Well I finished it, and it only took 3 months of what felt like homework for the first 200 pages. I think we should start with the version of this review I wrote 100 pages in out of a need to vent my frustrations...

I wish I had liked this book, I could have liked this book, but little by little, small moments and inconsequential lines wore me down so I am now forced to conclude this is not particularly good.

I'll start with the biggest gripe, the characterisation of Polly, who the author chooses to write as 1.girl, 2.hot, 3.frightened, and little else. To give an example, early in the story Polly gets teleported to the middle of a cave system in total darkness and her first instinct to navigate her way out (after she has stopped being terrified) is to use a lipstick she is not currently in possession of to mark the cave walls she cannot see, and while she does come up with a viable plan soon after the moment still annoyed me, it was wholly unnecessary and made her seem stupid. Most instances that bothered me were not as notable but they were very frequent to a very frustrating degree. Even if the 60s characterised her similarly, which is a big if, this was written in the 2000s and could have shown the character a little more respect.

It's not just Polly though, it's all the women in this story. It took 70 pages to find out Shadow had shrapnel embedded in his face, he was the perspective character for the first chapter, and this is notable because at this point in the book I knew exactly which of the women in the story were hot and which were ugly and why. Every time Ben saw someone for the first time there's a comment in the narration of if he finds them attractive, and every time Polly came across one of the men there's a comment in the narration about how they find her attractive. It is so frustrating because it is so unnecessary and entirely one sided, nobody is ogling Ben, and other than Shade I don’t know if Polly found any of the men attractive

Like, I want to enjoy this book, the mystery is intriguing, I like the idea of it playing with its format in later chapters. There are moments that there's a reprieve from the constant frustrating moments and I would get into the story for a short while but then I'd get snapped out of it by some annoying line. Why have Ben make a random racist comment seemingly just so Polly can tell him he shouldn’t have said that? Why x? Why y? Why z? Please I just want to enjoy the book. I like the story underneath all of this. Please let me enjoy the book! Aaaagghhhhhh.

I wrote all that while reading the first 100 or so pages of the book, before the real meat of the plot got going. It is all very true to the frustrations I had in the those opening chapters, after that the annoying elements of the narration slow down, although do not entirely go away, to the point I can actually ignore them (perhaps because all the characters have finally been introduced to one another so the running commentary on the attractiveness of the women stopped).

Unfortunately while I stopped being actively frustrated by it, the book did not get that much better. The plot started to feel more repetitive and less interesting, but I would say my biggest problem was the characterisation.

Frankly, there are too many of them, it took until near the very end for me to even be able to name them all. There are a handful who were interesting and characters I could distinguish from the others, but that still left four or five (I honestly can’t remember) who I simply did not care about because it was impossible to get to know them and what made them distinct characters. This would potentially have been fine, background army grunts are a dime a dozen in Doctor Who as a whole, but if they're all in one group and half the them can't be trusted it’s a lot more important to be able to tell who’s who, and I couldn’t.

Of the core TARDIS team, Ben is really the only character to receive any amount of love. The Doctor is an active part of the story but most of the time what he’s doing feels at best tangential from the current focus of the plot, this is mostly fine, the Doctor not explaining themselves if par for the course, and there are certainly some action heavy sections the first Doctor can’t really participate in, so I don’t hugely begrudge the book this, Polly however… well let’s just say it doesn’t much improve on those first hundred pages. It feels at times that the author wanted to write a first Doctor and Ben story and Polly is only there out of necessity.

Let’s see, I’ve talked about the writing and characters, I suppose I should talk about the plot, the thin thin plot. Look, it's not bad, just repetitive. There are many times where the group splits up to look for something or someone, later regroup for a chapter just to split up again. It all works in the moment but by the time you finish it all just feels kind of like padding.

There is also the overarching mystery of what exactly is going on. I don't have a lot to say on that front, it's serviceable for the most part, although the resolution in the final few chapters was at times very hard to follow, characters I thought were dead in fact weren’t for no discernible reason, I won’t say anything else in an attempt to keep this spoiler free, but yeah it wasn’t great

I would take my opinions on the plot with a pinch of salt, I very much read this book in fits and starts, it took me around 3 months, and I would sometimes take breaks from it for a few weeks. It could very well be that the novel flows really well if read at a more normal pace. My thoughts on the characterisation and writing however should be taken entirely at face value though as the reason I struggled so much.

Now you may ask, why did I bother, if I disliked the book this much why didn't I simply stop reading. Well it was at least partly that I have never read a Doctor Who novel before so wanted to finish the first one I tried, but mainly I was really curious about the choose your own adventure style section I knew was towards the end, curious enough to keep me slogging through the first 200 pages.

