Doctor Who S02 E03 – Blast from the past

Previously: Werewolves and Queen Victoria, believe it or not.
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School Reunion

Marines: We’ll start this with an announcement: Sweeney is officially bowing out of these recaps. It’s mostly because she needed to reorganize how she spends her time and this was an easier thing to take off her plate. She can probably tell you all her reasoning in the comments, because she’s still going to try and hang out there and perhaps keep up with the series. That said, Sara will be joining us as the third recapper and our official Snow. YAY SARA!

Now episode:

GILES. I’m glad we’re getting this out of the way so soon in the episode because GILES, GILES, GILES! I have selective Buffy nostalgia and characters like Willow, Oz and Giles are guaranteed ways to set it off. Also, I’m aware that Anthony Stewart Head has a whole career and stuff but GILES.

Kirsti: There are some actors who I will never be able to see as anything but certain roles. John Krasinski will always be Jim Halpert. Ryan Kwanten will always be Vinnie the lifeguard from Summer Bay. And Tony Head will always be Rupert Giles, no matter what he’s in or what he does. So yeah. GILES.

Mari: Giles descends some stairs as creepy set-up music plays. He’s at a school because Giles. He sees a little girl sitting outside of his office. She’s got a headache and Giles does not even care a little bit until the girl says she has no one to go home to, because she’s an orphan. Giles gets happy, lets the girl into his office, and then we see monster shadows through the frosted window and hear monster noises and a bad TV scream. It melts into a ringing bell. We watch a boy with hedgehog hair run into his class room and out of the frame. The Doctor walks into the room and greets the class with a huge smile. It’s cute because the show almost plays it like, “didn’t expect that, DID YOU?” Um, yeah. We kind of did.

After the credits, the Doctor writes ‘physics’ on the board and then says it like ten more times while the class stares at him blankly.

K: I’ve seen a theory on Tumblr that he’s actually saying a bunch of different words in Gallifreyan but that the TARDIS translates them all as “physics” because it knows the kids won’t understand. I kind of like that head canon.

Mari: Where did that head canon even come from? Who was sitting there trying to explain the Doctor saying physics a lot? I can’t explain fandom.

The Doctor quizzes the class but the only one who has any answers is a little boy named Milo, which is the best, because that is also the name of Sara’s baby aka Snark Baby. (S: It makes me happy that I happened to jump in on this episode. Obviously this child is going to do great things with a name like Milo. Must have had very creative and cool parents.)

We cut to the cafeteria where the Doctor is served by a very unamused Rose.

Rose leaves her post to go chat with the Doctor. Apparently, it was Mickey who gave the heads up about this creepy school where everyone is super well behaved and the chips are delicious. Another lunch lady tells Rose she can’t leave her station, so Rose plays it off like she was just talking to a teacher (the Doctor) who didn’t like the chips. Serious Lunch Lady says the menu is specifically designed for improved concentration and performance. I can’t really argue because I will never doubt the power of delicious fries.

K: I dunno. Those chips don’t look particularly delicious. They look kind of sad and soggy to me. In other words, like the chips I got at boarding school. Urgh. 

Mari: The creepy soundtrack swells as another teacher enters the lunch room and approaches a table of kids. He tells a girl named Melissa she’s moving up a class. Hedgehog Hair isn’t eating the chips and says he isn’t allowed to. Melissa follows the Creepy Teacher (Creep-cher?) and the Doctor looks at them intently. Until he spots Giles and then he stares at Giles intently.

Rose is in the kitchen. She watches as the other lunch ladies wheel in a barrel of something suspicious. She hides away behind some shelves and answers her phone. Mickey tells her that he’s broken into some Army records and there have been a ton of UFO sightings in the area. He can’t dig further than that, because he keeps getting locked out. (We see the name Torchwood flashing on the computer screen.) Rose tells him that a few months ago all the other lunch ladies were fired and replaced with this weird lot. Mickey was right about the strange dealings. Rose says that she thought maybe Mickey just invented an emergency to get her home. She says it with a smile and some flirt to it, but ain’t it just very Rose-like to even joke that way? I think it’s part of why people don’t like her. Her world is still pretty damn small for someone who has been exposed to so much.

