Christmas (not so) special

24 December 2019

For the second year running, there is no Doctor Who Christmas Special.  This must be strange for some, but for those of us who grew up with classic Who and lived through the drought of the 1990s, the idea of a Doctor Who Christmas Special still almost seems something of a novelty. Christmas Specials were for Morecambe and Wise, not our favourite Saturday teatime behind-the-sofa viewing.

However, in 1981 something very like a Christmas Special was aired - not Doctor Who, but a spin-off featuring two favourite sidekicks: K9 and Sarah Jane Smith.

In an attempt to get in a festive mood, I decided to watch K9 and Company on DVD.  I'm sorry to say that it really isn't very good.  In fact, it's terrible.

Let's start with the plot.  Sarah returns from working abroad for Reuters to spend Christmas with her aunt Lavinia (the famous scientist - remember?) at her, er, manor house and market garden in the Cotswolds.  But Lavinia has vanished, apparently on a book tour of the States, leaving Sarah to look after her cousin Brendan, home for the holidays from boarding school, and to open that mysterious crate that arrived a few years ago. The crate turns out to contain a gift from the Doctor.

Naturally, since it is set in the countryside, the plot involves a lot of suspicious villagers and a pagan cult. As the solstice is coming, there are rituals to perform.  The annoying cousin Brendan provides suitable human sacrifice material, leading Sarah to a frantic dash around all the churches within a five mile radius to find him before midnight, only for K9 to point out at the last moment that there is actually a chapel in the manor grounds.

And Aunt Lavinia?  Is indeed on her tour of the US.

 It could have been good, but somehow neither the script nor the editing seem to work. Who really cares about the pH of soil at Christmas?

I think I will stick with The Christmas Invasion  in future.