I did really enjoy the choose your own adventure section, it flowed really well and was pretty tense throughout, I particularly enjoyed being able to get different characters perspectives on the same events. It also, mercifully, was written very differently, no annoying comments, or rather if there were I didn't notice because it's in first person and thus not outside narration, just the characters thoughts. I found myself trying to make sure I read as much of it as possible

Was it worth it? No, I waded through a whole load of rubbish to read one genuinely good section. But hey I did it, and now I can confidently say nobody else should ever read this book again. Sorry Stephen Cole I'm sure this isn't a reflection of any of your other writing, and I do mean that genuinely, I know he’s written a lot for the extended universe, so it's sort of necessary to believe it.

What is there to say, how can I put into words how much I adore this episode. I suppose the best place to start talking about it for me is the ending. My word the ending. My thoughts on the ending are endless, in my opinion the eleventh Doctor does not have more callous a moment. Locking older Amy out of the TARDIS, only to put the lock in Rory’s hand, claiming he’s giving him the choice when really he is absolving himself of the guilt. The handbots closing in on Amy insisting on their killing her as a kindness, but it's not them who kill her but the Doctor all in the name of saving her. It's heartbreaking, and these moments alone make this episode my favourite of the eleventh Doctor’s era.

Of course, none of those final moments would work without the bedrock of Amy and Rory’s relationship in this episode in particular. The episode convincingly portrays that to Rory older Amy is still his wife, her suddenly being older has no bearing on his love for her, and on Amy’s side just how much she’s missed him, he’s her first priority, and she is his, but instead of making things simpler it just makes it more complicated.

In a lot of ways this episode feels like well trodden ground, there have been many episodes where Amy and Rory’s relationship has been a if not the focus, about how they are the most important thing for each other, but at no point does this episode feel tired, somehow it finds new and impactful things to say about them.

I could go on and on about this episode, but I’m not sure any of it would sound particularly coherent, just random gushing. Suffice to say an all time great.

Was that episode interesting or just confusing? That's the question I'm stuck on thinking about the episode now I'm over the initial “huh???”.

It was certainly an enjoyable episode to get swept up in, I was never bored so I haven't come away hating the episode, but I'm sat here trying to think about it, trying to mull over it in a way beyond the literal plot, but I'm coming up empty.

If you are going to write an episode that doesn't care to make sense that can be great, but I think there should be a reason for it. It should be in service of something, it doesn't necessarily matter what, some theme, some metaphor, some point being made, and I don't think this was. Ultimately I feel as though it was confusing for the sake of it.

What is there to get out of the episode? Underneath the confusion what was 73 Yards about? Surely it should be something more than pointing out nuclear armageddon would be bad.

I know that this isn’t a particularly good story in anyone else’s estimation, and I understand why, but alas I have been in love with this show and these characters for perhaps longer than I have loved Doctor Who, and I remember being terrified of the Slitheen and that it was this episode specifically that sparked that fear. Disliking Sarah-Jane Adventures episodes where the main bad guy is the Slitheen is fundamentally impossible for me, for the simple fact that they transport me back to watching this show at 8 years old like nothing else does, so this review is about to be biased beyond belief, do not let it lead you to believe this episode is something I would strongly recommend unless you are already in love with the show. Although I do genuinely believe this and less mature episodes like this, are better than people give them credit for.

First of all, Clyde is here, my favourite SJA character, seeing him reluctantly befriend Maria and Luke makes this episode. He’s so desperate to make cool friends, which Maria and Luke are not but he cannot help but like them and get along with them before he even knows about their deal with aliens. And of course because he’s Clyde and he’s awesome he does end up popular in later episodes.

I also think this is a darker episode than people give it credit for. Yes the Slitheen look and act silly, but there is a reason they petrified me as a small child. Its not as up front with most of them, but with the science teacher they make it pretty clear he was a person who got murdered and now there’s this thing living inside his skin. And then of course there is the child Slitheen who ends the episode begging for his life. Absolutely wild.

Aside from that, it is one of those episodes of The Sarah-Jane Adventures that is very ‘children’s show’ for lack of a better term, but that doesn’t make it bad. It makes sense that it's a turn off for a lot of people, but I think at times really negative opinions of the episode forget that it isn’t for them, this is good kids TV, I know this because I loved (and was terrified by) it as a kid, just the kind with limited appeal for adults. Because the show has a lot of episodes with more mature themes in episodes that are easier to get behind as an adult, its easy to dismiss these simpler stories. Not every episode is, or even should be, Whatever Happened to Sarah-Jane?

