The Sarah Jane Adventures “Revenge Of The Slitheen Part 1”

It looks like Sarah Jane’s show will be a series of two-parters, each episode running about a half hour.  Not a bad set-up.  Kinda close to the old stuff Sarah Jane used to appear in all the time.  But for now, let’s see what happens when the Slitheen infiltrate some English middle schools.

Or whatever they call them at that level of education.  I only really know the American terms.

Apparently, aliens can’t leave Sarah Jane and her neighborhood alone, so when Maria and Luke start at their new school, gaining the attention of young Clyde Langer, it should be a simple fish-out-of-water story for Luke, a genius kid who never spent any time outside of a lab prior to the pilot episode.

Small problem:  the Slitheen have infiltrated the school, wearing the skins of overweight people to do…something that won’t be good for anybody.

Now, using the Slitheen here is a lot more appropriate than it was on Doctor Who.  The whole thing with them there seemed to be that the process of compressing them into a human skin made them exceptionally flatulent.  So…lots of fart jokes.  They really overdid it when the characters first appeared, and quite frankly, the Slitheen don’t look particularly dangerous anyway.

But transfer them to what is basically a kids show, and it seems a lot more appropriate.  Granted, these Slitheen look to be a different color, and the show toned down the fart jokes, something that makes me rather pleased in the grand scheme of things.

OK, there’s also a child Slitheen in a chubby kid’s skin which means the Slitheen killed a child at some point, but that’s more implied than anything else.

Also, we now have Clyde, clearly a replacement for a character from the pilot, a neighbor girl named Kelsey who apparently wasn’t received well by test audiences.  Kelsey was a bit obnoxious and didn’t believe in any of the stuff happening right in front of her so…I am fine with that.  Clyde seems like he’ll fit in better, and Wikipedia tells me Clyde will be with the show until the very end.

Anyway, the Slitheen took over Maria, Clyde, and Luke’s school.  They serve rotten food in the cafeteria…like, visibly rotten food, and they don’t like the smell of fresh food.  Of course, it looks like there’s only about four of them involved, so why the rest of the humans running the place go along with all this, I don’t know.  Regardless, the Slitheen rebuilt a lot of schools to do…something they trick Luke into doing, and the episode ends with Sarah Jane cornered by one, Luke meeting up with the one inside the principal’s skin, and Maria and Clyde running from two more, one of which is a juvenile.

This is where experiencing lots of dangerous adventures with a certain Doctor comes in handy…