Day 282 — October 9th 2021
K9 and Company — A Girls’ Best Friend
A Girls’ Best Friend
The idea of a spin-off starring Sarah Jane and K9 seem obvious now, but I think watching this makes it clear why it took them 25 years and a more competent production team to make it work. I dearly want to love K9 and Company, but almost every decision they made when putting this together was wrong.
I know that when I say that, minds will go straight to the opening titles, which have to be regarded as one of the most bizarre things ever created within the world of Doctor Who. They’re bonkers. An attempt to do something modern and flashy but without any budget and clearly squeezed in at the end of a long day. That they have to reuse the same bits of footage over and over only makes it worse. And yet I have to admit that I love them in their own way. They’re sort of so bad that they come back round to being good again — and they’re certainly the most entertaining part of the hour.
Not that they’ve got a lot of competition because my God this is a boring hour. There’s so many middle-aged people banging on about Market Gardening. It’s such a bizarre choice, and I can’t for the life of me work out who thought this was a good idea. In some ways it feels like someone has half remembered the first half of The Stones of Blood and decided that it worked well, but they’ve forgotten the alien rocks and the guest characters actually being… y’know, fun in any way.
I say that almost every decision was wrong, and that’s because the core concept — pairing up Sarah Jane and K9 — is brilliant. Like I say, they proved that quarter of a century later when the idea ran for five very successful seasons on CBBC. I think the big difference there is that they also remembered to chuck in some aliens.
Okay, so it’s not all bad. There’s a handful of little touches in here which I genuinely love, the key one of those being a call back to the last time we saw Sarah Jane in The Hand of Fear;
Sarah: ‘Where are you from, K9?’
K9: ‘From the Doctor.’
Sarah: ‘From the Doctor?’
K9: ‘Affirmative. A gift to you.’
Sarah: ‘Oh, Doctor, you didn’t forget.’
They’ll do a similar call back to that moment in The Wedding of Sarah Jane and it’s just as beautiful there — referencing the scene without going too over the top.
Sadly it’s about the only time Sarah Jane is particularly likeable in this story. She spends a lot of time moping around and being quite rude to everyone, and it’s hard to square that with the loveable companion who travelled in the TARDIS for so long. They also don’t seem to realise that it’s a big deal to bring her back almost five years after she left — our first sight of her outside of the titles is simply stepping out of a car and wandering off. There’s no attempt to make it a ‘reveal’ of it being Sarah Jane, and that feels like a massive missed opportunity.
The same is true for the reveal of K9. The crate he’s stashed in is wheeled into the set in an early scene, and Sarah Jane unwraps him as soon as she gets time. Even then it’s treated simply as something that has to be done rather than a key moment in the story. K9’s first act is to go off an analyse some soil. Ooh, exciting. I feel like — whatever the story is — K9 shouldn’t be introduced until a crucial moment in the narrative. Have him realise he’s needed when Brendan is attacked, and break out of the crate to shoot the attackers!
Overall, I reckon this is a massive missed opportunity, and I find myself oddly depressed about it. I’ve been so looking forward to the return of Sarah Jane, and I love The Sarah Jane Adventures. I knew this wasn’ up to the same standard as that series, but I’d sort of convinced myself that it might be better than I remembered. I think I’ve got to go with a 3/10 at the very most.
