School Reunion
After Mickey alerts them to strange goings-on near Deffry Vale High School, the Doctor and Rose each take a job there, the Doctor posing as a new physics teacher and Rose winding up as a dinner lady in the school’s cafeteria. The new headmaster, Mr. Finch, has brought a new curriculum, a new lunch menu, and several new staff members with him. But original faculty members and even students are vanishing without a trace. Rose spots large barrels of a strange and apparently dangerously corrosive oil being moved around by the cafeteria staff, and the Doctor discovers that students who have been eating foods from Mr. Finch’s new lunch menu, prepared with that oil, are demonstrating knowledge and learning ability far beyond 21st century humans. The Doctor is stunned when he learns that someone else is investigating these unexplained happenings – namely, reporter Sarah Jane Smith, his former traveling companion, with her now somewhat dilapidated K-9 in tow. While the Doctor and Sarah are cautiously eager to renew their friendship, it becomes apparent – especially to Rose – that traveling in the TARDIS and seeing the wonders of the universe carries a price.
written by Toby Whithouse
directed by James Hawes
music by Murray GoldGuest Cast: Noel Clarke (Mickey Smith), Anthony Head (Mr. Finch), Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane Smith), Rod Arthur (Mr. Parsons), Eugene Washington (Mr. Wagner), Heather Cameron (Nina), Joe Pickley (Kenny), Benjamin Smith (Luke), Clem Tibber (Milo), Lucinda Dryzek (Melissa), Caroline Berry (Dinner Lady), John Leeson (voice of K-9)
Notes: Elisabeth Sladen first appeared as Sarah Jane in 1974’s The Time Warrior, the premiere of Jon Pertwee’s final season as the Doctor. She remained with the Doctor after his regeneration, accompanying Tom Baker through 1976’s The Hand Of Fear, which did indeed see the TARDIS dropping
Sarah off in what she thought was Croydon. In 1981, Sladen and John Leeson starred in the first spinoff of Doctor Who to make it to production, K-9 & Company, in which she found a gift from the Doctor – her own K-9 unit. Sarah and her K-9 appeared in one further Doctor Who story, 1983’s The Five Doctors.
Guest star Anthony Head – a.k.a. Anthony Stewart Head – starred as Giles in Buffy The Vampire Slayer. He’s been linked several times to Doctor Who, including a contender for the role of the Doctor himself when the new series was first announced in 2003. He appeared as a cunning, immortal villain in the linked Excelis trilogy of Big Finish audio plays, though he did so without ever meeting any of his co-stars, since recording schedules forced him to record his dialogue alone without any other actors! He has thus “appeared” with previous Doctors Peter Davison, Colin Baker and Sylvester McCoy without actually working with them. He also had a small role in the BBC Radio one-off story Death Comes To Time. Another series in which Head starred was Manchild, alongside Don Warrington (the President in Rise Of The Cybermen and the voice of Rassilon in the Big Finish eighth Doctor stories).
Sarah Jane Smith has also appeared in two series of Doctor-less audio adventures from Big Finish, though in this case without K-9 (in the final story of the first “season” of her adventures, Sarah notes that K-9 has been incapacitated, though the nature of K-9’s state of disrepair in the audio plays is a case of deliberate sabotage; it’s unclear if this is the same damage that the Doctor seems to fix rather quickly). Big Finish producer John Ainsworth has said that School Reunion likely takes place between the first two “seasons” of Sarah’s audio adventures.
LogBook entry & review by Earl Green
The Doctor and Lucie are undercover, having arrived on a drought-stricken future Earth where former music star Alex Marlowe is using his wealth and influence to lead a radical environmentalist movement that has increasingly become associated with violent protests and acts. Lucie has wormed her way into Marlowe’s organization, while the Doctor poses as a member of the World Ecology Bureau for a surprise inspection. What the Doctor discovers at Marlowe’s facility is horrifying: Krynoid seed pods have been acquired and genetically re-engineered. Marlowe is aware of the Krynoid’s killer instincts to consume all nearby life, and hopes that the Doctor will help him continue his experiments to create, among other things, a rainforest that can “fight back.” To ensure the Doctor’s cooperation, Marlowe decides that Lucie should be the next human to “volunteer” to be infected by one of his genetically altered Krynoid seed pods. Unfortunately for Earth, however, Marlowe’s attempts to change the Krynoids becomes a battle against nature that he can’t win.
Cast: Peter Capaldi (
Notes: The Doctor refers to the trapped aquatic creature as the Loch Ness Monster, though the story leaves nebulous whether he means it’s literally the same creature. (Doctor Who has previously revealed the identity of that legendary monster to be a Skarasen deposited in Loch Ness by the Zygons (Terror Of The Zygons, 1975), though there’s nothing explicitly contradicting this creature being the Skarasen, or a progenitor of the Skarasen seen by the Doctor’s fourth incarnation in 1975.)