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For Shame, SJA! For Shame!
Well, I'm a bit late in the game with this, but a couple of thoughts on this week's Sarah Jane Adventure, "Mona Lisa's Revenge":
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not having a go at you SJA. In fact I love you. I especially love the sheer amount of Doctor Who continuity w*nk you manage to shoehorn into a show whose main target audience won't appreciate it at all. And the quotient has been especially high in this series. But, well...
You make a story about the Mona Lisa and don't throw in one single solitary City of Death reference? It wouldn't have been hard; when Lisa was talking about people who have visited her in the past, she could have mentioned the grinning weirdo in the scarf with the girlfriend in the school uniform. Or something. You could have given her a big "This is a Fake!" tattoo on her back! I mean, I understand perfectly that you don't make the show just for my strange amusement, but I can't help but be a little sad at the great opportunity for embarrassing squeeing that was lost...
I suppose a totally random guest cameo from John Cleese was completely out of your price range? Thought so.
I'll be kind and assume that the centrality of a Chinese puzzle box to this week's plot was some sort of extremely oblique nod to Romana II's third or fourth greatest moment in Who (shortly after the bit where she weirds out all the slavers in Warrior's Gate, any exchange of dialogue between her and Duggan in City of Death (although the thing about unconscious chefs is a good one), and *insert cool Romana II moment here*.
Oh, and well-played with the Mona Lisa's very noticeable lack of eyebrows, which I'll also assume was somehow meant to recall the exchange between Four and Romana on that very subject. Or make her look like Matt Smith, conceivably.
And while we're on the subject, why was Suranne Jones (formerly of Corrie), playing her as if chanelling Peter Kay as the Abzorbaloff? She was actually quite amusing at a couple of points, but, well...
Nice to see Jeff Rawle of Drop the Dead Donkey and Frontios notoriety. He did a good job of playing an absolute narcissistic weasel who came good in the end, and...got told off by his formerly adoring PA Miss Trupp who had finally realised she could do better than him. Good for her!
And you know you've watched too much SJA when you recognise Mona Lisa's gun as the one that Sontaran was toting around last season, not when it's mentioned as such in dialogue, but in last week's teaser trailer...
Clyde is, as ever, The Man. I don't find his artistic prowess in the least bit surprising - there is in fact nothing that he could not turn his hand to, and master. The painting he actually won the competition with was probably his weakest work, actually, but they just saw that it had his name on it and immediately gave it first prize (plus it was a transparent excuse to get ray guns into an art gallery). More seriously, some very well observed stuff here on the dictates of high school "cool", and of how kids like Clyde can fail to live up to their very real potential because of the roles they and their circumstances and also authority figures like Mr Chandra (and the two of them have a convincingly love/hate hardman teacher/bright but wayward pupil relationship too) cast them in. That won't happen with Clyde, hopefully, because he is The Man. "So? I gave them names." Heh.
I like all of this stuff about mad Renaissance painters and paintings so evil and twisted you'd go mad just looking at them, locked up for hundreds of years in museum basements. In fact, that would have made a good story in itself - maybe they should have just gone with that instead of all of the Mona Lisa stuff.
As if France would let the Mona Lisa out of the country without about a battalion of Foreign Legionnaires or something guarding it. As if they'd let the Mona Lisa out of the country. And that foot-thick bulletproof glass screen I remember it being behind when I saw it might have cramped Lisa's escape plans just a little... ;D
Speaking of insane museum security, if this was the same place where Lady Christina pulled off the spectacular Cup of Athlestan caper back at Easter, where were the world's most heavily-armed museum security men and their big machine guns? Do they only work nights?
But yes, I did like this very much, on the whole. And in next week's exciting adventure:
Slitheen?? Er...yay...?
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not having a go at you SJA. In fact I love you. I especially love the sheer amount of Doctor Who continuity w*nk you manage to shoehorn into a show whose main target audience won't appreciate it at all. And the quotient has been especially high in this series. But, well...
You make a story about the Mona Lisa and don't throw in one single solitary City of Death reference? It wouldn't have been hard; when Lisa was talking about people who have visited her in the past, she could have mentioned the grinning weirdo in the scarf with the girlfriend in the school uniform. Or something. You could have given her a big "This is a Fake!" tattoo on her back! I mean, I understand perfectly that you don't make the show just for my strange amusement, but I can't help but be a little sad at the great opportunity for embarrassing squeeing that was lost...
I suppose a totally random guest cameo from John Cleese was completely out of your price range? Thought so.
