Monday, January 01, 2007

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Didja see it? Huh? Did you? The climax of "The Sarah Jane Adventures" tonight hinged on memorising a big long number! Who says this whole memory thing has no real-life applications? If not for memory skills, the whole planet would have been taken over by aliens! Hey, do you think they stole the idea from my movie synopsis the other month?

Of course, if we're going to be just a tiny bit picky, I could point out that the number Luke mutters to himself while typing it into the communicator wasn't the same one that he heard earlier in the show, so technically the Bane should have killed them all and gone on to subvert the human race, but never mind. I liked this. A lot. I think it's going to be a very fun series. Elisabeth Sladen is brilliant in the Doctor role as the eccentric investigator, and she has good support from the young co-stars (although Porsha Lawrence-Mavour, playing the least important of the three kids' roles, seems to be the best actor by some distance - they're all quite acceptable, though).

Hopefully for the series proper they'll ease off on stories where almost the whole Earth's population fall under the mental control of the aliens, because we've had quite a lot of those just lately. Also it would be nice if they'd ease off on the CGI monsters - tonight's episode had one infuriating little moment when the alien chases our heroes up the stairs and runs right over a hat hanging on the bannister without moving it at all. That's just sloppy. Besides, I like to see a guy in a monster suit - the actors seem to react better when they can see what they're supposed to be reacting to. And while I'm criticising, Sarah Jane goes to great lengths to investigate the mystery drink, even getting scientist friends to analyse it for her, but never thinks to point her alien-life-detector watch at it!

Enough nit-picking. Like I said, I really liked this, and I think it might be a big success. But then, I like Torchwood, and that seems to be getting very mixed reviews. I'll have to try to redress the balance by raving about it after tonight's final two episodes. Well, I'll wait until they've been on BBC2 on Wednesday in case any of my devoted and non-Sky-having readers are still watching.

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