K9 and Company

World Distributors The 1983 K9 Annual

Published	1982
SBN	7235 6661 5

Starring K9, Sarah Jane Smith, Brendan and Aunt Lavinia

• A Review by Finn Clark

A Review by Finn Clark 3/4/04

An odd experience. We've had plenty of post-Who appearances for Sarah and/or K9 Mk III (Interference, Bullet Time, Downtime and various short stories and comic strips), but none which followed so closely in the footsteps of K9 and Company. This annual seemed to take that as the pattern for an upcoming TV series of witchcraft, satanism and the supernatural. Its six stories thus feature no aliens, telepaths, time-travellers or anything else SF-related, apart from K9 himself. It's quite refreshing, actually. You'll certainly never read another Who-related collection like it.

It has filler articles, but even those aren't what you'd see in a Dr Who annual. Here are articles on Rubik's Cube (remember that?), the Loch Ness monster, ghost stories and the shape of TV to come - the latter being spookily accurate, unlike those amusing "we'll be living on the moon in three-mile high skyscrapers" articles in sixties annuals. I particularly liked the article on how the concept of a robot has evolved over the years. It's a remarkably literate piece, mentioning Greek legends, 19th century ballet, Pinocchio, Baron von Kempellen's 'automatic chess player' and more.

The book even begins with sections called Introducing K9 and Meet Sarah Jane Smith, in case our memories need refreshing on Brendan and Aunt Lavinia. Very sensible, that.

What about the fiction? There's no comic strip (boo, hiss!), but instead six Hardy Boys-esque investigations for Sarah and K9. Sometimes we also meet Aunt Lavinia and Brendan, with the latter even getting to throw a cultist of Kanbo-Ala off a train! There's a certain predictability to these tales. Sarah finds a skeleton walled up in her basement... and it's a member of a coven that used to gather in the caves below Moreton Harwood in the 14th century! (Surprisingly this coven is still active.) Sarah visits a film set and learns of yet another coven! Sarah checks into a hotel which happens to be the home of Satanists! Clearly the poor girl's jinxed.

Hound of Hell is probably the best story here, giving us the amusing spectacle of K9 briefly thinking he's Ragok, Hound of Hell. Otherwise it's good solid fare of the kind you last read when you were ten. However one peculiarity is that the witchcraft and ooga-booga on display always has a prosaic explanation. There's never anything really supernatural. Even the monster of Loch Crag (in a story called The Monster of Loch Crag, amazingly enough) is merely a smugglers' gang with an imaginative technique for scaring off visitors. Yes, K9 is Scooby-Doo.

Sarah and K9 have clearly evolved. K9 is a remarkably ineffectual shot whenever the plot demands it, while in Horror Hotel Sarah displays hitherto unknown martial arts expertise. ["Lord was big, easily capable of defeating most men in a fight, but Sarah Jane's training in the martial arts held her in good stead, and soon she held Lord in an unbreakable grip. Ending the struggle, Sarah Jane karate-chopped Lord a stunning blow and he fell, out cold, to the ground."] The same story also shows her picking locks, despite not being able to do so in 'The Monster of Loch Crag'. By her third annual I'm sure she'd have been able to kick trains off their tracks and catch speeding bullets in her teeth. <>There are in-jokes. The Shroud of Azaroth gives us George Spielberg, film director, thus combining the names of Spielberg and Lucas. However even more ridiculous is Sarah's late uncle Africana in The Curse of Kanbo-Ala, complete with turban-clad foes straight out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. As Aunt Lavinia says on p56: "Africana Smith lived for adventure. All his life he was involved in exploring lost tombs and cities, locating legendary tribes, unearthing priceless archeological treasures."

Can I be the first to say "oh dear"?

The 1983 K9 Annual is a peculiar reading experience, taking itself far more seriously than one might expect given its somewhat goofy subject matter. (And let's face it... a fandom of raving K9 and Company addicts would probably laugh themselves silly if anyone ever showed them Doctor Who.) Apart from those in-jokes, its stories are played straight and don't take the piss out of themselves. The art's fine too. You could do much worse.