Sara: I love that Mickey is proving himself useful now, instead of just crying about Rose never coming home to see him. He’s much better when he’s using his brain.

Mari: The Weird Lot o’ Lunch Ladies mishandle their mysterious vat and one of the ladies gets the mysterious content on her. She starts yelling and smoking, which are two very bad signs. Rose whips out her cell phone but Serious Lunch Lady tells her not to bother with an ambulance because Smoking Lunch Lady is fiiiine.

K: Given that they wheel the mysterious vat in while wearing safety glasses and face masks, I’d be running the fuck away. Maybe that’s why I’m not a companion. Also, the contents of the mysterious vat look a lot like lemon curd. Mmmm, lemon curd.

Mari: In a computer lab, the Creep-cher instructs a bunch of students to put their headphones on. The computers in front of them are full of green swirlies and a rotating box of characters and a stream of data. The students type quickly.

Giles is showing Sarah Jane Smith! around. I mean, “a woman.” Giles tells this woman about the compulsory school dinners and amazing chips, but she seems to be pretty in tune with how creepy this school is.

The Doctor is talking to another teacher who is filling him in on how things got weird about three months ago when Giles became headmaster. Lots of teachers caught the flu and disappeared, except for the lady that the Doctor replaced who “mysteriously” found a winning lotto ticket under her door. Uh, what? Doctor, COME AND FIND ME. You can take over my job in an HR department. I’m sure something alien is happening here. I’m totally for reals and not just angling for a  winning lottery ticket.

Giles comes in and introduces Sarah Jane as a reporter doing a story on the school. The Doctor absolutely lights up the moment he sees her. He’s grinning so hard, that she walks over to him and introduces herself.

K: The look of joy on his face actually made me tear up, which is absolutely ridiculous. It’s mostly because Tennant’s a brilliant actor and is able to put all that “OH MY GOD, SARAH JANE” emotion into one look, but I think at least part of it is his genuine “I grew up on Doctor Who and OH MY GOD I GET TO ACT WITH ELISABETH SLADEN AND SHE’S PLAYING SARAH JANE SMITH” emotion. FEELS.

Mari: He gives the name “John Smith” and she muses that she had a friend who once used that name. Sarah asks if John Smith!Doctor has been working the school long and what he thinks of the rather odd school. He smiles that she doesn’t seem like she’s just doing a profile. She admits she might be doing a little investigating and the Doctor is beaming again as she walks away. It is truly adorable.

      Sara: Elisabeth Sladen seems to have just gotten more beautiful with age. (Also, I did spend a good five minutes trying to figure out if she was Mary McDonnell.)

Mari: Later in the halls, the Doctor is still dazed. Hedgehog Hair hears some growling and because he doesn’t value his own life, goes toward the noise. In the computer lab, he sees a monster that morphs into Creep-cher. Luckily for Hedgehog Hair, Creep-cher lets him leave.

That night, Sarah Jane is breaking back into the school. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey are already inside. The Doctor sends Rose to the kitchen, asks Mickey to check out the maths (hahaha, maths) (K: THAT’S WHAT THE REST OF THE WORLD CALLS IT, OKAY?) department and says he’s going to Giles’s office. He bounds off as Rose makes sure Mickey’s all right. There’s a bit of a har-har-har moment as he confidently heads off in the wrong direction.

The Doctor hears the monster screeching. Sarah Jane is just about to break into Giles’s office when she hears it too. She runs off, steps into a closet of some sort and comes face to face with the TARDIS. She backs away slowly and the Doctor is behind her, looking especially creepy right now. Sarah Jane realizes that this man is the Doctor, regenerated “half-a-dozen times” since she last saw him.

K: FEELS. SO MANY FEELS. I don’t know much about Sarah Jane’s storyline from Classic Who, but I do know that she didn’t want to leave the Doctor. So for her to come face-to-face with the TARDIS after thirty years and then realise that the Doctor has finally come back? Seriously, you guys. FEELS. 

