The Sarah Jane Adventures “The Gift Part 1”

It’s important to remember that “Slitheen” is the name of a family, not a species, so other puffy, baby-faced things that come from that world might not be Slitheen necessarily.

That’s something worth mentioning for this one.

After an opening where our heroes are chasing a chubby kid through a warehouse, I think to myself this could be a Stephen King story where some would-be bullies are chasing a protagonist.  But this is Sarah Jane’s show, so the chubby kid must be an alien.

He’s a Slitheen.  There’s two because apparently there’s always more of those bozos, and they have some gadget that will shrink the Earth down into a diamond because the Slitheen are universally dicks.  The sonic lipstick won’t work, and summoning K9 to blow the thing up doesn’t work because the baddies take Rani hostage.

But then two orange-colored aliens calling themselves the Blathereen show up, disable the machine, and take the Slitheen away.  These guys seem friendlier and want to make Sarah Jane their ambassador.  She’s a little skeptical.  So are the boys, especially Clyde.  Rani, however, thinks it wouldn’t hurt to trying trusting them.

That means having the two Blathereen, a married couple, over for dinner.  Clyde’s a good cook.  And the Blathereen have a gift, some plant called the Rakweed.  The aliens insist it will save billions of lives, and Mr. Smith says it is harmless.

As it is, there’s a big test the next day, and while Luke and Rani are ready for it, Clyde not so much, so he swipes K9 for help.  Mr. Smith sees this, but he opts to keep quiet because he’d rather like it if the dog went away for a while.

Well, this seems like a harmless scenario.  When is the other shoe going to drop?

Oh, the Rakweed gave off some bad CGI spores.  Luke inhales some the next day and gets sick…for the first time in his life.  He’s not supposed to get sick.  It turns out the Rakweed spores are deadly to humans.  Oh, and the Rakweed is growing everywhere, even at the school where Rani, Clyde, and K9 are.

Man, you just can’t trust blobby, baby-faced things.