The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Eternity Trap

Just for a change, these people are not zombies.

They are not possessed, they share no group-consciousness, and they are the same people on the inside as they appear to be on the outside. They just happen to stand like this - motionless, silent and staring - for a over a minute because they each individually choose to.

(a couple of them do get fleeting lines of dialogue)

Well, that's a relief.

Broadcast in the week following Halloween, The Eternity Trap is a well-written, well-directed and well-played science-fiction ghost story, but without much of an ending. As usual, Sarah handily builds a machine which just undoes everything that's happened so far.

Sarah: "The accelerator was synchronised with Darkening's energies. When the magnetic field destroyed him, it must have overloaded sending Professor Rivers back."

Clyde: "Well what about all the others?"

Sarah: "They wanted to be released. [At] least their nightmare is over. Well I can't leave Darkening's device as it is. Have to take care of it, permanently." (PRESSES A BUTTON ON HER LIPSTICK WHICH DESTROYS IT)

Rani: "What about Lord Marchwood and his children? Do you think they found each other?"

Sarah: "I don't know."

Yep, that wraps up everything. Including whatever Professor Rivers remembers.

In continuity news, as well as the return of Rivers from the Pharos Institute, K-9, Luke and Mr Smith take the episode off, while Sarah doesn't seem to remember The Ghosts Of N-Space, which I think is a bit of a shame.

Sarah's successful conversion of Toby's belief in ghosts into a belief in aliens seems, well, a little closed-minded, as does her blind faith in science. A better ending would have been for them both to have learnt something from each other.

Still, there are funny moments in this, even if the incessant music does still try its darndest to stop them.