2.3: School Reunion
Synopsis: At Mickey's request, the Doctor and Rose go undercover at a London high school to investigate some strange occurrences. The Headmaster, Finch, brings a reporter into the school, he thinks, to do a profile on him. In reality, the reporter is none other than Sarah Jane Smith, the Doctor's companion from six regenerations back, and she is investigating the school in very much the same way as the Doctor. In their searching, and with the help of the robot dog K-9, they identify Krillitanes, shape-changing aliens posing as new teachers (including Finch).
The Krillitanes are using the kids, lubricating their minds with a special oil used in the school kitchens, to crack the code for the Skasas Paradigm, which would give the Krillitanes control over the building blocks of the universe: time, space, matter. Finch offers to let the Doctor in, share the power with him, but the Doctor refuses, of course. The team evacuates the building, and K-9 detonates his laser, causing barrels of oil to explode, destroying the Krillitanes.
Meanwhile, Sarah Jane laments being left behind by the Doctor, and Rose begins to realise that her position at the Doctor's side is not as permanent as she once thought. The Doctor invites Sarah Jane aboard again, but she declines, says she has moved on with her life. They decide, instead, that Mickey should travel with them.
Golden Comic Moment: Watching Sarah Jane and Rose scratch at each other, Mickey says to the Doctor, throwing his arm around his shoulder, "Whoa, mate! The missus and the ex. Welcome to every man's worst nightmare." The delivery from Noel Clark is letter-perfect and makes us smirk at the "suave" Tenth Doctor. We're sorry to report this, but Mickey has earned the right to a bit of Schadenfreude where the Doctor is concerned, especially in the arena of too-many-women.
Almost as good is later on when he tells Rose that he's prepared a little "I-was-right Dance," because he claims that he tried to warn her about the Doctor and his affections.
Golden Fangirl Moment: It's the adorably giddy look on his face when the Doctor speaks to Sarah Jane for the first time in ages. It is clear that his excitement is barely contained, and after all these years, all those companions, though she is now closer to sixty than thirty, he still finds her utterly charming. And in the following scene, when he stops in the hallway just to reflect upon her with that dreamy, goofy grin like the schoolboys surrounding him, we can't help but squeal "awwww!"
It is an evocative phenomenon for a couple of reasons:
1) Sarah Jane's reapperance is the first really juicy bit of continuity "fan-wank" we've been given since the series recommenced, and the Doctor's reaction to her is very much indicative of the way the fans felt! And as every good Doctor Who fangirl knows, David Tennant is a fanboy himself, and probably, very little acting was necessary to achieve the starstruck effect he exudes! He acts like he has a monster-size crush on her, and she's old enough to be his mother, which is just cute in its way.
2) It is a "classic" Doctor Who relationship reconstituted in the new era. This brings forth all sorts of new, twitterpating fangirl material because the tone of the series has changed so much since Sarah Jane's first run. Tom Baker has said that he consciously played the role of the Fourth Doctor as absolutely asexual, (think back to City of Death when he said to the Countess, "You're a very beautiful woman, probably.") so obviously, he never showed any outward attraction to Sarah Jane or anyone else. David Tennant, however, can make no such claim! He is the Ladykiller Doctor, and by the end of his run, he has a veritable harem of admiring women ready to lay down (get your mind out of the gutter) their lives for him. Sarah Jane's snarky, visceral reaction to Rose, her talk of heartbreak and allusion to past hopes of having grandchildren with the Doctor gives an entirely new spin to her character, and puts her classic episodes with the Third and Fourth Doctors in a completely different light. What other single wordless moment from the new series has had the power to re-write the subtext of scenes shot thirty-five-plus years ago?
Cringeworthy Moment: God help us, we actually feel sorry for Rose after spending an hour with Sarah Jane.
Rose: How many people have you had travelling with you?
Doctor: Does it matter?
Rose: Yeah, it does, if I'm just the latest in a long line.
Doctor: As opposed to what?