Mari: She cuts to the chase rather quickly, asking what he’s doing here. The UFO sightings brought them both. She emotionally says that she thought he’d died. She waited for him and she thought he died. “I lived,” he says. “Everyone else died.” Catch-up time is interrupted by a screech.

They run out and run into Rose. The Doctor quickly introduces Rose to Sarah Jane and their two reactions… gosh. Rose is absolutely sizing Sarah Jane, who just smiles and jokes that she can tell the Doctor is getting older because his “assistants” are getting younger. Rose balks at being called his assistant and Sarah just says, “get you, tiger.” LOL. I think I love her. (K: I definitely love her.) (S: So much love.) The Doctor says nothing and runs off ahead of them.

The screaming was just Mickey who came across a bunch of vacuum packed rats. The Doctor calls him a girl (RUDE). Sarah snarks that maybe they are for dissection and Rose hasn’t gotten to that bit of her schooling because she’s too young. Rose snits back that they haven’t dissected things in school since the dark ages, where Sarah is from. Is that true across the pond? This aired in 2006 and I was definitely dissecting things at that point in my zoology course in college, and had dissected a couple of things in my high school biology course.

K: We dissected hearts in year 9 and eyeballs in year 10. I’m still relieved that I missed that day. I just Googled it, and apparently rat dissection was part of the year 12 biology curriculum in 2010, so apparently it was still a thing in Australia (or Victoria, anyway) when this aired. I dropped biology in favour of chemistry as soon as they’d let me, so I’m of no use. 

Sara: We dissected baby pigs. I think I might have cried.

Mari: In the hall, the pissing contest continues as Sarah Jane says she used to travel with the Doctor and Rose is all, “huh. He’s never mentioned you.” Mickey commiserates with the Doctor about his, “the missus and the ex” situation. We cut to the Doctor using the sonic screwdriver to break into Giles’s office, thinking that maybe the rats are food. Inside the office, a bunch of bat-like aliens are hanging from the ceiling, sleeping. Everyone kind of gawks at them until Mickey sees them and is all, “NO.” and runs. (K: Legit, Mickey. Legit.) The Doctor quietly shuts the door, but one of the Bat Aliens stirs and screeches at the camera.

Mickey runs straight out of the school and says he’s definitely not going back in there. The Doctor casually follows them. He explains that Giles brought some teachers, some dinner ladies and a nurse with him, totaling 13 bat people. The Doctor starts to head back in because he needs the TARDIS to analyze the oil in the kitchen that comes in vats and makes people smoke. Sarah Jane says she has something that may help.

She takes everyone to her car and in the trunk, there is a robot dog. The Doctor happily greets K-9. Rose asks why it looks “so disco.” Sarah Jane says K-9 just stopped working one day, but she couldn’t get it repaired because of the alien tech. The Doctor continues to make kissy faces and pet the robot dog (K: I would totally do the same. K-9 is adorable and I want one.) and we switch perspectives so that we know that something is watching them from inside the school. The bat alien takes off and we watch it fly in front of the moon.

Cut to a diner. The Doctor and Sarah Jane are seated and chatting happily in the background. At the counter, Mickey is congratulating himself for how long he’s lasted without saying, “I told you so.” All this time, Rose has been insisting that the Doctor is different, but Mickey thinks he’s just like any other bloke. Mickey doesn’t make any friends when he says that he were Rose, he’d go easy on the chips.

In addition to being offensive, that is always horrible advice.

K: Life without chips is meaningless. You shut your face, Mickey Smith.

Mari: Giles is watching the Doctor in the diner from a top a building across the street. He calls for one of his Bat Alien friends who lands next to him.

