Posts Tagged ‘nikki smith’

The Poison Sky

Monday, July 6th, 2009

The poisonous Sontaran gases (creating the titular "poison sky") above Sylvia and Wilfred's street ignite as the flames from the Doctor's atmospheric converter spread globally.

“The Poison Sky” is the fifth episode of the fourth series (since revival) of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 3 May 2008. The episode features both old companion Martha Jones and the alien Sontarans. It is the second of a two part story, following “The Sontaran Stratagem”.

Plot

Synopsis

Following from the previous episode, Sylvia Noble (Jacqueline King) manages to free Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins) from the car by smashing the window with an axe. The Doctor (David Tennant) sends Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) back to the TARDIS while he sets off to figure out what the Sontarans are up to. After studying the gas, UNIT determines that it will need to reach 80% density to become lethal. Elsewhere, Martha Jones’s clone (Freema Agyeman) informs the Sontarans of UNIT’s defence systems and helps them to teleport the TARDIS to their orbiting ship. Realising that he is trapped, the Doctor attempts to goad General Staal (Christopher Ryan) into revealing their plan: Staal is smart enough not to fall prey to this ploy, but the Doctor soon works out by himself that the Sontarans plan to use the Earth for their own benefit, since they are beginning to lose their long war with the Rutans. He also tricks Staal into moving the TARDIS out of the main war room, placing Donna in a position to help.

Against the Doctor’s advice, UNIT decides to use nuclear weapons against the Sontarans; however, Martha’s clone has covertly copied the launch codes, and stops every attempt they make to fire the weapons. This in itself shows a hidden agenda, since the Doctor knows a nuclear strike would not have harmed the Sontarans in the first place. This, combined with the unidentifiable elements in the gas, suggest that the Sontarans have an interest in keeping anything from disrupting the atmospheric conversion. At the same time, the Sontarans, under Commander Skorr “the Bloodbringer” (Dan Starkey), mobilize a contingent of troops to protect the factory. With the Sontarans’ ability to jam most conventional firearms by expanding the copper-lined bullets, the UNIT troops are quickly slaughtered and the factory is secured.

Luke Rattigan (Ryan Sampson) leaves the Sontaran mothership to gather his students, explaining that he plans to have the Sontarans take them to another planet and begin the human race anew. The students merely laugh him off, even when he brandishes a gun. When he returns to report his failure, the Sontarans likewise ridicule his efforts, admitting that they had planned to kill his students and never intended to take him anywhere. Rattigan teleports back to his mansion before they can kill him, and the Sontarans lock the teleport pods behind him. Back in his own quarters, he lies sobbing on the ground.

Meanwhile, the Doctor instructs Donna on how to reopen the teleport pods. As she makes her way through the ship, UNIT begins a counterattack, loading their weapons with non-copper bullets and using the aircraft carrier Valiant to clear the gas. The counterattack is a success, and the UNIT troops are able to put the Sontarans on the defensive. The distraction allows the Doctor to make his way to the cloning room where Martha is being held. Having figured out long before that the clone wasn’t the genuine article, he severs its connection to Martha, leaving it to die. Martha convinces the clone to betray the Sontarans in its last moments, and the clone reveals that the poison gas is actually food for Sontaran clones: they are converting the planet into a giant breeding world. With Donna’s help, the Doctor is able to reactivate the teleport pods, allowing him to rescue Donna, steal back the TARDIS, and teleport into Rattigan’s mansion.

With the terraforming equipment Rattigan’s students built, the Doctor builds his own atmospheric converter, igniting the atmosphere to clear out the poison gas as shown in the picture. However, he knows the Sontarans won’t accept defeat so easily, and teleports to their ship with the converter, planning to give them the choice between retreat or death. Staal chooses the latter, content with the knowledge that the Doctor will die with them. At the last moment, Rattigan teleports himself to the Sontaran ship and sends the Doctor back to Earth, sacrificing himself to destroy the Sontarans.

With the day saved, Martha says goodbye to Donna and the Doctor in the TARDIS and prepares to head home. However, before she can leave, the TARDIS suddenly springs to life, locking the doors and piloting itself to an unknown destination as the jar containing the Doctor’s severed hand bubbles.

