These episodes make up the series finale of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Although it wasn’t intended that way (they only filmed half the season before Elisabeth Sladen passed away,) what we’re left with is oddly fitting as we bid our heroes a fond farewell.
Luke is home visiting from university, which means he’s meeting his adopted alien sister Sky for the first time. Things are awkward between the Smith siblings at first, but they soon receive their baptism by fire through, what else? An investigation of extraterrestrial goings-on! Everyone is obsessed with the launch of the Serf Board, the mysterious new tech toy from the just-as-mysterious mogul Joseph Serf. Serf isn’t all that he seems, and there’s no telling what he has planned for the Serf Board. Team Sarah Jane is on the case!
We’ll start with the episode as a whole. The alien mystery is fun, a nice real world/sci-fi blend, mixing aliens with the hot new tech gadget everyone’s clamoring for. The humor is on point—maybe a little over-the-top in moments, but the jokes come fast and furious in this one, and there are some great, entertaining sequences. I especially enjoy the banter during a clutch scene of Luke and Sky working together, as well as Clyde and Rani executing Rani’s notion of “taking precautions.” There are some good, unexpected twists, and I really like the tack the story takes with the aliens of the week.
All the characters are used well. I really enjoy the dynamic between Luke and Sky—both are feeling just a little awkward about meeting one another (and, given their less-than-human origins, both are kind of awkward in social interactions anyway,) but both try to tiptoe around the issue instead of addressing it, which leads to bigger squabbles in the short term. The two of them sort of take pride of place in this story, but Sarah Jane is right in the thick of it too. I like seeing her do her “coolly confront the baddie while not missing a trick” routine. And of course, Rani and Clyde aren’t about to be counted out! They start out a bit sidelined, but they find a way of getting in on the action that’s a total delight.
As I said, if the show was going to end on a story they didn’t plan to end on, they could’ve done much worse than this one. First, it would’ve been an absolute shame to end the season without an appearance from Luke, so I’m really glad they were able to film a story with him, and meeting Sky gave him plenty of nice material to work with (plus, an appearance from Luke generally means an appearance from K9!) We get to see Sarah Jane neatly balancing her roles of journalist and alien investigator, there are a few cute nods to the Clyde/Rani ship (“Clani,” aww,) and the way things ultimately shake out with the aliens feels very true to The Sarah Jane Adventures’ overall philosophy/outlook. Oh, plus there’s a UNIT shoutout!
The final moments of the story, and the series, borrow a page from Pushing Daisies’ series finale, ending on a montage of old footage that tugs at our heartstrings while a voiceover wraps things up. It might work even better here than it does on Pushing Daisies – pretty much every season of The Sarah Jane Adventures ends with variations on Sarah Jane’s monologue that “life on Earth can be an adventure too,” so it doesn’t feel out of place, and the ending montage (with the final, beautiful, superimposed tag) gives me all kinds of feels. Years later, Russell T. Davies came back to give us one final Sarah Jane sendoff filmed special for the pandemic, but even when the only ending we had was “The Man Who Never Was,” it was still quite the worthy, touching farewell to the series.
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