentient beings (or even others of their own species) as the prey.



I like to think of Sarah Jane as the answer to the question "What would Roslin look like without all the ill advised Botox injections?"

It's fun if fluffy so far, but this episode seemed pretty badly hacked. The Slitheen!teacher suddenly declares Luke a genius when we've never seen them within twenty feet of one another? Or did I miss something?

I was prepared to hate Kelsey, and I just found her kind of boring and useless. I can't say I miss her; Clyde seems more promising.

I don't exactly get why Luke, as a human archetype built up from scans of actual humans who toured the soda factory, is scientifically brilliant but socially ignorant, but lalala.

ETA: Thanks, ovrdedge!

It was. This fan site details the cut scenes.

Well you can definitely count me in as someone who needed the Clyde introduction scene put back in. My working theory through the episode was that the annoying girl from the pilot had been transgendered by aliens or something. Actually, I'm going to stick with my theory.

My mom and I were discussing this show today (we both love it), and we've decided that although it's supposedly a children's show, it's practically the ultimate adult woman fantasy. The title character is a woman "of a certain age" who is cool and glamorous, who has a hot car, who is intelligent and independent and who isn't a knitting granny, bored housewife, shrewish mother-in-law, predatory cougar or any of the other standard roles for a woman that age. The kids on the show think she's cool. The hot dad seems to find her intriguing. The teen characters are intelligent, helpful and polite, and it seems like the obnoxious kids get eaten or otherwise attacked by aliens. That seems far more likely to appeal to adult women than to kids.

But Mom had a question, and I don't know if this will be answered later in the series or is something we should know from Sarah Jane's Doctor Who days (I'm fuzzy on DW from that era, even though those are primarily the episodes I've seen as they're the ones PBS kept showing during the 80s). Where does Sarah Jane get her money? That seems like a pretty big, nice house by US standards, and from what I've seen of UK real estate, it's really, really upscale and likely expensive. Is her being an investigative reporter just a cover for her alien investigative activities, or does she actually ever sell articles? Or does she have some other source of money?

Agreed. Had no clue who Clyde was-- it was very abrupt how he just sat down with Maria.

I definitely enjoyed the Slitheen in this setting more than I enjoyed them in the Doctor Who episodes. And they didn't go totally overboard on the farting, thank goodness. Even in a show for younger audiences, I don't know if I could have handled that.

But overall, I am enjoying the show so far.

Shanna Marie,

If my memory serves me correctly - and it could be serving me badly, so I beg pardon in advance - Sarah Jane was raised by a rather well-off relative, Aunt Lavinia, from whom she inherited a certain amount of Less Than Difficult Life when Lavinia departed this vale of tears. (She may even have sold the estate, which we saw in the late and not-lamented K-9 and Company, which would have increased her bank account all by itself.)

Sarah Jane is also a successful journalist, I believe, although I don't know whether she's always been an independent. She might have spent time as a staffer or stringer for various papers or mags.

I'm so glad people are liking this. I remember SJ from Old Who days, and loved her then. Our entire family loves her (and my Best Beloved is loud in his insistence that SJ is the real Doctor) and this is a lovely little show. It's what DW was originally. I love what that show's become, mind you, very much so, but I'm also glad that SJA has come around, to highlight a fantastic mature female character, done by a very good actress, with a group of good teen or young adult actors portraying effective and affecting characters.

And that last sentence wasn't too byzantine...Sarah Jane is fantastic, all prickliness and stouthearted affection, liberally layered with a fast intelligence. None of the characters are treated with disrespect by the writers, and it shows.

I also love the fact that the alien poet was of the same species which gave us the murderous Mary from Torchwood, series one.

And, yes, MDKNIGHT, they're cousins, identical cousins...[/pattyduke] Heh.

Since she lives down the road from me (Ealing/Hounslow/Hammersmith area somewhere - it's mentioned in one episode) I can say that if she bought around the same time my parents did (early 70s), she could pick up a house like hers for around £20,000 - albeit my parents' one doesn't have an attic (even without a supercomputer in it) - which would probably now be worth in the vacinity of £500,000. And her house (externally) looks just right for the West London area, even though its actually in Cardiff.

So, looks like we've got a combination of smart real estate investing at a good time (which would be very Sarah Jane) and possibly inheritance, plus a decent career. I can buy that.

And she did travel in time, so maybe she picked up some stock market tips for the future along the way.

My DVR for some reason (Sci Fi channel was inexact maybe?) missed the very beginning of the first regular ep. In the rest of the ep Luke says more than once that SJ doesn't want him calling her mom/mum. Did she really say that or was that his "new to humanity" understanding of what she actually said? If anything it is clear it's that SJ wants desperately to be Lukes mother so I'm a little confused by this.



I haven't seen Torchwood but I like that they are portraying aliens as individually good or bad rather than by species. I once had this silly idea that I would have liked one of the Daleks to run completely counter to his heritage and hide out on earth being a disk jockey or a computer programmer while wearing a backwards baseball cap. They could do something like that on this show, since it IS geared towards kids.

