With his presence noticeably absent for the last few stories, this two-parter gave Luke some much-needed focus this series.
That said, I’m not entirely sure it worked. I didn’t entirely buy his falling out with Sarah Jane although the idea of Luke becoming more like a normal teenager is an interesting one that deserves a bit more focus I think. And the way he finally saved the day by tricking the Mona Lisa into summoning K9 was quite clever I thought.
There’s been a lot of chatter online rotating around the main aspect of this story. The Mona Lisa. Be it the painting itself, and whether or not the story contradicts City of Death, or the portrayal of Mona Lisa the episodes attracted a fair amount of discussion.
For the first, I don’t see that it did contradict City of Death. We know that Leonardo painted seven copies of the painting for Count Scarlioni. There’s nothing to say that all seven weren’t painted with the tainted paints and wouldn’t have reacted in the same way once they got close to the Abomination. We never saw the blank canvas of the painting either, so its quite possible “This is a fake” was still written underneath.
I loved Suranne Jones as the Mona Lisa. Personally I loved that they played the character completely against expectation. It was a great laugh and very entertaining 
I also liked the visual of the characters trapped in the paintings. It was similar to what was done in Fear Her, although I think here the idea was a bit more successful, and removing Sarah Jane from events to allow the kids to shine made for a nice change of pace.
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