Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?

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05 Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
The Sarah Jane Adventures story
Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane (Trickster).png
Cast
Starring
Others
Production
Directed by Graeme Harper
Written by Gareth Roberts
Script editor Lindsey Alford
Produced by Matthew Bouch
Executive producer(s) Phil Collinson
Russell T Davies
Julie Gardner
Music bySam Watts
Production code1.7 and 1.8
Series Series 1
Running time2 episodes, 25 minutes each
First broadcast29 October 2007 (2007-10-29)
Last broadcast5 November 2007 (2007-11-05)
Chronology
 Preceded by
Warriors of Kudlak
Followed by 
The Lost Boy
List of The Sarah Jane Adventures serials

Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? is the fourth serial of the first series of the British science fiction television series The Sarah Jane Adventures . It first aired on the CBBC channel on 29 October and 5 November 2007.

Contents

Plot

Sarah Jane receives a puzzle box from a Verron soothsayer, with the instruction to give it to the person she trusts the most. She gives the puzzle box to Maria. A meteor is on a collision course with Earth, and Sarah Jane has set up, but not yet activated via Mr Smith, a force field to deflect the meteor. The next morning, Maria wakes to find that Sarah Jane and Luke have gone missing, but no one besides Maria knows who Sarah Jane or Luke are. A woman called Andrea Yates has apparently taken Sarah Jane's place. Andrea was present when Sarah Jane fell off a pier to her death at age 13. When Maria goes to Andrea to talk to her about this, Andrea rushes to her attic, where she takes out a second puzzle box. She remembers making a deal with a hooded figure called The Trickster.

When Sarah Jane and Andrea were 13, Andrea made a deal with the Trickster to switch places with Sarah Jane when she lost her footing and was about to fall off the pier; she had forgotten the Trickster until the present. Unknown to Andrea, the Trickster removed Sarah Jane from Earth's timeline so the meteor will destroy it and create the chaos on which he feeds. In the present, Andrea accepts the Trickster's deal to make Maria disappear. The Trickster dispatches a Graske, who captures Maria just after her father, Alan, picks up the first puzzle box. Subsequently, no one besides Alan can remember Maria.

Remembering Maria's suspicions, Alan questions Andrea at her birthday party, who takes him to the attic and reveals the truth. Alan is chased into the street by the Graske but he knocks it down, then uses its device to bring back Maria, though Sarah Jane is still not back. They return to the attic, where Sarah Jane appears in the mirror and explains to Andrea that witnessing her death caused tremendous pain for her and gave her the resolve to fight pointless deaths herself. Andrea revokes her deal with the Trickster, causing her to fall off the pier to her death when she was 13. Sarah Jane and Luke reappear in the attic in the present and activate Mr Smith to divert the falling meteor. Alan demands an explanation of Maria's involvement with aliens and supercomputers.

Continuity

Outside references

Cast notes

Reception

The story received several positive reviews. Mark Wright, writing on The Stage's "TV Today" blog, stated that the series, while usually "wholly satisfying and entertaining", "achieves true greatness" with the first part of Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? He called the episode "scary as hell ... but with that essential lightness of touch that has typified the show from the start". [2] Alisdair Stuart praised the acting of Jane Asher, Joseph Millson and Yasmin Paige; he regarded Paige's prominence as compensating for her relative lack of screen time in Warriors of Kudlak . Stuart summed up Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? as "the darkest, most ambitious and most effective Sarah Jane story to date" and "one of the best New Who stories to date". [3] [ unreliable source? ] Andrea Mullaney in The Scotsman also commended the "young actors", while calling attention to a "gentle theme" in the story of "ageing and what we leave behind". [4]

The second part of the story received the most viewers of any programme ever broadcast on the CBBC Channel. [5]

Novelisation

Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
Author Rupert Laight
Series The Sarah Jane Adventures #5
Published2008 (Penguin Books)
Pages128
ISBN 1-405-90507-7
Preceded by Warriors of Kudlak  
Followed by The Lost Boy  

This was the fifth of eleven Sarah Jane Adventures serials to be adapted as a novel. Written by Rupert Laight, the book was first published in Paperback on 6 November 2008. [6]

Related Research Articles

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References

  1. The Smiths' front door bears the number 21 in Eye of the Gorgon , and Sarah Jane's business card shows her address as 21 Bannerman Road in Warriors of the Kudlak .
  2. Mark Wright (5 November 2007). "Square Eyes 5–8 November". TV Today. The Stage . Retrieved 8 November 2007.[ dead link ]
  3. Alisdair Stuart (6 November 2007). "Review:The Sarah Jane Adventures-Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?". Firefox News. Archived from the original on 22 December 2015. Retrieved 8 November 2007.
  4. Andrea Mullaney (6 November 2007). "I'm not over-eager for the rise of the cybermen". The Scotsman . Retrieved 8 November 2007.
  5. The Doctor Who News Page Archived 12 April 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  6. Sarah Jane Adventures: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? [Paperback]. ASIN   1405905077.

Novelisations