Unfortunately I really struggle with the sound design of this story, particularly the Kar-Charratans which give me a headache, and I mean that very literally. Is it otherwise good? I don’t know because through no fault of the story itself the audio causes me physical pain. It certainly starts off fine, fairly intriguing and engaging once it gets going, if nothing particularly special, but once characters are having conversations with the Kar-Charratans, I am unable to judge the story as I can no longer follow it due to the sound design, and the headache it causes.

This is very much a personal problem, I’m sure most people will not have this issue, so probably worth a try

Pilots often feel a little off from what a show will become and this is no exception. While a good little episode taken on its own, it doesn’t quite feel like an episode of The Sarah-Jane adventures, not so much for any faults in and of itself, just for not quite meshing in the context of the rest of the show.

While all of the new characters are pitch perfect from the get go, or in the case of Luke as close as it is reasonable to get just after being born, outside of the scenes with Mrs Wormwood, Sarah-Jane feels a little off to me in a way I can’t quite put my finger on. A little too hard edged in perhaps not quite the right ways, and I suppose that's what the episode is going for, to see her softened by Maria and Luke, and later Clyde, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing. To an extent it feels as though they haven’t yet figured Sarah out as the main protagonist, as the leader of this small band of alien fighting kids, any coldness towards them or attempts to keep them out of the danger feel to me as though they are out of annoyance more than any desire to keep them out of harm's way.

The plot of this story is also pretty thin, which isn’t really an issue as this is the first episode, the plot is not as important as introducing us to the characters, but it does leave you with the impression that this is a Doctor Who plot with a Sarah-Jane Adventures coat of paint, making it pretty unrepresentative of what the show will be like moving forward. I think the primary reason for this is the sense of scale, while other Sarah-Jane Adventures episodes have aliens with plans to take over or destroy the world, the initial steps of those plans usually feels very local to Bannerman Road, or sometimes even hyperfocused on Sarah and the kids, and I don’t get that sense here.  Bubbleshock is already a large company getting endorsements on Blue Peter, and while I would never question the capabilities of Sarah-Jane and friends, alien invasions of this nature and scope are not really within their typical wheelhouse.

As someone who grew up on this show I do like the episode overall, and certainly it introduces all of its characters in a version of themselves that is either already perfect or will be with some minor tweaks which is the most important thing, but it is a story what just does not quite feel like it belongs to the Sarah-Jane Adventures as a whole.

Imagine, if you will, a 10 year old girl, watching the revival from the start for the very first time, rewatching episodes she was too young to remember watching the first time. As that little girl, thoroughly obsessed with Doctor Who, I fell in love with Love and Monsters, and it quickly became my favourite episode. I don’t remember being 10 well enough to tell you why, but I’m glad I remember my taste in episodes when I was small, and that I can now recognise that it was good, unlike when I was a teenager and suddenly too cool for it.

So, why was I right to love this episode at 10? Before the reveal of the Absorbaloff, this is a truly great story, all the members of LINDA are likeable and watching them become friends is just fun. And then there’s the stuff with Jackie which is utterly heartbreaking. Seeing how lonely Jackie is without Rose, and how much it hurts her that this new connection she made was using her, not even to get to Rose, but to get to the Doctor makes for genuinely great television. Not only that but the added layer as he realises what he’s doing is wrong, he suddenly sees what LINDA has become under Victor Kenedy, and that he is going to have to give up that part of his life, at the same time that he realises he has this genuine connection with Jackie, that he likes her and wants to be friends with her, only for that new friendship to be ripped away because he realised it too late.

Despite how good the first two acts are, it's the final act after the reveal of the Absorbaloff that the story really falls apart. I understand that it was designed as part of a Blue Peter competition, but that doesn’t change the fact that it isn’t very good. (There is one good bit when we learn he comes from Clom, twin planet of Raxicoricofallapatorius). It's weirdly not that intimidating for how awful the absorption aspect is, and then its final defeat just does not stack up to the rest of the episode.

And then of course there is the final joke, all I have to say on that is: why?

Overall a good story let down by its ending and the need for a monster, perhaps the quintessential example of this for me.

For me, Mark of the Berserker is an encapsulation of what The Sarah Jane Adventures does best, taking a difficult situation kids at home might be struggling with and making it worse through aliens, could be as simple as starting a new school or anxiety that your friends don’t really like you, or something a lot heavier that you’d never expect a show that is, at its core, for children to ever even approach. Mark of the Berserker fits somewhere in the middle.

