So, Sarah Jane left the Fourth Doctor before K9 was introduced and K9 left the Doctor light-years away from Earth, and yet, in The Five Doctors (and apparently from that point on) K9 is with Sarah Jane. How/When/Why/Where?
Sarah Jane and K9?
- Thread starter Turtletrekker
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They made a pilot for a spinoff, which eventuated into a tv movie.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-9_and_Company
Not really part of your question, but in the Gallifrey Audio stories, Leela's K9 and Romana's K9 were always bumping heads about who is the superior K9.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-9_and_Company
Not really part of your question, but in the Gallifrey Audio stories, Leela's K9 and Romana's K9 were always bumping heads about who is the superior K9.
The fourth Doctor made K9 mark III and sent him as a gift for Sarah. It seems only fair after Leela and Romana get one - it means he ensured that each of his female companions ended up with a K9.
^Thanks, Guy!
So, in the audio, did John Leeson provide both voices?
So, in the audio, did John Leeson provide both voices?
And the whole episode is on YouTube!
I watched the first fifteen minutes, which answered all of my questions. Despite the name of the show, it was obviously meant to be Sarah Jane-centric. I think I already like it better than the eventual Sarah Jane spin-off that we did get. I've watched the Brigadeer, Tenth Doctor and Eleventh Doctor/Jo Grant episodes of Sarah Jane Adventures for the guest stars, but it's generally a little too Saturday morning cartoon for my taste.
I watched the first fifteen minutes, which answered all of my questions. Despite the name of the show, it was obviously meant to be Sarah Jane-centric. I think I already like it better than the eventual Sarah Jane spin-off that we did get. I've watched the Brigadeer, Tenth Doctor and Eleventh Doctor/Jo Grant episodes of Sarah Jane Adventures for the guest stars, but it's generally a little too Saturday morning cartoon for my taste.
Interesting fact. The only reason Elisabeth Sladen agreed to do the show is because she was promised a series about Sarah, and was somewhat disappointed to find out that she was second place to a metal dog. Of course, she'd signed up to it by then so could do nothing about it. It was a very rushed production and failed to spawn a proper series, which is possibly a good thing in hindsight. Although I wouldn't have minded seeing more.
As it was meant to be, its quite a bad pilot for a new show set in the Who-niverse. You really don't get a lot of background for Sarah or what this K9 dog is or who this Doctor person is.
As it is, I suppose I see it as the first true Christmas special - in the sense of being a holiday episode, outside of the main body of the show, like the NuWho Christmas specials nowadays are, really. With that frame of mind, you could just see it as a gift the Fourth Doctor sent her before taking a "vacation" in Brighton at season 18.
As it is, I suppose I see it as the first true Christmas special - in the sense of being a holiday episode, outside of the main body of the show, like the NuWho Christmas specials nowadays are, really. With that frame of mind, you could just see it as a gift the Fourth Doctor sent her before taking a "vacation" in Brighton at season 18.
I figure just about everyone in England, certainly in the show's target audience, already knew those things.
And that's part of its failing. It was only marketed at fans of the parent show, with no attempt to make it accessible to the casual viewer, which as a pilot for a new series it should have been, and as a Christmas special it should have been.
But that's my point. In England at the time, everyone knew about Doctor Who. It was a British institution. Saying they should've marketed it to BBC viewers who weren't familiar with the Doctor is like saying that a Christmas special should be marketed to people who aren't familiar with Santa Claus. A show isn't doing anything wrong by failing to target a demographic that essentially does not exist.
Just a word of warning. Given the chance, Chris would argue that the sky is red and not blue if given the chance.
Doctorwhovian
Fleet Captain
There's also a K9 TV series in Australia but it's not really part of the "Whoniverse" (Who/SJA/Torchwood) but I think was developed independently by K9's creators. I'm not even sure what K9 mark (There are four) it's supposed to be, or even if it's any of them. Generally it's considered pretty bad.
K9 receives a redesign for it too.
K9 receives a redesign for it too.
But Christopher is absolutely right.
The rest of you are looking at this in American terms. Context is everything. England in the 1980s was a very small island with a big population and only three television stations (two of which were part of the non-commercial, publically owned broadcaster). Proportionately, a much larger sub-section of the population can be expected to have watched the same things as each other, on account of there not being anything else to watch. Comapre this to America where the population is much more diverse and much more widely spread geographically. So there's no comparison.
It's not unreasonable at all for them to have "assumed" everybody knew Doctor Who and its characters already. Now, as the eighties rolled on, that proposition became much more dangerous, but in 1982, when the K9 spin-off was made, it was safe to call it a public institution that everybody knew and intimiately understood. .
He's implicitly supposed to be a regenerated version of the K9 Mark I who stayed on Gallifrey with Leela. They can't say it outright, though, since they don't have the rights to anything but the K9 character himself, and thus can't explicitly mention the Doctor or Gallifrey or any of that. They couldn't use his original design either, since the BBC staff were behind that, although he did appear briefly in his original form before being blown up and reconstituting himself in a new form (implicitly thanks to a Gallifreyan technology upgrade) -- and with a convenient memory wipe so he can't mention anything about his past.
Syfy did a Christmas marathon of the whole series 2 years ago, and yes, it was pretty bad. Here's the thread about it:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?p=7399825#post7399825
(Which wasn't easy to track down, since TrekBBS's search function can't handle a 2-letter term like "K9." Are they ever going to upgrade that?)
^Okay, that's a fair point. The older viewers would probably remember, but younger fans might've felt left out.
^ Good point DrFrankhamstien. That *is* a bit of a stretch.
Sarah is widely seen as being one of classic Who's more popular assistants, but I agree that it was a dangerous precedent, and a sign of things to come for the series, for them to assume that the television audience would all know her after five years away from the fold.
One behind-the-scenes story is that actress Elisabeth Sladen was initially contacted about coming back to help "bridge" the regeneration from Tom Baker to Peter Davison, the producer having become concerned that there were too many fresh faces in the supporting cast, but when the actress replied in the negative they pitched a spin-off at her instead.
Either way, your point certainly still stands.
Sarah is widely seen as being one of classic Who's more popular assistants, but I agree that it was a dangerous precedent, and a sign of things to come for the series, for them to assume that the television audience would all know her after five years away from the fold.
One behind-the-scenes story is that actress Elisabeth Sladen was initially contacted about coming back to help "bridge" the regeneration from Tom Baker to Peter Davison, the producer having become concerned that there were too many fresh faces in the supporting cast, but when the actress replied in the negative they pitched a spin-off at her instead.
Either way, your point certainly still stands.
I suppose it could be that Sarah Jane/Sladen was so popular that her profile would still have been pretty high even five years after the fact -- which would be why they wanted her in a spinoff in the first place. I suppose we'd have to know something about her standing in the media at the time, whether she was still talked about and interviewed and such. Anyone have access to an archive of the Radio Times or something from the era?