Yikes, Doc. This is pretty brutal, a kind of obtuse verbal battery that he won't show again until Martha Jones enters the picture (each successive companion seems to cause indirect brutality to the next... ah, the circle of life). It seems like there are much nicer ways to have expressed the same sentiment. Give the girl a break. She is young and in love, which automatically makes her deaf and blind. So, it is just now occurring to her that a man who is nine hundred years old and can regenerate might actually view her as fairly ephemeral. The fact is, no matter how much they love each other, her lifespan is a drop in the bucket to him. Everyone he loves dies first, therefore, he keeps them all at an arm's length. This is frightening for Rose because she (and we) begin to see that he "dumped" Sarah Jane because he was beginning to feel too strongly for her, and it was getting harder to keep the distance. What does that mean for her? (It means the TARDIS will soon have a buffer in the form of Mickey to help water-down the Doctor and Rose's fairly intense relationship.)
Golden Moment: "May I introduce Miss Sarah Jane Smith." The ick-tastic Finch says the words, but they might as well be the words of the gods. The minute Sarah Jane re-enters the scene, the new Doctor Who is hurled into an entirely new era, and frankly, gets taken up a notch. It receives its stripes, earns a kind of legitimacy by forming an official connection between itself and the classic series. Moreover, Sarah Jane's presence in the story (and all of the relationship debris that gets stirred up as a result) totally overshadows the fairly rudimentary plot about the kids and the aliens. But no-one cares, because Sarah Jane is back!
Why I Beg to Differ: DWM names two different moments as the Golden ones of the story. The first is the when Sarah Jane first spies the TARDIS and realises that the "John Smith" she'd spoken to earlier had been the Doctor, mostly for the reasons that we mentioned above. It also mentions the juxtaposition of the Doctor and Sarah Jane filling the dark, empty space between them, and the new series bridging the gap with the classic series. The second Golden Moment is the conversation at poolside between the Doctor and Finch, because it becomes a commentary about the episode's themes of change and adaptation.
But we don't have to wait for Sarah Jane to become aware of the Doctor, or for her to start discussing her feelings, for her to make her impact. The minute they're on-screen together, the damage, as they say, is done. In fact, it's all the more thrilling that she doesn't see her Doctor in the eyes of this fresh-faced stranger, but that he fully recognises her. It's quite a symphonic moment, one that does not need dark spaces or metaphor to work well.
The Krillitanes are using the kids, lubricating their minds with a special oil used in the school kitchens, to crack the code for the Skasas Paradigm, which would give the Krillitanes control over the building blocks of the universe: time, space, matter. Finch offers to let the Doctor in, share the power with him, but the Doctor refuses, of course. The team evacuates the building, and K-9 detonates his laser, causing barrels of oil to explode, destroying the Krillitanes.
Meanwhile, Sarah Jane laments being left behind by the Doctor, and Rose begins to realise that her position at the Doctor's side is not as permanent as she once thought. The Doctor invites Sarah Jane aboard again, but she declines, says she has moved on with her life. They decide, instead, that Mickey should travel with them.
Golden Comic Moment: Watching Sarah Jane and Rose scratch at each other, Mickey says to the Doctor, throwing his arm around his shoulder, "Whoa, mate! The missus and the ex. Welcome to every man's worst nightmare." The delivery from Noel Clark is letter-perfect and makes us smirk at the "suave" Tenth Doctor. We're sorry to report this, but Mickey has earned the right to a bit of Schadenfreude where the Doctor is concerned, especially in the arena of too-many-women.
Almost as good is later on when he tells Rose that he's prepared a little "I-was-right Dance," because he claims that he tried to warn her about the Doctor and his affections.
Golden Fangirl Moment: It's the adorably giddy look on his face when the Doctor speaks to Sarah Jane for the first time in ages. It is clear that his excitement is barely contained, and after all these years, all those companions, though she is now closer to sixty than thirty, he still finds her utterly charming. And in the following scene, when he stops in the hallway just to reflect upon her with that dreamy, goofy grin like the schoolboys surrounding him, we can't help but squeal "awwww!"
