Doctor Who:
School
Reunion
By Toby
Whitehouse
“You were my
life. You know what the most difficult thing was? Coping with what happens
next, or with what doesn't happen next. You took me to the furthest reaches of
the galaxy, you showed me supernovas, intergalactic battles, and then you just
dropped me back on Earth. How could anything compare to that?”
The Doctor
and Rose are undercover at Deffry Vale High School as the students are showing
and incredible amount of intelligence. Also investigating what is going on is Sarah
Jane Smith. She suspects something is
going and decides to go to the school to interview Mr Finch as a ways of
getting in. The Doctor, Rose and Mickey
go to the school at night and decide to look around and investigate what is going
on and why the kids are incredible smart. During the investigation The Doctor and Sarah
Jane have a reunion as Sarah Jane runs into The Doctor who is standing near the
TARDIS.
What they
discover is that the batlike Krillitanes have taken over the school and are
using Krillitane oil in the chips and that is what’s making the kids
smarter. What the Krillitanes need is
the imagination of a child to help them break Skasis Paradigm which would give
the Krillitanes god like powers. Whoever
possesses it will be able to control the building blocks and be able to control
all of time and space and even try tempting The Doctor that he could bring back
the Time Lords. So it is up to The
Doctor and the Scooby Gang to stop the Krillatanes from getting all that power.
The episode
of David Tennant’s first season that a lot of the classic fans have been
waiting for since they first announced it was “School Reunion”. The reason being the return of Sarah Jane
Smith and K-9 for the first time since “The Five Doctors”. At first I was kind of hesitant about this
story when it originally came out as I was hoping they were going to try and
stay away from fanwank scenarios with the exception of old aliens and villains during
the new series. Well that would not be
the case but Russell T. Davies did do it in a pretty creative way and not for
cheapness at all. Sarah Janes appearance
in “School Reunion” is more meaningful unlike her appearance in “The Five Doctors.” Instead of being thrown in with a bunch of
old companions for nostalgic reasons we get to see her like when she was a
regular on the show back in the 70’s.
Plus it was
good that in “School Reunion” to see The Doctor give Sarah Jane the send off
and farewell she deserves, for those that don’t know she was dumped in the
wrong town in part 4 of ‘The Hand of Fear”, and watching it now it is quite the
emotional scene knowing that Elisabeth Sladen is no longer with us. “School Reunion” was also important as I see
it as a starting point and a tryout to see if Sarah Jane could hold her own
with the new fans and was a stepping stone in her getting her own series later
on.
One of the
best scenes that I liked in “School Reunion” for that matter the whole new
series is the reunion scene between The Doctor and Sarah Jane. The way the director set up that shot made
the scene all that memorable by placing the camera on Sarah Jane than panning
around to seeing the TARDIS and The Doctor out of focus in the background was
just perfect. Then when she turns around
and he says “Hello Sarah Jane” makes the fanboy jump up with glee at the
reunion. What was also funny was the
cat fight between Sarah Jane and Rose.
Rose was so jealous of Sarah Jane that you could see it all over
her. It really made Rose very unlikeable
and not a good part of her personality as we have seen this before and would
see again in “The Girl In The Fireplace”.
But the bickering back and forth was funny as the two companions tried
to out do the other in what they have seen with The Doctor.
The return of
and sacrifice of K-9 was one of the happy and sad moments in the show
history. You get all jazzed up to see
the old dog agin then have your emotions tug at you when je blows himself up to
save the universe. At least The Doctor
builds Sarah Jane a new model before he leaves.
It was good to see Mickey have a better part and it was funny to see him
realize that he is the metal dog. It was
funny seeing him having that revelation and it was good to see him have the
courage to finally take that trip in the TARDIS at the dismay of Rose. I would be remiss to not mention how good
Anthony Head’s performance was. His
performance as Mr. Finch was really good and he was so evil and looked evil
from the moment you saw him. His
performance was great especially when he had the showdown with The Doctor at
the pool. That was a pretty good confrontation
and one of the better ones during the Tennant era.
“School
Reunion” is one of my favorite stories of the new series and in fact all of
Doctor Who and is a special one for the fans of the classic series as one of
the best companions and most beloved makes her triumphant return to Doctor Who.
Grade A
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