Continuity

  • Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart is mentioned as being “stranded in Peru”, the first explicit mention of the character in the new series. Colonel Mace refers to him as “Sir Alistair”, implying he has received a knighthood since the events of Battlefield.
  • Just as Donna moves towards the TARDIS screen while the Doctor contacts the Sontarans, Rose Tyler briefly appears on the screen, silently calling out. This follows a similar silent cameo appearance in “Partners in Crime”. The same happens in “Midnight.”
  • The Valiant, the primary setting for the climax of “The Sound of Drums” and much of “Last of the Time Lords”, is seen again in this episode when it is used by UNIT to clear the poisonous gas from the atmosphere over the ATMOS factory. It is also equipped with a scaled down version of the Torchwood weapon that destroyed the Sycorax ship in “The Christmas Invasion”.
  • As the TARDIS traps Donna, Martha, and the Doctor at the end of the episode, the Doctor’s severed hand, last seen at the beginning of “Voyage of the Damned”, can be seen in a similar state of agitation it felt when the TARDIS materialised near it in the Torchwood episode “End of Days”.
  • In addition to the Sontarans, the Rutans are mentioned for the first time in the revived series.
  • Lachele Carl reprises her recurring role as Trinity Wells, a US newsreader, seen previously in the episodes “Aliens of London”, “World War Three”, “The Christmas Invasion” and “The Sound of Drums” and in Doctor Who spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures story Revenge of the Slitheen.
  • The Doctor asks Colonel Mace, “Are you my mummy?”, while wearing a gas mask – a line spoken by gas mask-wearing characters in “The Empty Child” / “The Doctor Dances”.
  • The episode is revisited in the series four episode “Turn Left”, where Jack Harkness and the remaining Torchwood team of Gwen Cooper and Ianto Jones stop the Sontarans in a parallel timeline. Harkness is transported to Sontar while Cooper and Jones are killed destroying the Sontaran ship.
  • The finale episode “Journey’s End” features a brief flashback of Luke’s sacrifice, among others, as the Doctor remembers all of those who have died for him.
  • The Doctor doubles back from calling Martha, Donna, and himself the “old team”, and calls them the “new team”. In Series 2’s “Doomsday”, Rose proclaims that the Doctor and herself are the “old team”.
  • A single remaining Sontaran from this story is the focus of The Sarah Jane Adventures story “The Last Sontaran”.

Production

This episode and the previous episode were filmed over five weeks, beginning in September 2007. Post-production was completed a week before the first part aired.

During production, director Douglas Mackinnon intended to have the episode’s climatic scene in the TARDIS show the moveable column in the center console move up and down much more rapidly than normal. However, when attempting to accomplish this, Mackinnon ended up breaking the prop, which took thirty minutes to repair.

When interviewed on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, Catherine Tate stated that she had been filming alongside ten actors playing Sontarans for two weeks before she realised that there were actors inside the Sontaran costumes. She had assumed the Sontarans “ran on electricity”. It was not until an actor removed his helmet to reveal his real face that she realised her mistake. She stated she was “freaked out” by this and said she “nearly died”.

When the Doctor interrupts the Sontarans’ transmission, animated footage from CBeebies’s part live action, part animationeco adventure show Tommy Zoom is brought up on screen featuring the villanous Polluto disguised as a magician and the heroic Tommy and his dog Daniel as his audience. Originally, the plan was to use Shaun the Sheep, but this fell through.

As in many previous episodes of the revived series, supposed BBC News 24 footage is used featuring reports of unfolding events. However, as with the more recent appearances of such footage in Doctor Who, the channel is simply captioned on screen as ‘News 24′ devoid of the BBC logo. Since this episode was produced, the BBC News 24 channel was rebranded in real life as BBC News.

Broadcast

Unofficial overnight figures indicated that “The Poison Sky” was watched by 5.9 million viewers, giving it a 32.5% share of the total television audience. The final consolidated figure was 6.53 million viewers. It was the second most watched programme of the day, being beaten by ITV1’s Britain’s Got Talent, which got 9.12 million viewers. It was the highest rated programme on BBC1 for the day and the 18th most watched of the week. The episode received an Appreciation Index score of 88 (considered “Excellent”).

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The Sontaran Stratagem

Wednesday, July 1st, 2009

A Sontaran introduces himself to the Doctor as General Staal, "the undefeated".

“The Sontaran Stratagem” is the fourth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was broadcast on BBC One on 26 April 2008. The episode features the return of former companion Martha Jones, as well as the return of the alien Sontarans to the series. It is the first of a two part story, followed by “The Poison Sky”. This is the Sontarans’ first appearance since the 1985 Colin Baker story The Two Doctors.

