The Sarah Jane Adventures: The Gift

The final story of this series doesn't start off so well.


There's an obese kid being chased by our heroes. Obesity, as you know, is not something you should poke fun at kids for.

Rani: "He's just a kid! What does he want with a… what was is called?"

Luke: "Matter Compressor."

Clyde: "Well - maybe he wants some matter compressed."

However, everyone knows that in this show, obese people are always evil Slitheen who must be stopped, not that that's the sort of message you would want to send into the nation's playgrounds either…

Despite this, our heroes are amazed when said big kid turns out to be a Slitheen zombie, as usual.


No-one even mentions the poor kid who has died to provide the body.

The Slitheen actually get defeated in the opening minutes by the Blathereen. These are two good aliens voiced with unusual difficulty by Simon Callow and Miriam Margoyles.

The helpful Blathereen then politely invite themselves over to Rani's house for dinner. At this farcical situation, a comedy of manners ensues, strangulated as always by so much incidental music. Trying to filter out so much interference is reminiscent of watching something on a portable TV.

At the end of the evening, the friendly aliens give Sarah a rackweed plant as a gift, promising that it can solve the Earth's famine problem. (which I'd always thought was more about mankind's lack of organisation) Sarah's reluctance to accept prompts her to wonder if she's actually being careful, or just plain prejudiced.

This in turn then gives way to a more solid storyline about said plant infecting the Earth's atmosphere and proceeding to destroy the environment. It's a New Zealand customs official's worst nightmare. It goes without saying that these new nice aliens turn out to actually be malicious ones.

It all finishes with K-9, Clyde and Rani realising that the plant can handily be destroyed by sound, and Mr Smith somehow retuning London's smoke-alarms, clock radios, car alarms, even microwaves etc. to that frequency. Yes, once again they have a machine that just undoes everything for them.

Mr. Smith: "I am now linking to all electrical devices in the area invaded by the rackweed, and retuning them to replicate the bell's frequency."

How does he do that? I mean I know that Mr. Smith is an alien computer an'all, but still, just how does he retune the alarm frequency of all the microwave ovens in London?

Furthermore, why didn't the aliens just release the plant into the wild themselves? Why go through that whole difficult charade of having dinner with, and talking Sarah into, accepting the plant as a gift? All this and cool Clyde's out-of-character theft of K-9, and "Go" dance.

It all adds up to the worst full-length story this season, particularly because of the ending, in which the aliens break wind so violently that they literally explode their brown innards all over the cast.


Since the last story of each series usually features the return of the aliens from the opening one, I had been expecting the Judoon to come back. Now of course I wish that they had.

Silly me, I guess I forgot about this season's actual opener, specifically that awful sketch on Comic Relief…

Sorry guys, but I didn't think it finished so well either.