K-9 and Company

John Nathan-Turner's time as producer of Dr Who (1980-9) was a frightful mess. Clearly out of his depth, his period at the helm was characterised largely by thrashing around with gimmicks to compensate for small budgets, miscasting, poor scripting and uncertainties of tone, whose accumulation had begun during Graham William's tenure, but which accelerated dramatically from Nathan-Turner's first season (season 18) onwards.

One problem that Nathan-Turner faced was that the audience was ageing, and sci-fi nerds were beginning to define the show to the detriment of its universal qualities. It was therefore potentially a shrewd move to develop the one-off TV movie K9 and Company, coupling Dr Who's favourite companion, Sarah Jane, who still lingered in the memory, with his most asinine, for younger viewers. If this reached fruition as a series, maybe a new younger audience could be cultivated?

Of course, he muffed it. The filming does not appear to have been a happy experience, at least for Elisabeth Sladen, according to her memoirs. But the appalling script, the embarrassing public school nephew Brendan, the weedy attacker Peter, a goodly set of well-known character actors reduced to oo-arrr dialogue, and a set of unintentionally comic pagans all combine to kill it anyway. The wonderful support actress Mary Wimbush is particularly wasted. The execrable title sequence is a microcosm of the failure of the whole enterprise.

Lots of people watched it; I was one of them. I wanted to love it, especially as it came shortly after the very disappointing season 18. I hated it. I assumed I was just growing too big for Dr Who, but, now we can watch these shows again on DVD, it is clear that Dr Who was leaving its audience, not the other way round.

After wading through several ideas for Doctor Who's one `official' spin-off (including a UNIT series I believe), John Nathan-Turner decided to base a series on K9. After all, there were times when the metal dog had received more fan mail than Tom Baker.

In short, the pilot episode has an older and wiser Sarah Jane Smith returning to her home village. She finds a box that the Doctor sent her years ago containing K9 Mark 3. Being the nosy investigative journalist she is, Sarah Jane soon become involved in stopping the activities of a coven of witches. Thank goodness she has K9 and her geeky cousin Brendan helping her.

It doesn't look promising from the first second of the theme song (something I'm sure Nathan-Turner wrote during lunch one day), and the plot is not all that engaging. In fact, there are times it seems you're watching bits of some of the Earthbound Doctor Who episodes cobbled together. Perhaps because of these factors, K9 & Company didn't make it to Episode 2.

For completists only.

Hmm some people really have it in for K9 AND COMPANY the first - And to date - only spin off from DOCTOR WHO . I guess if there was any potential spin offs from the legendary fantasy show then two would spring to mind . The first one obviously being a series featuring the Daleks . Terry Nation actually approached American television studios in the late 1960s seeking funding for the metallic meanies but since America never experienced Dalekmania you can see why they wouldn't want to invest in a concept they have no knowledge of . It would have probably been too expensive anyway and almost certainly unfilmable . The recent series of DOCTOR WHO contained breath taking Dalek sequences but that's because television technology has moved on in the last 40 years . The other obvious spin off would have been a show featuring Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart and UNIT but again the amount of military hardware involved would probably have made it prohibitive on financial grounds ( though THE X - FILES isn't a million miles removed from this premise when you think about it ) so instead of what we might have got we ended up with a former journalist and a robotic dog !

I was never keen on K9 during the fourth Doctor's tenure . Every time Tom Baker would be chained to a wall about to be tortured you just knew that K9 was going to appear out of the shadows and shoot the villains with his blaster . So in other words he was a plot device used by very lazy writers during the poorest period of the show seen at that time . As for Sarah Jane Smith I always thought she was slightly overrated as a companion ( She wins every single poll as favourite companion ) possibly because she was the Doctor's sidekick when the show achieved its highest ratings and most critical acclaim in the mid 1970s . I guess John Nathan Turner thought he was onto a winner by resurrecting two popular companions in a pilot for a proposed series

What is very clear by watching this pilot is how self limiting the format is . It's set on present day Earth with no monsters with the villains being pagan worshipers . If it had gone to a full series we'd have seen Sarah and K9 and girlie boy Brendan tackle mad scientists and .. and .. and ... maybe they'd have brought back pagan worshipers for a rematch . Or maybe JNT could have had an alien invasion every third week to break up the monotony of mad scientists and pagan worshipers . No doubt Sarah could have tackled the aliens with her karate ( Where did she learn that ? ) and if that wasn't enough K9 could zap the aliens with his laser - As long as the aliens didn't run up a flight of stairs or hide behind a greenhouse or were able to run faster than three miles per hour .

Despite the poor format there are some good points to this pilot . It contains some impressive night filming which lends itself to some atmospheric moments such as the policeman gingerly walking down a lonely country lane and it's nowhere as badly acted as some people claim , I mean try watching some DOCTOR WHO from the mid to late 1980s to see what bad acting is . Sean Chapman as Peter Tracey has a scene where he bursts into tears of despair and I often think that crying must be difficult for an actor to portray convincingly but here Chapman manages it . I'm not saying he deserves an Oscar but think of all the scenes you've seen on television and in movies where an actor is supposed to be crying and you're asking yourself if their character is laughing or crying ? As for the really crap title sequence or more appropriately the music that goes with it blame Ian Levine , someone who would later produce records for Take That , aka Robbie Williams and those other blokes

Hardly brilliant but not as bad as some people claim K-9 AND COMPANY gets six out of ten

So K9 was written out of Doctor Who and with the furore from the fans and the media, the producers gave him a spin off show and teamed him with Sarah Jane Smith.

It seems not much attention was paid as to who this series was aimed at. It looks like there was no type of focus group evaluation, it was just quickly green-lit into production.

The final result, a mish mash of ideas that forgot K9 was popular with kids. Therefore a witches coven story line that harks back to Pertwee era Doctor Who might not be the wisest of moves.

For years K9 & Company stuck out like a sore thumb in the Doctor Who canon. Almost a quarter of century later, Russell T Davies effectively tried a second pilot, pushing Sarah Jane to the forefront, surrounding her with some kids and K9 pushed to the background. Even the Doctor turned up a few times.

In essence this pilot provided a bridge to the Sarah Jane Adventures.

Sarah Jane arrives at her Aunt Lavinia's cottage, but she isn't there, the locals are all highly suspicious, she receives K9 in the post and young Brendan comes to stay with her.

The plot is a little on the thin side, and has been mentioned before the boundaries of the show's format at that time would have prevented a series going very far. For this episode the Pagan villagers work really well.

That said I find K-9 and Company hugely watchable, I suppose for reasons of nostalgia, it has become my official Christmas wrapping show, it goes on, out comes the Baileys, it does have a very festive feel to it.

The acting is a little on the patchy side, most of the performances dare I say it are a little on the theatrical side, but still enjoyable and in keeping with the script, that said I love Juno Baker, played by Linda Polan, she was great fun.

I still love those opening credits and music too!

Not to be taken too seriously, but lots of fun, 7/10