From School Reunion: 29 April 2006 This is a moment where just a single scene said it all. It is the scene where Sarah Jane Smith stumbles across the TARDIS as she creeps around Deffry Vale High School at the dead of night in search of evidence to support her suspicions that things were not quite right at the institution. The moment itself had been expertly set up in the scenes preceding it. Taking the role of investigative journalist, Sarah Jane had infiltrated the school on the pretence of writing a profile of its Head Teacher, Mr Finch. Unknown to her, The Doctor in his tenth incarnation and Rose Tyler are already undercover in the school as a teacher and 'dinner lady'. Drawn there by similar suspicions to Sarah Jane she is presented to The Doctor in his usual guise as plain John Smith. It is the classic we-know-that-he-knows-who-she-is, but we-also-know-that-she-doesn't-know-who-he-is. From then on we just want her to find out. The dialogue employed when they meet expresses untold longing in Sarah Jane for her own John Smith who left her life countless moons earlier. Toby Whithouse is responsible for the script here and it is a brilliant example of how to line the viewer up for maximum pay-off. We know it's coming, but are fearful too that it might not, all the same. When it does come, the look of shock and hope on Sarah Jane Smith's face is a fitting testament to the quality of an actor who has in previous decades gone unnoticed to some extent. It used to be fashionable to say that the point of any companion was simply to scream a lot, freeze in terror and get rescued. The performance of Elisabeth Sladen in this episode gives a lie to all that, so not only is the moment itself a satisfying pay-off, but so also is the character of Sarah Jane Smith allowed to come of age.
Hello, I'm Paul Hammans, terminal 'Who' obsessive, F1 fan, reader of arcane literature about ideas and generalist scribbler. To paraphrase someone much better at aphorisms than I: I strive to write something worth reading and when I cannot do that I try to do something worth writing. I have my own Dr Who oriented blog at http://www.exanima.co.uk
