We’re now two full stories into this season of Sarah Jane Adventures, and so far I’m enjoying it as much as I did season 1.

The Last Sontaran was a nice follow-up to this year’s Sontaran Stratagem 2-parter in Doctor Who, with Sarah Jane and co stumbling upon the sole survivor of that fleet, determined to take revenge and restore their honour.

I really enjoyed the idea of having one of the spin-offs directly follow on from a Doctor Who story. It was nicely executed as well since you didn’t really need to have seen the Sontaran Stratagem to understand it, but similarly, the Sontaran 2-parter in Doctor Who didn’t require you to watch the Sarah Jane story in order to get the full telling of events. I’d love to see a bit (but not a huge amount) more of this kind of cross-referencing between the shows (similar to the reference to the Trickster in Turn Left). It builds on the feeling that this is a shared universe and as long as it doesn’t start to drag down any of the shows it can be fun for those of us who’re watching everything.

The Day of the Clown was another cracking story. I hadn’t really seen Bradley Walsh as anything other than a presenter (although obviously I was aware he’d been in Coronation Street) so it was really a nice surprise to me just how good he was in the role. Especially in a role that required several different aspects with Spellman, Oddbob and the Pied Piper. Walsh played all of these brilliantly, and I barely recognised him at all as Oddbob.

This story also brought in the new girl to the team. Rani (possibly the most amusing piece of fan-baiting ever, or is it just me?) is a breath of fresh air to me. I’ve never been a huge fan of the Maria character, and at times found the close relationship they gave her and Sarah actually felt like it undermined Sarah’s relationship with Luke. Rani seems a lot more fun, and I enjoyed her tenacity as Sarah Jane desperately tried to keep her from getting sucked into their world of aliens and monsters.

If I had one complaint its that this story brought back up the issue regarding the public’s awareness of aliens. Rani made it clear that if she started talking about them, no one would believe her. For the sake of argument, I’m going to assume that these episodes are taking place prior to The Stolen Earth (although the gap between the two which had Maria settle into her new life in the States may be at odds with this), but there’s at least the issue of the Sycorax spaceship a few Christmases ago, the Racnoss Christmas Star, 5 million Cybermen invading Earth, Daleks wiping out people on Canary Warf (although the Doctor nipped that in the bud quite quickly) and The Toclafane (although that particular Prime Minister was a nutter, so probably not hard to discredit them).

Its a problem with Torchwood as well. Whereas the parent show has moved on to a point where most people know that aliens are out there and have a tendancy to turn up at Christmas and trash London, both spin-offs still have the general public oblivious to aliens (heck, Torchwood also has the whole argument of exactly how secret the organisation is supposed to be - they clearly took a leaf out of the 70s/80s UNIT manual for running a secret organisation). Its something that’s quite jarring when moving between the shows, no more so than in light of the Stolen Earth. If no one in Sarah Jane Adventures will believe Rani about aliens, what exactly were they doing when Earth was moved to the Medusa Cascade and humanity was enslaved by Daleks before being towed back to our usual solar system by a Police Box? The shows may try to be consistent within themselves, but in the larger scheme of things it falls apart horribly.

However that’s a side issue. When I’m just looking at the Sarah Jane Adventures, the simple fact is that I love this show. Yes, its supposed to be for kids, but frankly I’ve always found it incredibly consistent and enjoyable. And season 2’s off to a cracking start. Now I just hope we get a full third season next year. With only the specials from Who, and 5 episodes of Torchwood, it’d be nice if one of the shows got a full run.

I loved season 1 of Sarah Jane Adventures, so I’m really looking forward to this.   And after how good the Sontaran Stratagem was, I’m really pleased to see them back already

Well, the first full story of the first season of Sarah Jane Adventures finished this week, and I loved it. Unlike Torchwood, which (while I enjoyed it) seemed to struggle to find its footing, this spin-off has hit the ground running, first with the Invasion of the Bane pilot at New Year, and now with its first 2 parter. The Slitheen were a great choice of villain to use as well. I’ve felt for a while that the new Dr Who series should maybe focus on bigging up the new monsters to create some new “big bads” instead of exclusively relying on the classic monsters (let’s see the Judoon come back a few times - they were a great concept). Having the two spin off shows strikes me as a great way to spread the load, allowing all three shows to give us recurring threats, as well as develop new monsters.

Here’s hoping SJA keeps up the momentum, but so far I’m loving it.

(As a side note, if the K9/Jetix thing falls through - here’s hoping he gets brought back into this show)