Sarah Jane Smith teams up with K9 and so you'd be right to expect that it should be incredible. Sadly it fails miserably. This was a spin-off pilot that was meant to follow on from Doctor Who after Sarah had parted company from the Fourth Doctor but no series ever came from it. Watching it, it's not hard to see why!
Things start badly with an opening titles sequence so hilariously bad that it transcends even the realm of 'so bad it's good' and becomes 'so bad it's funny'. You'll laugh out loud at it's preposterousness, or maybe the laughter is a defence mechanism to help spare yourself the pain of watching it. Sadly these titles are the best thing here as everything that follows them is very slow and uninteresting.
The plot -- Just kidding there isn't one! There's a story, if you can keep awake long enough to pay attention, about what happens when Sarah and her new robot-dog K9 investigate a culture of witchcraft in a standard 1980s country village where her aunt lives. There's supposed to be a mystery element to it because the aunt in question has vanished but this is undermined when Sarah gets a phone call at the end of the episode from her aunt who has left to go to America earlier than planned without telling anyone, as you do. It's not the only twist either, I think it's meant to be one when the identity of the pagan worshippers are revealed but it's really hard to care for anyone in the episode to be bothered by it. The whole thing is a dull, boring, predictable, by the numbers snooze-fest.
There are a few guilty pleasures hidden among the horrifically bad stuff on display. Elizabeth Sladen is still wonderful as THE definitive companion (even if her companion days are now behind her) and K9 automatically improves anything he's in just by mere association with another pitch-perfect vocal performance from John Leeson. There's a great use of the recurring "Doctor Who?" gag (Who's the Doctor? Affirmative!) which is always fun and gives us the only reference to the Doctor (Peter 'Davison' Moffett, at the time). Still, the whole thing just feels wrong and insulting to everything it touches.
I would only recommend this to the most hardcore of Doctor Who fans and even then only watch it as an educational exercise. Sadly, the 2006 episode "School Reunion" confirms this as canon which means we have to remember it happened. This did redeem itself with anther spin-off 'The Sarah Jane Adventures' which proves that the formula can work. You're left, after enduring this monstrosity, wondering how it went so wrong the first time around.
I'll finish by saying this: If you have something 'Doctor Who' related and Elizabeth Sladen can't save it you know there's a problem. I give it 3/10 because of her performance.
Things start badly with an opening titles sequence so hilariously bad that it transcends even the realm of 'so bad it's good' and becomes 'so bad it's funny'. You'll laugh out loud at it's preposterousness, or maybe the laughter is a defence mechanism to help spare yourself the pain of watching it. Sadly these titles are the best thing here as everything that follows them is very slow and uninteresting.
The plot -- Just kidding there isn't one! There's a story, if you can keep awake long enough to pay attention, about what happens when Sarah and her new robot-dog K9 investigate a culture of witchcraft in a standard 1980s country village where her aunt lives. There's supposed to be a mystery element to it because the aunt in question has vanished but this is undermined when Sarah gets a phone call at the end of the episode from her aunt who has left to go to America earlier than planned without telling anyone, as you do. It's not the only twist either, I think it's meant to be one when the identity of the pagan worshippers are revealed but it's really hard to care for anyone in the episode to be bothered by it. The whole thing is a dull, boring, predictable, by the numbers snooze-fest.
There are a few guilty pleasures hidden among the horrifically bad stuff on display. Elizabeth Sladen is still wonderful as THE definitive companion (even if her companion days are now behind her) and K9 automatically improves anything he's in just by mere association with another pitch-perfect vocal performance from John Leeson. There's a great use of the recurring "Doctor Who?" gag (Who's the Doctor? Affirmative!) which is always fun and gives us the only reference to the Doctor (Peter 'Davison' Moffett, at the time). Still, the whole thing just feels wrong and insulting to everything it touches.
I would only recommend this to the most hardcore of Doctor Who fans and even then only watch it as an educational exercise. Sadly, the 2006 episode "School Reunion" confirms this as canon which means we have to remember it happened. This did redeem itself with anther spin-off 'The Sarah Jane Adventures' which proves that the formula can work. You're left, after enduring this monstrosity, wondering how it went so wrong the first time around.
I'll finish by saying this: If you have something 'Doctor Who' related and Elizabeth Sladen can't save it you know there's a problem. I give it 3/10 because of her performance.