In the diner, Sarah Jane tells the Doctor that she thought of him this Christmas just past, when the spaceship came to London. The Doctor says he was there and she asks if Rose was too. This leads to the question she’s probably been dying to ask: did she do something wrong? He just left her and never came back. The Doctor says he was called home and humans weren’t allowed there. Yeah, but Sarah Jane waited for him. She missed him. The Doctor tries to lightly suggest that she was getting on with her life just fine. “You were my life,” she replies. The hardest part for her was coping with a normal life after he’d shown her so many wonders. The Doctor asks if she wants him to apologize for showing her amazing things, but that’s not what she means. It was just such an abrupt end and he never came back. The Doctor says he couldn’t have, but won’t say why. Feels chat is cut short when K-9 comes to life.

I’ve never seen any classic Who, so this is all the Sarah Jane I know, but I LOVE that whole chat for its first glimpse into the life of a companion after the Doctor. In her own words, she “got old” and he’s still flitting about, seeing terrible and wonderful things. And it’s so very the Doctor to mess with things, whether it’s a planet or a person’s life, for better or worse, and then take off without a look back.

K: Sarah Jane is magical and I adore her. I’m eternally grateful that Elisabeth Sladen was able to be part of the new series. I also love how it’s been 30 years and Sarah Jane is still irate about the Doctor having left her in Aberdeen instead of Croydon (they’re nearly 600 miles apart, for anyone who doesn’t know). 

Sara: I do like Rose, but Sarah Jane made me understand the companion thing in a whole different way than Rose ever has. With Rose, it comes off as whiny when she complains about the possibility of going back to her boring old life. But when Sarah Jane explains that thirty years later, she’s still feeling these same things, I really believed her. I feel like such a traitor for thinking that I’d be okay trading Rose for Sarah at the moment. Girlfriend’s got spunk.

Mari: Rose brings over a sample of the toxic oil and the Doctor rubs it on K-9’s suction thing. It analyses the sample and identifies it as Krillitane Oil. This is Very Bad News as the Krillitanes are Very Bad Aliens. The Doctor explains that they are an amalgam of species they’ve conquered, cherry picking the best physical bits of the people they destroy. That’s why the Doctor didn’t recognize them and now, they must be doing something to the children at the school.

Outside, Giles and a Bat Alien (or, you know Krillitane) are still looking on as the gang all load back into their car. Mickey asks Sarah Jane what’s up with the robot dog, and Sarah Jane says the Doctor likes to travel with an entourage, sometimes human or alien or sometimes a tin dog. Sarah Jane asks where Mickey fits in and he says he’s their tech support and then quiets as he realizes he’s the tin dog.

K: I love that Sarah Jane can give us that Classic Who perspective, from the days when a companion didn’t necessarily travel with the Doctor for an entire season as happens in New Who. There were a range of companions who popped in and out and overlapped through various adventures. And frankly? I kind of wish we could do it that way again. (And no, I don’t count the Paternoster Gang as companions.)

Mari: Rose is following the Doctor out of the diner and she asks how many companions he’s had. He asks if it matters and Rose says it does if she is just one in a long line. “As opposed to what?” he asks and it stops Rose. It’s surprisingly stern and pretty sobering if you consider the last few adventures with their giggles and fun times. “I thought you and me were…” she starts. “I obviously got it wrong.” Despite all her travels to the future, Rose says she’s really seeing it for the first time. The Doctor leaves his companions behind.

      “You can spend the rest of your life with me, but I can’t spend the rest of mine with you.”

D:

K: FEELS. It also offers Rose a pretty brutal look at her future. 

Mari: Unfortunately, Giles has been listening in on their feels chat and hears “Timelord.” The Bat Alien screeches and flies down to them, but they easily duck and side-step it. (S: Don’t they always easily duck and side-step things? Aliens need to work on their aim.)

The next day, we’re back at Creepy High. Hilariously, the outside of the school building just says, “Welcome to High School.” (K: Technically, the “Deffrey Vale” part of Deffrey Vale High School is on the shield that’s between the “to” and the “High”, but it’s basically impossible to read. So yeah. Welcome to High School.) The Doctor and his entourage are there. He tells Sarah Jane and Rose to go the maths department to snoop. Mickey has to stay outside with K-9. The Doctor is going to have a word with Giles.

