School Reunion

Bob Dylan once wrote a song of which, he claimed, every line could form the start of another song. Similarly, "School Reunion" felt like the last episode of a longer story, and made one wonder if this is to become the trend of the new, snappier, soundbite-propelled Doctor Who. Every idea can no longer be afforded a four-parter, merely a squashed-in single episode to give us a taste of its potential.

Thus it was extremely telling that this story began rather oddly with the Doctor installed as a teacher at a school (though suggesting he used the TARDIS to make his predecessor a lottery millionaire in order to get him out the way was a lovely touch) with Rose as a dinner lady. It tried to make out this was to provide a suitably intriguing beginning, but it was obvious it was to save time. Like Sarah still being a journalist for ten seconds, it was a weird contrivance to get everyone into place for the story that really needed to be told: Sarah Jane Smith's story.

What's extraordinary, in retrospect, is the amount of continuity jam-packed into "School Reunion". A year ago, they were scared of naming Davros. Now, one senses the belt has been loosened to such an extent that the episode was more or less *about* "The Hand Of Fear", a show that hardly anyone watching will have seen. Who knows by now how many people this will have thrilled, and how many it will have baffled? Kids aren't stupid, and a year is adequate enough time for plenty to have swatted up on what the Doctor got up to before Wilson never got his lo'erry money. Whatever, the plunge was taken on the back of doing an "emotional impact" slant on the Doctor and his ever-changing companions, an excellent idea.

Sarah is a funny character. Although you'd struggle to think of a better choice of companion to bring back, she's perhaps the most difficult to resurrect because she didn't, contrary to "School Reunions" insistence, get abandoned. She was, as we know, back for the Christmas Special, the 20th anniversary special, the spin-off and the audio series. The question should have been not so much how did she cope with a life outside the TARDIS, as how did she grab a moment off from bumping into the Doctor, or the Yeti, or whatever goes on in that Big Finish thing, to investigate Mr Finch and his weird school. They seemed to get around this though, by implying that she got no peace of mind from "The Five Doctors" and by retconning "Train Flight" out of existence.

Oh, and making Sarah herself again. Every time we've bumped into Sarah post 1975, it's been a struggle to identify if it's really HER or not. Each time you have sensed Elizabeth Sladen trying to reach inside herself and find Sarah Jane Smith once again, but each time she isn't quite there. And you always find yourself reasoning that, of course, Sarah would have changed, as we all do over time. It's now been THIRTY years. So how would we know? Well, I swear that for the first time since she freeze-framed her way out of Tom Baker's TARDIS, I saw Sarah in there tonight. As she gasped as she saw the TARDIS in the basement, as she finally confronted the Doctor on screen after he explained how he couldn't take her to Gallifrey (ruddy hell, anything goes now doesn't it? What next, mentions of Andred and Rohm Dutt?) and as she realised that it was HIM... this was finally, indisputably, Sarah Jane Smith for the first time since that sunny afternoon in Aberdeen (Aberdeen! Thirty year old plot questions answered!). Ignore the rest as propaganda.

Amongst the beautiful scenes of Sarah and Rose becoming friends, and the Doctor lamenting the "curse of the Time Lords", it's almost a shame we had to tie a bogbeast of a monster plot around it all; the result was something of a rushed enterprise involving some school kids, a few vats of slime and some doohickey that would solve the meaning of life on a Pentium. I'm also going to be controversial and ask if K9 was surplus to requirements. Although it now seems as if I have a heart of stone due to the merits of his 'sacrifice' at the end, I have to now genuinely ask if anyone not a fan of the old series would have really cared, given his very small amount of screen-time prior to it happening? John Leeson must have recorded his lines in ten minutes (and notice they didn't let him go unmodulated this time!). "K9 and Company"'s enduring legacy seems to have been to have established the myth that K9 and Sarah must always appear together. That said, his re-appearance at the end DID almost justify his intrusion on a story which was essentially Sarah's tale, as it tied in nicely with the theme of letting go. Bravely, Sarah has never let go to the extent that she has never married because she couldn't find a man to replace the Doctor. At the conclusion of "School Reunion", she does let go, forcing him to finally say the word "goodbye" and leaving the TARDIS by choice. But taking K9 with her once more adds the footnote that the past may be best left where it is, but that doesn't mean you can't have the odd keepsake to make you smile occasionally.

A redressing of balances in many respects, "School Reunion" used the new series re-tooling of Doctor Who's emotional capabilities to hang a "The End" sign on a couple of Doctor Who's longest running, messily concluded tales. Let the two of them walk (and trundle) off into the sunset now, with dignity at last, and let us have to no longer remember either of them for being bundled out the TARDIS on a whim.