Sarah Jane's 50th anniversary

Sarah Jane Smith made her debut in The Time Warrior, fifty years ago today. A hero in her own right as embodied by Elisabeth Sladen.

The Whoniverse

We’re really calling it that now. It has a logo. And short reunion stories highlighting some classics. And nearly everything available on iPlayer.

K9 And Company!

The Sarah Jane Mini Adventures

The Hand of Fear and The Masque Of Mandragora cut to half an hour each.

Farewell, Sarah Jane

Farewell. Expect this to make you cry.

Birth Of The Character

So, today’s Google Doodle is... my birthday.

Okay, that’s cute.

As a horror show, Doctor Who tends not to welcome new births with glad tidings and cake. Amy was hit by a bunch of expectant mothers’ worst fears. Gwen didn’t have much luck on her wedding day in Torchwood either. Births on screen tend to be monsters hatching. About the best we’ve seen is Stormageddon, Dark Lord Of All - Alfie, who defeats the Cybermen with a well-timed bit of crying.

One notable exception is Luke (and later Sky) from The Sarah Jane Adventures, where parenthood is something heroic to be celebrated - and of course they’re teens pretty much as soon as they arrive. (Babies turning into young adults who can take on the role full-time at great speed is so practical that it’s all over fantasy and SF TV and you can find it outside of genres where it fits too!)

The Moffat years have been notably kid-friendly, from wee Amelia Pond to Stormageddon to Artie and Angie. If you want a distinctive Eleventh Doctor feel for a particular adventure, consider having a couple of kids among the characters who might act as temporary companions...

Birth itself could be a source of adventures too.

The predicted birth of a child destined to change the world? That might be a bit on-the-nose, but if the players wouldn’t mind a “guard mission”, the mother of an unborn Messiah or Antichrist (opinions vary) pursued by various forces would certainly make for an interesting one.

The mysterious deaths of everyone in the city born on a particular day, in the order they were born in. And one of the PCs was born late that night...

On Elisabeth Sladen’s birthday, Sarah Jane’s character sheet by Siskoid, as of her departure in The Hand Of Fear, the series shown by BBC4 as a tribute to her.

And the story goes on... forever.

Russell T Davies on Wizards Vs Aliens

SFX talks to RTD about WvA

Including who he would have cast as the Rani (Ruthie Henshall, who we get to see in WvA so we can see what he had in mind) and why they dropped a time travel episode.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: And the story goes on... forever.

Due to the sudden loss of Elisabeth Sladen, the final volume of DWM’s Sarah Jane Companion only has three televised stories to talk about, so it turns most of its pages over to what might have been, as well as the general interest of unmade episodes.

So for GMs looking for Whoniverse adventures that were almost made, what could we turn into adventures to dedicate to Ms Sladen?

Happy Chinese New Year

It's the Year of the Dragon. This means something to do with astrology, dividing people by the year they were born. The Sarah Jane Adventures managed to get a plot out of astrology already...

A visit to a Chinese-colonised planet, as seen briefly in Turn Left and obviously Firefly? Maybe patches and banners marking their positions in the traditional Chinese constellations? With people who look like this and maybe this.

And a plot that isn't actually connected to the Chinese antecedent of the setting, any more than The Impossible Planet is about the Britishness of the crew there.

Making Our Own Whoness: Because Someone Has To

With Doctor Who away till autumn (not even an Easter special!) and Torchwood inconsistent and The Sarah Jane Adventures sadly retired, there's a gap for something Whovian on the tellybox. Being Human is back in a few weeks, and we're still waiting on the rest of Primeval, so it's not like we're entirely lacking in genre stuff, but nothing where it might turn out to be Sontarans. And RTD's new Aliens Vs Wizards CBBC show is a long way off, and Sherlock's off too.

So what would we tune in for?

(Well, I'd tune in for Wilfred Mott Tells Off Alien Invaders but I acknowledge the concept might wear thin.)

Of course, I've been thinking about this since week one of this blog thingy.

And... who'd like A Series-Ful Of Spinoff Show?

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Man Who Never Was

Well timed for the launch of the new iWhateverItIs, the satire on flashy product launches is just a minor aside really, about as significant as the charming Peter Bowles cameo.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Curse Of Clyde Langer

Forteana and social commentary.

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Sky

With Doctor Who off until Christmas (barely ten weeks, never mind!) The Sarah Jane Adventures has returned with the final three stories.

“Never careful, always prepared!”

The Hand Of Fear

This story was repeated on BBC4 over the past two days to celebrate the life of Elisabeth Sladen. It’s a fine little story in and of itself, if a bit odd in having the titular creepy hand quickly turn into a perfectly good female villain and then she turns into a shouty bloke when you’d think a moving hand was enough, but of course it became more than a footnote when it turned out to be Sarah Jane’s swansong as a companion.

It isn’t quite business as usual, as she comments on how much horrible stuff has been happening to her of late - “I must be mad. I’m sick of being cold and wet and hypnotised left, right and centre. I’m sick of being shot at, savaged by bug-eyed monsters, never knowing if I’m coming or going... or been... I want a bath, I want my hair washed, I just want to feel human again... and, boy, am I sick of that sonic screwdriver. I’m going to pack my goodies and I’m going home...”

She goes to pack, and then the Doctor receives a call back to Gallifrey and has to leave her, so now she doesn’t want to go. Such a natural reaction.

So many classic companions left with little warning (see next companion Leela deciding to stay behind and marry Some Bloke) that it was good to see the reasons for Sarah Jane’s departure pile up throughout this story. It’s something the new series has built on, making every departure a big deal.

