Review of K9 S01E01 - Regeneration

This is the first episode of the Australian TV show based on the beloved Doctor Who character K9. Unfortunately, due to rights issues, there are no other callbacks to the original series.

The Story
The episode starts with a futuristic and fun intro, blending technology with dog-themed elements, immediately setting the tone for a light-hearted sci-fi show.

Two mysterious men in dark suits deliver a package to Professor Alistair Gryffen, who is wearing a strange helmet. He dismisses them curtly, revealing his edgy personality.

Meanwhile, in a futuristic London (where all the present London landmarks are gone), an edgy teen hacks into a floating screen above the river, and changes it to display:

"NOBODY THINKS
AND
NOBODY GETS HURT
A MESSAGE FROM
STARK REALITY"

Jorjie, a girl who admires his rebellious act, approaches him and offers her help. Starkey insists that STARK REALITY works alone. But then she reveals she knows his real name: Starkey. The edgy boy gets shocked that someone was able to connect that STARK REALITY was a guy called Starkey. Their conversation is cut short by the arrival of Robot Police, but Starkey manages to escape with Jorjie, leading to an exciting chase through dark, foggy alleys.

The boy tries to hack a door. but his equipment breaks. The girl then just opens the door that was not looked at in the first case. This show manages to mix humor and actions flawlessly.

The building turns out to be the home of Professor Gryffen, who is conducting strange experiments. A portal opens, and the Professor gets excited upon seeing a woman and two kids, but Starkey accidentally disrupts the experiment by tripping on a wire, causing the portal to close and trapping them with four menacing aliens. Starkey gets trapped in a corner by one of the aliens and the alien starts to spit on him! ewwwww...

Just when things seem dire, K9 emerges from the portal and saves the day by fighting off the aliens. However, K9's power levels are low, and he is set to self-destruct. Starkey feels guilty and tries to save K9 only to witness K9's heroic sacrifice, which stops the aliens but also results in K9's destruction.

The story takes another twist as more aliens appear, and a new edgy character, Darius, arrives and flirts with Jorjie. But Jorjie is not impressed by our edgy new guy. I think she likes the other edgy guy. K9 then miraculously regenerates into a new, slick form.

The Robot Police came back and they arrested Starkey. His location was revealed to be due to a tip-off from Darius. Starkey gets imprisoned in a white version of The Matrix (the movie not the Gallifreyan one). But there is hope. Jorjie sneaks into the police station wearing cool sunglasses that allow her to communicate with Starkey. She informs him about the department's imprisonment of aliens, even friendly ones. This cool act by Jorjie ends with a comedic moment as Jorjie's mom calls to check if she is at ballet class and if she is wearing her new pink dress.

During the search for Starkey, the alien monsters antecedently release him from the White Matrix, only for him to be trapped in a dark and dirty cell. Once again, the alien spits on Starkey, adding to the gross-out factor.

The commotion in the cell draws the attention of a Robot Police guard, who comes to investigate. The alien attacks the guard, creating a distraction that allows Starkey to slip out of the cell and escape.

Starkey makes his way back to Professor Gryffen, where K9 scans him. However, the alien spit causes K9 to become confused and mistakenly identify Starkey as an alien. In a tense moment, Starkey insults K9 by calling him a dog, which somehow resets K9's system, allowing him to recognize Starkey again.

A woman from the department arrives, inquiring about Starkey and K9. The Professor and Darius cover for them, refusing to give them up.

The episode ends with our three young heroes discussing their next steps. The fate of the alien monsters remains unclear. Were they imprisoned by the Robot Police, or will they return in future episodes? We'll have to wait and see.

My Thoughts
This show suffers from poor acting and a plot that struggles with its tone, oscillating between serious and silly. It may appeal to die-hard Doctor Who fans who have exhausted all other content and enjoy campy sci-fi. I find it best suited for times when I'm too tired for more engaging shows.

😐6️⃣ = NOT ENJOYABLE!

Barking through time and space, one adventure at a time!

Following plenty of brainwashing and threats of having my Doctor Who Fan Licence revoked, I decided it was time to tackle this infamous, unofficial Australian Doctor Who spin-off K-9, which aired 26 episodes in 2010 and follows the adventures of the Doctor’s robotic canine friend. The series mixes live action with animation and sees John Leeson return as the voice of K9.

“THE BEGINNING OF A TRAINWRECK!”

The opening credits sequence is very Naughties in style, and I sort of like it.

The writing is really simple—introduce the characters and how they meet K9, include an alien danger, and then get to the end—and while it certainly sets things in motion, it does next to nothing to actually develop the characters. The dialogue is clunky too.

What the heck is going on in the second half, in the weird white realm? It’s as if the episode runs out of plot after 10 minutes.

I can already tell from the first few scenes that the acting is going to be horrendous. The two leads, Starkey (henceforth Bad Starkey, in contrast with the good one, Dan) and Jorjie (Forgettable Girl), are pretty atrocious, and the adult actors are hardly any better. This Professor Gryffen type (Dull Professor) is supposed to be a slightly nutty professor (sort of a take on Professor Marius, who created K9 in the parent show; see The Invisible Enemy), but the performance is too understated to hit that mark.

The Darius kid (The Annoying Kid) is already grating in his introductory scene.

John Leeson seems to put real effort in as the voice of K9, and he’s never bad when doing it. Too bad that the new K-9 model introduced halfway through is pretty bad (why did they add those bunny ears?).

There are these monsters (Jizen), but there is no explanation as to what they are, where they come from, or what they want.

The production is very shoddy. The editing and camera work in the monster attack scenes look horrible. The incidental music plays way too loud all the time.

This isn’t a good start to the series, but it’s not completely hopeless either. It's never funny or exciting, and it’s not boring even if there isn’t a lot going on.

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.

I went into this skeptical but open-minded.  Sarah Jane Adventures were clearly intended for a younger audience but is still pretty damn good and fun even as an adult.  The K9 series is that kind of lowest common denominator of kids TV.  It's made on the cheap, doesn't have a ton going on story-wise, and just kind of goes through the basic beats of a story without much creativity.  It reminds me a lot of the shows I used to watch in Canada on our public broadcasting network - fine content for children, but nobody else.  I don't think even kids would find this show that funny, especially these days.  This is easily the worst Doctor Who spin-off.

It is alarmingly hilarious how bad K9 looks when compared to his original appearance.  There is some potential with these characters but all the K9 elements of the show feel like a cheesy gimmick.  I worry what the rest of the show could possibly be like because rather than improve, I feel like the low effort sense I got out of Regeneration would have only gotten worse over time.  This at least had a bit of fun in the silliness of the K9 reveal.  What more could a show possibly offer so thoroughly divorced from the rest of the franchise?  K9 is not the kind of character that could ever carry a series on his own.  People barely seem to like him as a companion, even though I think he can be fun in the right context.  This is the opposite of the right context, though.

I was pleasantly surprised at how not completely terrible this was. However, I had rock bottom expectations, so that's not saying much.

I felt that it was editted really weirdly, with strange cuts and time skips. Some of the special effects are truly awful, with monsters warping around strangely. I don't love the new K9, and I think its newfound ability to fly is stupid.

The plot has some interesting ideas, and this is certainly not boring.