I'll be kind and assume that the centrality of a Chinese puzzle box to this week's plot was some sort of extremely oblique nod to Romana II's third or fourth greatest moment in Who (shortly after the bit where she weirds out all the slavers in Warrior's Gate, any exchange of dialogue between her and Duggan in City of Death (although the thing about unconscious chefs is a good one), and *insert cool Romana II moment here*.
Oh, and well-played with the Mona Lisa's very noticeable lack of eyebrows, which I'll also assume was somehow meant to recall the exchange between Four and Romana on that very subject. Or make her look like Matt Smith, conceivably.
And while we're on the subject, why was Suranne Jones (formerly of Corrie), playing her as if chanelling Peter Kay as the Abzorbaloff? She was actually quite amusing at a couple of points, but, well...
Nice to see Jeff Rawle of Drop the Dead Donkey and Frontios notoriety. He did a good job of playing an absolute narcissistic weasel who came good in the end, and...got told off by his formerly adoring PA Miss Trupp who had finally realised she could do better than him. Good for her!
And you know you've watched too much SJA when you recognise Mona Lisa's gun as the one that Sontaran was toting around last season, not when it's mentioned as such in dialogue, but in last week's teaser trailer...
Clyde is, as ever, The Man. I don't find his artistic prowess in the least bit surprising - there is in fact nothing that he could not turn his hand to, and master. The painting he actually won the competition with was probably his weakest work, actually, but they just saw that it had his name on it and immediately gave it first prize (plus it was a transparent excuse to get ray guns into an art gallery). More seriously, some very well observed stuff here on the dictates of high school "cool", and of how kids like Clyde can fail to live up to their very real potential because of the roles they and their circumstances and also authority figures like Mr Chandra (and the two of them have a convincingly love/hate hardman teacher/bright but wayward pupil relationship too) cast them in. That won't happen with Clyde, hopefully, because he is The Man. "So? I gave them names." Heh.
I like all of this stuff about mad Renaissance painters and paintings so evil and twisted you'd go mad just looking at them, locked up for hundreds of years in museum basements. In fact, that would have made a good story in itself - maybe they should have just gone with that instead of all of the Mona Lisa stuff.
As if France would let the Mona Lisa out of the country without about a battalion of Foreign Legionnaires or something guarding it. As if they'd let the Mona Lisa out of the country. And that foot-thick bulletproof glass screen I remember it being behind when I saw it might have cramped Lisa's escape plans just a little... ;D
Speaking of insane museum security, if this was the same place where Lady Christina pulled off the spectacular Cup of Athlestan caper back at Easter, where were the world's most heavily-armed museum security men and their big machine guns? Do they only work nights?
But yes, I did like this very much, on the whole. And in next week's exciting adventure:
Slitheen?? Er...yay...?
no subject
Clyde most definitely is The Man. If he doesn't get to be a companion at some point, or even get his own show, I will cry. D:
Yeh, the whole lack of security around the Mona Lisa makes my mind boggle. Although, wasn't the museum actually closed when the kids were there? It was only open for them, so that might explain the lack of big security men toting guns?
Next week... I can live without seeing the Slitheen/Blathereen/whoever the hell they are in NewWho/SJA EVER again. Worst aliens ever.
no subject
I see him leaving school without much in the way of qualifications, a victim of his own anti-authoritarianism, and joining UNIT. And being awesome! ;D
That was one of the funniest things I have seen in NuWho to be honest, in Planet of the Dead. The idea that a British art gallery would have a phalanx of guys with machine guns guarding anything, and even better that they were all standing perfectly still with their backs to the item in question, and not one of them ever looked up...
To be honest, if I never saw another Slitheen in my life, I could probably live with that. They'd better pull out some spectacular continuity geekifying to make up for it, is all I'll say!
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On reflection, I really like the idea of her having "This is a Fake!" written on her back... Yes, missed opportunity, that. ;D
no subject
You know what would have been cool? Duggan as the head of security at the museum.
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I can't figure out why they wouldn't have done this with a different painting and educate the kiddies a bit. Something that's still famous, but not as... nothing's springing to mind at the moment because I'm tired and silly, but you know what I mean.
the only thing I do want to know more about is that painting in the basement, which rather made me think of Edvard Munch's The Scream (and oddly enough, another one of his paintings was stolen not soon after the episode aired. Eerie or what?)
no subject
I think if France were going to send the Mona Lisa to Britain, they'd want the Crown Jewels or something as a deposit! ;D
Actually, I'm surprised Lady Christina wasn't all over it, with the security being so light and everything (yes, that was a shameless read the rest of my fic! thing! XD).
And yeah, the Scream is creepy, as well as being very obviously a portrait of a "Grey" alien like they have in the UFO conspiracies... All of that stuff, though; demented artists, evil paintings, dark secrets buried in museums...great stories right there without bringing Leonardo into it.