More than just an impression-episode 3

Chris has released the third and final episode in the first series of his podcast, ‘more than just an impression‘.

The podcast is run by actor and Impressionist Chris Walker-Thomson, who interviews other well-known talented individuals who continue the legacies of big stars no longer with us.

In episode 3, he talks to the brilliant writer and actor, Sadie Miller, about playing the role of Sarah Jane Smith for Big Finish Productions, a role previously played by her late mother, Elisabeth Sladen… and much more!

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Book Review-Elisabeth Sladen’s autobiography

I can’t be critical about this book. Lis was a lovely, affectionate person who touched the heart of everyone she met and, everyone she didn’t. I remember hearing that she was going to be in the series 2 episode, school reunion. Despite never having seen an episode with Sarah Jane in, I knew who she was. Sarah Jane is the definitive companion.

Sadly, Elisabeth died in April 2011. Even now, a few months away from the anniversary, it still feels fresh and somehow unreal. It isn’t just the older viewer who has lost someone; it’s also the millions of younger viewers that knew her from The Sarah Jane Adventures.



The role of Sarah-Jane Smith is arguably her most famous. The book charts her early life in Liverpool, as well as her career on the stage, her break into TV and radio, her marriage and motherhood, and her return to the Doctor Who family, in 2006. Every tale is recounted in glorious detail. It’s easy to see how children have always been spellbound by Lis.

She is also warm and praising about her Doctor’s, although Tom Baker comes across slightly better than Jon Pertwee. She then praises her later Doctor’s, David Tennant and Matt Smith, as well as the young cast of The Sarah Jane Adventures.
This is a brilliant book, with a lovely message from her daughter and a foreword by David Tennant.
Russell T Davis summed it up best when he said, “The universe was lucky to have Sarah Jane Smith; the world was lucky to have Lis.”

Elisabeth Sladen: the autobiography, is published by Aurum Press and costs £18.99

Listen to our review of the final series of The Sarah Jane Adventures

Review-Doctor Who: The BBC Radio Episodes

Here’s a beautiful box-set of BBC radio plays. So beautiful in fact, I almost didn’t open it.

It’s a collection of radio adventures; there are three different Doctors, the 3rd, 4th and 6th.

The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space

These are 3rd Doctor stories which feature Jon Pertwee, Elizabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney.

Neither story really works that well and they introduce an extremely annoying, new companion.

In N-Space we meet the Brigadier’s uncle, in an awful ghost tale.
The performances are strong, but the scripts aren’t that great. You can make bad audio out of a good script, but you can’t make good audio out of a bad script. It does, however, try to capture that era of Doctor Who, which even though it failed, was an interesting experiment and given the recent passing of Nicholas Courtney, it was great to hear him again

Doctor Who and the Pescatons

This is a fun little tale, which features the 4th Doctor and Sarah Jane. The Doctor and Sarah are battling monsters, that are bringing panic, to the streets of London. This is less than an audio play and more of an audiobook, with Tom Baker narrating and Liz Sladen throwing in the odd comment. It’s a fun story, but I couldn’t help but feel that it would have suited Patrick Troughton’s 2nd Doctor better.

Exploration Earth

This is the real clunker in this box set. It features the 4th Doctor and Sarah Jane investigating the start, of life on Earth, only to run into the Megaron Lord of Chaos. The performances feel a little “phoned in”.

Whatever Happened To… Susan?

This is a tongue-in-cheek tale of what Susan did after she left the TARDIS. Jane Asher takes over from Carol Anne Ford, as Susan and is talking to a documentary crew, about her life after leaving the TARDIS.

There is some laugh out loud moments here, including her tale about how The Doctor gets younger and younger with each regeneration and how companions fell in love with him.

It’s an amusing story that runs at about 30 minutes, but it completely contradicts continuity. If you’re willing to switch your brain off and just listen, then you’ll have an amazing time, if you get bogged down with continuity, you won’t enjoy it.
I couldn’t help but wish that it was a proper, serious audio drama, with Carol Anne Ford reprising the role of Susan and telling the tale. Done seriously, this could have been a brilliant audio drama

Slipback

Now, this was the first Doctor Who story made for radio and was broadcast during the show’s enforced hiatus, in 1985.
This was a very Douglas Adams story – I could imagine Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect in this. This isn’t a great story; the computer is annoying but likeable. The performances of Colin Baker and Nicola Bryant are quite good and you get a foreshadow of the chemistry that would later work so well on Big Finish.

It’s a good enough box set with a few decent tales, but also with a few poor episodes. I’d say this is one for true, die-hard Doctor Who fans. Viewers of the new series will get very little for money.


Episode 20: K-9 and Company

In which Martyn and Gerrod look at the 1981 pilot for K-9 and Company.

God help us all.

K-9 and Company is a one-episode television pilot, for a proposed 1981 television spin-off of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It features former series regulars Sarah Jane Smith, an investigative journalist played by Elisabeth Sladen, and K9, a robotic dog voiced by John Leeson. Both characters had been companions of the Fourth Doctor, but they had not appeared together before. The single episode, “A Girl’s Best Friend”, was broadcast by BBC1 as a Christmas special on 28 December 1981, but was not taken up for a continuing series.

“A Girl’s Best Friend” is set in the fictional English village of Moreton Harwood in 1981. In the programme, Sarah and K9 investigate the disappearance of Brendan Richards (Ian Sears), the ward of Sarah’s Aunt Lavinia (Mary Wimbush), in the wake of increasing reports of witchcraft.

Under a different production team, the overall concept of a Sarah Jane and K9 series did eventually come to fruition: The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–2011), featuring both of these key characters and actors (though K9 and Leeson only appear in some episodes).

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