Review: Doctor Who 2.3: School Reunion

Nostalgia-fest galore as Sarah Jane and K9 cameo.

Doctor Who - Season 28, Episode Three - School Reunion Written 20/3/12.

I don't hate Season 28. It's not that. It's just that it contains some of the worst Who that I can ever claim to have seen. I would rather watch Time-Flight or Terror of the Vervoids, two of my least favourite Eighties stories, than ever touch upon New Earth ever, ever again. But that doesn't say anything about the season that surrounds it. In Being Human, Adam's Family is the lowest the series ever sunk to, but I'm prepared to say that Series Three was one of the series' best.
     The comparison to Being Human is particularly apt with today's episode, the final one in my examination of Season 28 over this Holiday period, School Reunion by Toby Whithouse. School Reunion is somewhat like a rose set into liquid nitrogen; it's a unique and precious thing to behold, but one that will shatter with the slightest knock. Like Tooth and Claw, School Reunion boasts a lot of high-profile sci-fi ideas, but this time the characters are enough to keep it afloat when the plot's hull strikes the iceberg. This can be blamed, in part, by something that warms my Whovian heart - the return of Sarah Jane Smith and K9.
     Let's take a second to discuss The Sarah Jane Adventures. Season 28 was the one that pretty much launched both of the RTD spinoffs, Torchwood (for the Good Captain) and The Sarah Jane Adventures, a Softer and Lighter version of the main show following Sarah Jane and her entourage of children. While I loved the first series, I gave up after the main companion Maria (Yasmin Paige) bogged off after the first series and I detected either a drop in quality or my own movement outside the target audience. Nevertheless, the series continued to contribute towards the Whoniverse many times, including cross-overs with the main show, something that Torchwood never did. While I didn't like it, I recognised that it had a large fanbase amongst younger fans and I was greatly saddened by Elisabeth Sladen's untimely death in 2011.

Anthony Head is great as Finch.

     School Reunion, like Tooth and Claw, is the seed story for the spin-off, and so has to juggle that with any other ideas it may have. The main plot follows The Doctor, Rose and Mickey's investigations into Deffrey Vale School after Mickey reads news reports about lights in the sky and strange staff changes. It turns out that Sarah Jane is investigating also, and together they discover that the new Headmaster, Mr Finch (Buffy star Anthony Head, in a delicious performance), is a Krillitane who has brought some of his fellows to work at the school, and through using a special oil on the compulsory school dinners, they plan to brainwash all of the kids into solving an equation that will let them rule the Universe. The episode is a Scooby-Doo plot, and ultimately the day is saved when Mickey frees the kids and K9 uses his laser to explode a vat of the oil, which the Krillitanes are allergic to.
     I'll be honest, School Reunion's best facet is not its plot. The shambling element is pretty linear and it doesn't really go into much detail about just how interesting these ideas could be if properly exploited. But that's fine. Really, that's ok, because Whithouse is all about the Characters and their dynamics. Here, the quiet contemplative moments between Sarah and The Doctor are some of the best things in the season, and despite making references back to an event that occured 30 years prior (The Hand of Fear, 1976), it still manages to move even if one is ignorant of the subject matter. I chose to explore the Eighties when I looked into Classic Who, and I'm glad that I did, because I know that I have so much great Doctor Who left to experience from Sarah Jane's era.
     The weekly, "Complain about Doctor and Rose" bit? Well... more Rose than Ten. He is a little angsty here and there, but it's done with some panazz and as this is his fourth episode it isn't as tiring as it would become in, say, Season 29. In fact, this is the first episode where Ten shows some of the better aspects of his character - the rampant enthusiasm for the cosmos, the unrelenting battle against corruption, all that sorta thing. No, the annoying one this week was Rose, who apparently assumed that she and the Doctor were "special" and that the 900-year-old alien with a time-machine had only just decided to have a companion. (Here's a great piece on Deviant Art that describes this more simply.) It's not that I have a vendetta against Season 28 Rose, but she sure does not make it easy. I found the slanging match between Sarah Jane and Rose near-intolerable at times, because it seemed to stem out of Rose's immaturity more than anything else.

Goodbye, my Sarah Jane.

     Like Being Human, School Reunion's plot isn't much to talk about, but what is important is the way that he handled the return of the second-most important recurring character in Who history. (The first being the Brigadier.) The problems with the main cast still exist, but I found myself really enjoying School Reunion's mix of action and nostalgia, and the fact that I enjoyed it at all is a testament to how well the characters were written. Season 28 isn't all bad; episodes like this, The Girl in the Fireplace and the Impossible Planet two parter are some great Who. I think it's perhaps a statement about Doctor Who on the whole that whereever you look, in even the worst parts of the series, there will always be something to entertain.

Thanks.

P.S. I am literally in tears right now.