Monday 1 January 2007

The Sarah Jane Adventures: Invasion of the Bane

Where Kelsey Went

New Beginnings, Episode 6
Sunday 19 May 2024.

We bring our first season to a close with the new beginning of Doctor Who’s most successful spinoff, in which a beloved TV heroine from our childhood was given one last chance (or twenty-seven last chances) to save the world.

Notes and links

Kelsey Hooper is played by fifteen-year-old Porsha Lawrence-Mavour, who had been in Stars in Their Eyes Kids at the age of nine. You can see her in action here.

Nathan mentions a couple of children’s TV shows which are formal influences on The Sarah Jane Adventures, including Chocky (1984) and Children of the Stones.

Adam alludes to a theory by friend-of-the-podcast Gary Russell, which he outlined in a tweet in 2022: the third bedroom was actually locked, bolted and then the door bricked over, making it airtight. Behind it was Kelsey. “I wonder whatever happened to her?” SJ would ask - and Luke and Maria would look at each other knowingly… and say nothing. It was “the pact”.

Wētā Workshop in Wellington, New Zealand, were the design studio for the gorgeous miniatures in Thunderbirds Are Go (2015) (among countless other things).

Flight Through Entirety did its first commentary on the first Doctor Who spinoff K9 and Company (Episode 76: K9 and Commentary), in which Todd first notes writer Terence Dudley’s relentless obsession with phones and doors.

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Nathan is on X as @nathanbottomley, Todd is @toddbeilby, Richard is @RichardLStone, and Adam is @adamrichard. The 500 Year Diary theme was composed by Cameron Lam.

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And more

You can find links to all of the podcasts we’re involved in on our podcasts page. But here’s where we’re up to right now.

Flight Through Entirety will be back at Christmas in July to discuss The Return of Doctor Mysterio; after that, we’ll be covering Peter Capaldi’s final year on the show, concluding with Twice Upon a Time at Christmas.

The next episode of The Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire will be out on Monday. In it, we talk about Steven Moffat’s return to the show in Boom. We’ll be doing weekly episodes until the end of Season 1 of the new era.

Last week saw the release of Episode 3 of the new Avengers commentary podcast, The Three Handed Game, featuring our very own Brendan and Richard, as well as frequent-guest-of-the-podcast, Steven B. In Episode 3, they conclude their Reach for the Stars triptych, with a Cathy Gale episode called The White Dwarf.

In news just to hand, Brendan and Bjay have just dropped another episode of The Bjay BJ Game Show. This month, they played Cat Quest, a cheerful and cartoony action RPG featuring an alarming number of cat-based puns.

And finally there’s our Star Trek commentary podcast, Untitled Star Trek Project, featuring Nathan and friend-of-the-podcast Joe Ford. This week, we watched one of Nathan’s all-time favourites, a relaxed and genuiunely funny episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation called Disaster.