In Mark of the Berserker the central issue is Clyde dealing with the return of his father who has not been around in years, even before aliens get involved the situation is ripe with drama, your heart breaks for Clyde as he desperately seeks the approval of a man who does not deserve to be a part of his life.

Then the pendant is introduced and Clyde’s dad can get everything he wants from his relationship with Clyde without putting in the effort, and as soon as Clyde’s mum and his friends, the people who are actually there for him, try to intervene he is forced to forget them, it's awful.

And then it all comes to a head and Clyde learns that his father didn’t come back to see him, but to once again avoid his responsibilities with a different family.

It is perhaps a perfect episode of the Sarah-Jane Adventures, and shows everything that the show can do and be. There are episodes that are probably better pieces of television, but none that quite so successfully balance their tone as a children’s show with the subject matter, often injecting scenes that feel like they are just there to keep the kids watching entertained. Not Mark of the Berserker which successfully keeps a consistent tone throughout, never feels as though it forgets its target audience, and pull no punches when it comes to what Clyde is going through

I will start by saying that to my untrained eye the colourisation of this story is fine, there are choices in it I don’t like, particularly in the city itself but overall it seems competently done.

That said, if someone is looking for a faster paced version of the Daleks that’s also in colour, the Peter Cushing movie is a much better choice. This version takes a story that’s strongest element is its atmosphere, recuts it so it's faster paced especially towards the end, and adds vibrant colours to scenes that were much better served when the sets felt eerie and clinical. The recut is definitely the worst of the two changes, the colourisation only really felt off in the Dalek city, and out in the forest it actually led me to notice new things like the large holes in the Thals costumes, meanwhile the pacing issues caused by the recut really worsened the whole story.

In addition to the recutting and the colourisation, this version also adds new music, and it does not fit at all. Background music is not normally something I notice, it usually just washes over me, but here it is pervasive and distracting. This is a comparatively minor complaint but if I didn’t make it this review would be lacking

As an experiment into whether or not a colourisation of black and white stories is possible I suppose it worked, the montage of clips from other stories was perhaps the most enjoyable part, but the Daleks was not the right choice of story to do this for, but this treatment might work or stories where the atmosphere is less important or with sets props and costumes that it makes sense to have in all manner of crazy colours, but that doesn’t change the fact that this is a worse version of not one but two stories.

Nonsense, wonderful nonsense.

The Daemons might be the story I have the most fun watching, I am not going to pretend it's particularly deep or complex, but such concerns for what makes a story “good” fall aside as I watch, and isn’t that the biggest complement of all. From Bok to Miss Hawthorne to remote control Bessie, to the Master’s plan this episode, it's truly an entertaining ride. Best of all, after Jo and Yates have had a season to settle in, the character dynamics between the members of UNIT are the best they have ever been.

A perfect story to watch for May Day or Halloween

The Rescue is by no means a perfect story, being part of an era better suited to longer stories and having to serve as a companion introduction above everything else means it squanders some of the potential in its mystery and, in my opinion, somewhat rushes Vicki's forgiveness of Barbara. But really these are minor complaints about a story I adore.

At its core the Rescue is a really great introduction to Vicki, you really get a sense of how young she is and the hell she has been through since crash landing on Dido, even before Bennett/Koquillion's true nature is revealed. At the same time she still has this sense of fun that her character will retain as she joins the TARDIS as we learn of Sandy, a large dangerous looking creature who she has been keeping almost as a pet.

I find Sandy's death to be truly heartbreaking, Sandy is potentially the only being left in the universe who truly cares for Vicki when we meet her, and it is in the story's handling of Barbara shooting him that I feel it falls short. While yes, Barbara did believe it was necessary to save Vicki, there's a lack of understanding in how Barbara, Ian, and The Doctor all insist to Vicki that she should instantly forgive Barbara and move on from what happened almost immediately. I find myself struggling to understand why she would choose to leave with these people. While they may have revealed to her what Bennet had done, rescue was only a few hours away and didn't require her to instantly forgive the pain they caused her however unintentionally. While I have gone on about it some, this is overall a minor gripe, and probably just my 21st century morals and concerns clashing with those of the 1960s.

Overall I'd heartily recommend this story if you've not seen it, especially if you are looking to dip your toes into the first Doctor's era for the first time, or even Classic Who. As its only two parts, The Rescue is a lot faster paced than other stories of the era so a good one to try if you are not yet used to the storytelling of the 60s, and of course my beloved Sandy is in it who I am sure everyone will fall in love with.