The Sarah Jane Adventures: Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith

Another generic title, which could refer to pretty well any SJA story.

Sarah: "What are you doing here?"

Ruby: "Saving the world! All a day's work. Goodbye!"

Sarah: "No wait! Who are you?"

Clyde: "She's exactly like you."

Yes, Clyde actually does have just the one sentence from Ruby upon which to base this analysis.

Okay, so there's also a small explosion following which he sees her drive off, but it's still a pretty big leap if you ask me.

After such quick plot-setting, this story then looks to be a plodding instalment in which Ruby hilariously turns out to be just like Sarah, and indeed much of part one is accordingly slow. As Ruby's successes escalate, Sarah's mental condition does the opposite. By the cliffhanger Ruby even has Sarah's house, friends and vocation. It's identity theft to the nth degree.

Nice to see the word "Auckland" getting a mention too.

Part two is a much more complex web, with Luke, Clyde, Rani, Mr Smith and K9 all working together to spring Sarah and defeat the villain.

As is the sort of thing that happens rather a lot in modern Who, everyone on the entire planet, including you, gets attacked by holographic falling meteors. It's a ruse to make them all terrified and overload the villains' plan, just like in Death Of The Doctor three weeks earlier. Hopefully all the people with heart conditions were indoors. (I do wish they'd think these throwaway notions through a bit)

Overall, I didn't find the plot to be anything special, but compared with the usual chaos, any story which roughly holds together in SJA is guaranteed to stand out. A shame they couldn't quite figure out what to do about Sarah's son Luke.

If The Sarah Jane Adventures was this well written every week, it'd be just about okay. Not anything special, just okay.