May 14: "Mind Snap" (K-9) / Death of the Doctor Part One (SJA)

It's been a while since Bob Baker wrote for Doctor Who or any of the spin-offs, and during that time he's done a fair bit, including cowriting three Academy Award-winning Wallace & Gromit films.  But now he's finally gotten his K-9 spin-off off the ground (after spending 12 years trying to get the thing going), and after 21 episodes Bob Baker has finally cowritten an episode of this series.

And so what do we get?  A sodding clip show.

So that's a first, I guess; none of the other shows have ever done a clip show before -- lots of retrospectives and things, sure, but nothing inserted into the main run of the series.  But because it's a clip show, it's hard to really discuss this.  The framing story (K-9's mind is scrambled by the STM, so Gryffen and Starkey have to try and help him remember who he is) is fine enough, and the clips are well chosen, but there's still little to engage with here.  This is a way for the show to save money, pure and simple, and while these sorts of episodes may have been (marginally) acceptable in the 1990s and earlier, as a way for viewers to see clips and fondly remember the stories they came from, now with the Internet and streaming video services and cheap DVDs, clip shows are largely redundant.

I guess in terms of achieving the episode's goals this story is a success -- there don't appear to be many awkward clips that K-9 wasn't actually present for or revisitations of any truly painful moments, and it does serve as a somewhat useful reminder if you've forgotten aspects of the show.  And I assume it did save them the money they were hoping for.  But by just about any other standard, "Mind Snap" falls well short of the mark.

But now we're back to The Sarah Jane Adventures.  After cowriting the first episode, Russell T Davies has stayed away from contributing scripts to the series -- but now he's finally back with Death of the Doctor.  It's a nice hook, suggesting that the Doctor is dead, even if it's not one we actually believe (if nothing else, the main series is carrying on, so it's unlikely they'd let their main character be killed in a spin-off) -- but what works well here is that Sarah Jane refuses to believe it either.  And to Davies' credit, he does a good job of having it both ways: having us believe that there's something going on with the Doctor's "death", but maybe wondering that Sarah Jane is simply in denial.

Jo and Sarah Jane try to work out who would want to fake the
Doctor's death. (Death of the Doctor Part One) ©BBC
However, the most wonderful thing about this first episode is the appearance of Katy Manning as Jo Jones (née Grant).  From her first, slightly scatterbrained entrance, she slips effortlessly back into the role, and her interactions with Elisabeth Sladen are pure joy.  You also get the sense that, after five years of Russell T Davies reining in his fanboy tendencies on Doctor Who (for fear of alienating the casual audience), he's finally allowed himself to cut loose.  So we get references to Peladon, Azal, Zygons, Daleks...  Davies even sneakily has Jo reminisce about her visit to Karfel, as mentioned in Timelash.   But we also get a little bit of sadness as well, after Sarah Jane lets slip that the Doctor came back and saw her more than once -- something that apparently never happened to Jo.  "Oh, he must have really liked you," Jo says, with happiness and wistfulness equally mixed in one of the best line readings ever.  And you also get a hint of sadness from Sarah Jane, as she listens to Jo's stories of how she married Professor Jones, had seven kids and twelve grandchildren ("Would you believe number thirteen is on its way?"), and has spent her whole life traveling the world and standing up for what's good and right.  Jo is someone who met the Doctor and turned her experiences into action almost immediately, while Sarah Jane needed to see him again to realize what she should do.  It's a nice touch.

And, happily, the end of this episode sees the Shansheeth (who've been orchestrating this funeral) reveal their true colors, followed by the appearance of the eleventh Doctor, who swaps places with Clyde:
RANI: That's the Doctor?
JO: What Doctor?  The Doctor?  My Doctor?
SARAH JANE: Yeah, well, he can change his face.
JO: I know, but into a baby's?
DOCTOR: Oi!  Imagine it from my point of view.  Last time I saw you, Jo Grant, you were, what, 21, 22?  It's like someone baked you.
Clyde seems worse off, stuck on a red dusty planet with some sort of device counting down, but the Doctor is able to take more action on Earth.  Well, in theory, but the cliffhanger has him transfixed and in pain by a Shansheeth device...
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