Plot

Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) calls the Doctor (David Tennant) to ask for assistance during an investigation by UNIT. Minutes after the TARDIS materialises in contemporary Britain, Martha authorises the raid of an ATMOS (Atmospheric Omission System) factory. The Doctor introduces his companion Donna Noble (Catherine Tate) to Martha and UNIT; Donna instantly befriends Martha, but is concerned about UNIT’s ethics and asks the Doctor why he is associated with them; the Doctor ambiguously replies he used to work for them in the late twentieth century.

ATMOS is marketing a satellite navigation system developed by child prodigy Luke Rattigan (Ryan Sampson). The system also reduces carbon dioxide emissions to zero; UNIT requested the Doctor’s help because the technology is not contemporary and potentially alien. UNIT are also concerned about fifty-two simultaneous deaths occurring spontaneously several days before the narrative. The Doctor travels to Rattigan’s private school to investigate the system, and discovers that the episode’s events are being influenced by the Sontarans.

The Sontarans depicted in the episode are part of a battlegroup led by General Staal, “the undefeated” (Christopher Ryan). Instead of an instant invasion, they are tactically approaching an invasion with a combination of human clones, mind control, and ATMOS; Martha is captured by two of the controlled humans and cloned to provide a tactical advantage against UNIT.

A subplot depicts Donna returning to her home to warn her mother Sylvia (Jacqueline King) and grandfather Wilfred Mott (Bernard Cribbins) about the Doctor, having been advised to do so by Martha. Concerned about the implications of telling the truth, Donna reneges from warning her mother. At the end of the episode, the Doctor investigates the ATMOS device attached to Donna’s car and discovers a secondary function: the device can emit a poisonous gas. Wilfred attempts to take the car off the road, but is trapped when Staal activates all 400 million ATMOS devices installed in cars worldwide. The episode’s cliffhanger depicts Donna shouting for help while the Doctor stares helplessly at a street full of cars emitting the gas, while on their ship orbiting the planet, the Sontarans prepare themselves for battle.

Production

The episode features the return of the Sontarans, who last appeared in the 1985 serial The Two Doctors; a centric appearance by UNIT; and Martha Jones, who had last appeared in “Last of the Time Lords” and made special guest appearances in the Torchwood episodes “Reset”, “Dead Man Walking”, and “A Day in the Death.” The brief that executive producer Russell T Davies gave to writer Helen Raynor included the terms “Sontarans”, “military”, and “Martha’s back”.

Martha’s departure allowed Davies to change the character’s personality. In her reappearance, she is more mature and equal to the Doctor in comparison to falling in love in the third series. Several aspects of her character were debated: in particular, her status and reaction to Donna. Raynor elected to emphasise Martha’s medical career over her military career, and avoided a “handbags at dawn” scenario because she felt it would rehash Rose Tyler’s (Billie Piper) initial opinion of Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen) from the second series episode “School Reunion”.

The episode is the first centric appearance of UNIT since the show’s revival. Their name has changed from United Nations Intelligence Taskforce to Unified Intelligence Taskforce at the request of the United Nations, who cited the political climate and potential “brand confusion” as reasons for disassociation. The new acronym was coined by Davies after several meetings among the scriptwriters. The UNIT privates Gray and Wilson were specifically written as “alien fodder”. The episode refers to inconsistencies in dating UNIT stories when the Doctor is unsure whether he worked for UNIT in the 70s or 80s.

This episode continues the pattern of having monsters from the classic series return in the new one. Davies commented that the Sontarans were “always on his list” of villains to resurrect. The time and location of the episode was deliberately chosen because every Sontaran story except for The Invasion of Time was set on Earth.

When interviewed on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, Catherine Tate stated that she had been filming alongside ten actors playing Sontarans for two weeks before she realised that there were actors inside the Sontaran costumes. She had assumed the Sontarans “ran on electricity”. It was not until an actor removed his helmet to reveal his real face that she realised her mistake. She stated she was “freaked out” by this and said she “nearly died”.