That big showdown happens by the pool. Giles says his real name is Brother Lessar. Brother Giles talks smack about the Timelords, how they were a bit pompous and now all dead. The Doctor asks what Brother Giles’s evil plan is, but he’s all, “no, bro. Work it out on your own.” The Doctor threatens to stop him and Giles gives him a creepy head tilt as he says that Timelords were peaceful to the point of indolence, but the Doctor seems to be something new. In response, he says, “I’m so old now. I used to have so much mercy. You get one warning. That was it.” The Doctor tries to do a dramatic walk-away, but Giles keeps talking and says they aren’t even enemies. Giles promises that the next time they meet, they will join forces.

K: Somewhere out there in the depths of the internet, there’s probably slash fic of that. 

Mari: Kirsti, of course there is.

Sarah Jane can’t get the sonic screwdriver to work, so Rose takes it from her. They start sniping at each other again, about what they’ve seen, but it doesn’t last long. They hear themselves. They are arguing over the Doctor. That morphs into swapping stories about the way the Doctor talks and sometimes strokes bits of the TARDIS. By the time the Doctor walks in, they are pointing and laughing at him.

K: The authenticity of their laughing is because the make up team painted a ridiculous moustache on David Tennant and they weren’t expecting it. 

Mari: Wonderful.

Giles finds the other Bat Aliens and tells them the time has come to seal the kids inside the school and become gods, by way of evil master plan.

The kids are playing outside when an announcement comes on: all kids are to head inside and all staff is to meet in the staff room. The kids are overly excited about the early end of break, except Hedgehog Hair who looks around like, “this is bullshit.”

Inside, Giles and his Bat Aliens enter the staff room and they presumably eat all the non-Bat Alien staff. (S: Being a teacher truly is a thankless job.)

The Doctor is still in the computer lab but he can’t open the computer bits with his screwdriver because of a deadlock seal.

Creep-cher is herding a bunch of kids, all except Hedgehog hair, who stands a healthy distance away.

In his office, Giles closes down the school with a magical security override that closes the doors and everything. In a computer lab, Creep-cher starts the green cube program again, and the kids start typing away at their desks. In the maths lab, the Doctor is doing that thing where he goes, “NO. IT CAN’T BE.” But we have to wait to find out what it can’t be.

Hedgehog Hair makes it down to the ground floor, and even though the doors are locked, he does catch Mickey’s attention. Mickey bangs on K-9 a bit because he needs help. Thankfully, whenever you bang on electronics, they automatically work. It’s science. Mickey asks K-9 if it’s got some sort of drill or lock picking device and it just repeats, “we are in a car,” until Mickey is all, “OH, RIGHT, GOT IT. CAR.”

K: You wouldn’t have thought a robotic dog could be sassy as fuck, but K-9 manages it. 

Mari: Inside, the Doctor gets around to telling us that the Bat Aliens are trying to “crack the Skasas Paradigm,” some sort of formula for everything. The kids are little living, breathing, snotty computers and their learning power is being accelerated by french fries. Or, really, the oil but I mean we all know it’s the fries, right? Rose says she’s been eating the chips herself so the Doctor asks her what 59 times 35 is and she immediately answers 2065. (K: Totally doesn’t explain why Milo was the only kid who had any answers in physics, but whatevs.) (S: It’s alllll in the name, Kirsti.) The Bat Aliens are using children (as opposed to adults) because they’ve got imagination and shiny souls, or something. (K: ANYTHING BUT SOULS OHGOD.)

Giles senses that it’s Villain Gloating O’Clock and walks in. He’s all, “imagine all the power with solving the theory of everything!” Giles tries to convince the Doctor that he would use that power for good. I’m here thinking, “of course the Doctor won’t fall for this,” and I mean, of course he won’t, but Giles does get in some low blows as he tells the Doctor to think of the civilizations he could save, including his own people. The Doctor seems to be considering it until Sarah Jane says that the universe has to move forward. Everything has its time and everything has to end. #significant

The Doctor snaps out of it and throws a chair at a large screen in front of the room. The program shuts off. That was easy.

