This is the point where my Doctor Who pilgrimage goes totally loopy. I know I’ve done straight to video fan productions from the mid-90s, but somehow Australia’s Network Ten / non-BBC approved K-9 spin off feels a step even further removed from the original source material.

In episode one of K-9 we meet some teenagers and an old professor from an alt-reality dystopian future version of London which, baring from stock footage of the city, looks nothing like the UK and is populated with entirely posh white “Londoners” with Australian tinged accents. These characters are all built on well known archetypes (dotty professor, Hermione Granger, streetwise boy, uncool “nice” boy) and very little is done to flesh them out. It makes me feel so blessed for the brilliant work done on The Sarah Jane Adventures with Clyde, Luke and Rani.

The episode’s structure is all over the place. It starts and ends in what feels like moments, with one shallow concept introduced after another and no significant feeling of importance, depth or jeopardy occurring at any point.

Our two teenage protagonists wander from the robot policed streets of future London into the professor’s house for no discernible reason. They then spoil the professor’s experiment at the critical moment he was about to bring his family back from the dead. Boring alien menaces arrive as a result of the spoiled experiment. Then K-9 suddenly appears from nowhere to save the day, blows up, then reappears with an, admittedly cute, new “cool” and “updated” look.

The writers simultaneously give themselves too much to do in this initial episode and fail to do anything at all within the running time. I’m bracing myself for viewing the rest of this series.

The upside is that series three The Sarah Jane Adventures from around the same time suddenly had K-9 again which suggests some deal was worked out between Bob Baker and the BBC. Lucky John Leeson!

Given Doctor Who’s long history and multiple rights owners for various characters and concepts, it’s a wonder that there are not more examples of unofficial spin offs like these. I’m surprised and relieved.