Raynor initially envisioned the poisonous gas would be emitted by factories, but changed it in later drafts to cars for several reasons: the episode would provide social commentary and the idea of an “evil satnav system” was “much more engageable” and “irresistible”; Davies thought the concept was “so very Doctor Who“. Because the series was produced out of order, the “ATMOS” subplot was seeded in the episode “Partners in Crime”. The “fifteenth broken moon” of the Medusa Cascade is also mentioned. The Medusa Cascade was previously mentioned in “Last of the Time Lords”, “Partners in Crime”, and in “The Fires of Pompeii”. In the episode, a system installed in a UNIT jeep undramatically explodes; originally, Raynor wanted it to be a large explosion, but reduced the explosion to several sparks to reduce costs and to lampoon an action movie cliché. The opening scene, which depicts the system driving its occupant into a canal, was filmed at Cardiff’s docks. The scene was the first time a car-cannon had been used since 2005, and was required to be completed in one shot. The car fired into the canal was removed immediately afterwards to clear the shipping route.

The episode, like “Aliens of London” and “The Lazarus Experiment”, properly introduces the lead companion’s family. Unlike the Tyler or Jones families, both Sylvia Noble and Wilfred Mott had met the Doctor before (in “The Runaway Bride” and “Voyage of the Damned”, respectively), providing Raynor with an additional subplot. Expository dialogue explains Mott’s absence from “The Runaway Bride” as the character having Spanish flu. Wilfred’s positive opinion of the Doctor is different to Sylvia, who “joined a long line of mothers that don’t get the Doctor”; Davies had wanted a family member who trusted the Doctor since the show’s revival.

Despite the Sontaran’s clone culture being asserted in the classic series, “The Sontaran Strategem” is the first episode to depict cloning. Originally, all of the factory workers were to be clones, but Raynor reduced it to only Martha to solve continuity problems with the second part. The template clone was portrayed by Ruari Mears, who wore a prosthetic mask which took longer to apply than any mask he had worn. The scenes involving the cloning tank were filmed in a Welsh shampoo factory and reused a prop from “The Fires of Pompeii” as the tank which contained the clone. Davies and Agyeman enjoyed scenes set in the cloning room; Agyeman enjoyed playing an “evil companion”, who she and Davies felt made the real Martha “warmer”, and Davies thought Privates Gray and Harris discovering the tank in a darkened room was “classic Doctor Who“.

Broadcast and reception

“The Sontaran Strategem” was the most watched programme in its timeslot, with 7.06 million viewers. The episode was the second most-watched programme of the day, beaten by Britain’s Got Talent, and was the seventeenth most watched programme of the week. The episode’s Appreciation Index was 87 (considered Excellent), the highest figure recorded on its airdate.

Continuity

According to The Sarah Jane Adventures website (before the series started), the website revealed that Sarah Jane Smith was investigating ATMOS and the villainous Luke Rattigan. However, it was evident that she found out that Kaagh and his race were the ones behind the Earth burning.

Kaagh the Slayer (known as Kaagh the Shambles to Mrs Wormwood of the Bane) said that he was fighting off UNIT and the Doctor gave him his scar as a result of the fire.

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The Last Sontaran

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

As Kaagh, the last Sontaran of the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet, attempts to take Luke, Clyde, Maria and Sarah Jane captive, Maria creates a distraction by pointing to UNIT troops supposedly coming up behind Kaagh.

The Last Sontaran is the first story of Series 2 of The Sarah Jane Adventures and is a continuation of events from Doctor Who two-part story “The Sontaran Strategem” and “The Poison Sky”. The two-part story, The Last Sontaran, was broadcast on 29 September 2008; “Part One” as part of the CBBC slot on BBC One at 4.35 p.m.; “Part Two” on the CBBC Channel at 5.15 p.m..

Plot

Synopsis

Part One

Alan Jackson (Joseph Millson) is offered a job in Washington, D.C. in the United States of America, but seeks daughter Maria’s (Yasmin Paige) and ex-wife Chrissie’s (Juliet Cowan) approval before he relocates himself and Maria there.

After strange lights are sighted around the Tycho Radio Tower, Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), Luke Smith (Tommy Knight), Clyde Langer (Daniel Anthony) and Maria investigate. As shown in the picture, they discover Sontaran Commander Kaagh (Anthony O’Donnell), the only survivor of the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet which was otherwise seen to be destroyed in Doctor Who episode “The Poison Sky”. Kaagh plans to avenge his fleet by bringing Earth’s satellites down on nuclear power plants across the world thereby wiping out all of humanity with the resultant explosions.