Mickey drivers Sarah Jane’s car into the school. I know he’s helping but also I can’t help but think, “oh nos! The car!” Mickey finds the rest of the entourage and they run as the Bat Aliens fly toward them. They get trapped inside the cafeteria and Giles tells the Bat Aliens they can eat everyone except the Doctor. K-9 shows up and starts shooting the Bat Aliens with lasers. He’s pretty cute, that robot dog. The entourage runs out and K-9 keeps shooting until his power supply fails.

K: K-9’s method of attack seems to be very similar to mine when I play video games – spin in a circle while shooting constantly and hope you hit something. It’s usually reasonably effective. I also love that Giles says “Forget the shooty dog thing“, because that’s a pretty Buffy-esque thing to say.

Mari: The Doctor finds an empty classroom and they hide inside. Just completely out of NOWHERE the Doctor answers a question that no one even asked? He’s all, “THAT’S IT!” but like, lol, what? We were just running away? It feels like something is missing here. But anyway, THAT’S IT! It’s the oil! The Bat Aliens have changed their physiology so many times, they, um, hate oil?

 

Also, it seems to me that they should’ve connected the whole, “smoking, screaming person” to “bad for Bat Aliens” sooner and without all the “THAT’S IT!” faux-explanation. The Bat Aliens have found them. They need to get to the kitchens to get the barrels of oil. The Doctor tells Mickey to get all the kids unplugged and out of the school. That seems like a two person job, but okay. Hedgehog Hair thinks on his feet and smashes the fire alarm. The Bat Aliens screech and double over in pain, allowing the entourage to escape the classroom. Giles punches through a wall and pull out some cables, stopping the alarm.

In the kitchen, the barrels of oil have been deadlock sealed so the Doctor can’t open them. K-9 can shoot them, but his batteries are failing. The Doctor sends everyone out the back door.

Mickey is in a computer lab, looking around, trying to figure out how to shut off the program. He follows a bunch of wires to a plug. He gives a little, “I guess it’s this easy” shrug and unplugs all of everything. He orders the kids outside.

K: When in doubt, reboot your children.

Mari: In the kitchen, K-9 tells the Doctor he’s only got battery power for one last blast, meaning he’ll be trapped after the shot. The Doctor says goodbye to his old pal.

    Sara: THIS MADE ME SO SAD. You sweet, heroic robot dog. 

Mari: The Doctor leaves and Sarah Jane is waiting for him by the back door. She asks where K-9 is and he just grabs her hand and runs. Inside, all the Bat Aliens are in the kitchen now. Giles taunts K-9 who lifts his little doggy robot head and blasts one of the oil barrels. There is much smoking and screaming and then an explosion.

Outside, all the kids cheer as kids should if their school blows up and only Bat Aliens are harmed. They start chanting Hedgehog Hair’s name, since he helped blow it up. The Doctor apologizes to Sarah Jane. She tries to say it’s okay because K-9 was only a metal dog, but she starts crying anyway. (S: SOB.)

Later, the Doctor welcomes Sarah Jane back onto the TARDIS.

     

K: Unlike when the various iterations of the Doctor see the other TARDIS consoles and are all “EW WORST WHY.”

Mari: Rose kind of interrupts to say that she loves it. I guess it’s a little more good-natured than before. Sarah Jane says that even though the oil has worn off, Rose is still more than a match for the Doctor. Rose returns the compliment and they smile at each other.

The Doctor says they are about to take off and invites Sarah Jane to join them. She quickly declines. She can’t do this any more and she’s got a greater adventure ahead of her. One that doesn’t involve waiting for the Doctor. Mickey asks if he can come along. He doesn’t want to be the tin dog. Sarah Jane tells the Doctor he should have a Smith on board.

  Mickey can sense that maybe Rose isn’t happy and asks if that’s okay with her. She gives a very unconvincing, “why not.” I can’t tell what her issue is: the jealousy/I’m the companion thing or if having her ex-boyfriend, symbol of her past, on her present adventure. Lots of things get to dear Rose.

