Sarah Jane Adventures Episodes 9 & 10

Definitely another one of the better Sarah Jane Adventures, particularly of this season. This story focused on the way-back-story of Sarah Jane, and the mysterious cicumstances surrounding her parents. That is, their death in a car crash, and their abandonment of baby Sarah Jane right before that. Sarah Jane + crew find a rift that opens to that fateful day in 1951, which would cause Sarah Jane to cross her own timeline and possibly rewrite history. But it is a trap by the Trickster (last seen in S1's Whatever happened to Sarah Jane? story), who is trying to take advantage of a weak spot in the space time continuum. Or something. Explanations get fuzzy at that point. Sarah does indeed succumb to her "temptation", opting to save the parents she never really knew. But then history is rewritten and 2008 is replaced with a post-apocalytic wasteland of human slaves overseen by the (also slave) Graske assistant of the Trickster. Clyde and Rani are immune from the temporal changes because of the alien "box" that protected Maria in the last Tricker story. They make a deal with the Graske and he lets them help Sarah Jane & Luke in 1951, although really all Rani does is tip Sarah Jane's hand and cause a fuss with her modern clothes (and ethnicity, but they were only slightly hinting at that). In the end, it turns out Sarah Jane's parents are smart cookies (at least the mom) and they figure out that they are the temporal nexus, and that they need to die for all of humanity to live. So they volunteer to drive to their own deaths. Which is noble, but not entirely believable - I'd have to think they might need a little more evidence than a freak storm and a mysterious visitor before volunteering to kill themselves and leave their baby an orphan. But, I realize they probably didn't have screen time to hash it over any more than they did. And they had to give Sarah Jane a no-fault option (i.e., she couldn't ask or trick her parents into dying). As every one of the SJA eps has a "human" issue to be worked out, Sarah Jane is able to achive closure with respect to her parents. They did love her, and did not willfully abandon her, and she was able to know them for a short time. Next week: The final story + Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart returns!! Tags: doctor who Mood: busy