SJA: Eye of the Gorgon (part 1)

[selenay]

After the Slitheen episodes, this is a huge improvement :-) Slick, better pacing and a much more interesting villain. Hopefully this is the kind of episode we can expect from SJA from now on!

The opening scene of the nun in the old lady's bedroom was actually a little creepy. You know that you should expect something to happen when you start a scene at night in a darkened room, but I wasn't expecting the nun or how quickly she disappeared.

The episode initially seemed to be pointing at an episode about ghosts, but then Bea came on the scene.

She's absolutely lovely.

I wasn't too surprised that she picked out Luke. I think that's going to be the theme: Luke isn't like other teenage kids so things will just happen to him. I do love that while he's not An Alien any more, he's still fumbling around the Earth stuff and not quite getting it right. The friendship between Luke and Clyde is really coming along nicely and it makes a good counter-point to the friendship between Sarah Jane and Maria.

Back to Bea. She's lovely and I now really want to know what she and her husband got up to that they can joke about the Sontarans. Liz Sladen played it really well, with Sarah Jane getting excited and happy to find that there is someone out there who knows about this stuff.

There was some lovely character moments in the scenes with Bea and you just wanted to hug Bea and reassure her that everything is going to be fine now, Sarah Jane will help her.

Putting off the big reveal on the Gorgon's face was a good plan: it was creepier because we could use our imaginations for longer and there was just that little bit of doubt about whether she really was snake-haired and terrifying. I've always said that imaginations can create much better images than telly.

The relationship between Sarah Jane and Maria is very interesting. I don't think that Maria sees SJ as a surrogate mother figure, although SJ is starting to get a little motherly towards the kids. Maria seems to be seeing Sarah Jane as an older friend, wiser, with good advice but not a mother or mother-replacement. After all, her own mother is more than enough to do deal with!

Having a competent, caring, settled father juxtaposed with a selfish, silly, melodramatic mother is a role-reversal from the usual divorced parents stereotype. I was glad to see Maria's father finally tell her mother exactly how selfish and silly she's been :-)

I'd been assuming that the Revenge of the Slitheen was a two-parter just because it was the first story in the series and it did feel like that story needed a bit of padding. Eye of the Gorgon had no such sensation and I think it's a very good decision to make SJA a standard two-parter style show. Twenty-five minutes simply isn't enough time to introduce a good plot, tell the story, resolve it and put in the character stuff that modern dramas require. Two parts gives it just the right amount of pace for a show in this slot and there's always the option of a three-parter for a really meaty story.

All in all, both plot-wise and character-wise, this was a much stronger episode than the first two and I'm thoroughly enjoying the series now. Roll on part 2!


I need to stop watching the trailers for next week. They really give away far too much plot.