Sara: I’ve been a Rose defender from the start, but she’s really getting under my skin this episode. Mickey feels exactly the same way as her, like his life is kind of meaningless and he’s worthless, but Rose has to be all MINE MINE MINE about it. 

Mari: Sarah Jane pulls Rose aside. Rose asks what she should do. Should she say with the Doctor? Sarah Jane says yes. “Some things are worth getting your heart broken for.” They hug and Sarah Jane tells Rose to find her, one day, if she needs to.

Outside of the TARDIS, Sarah Jane thanks him for the adventures. The Doctor says they’ll be stories to tell the grandkids, but Sarah Jane admits that they’ll be someone else’s grandkids now. There was only ever one guy and she traveled with him, but he was a tough act to follow. She says goodbye, but the Doctor tries to brush it off. She insists, though. She wants to hear goodbye this time. (K: Foreshadowing shots?) He says it with a bright smile. “Goodbye, my Sarah Jane.”

The Doctor goes back in his box and the whooshing starts. When Sarah Jane turns around it’s all but gone. Just behind it, though, is K-9, looking bright and new. Sarah Jane calls out to him and K-9 explains that master rebuilt and upgraded him. Sarah Jane tells K-9 to get a move on. They’ve got work to do. (K: Has anyone seen The Sarah Jane Adventures?? I watched the first half of the pilot and it felt too little kid-esque for me to keep going. But I’m willing to have my opinion changed.)

I thought this was cute. Certainly not my favorite episode and it still answers a lot of the main plot question with an, “A-HA! BECAUSE.” Sometimes that is little more apparent than others (like here), but sometimes it doesn’t bother me as much (like here). The central story is not of Bat Aliens or french fry oil. That’s just the adventure that these characters play out on and what happens here really depends on where you are coming from.

Have you watched Classic Who? Here is a reunion with Sarah Jane Smith and K-9. You smile with the Doctor and beam as you see her, looking still so beautiful.

Are you just familiar with Sarah Jane? Here is a glimpse into a Doctor Who history you only know in passing. You may be just loving his character, but there are others out there who have loved him for so long.

Are you a Snow? Well, here comes Sarah Jane as yet another counterpoint to Rose. I like that we get this massive idea of who the Doctor is fed to us in bits. For some, it might hamper an already slow story (and I get that) but to me, it’s all enticing bits. Here is this man. Here is this not-man who travels across space and time. Here is this not-man who travels across space and time and who has faced the extermination of his people. Here is this not-man who travels across space and time, who has faced the extermination of his people, and who regenerates. Here is this not-man who travels across space and time, who has faced the extermination of his people, who regenerates and who has left a whole history of people behind him.

In that same vein, we’ve been learning what it means to be a companion. We’ve seen Rose less than gracefully struggle through every stage, from leaving her family behind, to wanting to place a claim on the Doctor who can’t be tied down, and now we get a glimpse at what her fate could be. Life as a companion doesn’t last forever. I rolled my eyes hard at Rose when her jealousy flared at the very idea that Sarah Jane once shared a bond with the Doctor. I roll my eyes less when it’s revealed that for Rose, it isn’t that Sarah Jane exists, but that she’s never been mentioned. It isn’t that people have come before her, but the possibility that there will be more after her.

So, clearly, I really enjoyed those bits.

K: I think this – the human side of things that comes with feels and real life and reminders that this isn’t forever – is part of what the RTD era of New Who does really well. Yes, there’s still a Monster of the Week. But the Monster of the Week isn’t the basis of the plot. That stuff falls to the characters that we know and love, the basis of the plot is around them and their interactions with EACH OTHER. Not around them and their interactions with the monster. In essence, this is a very human episode and while Giles and the MOTW stuff was meh-tastic, the human stuff was absolutely brilliant.

Mari: It’s really sad that my lovely, lovely Giles had nothing to do but walk around and bare his teeth. Seriously, Bat Aliens, french fries and high school? I don’t even know.

 

 

Next time on Doctor Who: The gang travel through time windows into the life of Madame de Pompadour in S02 E04 – The Girl in the Fireplace.