Part Two

Failing to overpower Kaagh as he implements his plan, Sarah Jane, Luke, Clyde and Maria are saved by the arrival of Alan and Chrissie, the latter discovering the truth about Sarah Jane’s alien investigations. Chrissie knocks Kaagh unconscious by jamming the high-heel of her shoe into the probic vent on the back of his neck, but an electrical charge also knocks her out and Alan and Maria think they can pass the day’s events off to her as a dream. Luke is able to deactivate the computer Kaagh has rigged to ground the satellites and with his ship’s weapons deactivated, Kaagh is sent back to his home planet, Sontar.

Six weeks later, Alan and Maria leave for America. Chrissie reveals to Sarah Jane that she remembers everything about the Sontaran incident.

Continuity

Reference is made to the Bane seen in “Invasion of the Bane”; the Slitheen seen in Revenge of the Slitheen and The Lost Boy; the Gorgon and Alan’s being turned to stone seen in Eye of the Gorgon; the Trickster and the alternate reality seen in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?; and the Xylok, the Moon coming towards Earth and the rebooting of Mr Smith (Alexander Armstrong) as seen in The Lost Boy. Kaagh refers to the Doctor’s victory over the Sontarans in Doctor Who two-part story “The Sontaran Strategem”/”The Poison Sky” and footage of the Sontaran mothership exploding is re-used from “The Poison Sky”, marking the first time footage from Doctor Who has been used in The Sarah Jane Adventures. Kaagh is shown to bleed green blood as other Sontarans have been shown to in Doctor Who. Sarah Jane refers to her past encounters with Sontarans, alongside the Third Doctor in Earth’s relative past in Doctor Who serial The Time Warrior and alongside the Fourth Doctor and Harry Sullivan in Earth’s relative future in Doctor Who serial The Sontaran Experiment. Clyde observes that Sontarans resemble baked potatoes, an observation also made by Sarah Jane and Bea Nelson-Stanley in Eye of the Gorgon, and by Private Ross Jenkins in The Sontaran Stratagem. Sarah Jane plans to call in military organisation UNIT to defeat Kaagh, but ultimately does not. UNIT battled the Tenth Sontaran Battle Fleet in “The Sontaran Strategem” and “The Poison Sky”. Sarah Jane refers to the Sontarans’ ongoing war with the Rutans. Stating “Some people never learn”, Chrissie breaks into Sarah Jane’s house through the same window she did in Eye of the Gorgon. As Maria enters the attic to take one last look around and to say goodbye to Mr Smith, she looks to her left and sees numerous alien objects Sarah Jane has collected, including; a bottle of Bubble Shock! seen in “Invasion of the Bane”; Mr Smith’s Portable Scanner; a Sontaran gas canister and Kaagh’s gun taken from Kaagh in this story; the MITRE headset seen in The Lost Boy; a puzzle box seen in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?; and entanglement shells seen in Warriors of Kudlak.

Outside references

Clyde and Luke refer to the Battle of Waterloo and the Battle of Hoth, the latter seen in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back (1980 and 1997). Sarah Jane likens the empty observatory to deserted ship the Mary Celeste. Clyde likens Kaagh to Conan the Barbarian, calls him “Bilbo” and accuses him of having a “little man complex”. When Sarah Jane asks Mr Smith if he has acquired a sense of humor since his reboot, he replies, “I will run a diagnostics check immediately” whilst playing the sound effect associated with the Book from the television adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Chrissie refers to Sarah Jane as “Mary Jane” and “Calamity Jane”. When Alan tries to convince Chrissie that Maria is playing an alternate reality game, Chrissie compares it to the time they spent “looking for a golden rabbit” when they were dating, referring to Kit Williams’ Masquerade.

Production

Writing

Speaking to Doctor Who Magazine, writer Phil Ford claims “we haven’t seen a Sontaran like this before” and states the character “was just fantastic to write for”. Ford thinks Kaagh is “the best Sontaran that we’ve ever seen in the Doctor Who world” and describes Anthony O’Donnell’s performance as “fantastic…[making] an amazing Sontaran”. The Jacksons were written out as regulars in The Sarah Jane Adventures because Yasmin Paige left the series in order to focus on her GCSEs.