It is an evocative phenomenon for a couple of reasons:
1) Sarah Jane's reapperance is the first really juicy bit of continuity "fan-wank" we've been given since the series recommenced, and the Doctor's reaction to her is very much indicative of the way the fans felt! And as every good Doctor Who fangirl knows, David Tennant is a fanboy himself, and probably, very little acting was necessary to achieve the starstruck effect he exudes! He acts like he has a monster-size crush on her, and she's old enough to be his mother, which is just cute in its way.
2) It is a "classic" Doctor Who relationship reconstituted in the new era. This brings forth all sorts of new, twitterpating fangirl material because the tone of the series has changed so much since Sarah Jane's first run. Tom Baker has said that he consciously played the role of the Fourth Doctor as absolutely asexual, (think back to City of Death when he said to the Countess, "You're a very beautiful woman, probably.") so obviously, he never showed any outward attraction to Sarah Jane or anyone else. David Tennant, however, can make no such claim! He is the Ladykiller Doctor, and by the end of his run, he has a veritable harem of admiring women ready to lay down (get your mind out of the gutter) their lives for him. Sarah Jane's snarky, visceral reaction to Rose, her talk of heartbreak and allusion to past hopes of having grandchildren with the Doctor gives an entirely new spin to her character, and puts her classic episodes with the Third and Fourth Doctors in a completely different light. What other single wordless moment from the new series has had the power to re-write the subtext of scenes shot thirty-five-plus years ago?
Cringeworthy Moment: God help us, we actually feel sorry for Rose after spending an hour with Sarah Jane.
Rose: How many people have you had travelling with you?
Doctor: Does it matter?
Rose: Yeah, it does, if I'm just the latest in a long line.
Doctor: As opposed to what?
Yikes, Doc. This is pretty brutal, a kind of obtuse verbal battery that he won't show again until Martha Jones enters the picture (each successive companion seems to cause indirect brutality to the next... ah, the circle of life). It seems like there are much nicer ways to have expressed the same sentiment. Give the girl a break. She is young and in love, which automatically makes her deaf and blind. So, it is just now occurring to her that a man who is nine hundred years old and can regenerate might actually view her as fairly ephemeral. The fact is, no matter how much they love each other, her lifespan is a drop in the bucket to him. Everyone he loves dies first, therefore, he keeps them all at an arm's length. This is frightening for Rose because she (and we) begin to see that he "dumped" Sarah Jane because he was beginning to feel too strongly for her, and it was getting harder to keep the distance. What does that mean for her? (It means the TARDIS will soon have a buffer in the form of Mickey to help water-down the Doctor and Rose's fairly intense relationship.)
Golden Moment: "May I introduce Miss Sarah Jane Smith." The ick-tastic Finch says the words, but they might as well be the words of the gods. The minute Sarah Jane re-enters the scene, the new Doctor Who is hurled into an entirely new era, and frankly, gets taken up a notch. It receives its stripes, earns a kind of legitimacy by forming an official connection between itself and the classic series. Moreover, Sarah Jane's presence in the story (and all of the relationship debris that gets stirred up as a result) totally overshadows the fairly rudimentary plot about the kids and the aliens. But no-one cares, because Sarah Jane is back!
Why I Beg to Differ: DWM names two different moments as the Golden ones of the story. The first is the when Sarah Jane first spies the TARDIS and realises that the "John Smith" she'd spoken to earlier had been the Doctor, mostly for the reasons that we mentioned above. It also mentions the juxtaposition of the Doctor and Sarah Jane filling the dark, empty space between them, and the new series bridging the gap with the classic series. The second Golden Moment is the conversation at poolside between the Doctor and Finch, because it becomes a commentary about the episode's themes of change and adaptation.
But we don't have to wait for Sarah Jane to become aware of the Doctor, or for her to start discussing her feelings, for her to make her impact. The minute they're on-screen together, the damage, as they say, is done. In fact, it's all the more thrilling that she doesn't see her Doctor in the eyes of this fresh-faced stranger, but that he fully recognises her. It's quite a symphonic moment, one that does not need dark spaces or metaphor to work well.