The Nightmare Man The Vault of Secrets Death of the Doctor The Empty Planet Lost in Time Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith

BBC The Sarah Jane Adventures Season Four

• A Review by Stephen Maslin

A Review by Stephen Maslin 27/4/14

When Doctor Who returned to our screens in 2005, one felt that people were taken aback by just how successful it was, by just how well a then 42-year-old show had fitted in with the diktats of contemporary culture. The realization that this was the case, in terms of production, seems to have come during the making of Season 2006, when awards for the previous season started rolling in. This industry validation seems to have gone to the heads of all concerned and it seemed to change the show's tone from quirkiness and originality to smugness, self-congratulation and overconfidence (with all the dreary profundity that goes with it). You can see it happening as Tennant's first season progresses.

Thank heavens that we had the SJAs to cool our fevered brows, a show that took over the mantle of charm and vivacity that the parent show ditched in favour of bombast and histrionics. Alas, the same successes meant that the same false vanities descended upon the SJAs four years later: following its steady climb to the stratospheric heights of Season Three, the message came through from on high that it could now be "so much more than just an exceptional children's show"; that it could join the ranks of 'Proper Telly'. In case you hadn't noticed, 'Proper Telly' has come to mean over-doing everything: too much music, too much hugging, too much kowtowing to transient contemporary norms, too much, too much, too much...

Which is why the SJAs Season Four is its least successful season. The show is no longer itself. In trying to improve what didn't need improving, it became something else entirely (and nowhere near as good; no longer brilliant family BBC but mediocre yoof-only faux-Hollywood). There's only one stand out story - compare that success rate with the previous seasons - with most of the rest smothered in a tedium of pointless excess. It had held off the wrecking ball of Hollywoodization for longer than most but eventually it had to be brought into line. Damn shame.

So what of the stories themselves?

The Nightmare Man as a title is only half right: man, yes, nightmare no. It is often visually impressive and the chopped up narrative works is initially intriguing BUT FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, WILL SOMEONE TURN THAT BLOODY MUSIC OFF! The dialogue, so carefully crafted, is at times rendered almost inaudible and what should have been a creep-fest is turned into a pink blancmange-fest instead. If I had been writer Joseph Lidster, I would have burned the BBC to the ground. 5/10.

Similar can be said of The Vault of Secrets. With a little restraint, it could have been something rather special. Without it, it isn't. Flashbacks to Prisoner of the Judoon only serve to emphasis the gulf in execution. Androvax, once such a sinister creation, is now merely a bit camp. Again the music is at fault. The more it tells me that I am supposed to be scared, the more I dig in my heels and refuse to do as I'm told. 6/10.

Death of the Doctor, in spite of Matt Smith on pretty good form, fails to warm the cockles as it should. The SJAs production team's repeated nods to Doctor Who's past had been extremely well-judged up to this point but shoe-horning Jo Grant into the proceedings here is as subtle as a bus-crash. (And is it my imagination or did she and Matt Smith really not get on? It's Tom and Lalla in The Leisure Hive all over again.) The Shansheeth are pretty cool, UNIT are in it and even Ben and Polly get a mention, so why am I so underwhelmed? 5/10.

So, there's nothing that bad thus far but disappointing enough that I almost didn't watch The Empty Planet, which would have been a real mistake. For The Empty Planet is far and away the pick of the crop. (Daniel Anthony and Anjli Mohindra once again I salute you.) It is, both technically and imaginatively, streets ahead of its rivals. The scenes of deserted London are superbly done and Gareth Roberts' sparkling script puts his co-writers to shame. 9/10.

Back on track? Well, Lost in Time almost manages to keep up the pace but fails to gel and eventually falls to bits. In spite of lush design (even now a BBC speciality) and laudable ambition, the narrative seems rushed and hackneyed, with some clunky dialogue, more than a little saccharin and some rather obvious homilies. It manages to do something that the SJAs had generally avoided, that of turning into a schools programme and, yet again, the music is all-pervading and awful. 5/10.

The finale, Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith, is reasonable enough, which for a show that was once consistently fucking brilliant is damning with faint praise. Elisabeth Sladen is at her best (when was she ever not at her best?) but there's an attempt to cram an old-style Doctor Who six-part send-off into a scant three-quarters of an hour, and, though Julie Graham makes for a worthy antagonist, I still wasn't convinced. Everyone is trying way too hard. What tries to be epic degenerates into shouting, simpering and running about. (Worst of all is that the title is, of course, tragically prophetic.) 6/10

What the SJAs as a whole gave to the world (especially seasons two and three and the sadly truncated season five), indeed what they were always meant to give, was that warm glow that fans of Doctor Who long past yak on about, but with an added twist of being rather hip and trendy into the bargain. A very hard balance to have struck. Whoever decided that SJA Season IV should aspire to being Torchwood for kids wasn't doing their job properly. It's a sign of how British television as a whole has lost sight of where its strengths lie that SJA Season IV won the Royal Television Society's award for Children's Drama, when its vastly superior predecessors had only been nominated.

But when the tragic news of April 19th, 2011 came around, none of this seemed to matter.