February 25: Warriors of Kudlak Parts One & Two (SJA)

Now we're getting into it!  This story is where The Sarah Jane Adventures starts to really distinguish itself from its sibling shows, as we're presented with a scenario and plotline that naturally fits into this show in a way that it's hard to imagine Doctor Who or Torchwood pulling off quite as well.

In Warriors of Kudlak, writer Phil Gladwin gives us a storyline inspired by things like The Last Starfighter and Ender's Game, with children being recruited to fight in a war based on how well they do in a game.  It's not the most original plot ever, but it's also a plot that's never been done by televised Doctor Who or one of its spin-offs, so that's not really a problem.  Besides, Gladwin does a good job of balancing the two storylines -- Clyde and Luke playing the game and getting recruited, and Sarah Jane and Maria investigating a missing child that seems to lead to the place where Clyde and Luke are -- so you never feel bored with either one.  All the regulars continue to be excellent -- we're a long way from the exaggerated and/or wooden acting you occasionally get in these shows (stand up, K-9) -- but Daniel Anthony in particular has a great energy and charm as Clyde.  It's great to watch them all together.

General Kudlak learns he's been duped. (Warriors of Kudlak
Part Two) ©BBC

But let's be honest; the star of this story has got to be Chook Sibtain as Mr. Grantham.  He is clearly having a great time playing this character, and you can't help but be entertained as well.  But it helps that he's still taking this all seriously; even when he is acting in an exaggerated manner, it feels like a natural part of the character, so you're never pulled completely out of the story.  But it's his interactions with, well, everyone, that make this story great.  It also helps that Clyde and Luke are being proactive and trying to break everyone out of the crates they're being held in -- it means that while Sarah Jane and Maria are investigating and dealing with Grantham, they're not just waiting helplessly.  And General Kudlak, of the Uvodni race, is a great-looking alien (although the decision to dress him in a red peacoat, maybe not so much).  They also do a great job of making the two storylines neatly dovetail, with Sarah Jane and Maria teleported aboard the Uvodni ship to rescue the kidnapped children.

But the decision that really makes this story stand out is the fate of General Kudlak.  Once he realizes that he's been duped (well, sort of; it was actually a programming error, it seems, but it comes out to the same thing), he's surprisingly contrite and gracious -- and he's even willing to make amends by trying to find other children he'd press ganged into service and bringing them back home.  It's the sort of ending that you simply can't imagine Torchwood (or even, to an extent in this era, Doctor Who) doing -- but Warriors of Kudlak pulls it off with ease, and we get a happy ending with no one dead, and that missing kid Lance back home, ready to be great instead of dying in an alien war.  "Well, after today, he might want to be an astronaut," Sarah Jane says.  "Be the first man on Mars.  The first human man on Mars, that is."¹⁹⁰

It's a fun story, with some great characters and a good plot, and a happy ending to boot.  It's actually a bit of shame that Phil Gladwin never wrote for the show again -- he clearly has a good handle on the characters and knows what makes a good story.  Warriors of Kudlak shows The Sarah Jane Adventures beginning to really find its stride.







¹⁹⁰ Setting aside the fact that Sarah Jane has been on Mars in Pyramids of Mars (since that hardly counts as official)... what about The Ambassadors of Death?  One of the opening lines notes that Mars Probe 7 "took off from Mars manually", so there were definitely people aboard.  And it's not like Sarah doesn't know this; even if you try to suggest that she didn't know about Mars Probe 7 (highly unlikely, given her background and the fact that Michael Wisher kept giving us live television updates of the mission's progress), you have to deal with the fact that The Android Invasion has her doing a profile of Guy Crawford right before he made his Jupiter mission -- so no, it's not very likely.  So what happened to those '70s Mars missions?
     (All right, here's a fig leaf: if you assume that Mars Probe 7 was the first of the Mars Probe missions to actually land on Mars -- not implausible, as the first moon landing took place in Apollo 11 -- but that the alien spaceship intercepted the craft before it landed (after all, it had already made contact with humanity via Mars Probe 6 and thus might have been waiting for a return visit) and that they landed the craft for some reason but without any humans on board and then faked a twelve-hour broadcast from the surface of Mars (maybe so as not to freak out Earth's general population), then maybe no person has actually set foot on Mars yet.  You have to have humanity learn this somehow (so that Luke doesn't say to Sarah Jane, "Wait, what about Frank Michaels?"), and also to have them decide that Mars is out (which is plausible after the events of The Ambassadors of Death) but maybe Jupiter is worth checking out.  No, it's not very satisfying, is it?)