Something to consider when a player has to leave a game, or a game is ending, assuming you get a few sessions’ warning. How do you make the character’s departure memorable, in a good way rather than the “I’m leaving with that guy over there, bye!” way?

Bring them back home or leave them very far from it? A happy ending or a broken heart? A new life or going down a blaze of glory? Upbeat or tragic or somewhere in between?

Best to talk this over with the player. How they feel about the character can factor in to how they’d like them to leave.

Help this man!

Kit on "recovered TARDIS" game setups.

I've been helping already. It's one of the classics - unreliable time machine, no (also unreliable) pilot attached. Go anywhere and anywhen at the whim of the players and GM and maybe the player characters if they ever figure out what they're doing, poke things with sticks that mortal man was not meant to poke with sticks, and run from Daleks.

It was the form our playtest game took. As nobody stuck their hand up to play a Time Lord we had a psychic who "inherited" the knowledge to pilot it (sort of) by mindlink. We were all adventurous sorts (my PCs was expressly what I'd make a companion like) which you kind of have to be when the basic format is "you leave the TARDIS and..." - and yes, I know of players who go "I stay in the TARDIS!"

Beyond that, it allowed us to stumble onto alien invasions, space operas, historical epochs, old FASA adventures with at most slight rewriting of the reason the PCs take interest after arriving, different GMs taking shots, a mild case of meeting the same characters out of sequence and things of that sort. As a lot of the adventures were pre-written and adapted to test the system, and the series didn't come to a real conclusion, and I don't fancy belatedly typing up two years' worth of gaming, no AP exists, so you'll have to take my word for some of this.

But yeah, it's a way to go.

Elisabeth Sladen

I'm shocked and saddened to report that Lis Sladen has died, age 63. My sympathies to family and friends, and my fellow fans.

"I saw amazing things, out there in space. But there is strangeness to be found wherever you turn. Life on Earth can be an adventure too... you just need to know where to look!"

Classic Who Themes: The Big Emotional Episode

The Big Emotional Episode is a story of some other kind that happens to hit one of the PCs where it hurts emotionally. This is the sort of thing that should definitely be discussed with the player beforehand, as some players aren't keen on putting their characters through the wringer.

Guest starring the Doctor

So, you don't have the Doctor in your game, you're doing something else in the Whoniverse. But you're thinking of a special episode (a Christmas special, a series opener) and drop hints about bringing the Doctor in for one night only.

Having the PCs work with the Doctor will of course give fannish players a bit of an egoboost, but maybe they find themselves working at cross purposes instead.

But which Doctor, and to what end? Which one can you do well, which would suit the tenor of your game, which would the players geek out over?

The First Doctor would suit mysteries and sense-of-wonder fantasies, the Second would fit romps, the Third dashing space-opera adventures or UNIT stories, the Fourth a mix of comedy and horror, the Fifth dashing adventures again, the Sixth confrontations with authority, the Seventh sinister machinations, the Eighth dashing adventures with a bigger effects budget and theoretically Time War stories, the Ninth quirky romps and gloomy war stories, the Tenth dashing adventures with angst, the Eleventh a bit more comedy and horror again.

Or of course there are other Doctors. The Richard E Grant version(s), the Unbound, DIY versions, here's eleven fan film Doctors, and check out the shot at 2.51... These give you more freedom, but lack the immediate fanjoy response of the televisual ones.

Or if you really want to mess with the players' heads, imagine their first meeting with the Doctor and it's actually the Valeyard. (How? I dunno, wibbly-wobbly...) And maybe away from confrontation with a normal Doctor he's more Doctor-ish, working for the good in his own way, but a bit sinister and Seventh-like. So they have to wonder if they can trust him, which could make for an interesting dynamic.

The main question, after which Doctor to use, is how to give him enough to do without overshadowing everyone else. Let's look at two handy examples: The Wedding Of Sarah Jane Smith and Death Of The Doctor from The Sarah Jane Adventures. In both of these, he only appears around the halfway point (at the cliffhanger of part one of two) so there's plenty of time for the regulars and other guests to interact, investigate and chat. He also spends most of his appearance time split off from some of the group, so they have to carry on without him solving problems on their own. And in both cases he has a hand in saving the day, but he's not the central hero of either.

K9

After thirty years (and a few years after his "And Company" sidekick Sarah Jane) K9 got his own series this year. Sort of. It's not a BBC show, and not canon even by the we-don't-have-a-canon standards of the Whoniverse. And he gets redesigned to look oddly like Gromit as Robocop.

Apparently it's set in a future London where (because it was made in Brisbane) everyone sounds sort of Australian. So like the future London of Mass Effect 3, then...

(Though I can imagine editing around the Sheffield/Melbourne sniper to make that a pretty cool "next time..." trailer for a Who adventure...)

But, y'know, it's got monsters and stuff. And it's getting its first terrestrial UK outing on Five for the next couple of weeks, in the mornings starting tomorrow.

Thanks to The Acrobatic Flea for the notification.

This week's Sarah Jane Adventures

Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith

Julie Graham was perfect casting as "the new Sarah Jane" because after Bonekickers and Survivors she'd seem like the BBC's go-to casting for "attractive middle-aged woman in modern-day genre series about investigating strange mysteries" which SJA is, if they were making it primetime and not basing it on an existing already-cast character.

What was being done rather bothered me - Sarah Jane affected with symptoms like Alzheimer's. And who wouldn't want to have a monster to stop if someone was suffering from that?

Gamewise, new monster(s).

So now, no new Who for... well, three days counting the Children In Need special, but then a whole five weeks, egad.