At the beginning of the episode, Sarah Jane drops Luke off at the school-- she kisses him good-bye and he calls her mum. She tells him Sarah Jane is fine.

I personally think that while Sarah Jane does have a mothering instinct, she is not completely comfortable as a "mom" yet. But she does want to be a *good* mom, hence making Luke a proper tea and wanting to know how Maria and her father have built up their raport. I think it's just awkward because she's never had kids, and Luke is in the unique position of being super smart, but having no human experiences. They're both learning.

catray,

Not to get too b/o/r/i/n/g/ academic or analytical, but I think you uncover a neat idea here. Kids and parents in real life enter their parts in the big play exactly as Sarah Jane and Luke have; untrained, unknowing, but eager to learn what they're supposed to do with and to each other, and how they're supposed to respond to the world as a family. It's just that, in most cases, kids start as babies and parents (moms especialy) start as terrified people a lot younger than Sarah Jane.

In SJA, we get the chance to see the usual journey, but it's illuminated and enlarged by having the players freed of infancy and life inexeperience.

aaaaand...uh...I like the show because it's fun. So just forget you saw the preceding post. Move along, nothing to see....

Sarah Jane was always my favorite companion, so I am doubly thrilled that coming back in "School Reunion" led to a big career comeback for Elisabeth Sladen. She brings such depth and empathy to the character, and I really like it that she plays the undercurrent of bittersweet sadness/loneliness in Sarah Jane's life very subtly rather than gnashing her teeth and wailing about it. The other adult characters in the show so far have struck me as a bit cartoonish—perhaps intentionally so given that it's a children's program—but the lead is one of the most wonderfully three-dimensional characters on television.

I really enjoyed this show. I knew it was a kids show (monsters a bit more farty and less meacing to my eyes), but still enjoyed it as an adult. Just like Bruinsfan, Sarah Jane was one of my favorite companions, too. I'm glad to see her back in her own show. Way to go!

DILF?

When the kid Slitheen (Kidtheen?) revealed himself, did anybody else expect the human kids to pull out cricket bats from thin air and lay into the puke green bugger? Vinegar's probably too good for the little bastard.

Opposite-sex version of MILF.

Oh. Doi.

Observations: Clyde needs to be medicated, Sarah Jane needs to pull the stick out from time to time, Luke still needs to learn common sense, and Slitheen getting blown to itty-bitty bits never gets old.

Lantern7

Yeah, he's kind of excitable, but I actually love that he accepted the idea of aliens and was willing to change his mind to do so. He's going to be a great team member! And I think he'll be a big help to Luke, not necessarily in the learning of common sense, but at least in the learning of teen sense.

I wonder how many scenes were cut out (the argument between Maria and her father, perhaps).

RTD shows have such sterling guest casts. Phyllida Law (Emma Thompson's mother) brought so much to what could have been an overplayed part as Bea.

The Torchwood/SJA crossovers continue. Bea's husband was mentioned in a Torchwood novel.

I liked that they had Sarah Jane snap at overeager Clyde, then at the end of the Slitheen episode, realized she saw herself in him and sat down to talk to him about her life. I was very pleased with how they handled her relationship with the Doctor. Lis Sladen underplayed those scenes just right.

I hear that. When my son was born I was to scared to think of anything further then the next few hours, and I'd been preparing for quite a while to be a mom.

I really enjoy Sarah Jane. Sure it's a bit campy during some of the alien fighting scenes, but the growing relationship between her and Luke and Maria is incredibly sweet. Elizabeth is a very lovely woman; how old is she?

It really reminds me of the 80's/90's tweenie American shows (Goosebumps, Are You Afraid of the Dark). Yes, it is campy and cheesy (Mr. Smith?), but for a show aimed at kids, I'm not expecting deep heavy handed drama.

Although it does seem like the 8pm time slot is a bit odd for the type of program it is. It would make more sense for Sci Fi to put it on Saturday mornings before the Mansquito marathons.

She was 60(!) in February.

I really enjoyed SJA, can't wait until the next series :-D

No, really? I want to look that good when I'm 60!

I'm really enjoying the show and I'm surprised how much I like Sci Fi mixing it up and have the first half hour being resolution of the prior week and ending the 2nd half hour with the cliffhanger -- it sounded cheesy when I heard it but it's sucking me in! I like the light and fluffyness of the show -- it's nice to have it on to wind down from the week; plus it's a better option for watching with kidlets -- years ago, I watched xfiles on fridays with my then 6 year old nephew, he's been warped (but in fun way) ever since; I'm going to enjoy watching SJA with his much younger siblings and perhaps they will be light and fluffy too!

As it's turned out, I think SciFi made a brillant move by having SJA air immediately before Doctor Who, and DW is turning out to be a great lead in into Battlestar Galactica.

Like the shout out to the Old Who half-hour format, and how they're making it work in SJA. I really do like this show, and I'm not going to single out what I like from each episode, but I will say I like how the whole package fits together. If there were edits this week they were hard to detect from dialouge or music, so whoever is doing the SciFi edits (since it might be the BBC Wales for all I know) is really doing a good job.