Broadcast and reception

Broadcast

“Part One” was first broadcast on BBC One at 4.35 p.m. on Monday 29 September 2008 and was repeated on the CBBC Channel at 5.00 p.m. on Saturday 4 October 2008. “Part Two” was first broadcast on the CBBC Channel at 5.15 p.m. on Monday 29 September 2008 and was repeated on BBC One at 4.35 p.m. on Monday 6 October 2008. Both episodes were made available for 21 days after first broadcast on the BBC iPlayer.

Ratings

Overnight ratings for “Part One” of The Last Sontaran indicate that 0.7 million people (0.3 million above the average 0.4 million viewers for that time slot) watched the episode on BBC One on Monday 29 September 2008, earning it a 6.3 per cent share of the television audience. The Appreciation Index for the episode was 84 – the joint highest figure on BBC One on Monday 29 September 2008.

Critical reception

Ben Rawson-Jones, Cult Editor for Digital Spy, praises The Last Sontaran for its “emotional content”, but notes that “Part Two” “disappoints in the action stakes” following “Part One”. He argues that the title The Last Sontaran nullifies any potential suspense prior to the revelation of the Sontaran as the force behind the mysterious lights, but praises O’Donnell’s performance as Kaagh as being largely responsible for making the Sontaran plot a success. He views Sarah Jane’s reaction to Maria’s news that she is leaving as “a fascinating departure from her usual maternal role to the children” and suggests this is a result of Sarah Jane having been abandoned by the Fourth Doctor at the end of Doctor Who serial The Hand of Fear. He claims Part Two has “[p]lenty of tension-free chase sequences function[ing] as meaningless padding and lessen[ing] the threat posed by Commander Kaagh”, attributing the lack of tension to “inadequate direction.” He brands Clyde and Luke as “dependable as ever” and the Jacksons as “endearing”, the latter compensating “for [Part Two's] action failings” with Maria and Alan’s departure being “well handled” and “touching” and Chrissie being “a revelation…[as] her seemingly vacuous nature has been replaced by an air of mystery.” Although Rawson-Jones notes “the subplot featuring the Sontaran-controlled Professor stalking his own daughter Lucy is rather disturbing for a CBBC show that airs at 4.35pm”, he describes the adventure as “[f]ittingly…death-free and surprisingly heartwarming.” However, he laments “that this wonderful show is not being shown in a timeslot when the whole family could sit down to enjoy it together.”

Writing for Dreamwatch, Patrick Holm describes “Part One” as “[o]verall, a good start” but argues that “[s]ome odd gaps in logic and excess runarounds make…["Part Two"] not as effective as it could have been.” Holm expresses surprise at the lack of references to the “literally world-shaking events” of Doctor Who episode “Journey’s End” which precedes this story chronologically and which saw a Dalek invasion of Earth and Sarah Jane, Luke and Mr Smith helping to defeat them and return Earth to its rightful place in space. However, he states Ford’s script for “Part One” is “enjoyable” and praises its mixing of “old and new Who mythologies” with its many “other references back to the parent series [Doctor Who]“. He also praises Ford for “giving the Sontarans a few new tricks” and notes that the effects in “Part One” indicate that the budget for The Sarah Jane Adventures has been increased. Whilst praising Knight and Langer for being “much more fluid in their movements”, Holm does not share Rawson-Jones’s appreciation for the emotional scenes in “Part One” regarding Maria’s departure and claims they lack “the resonance you might expect.” Holm does state, however, that “[t]he scenes regarding Maria’s departure are handled better…[in "Part Two"], even if some of the closing scene platitudes are a little vomit-inducing.” He cites as examples of weaknesses in “Part Two”; the ease with which Kaagh is fooled by the children; and the incredible luck Clyde has when Sarah Jane and Luke happen to be on the other side of a locked door in order to let him in thus saving him from Kaagh. He is also critical of the reuse of the threat of “something being brought crashing down to Earth…an overused plot last season” and observes that an “end of season rematch with Kaarg is unsubtly telegraphed”. However, he does states that “[t]here are some good moments [in "Part Two"], particularly as Chrissie Jackson gets more character development in one 30-second scene than she had in most of [Series One]“.

Holm likens Sarah Jane’s gang to Mystery, Inc. from Scooby-Doo and sees Kaagh as “a character somewhere between the sadistic Styre from The Sontaran Experiment and General Staal in “The Sonataran Stratagem”.” Both Rawson-Jones and Holm view Kaagh’s cloaking abilities as a “homage” to “’80s action classic” Predator (1987).

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