stunt_muppet

First off, happy slightly belated birthday to pimpmytardis ! And I'm sure I've missed a few other friends' birthdays between now and the last time I made a birthday post, so Happy Birthday to you all if I've missed you! Feel free to yell at me in the comments for being forgetful. :D

I told rainbowstevie I would do this ages and ages ago, as a way of introducing her to Sarah Jane's story pre-New Who, but it slipped my mind until one of her recent posts reminded me. Since I now handily have the DVD of The Time Warrior and a computer that takes easy, painless screencaps, now seems like a good time to begin the screencap recap of Sarah Jane's first ever adventure.

A note: I'm actually going to try to summarize some of the plot so the episode will make sense, so this will be a rather straightforward recap; the plot of the first episode is complicated enough without me cutting corners or embellishing it too much. As such, this will be a LARGE picspam (upwards of forty images) recap, and I'll have to take it episode by episode; this only covers Episode 1.

Except for the first image, which I accidentally deleted (derp), all screencaps were taken by me and are free to use however you like. And I should really organize my Scrapbook, that just occured to me. Possibly later, because I'll kind of have to set aside a day for that.


Our story begins in The Generic Middle Ages, where resident grumpy warlord Irongron is throwing wine mugs at people and complainging about how he hasn't pillaged anything in ages.


His tirades are interrupted, however, when Lynx the Sontaran falls from the sky into his backyard and claims the Earth for the Sontaran Empire via the cunning use of flags.


Lynx needs to repair his spaceship, and offers to make Irongron futuristic weapons if he helps him. But his ship can't be repaired with the primitive technology of The Generic Middle Ages! He will need...SKIENCE!!!


This seems like a good time to bring in the title character, currently in The Present Day (which, at the time this serial came out, meant The Seventies).


Scientists have been disappearing from a top ultra super secret scientific conference, and the Brigadier needs the Doctor to investigate. He's also keeping all the scientists in one building, in cubicles, so as to keep an eye on them. Not personally, of course. Figuratively speaking.


Also, the Doctor is wearing lacy cuffs. This is very important to the plot.


OH HEY, speaking of disappeared scientists - look who's hanging around The Generic Middle Ages! A bunch of guys in lab coats and anachronistic sweaters! I WONDER WHO THEY COULD BE.


Meanwhile, back in The Seventies, the Doctor gets introduced to Dr. Joseph Rubeish, whom I've affectionately dubbed Half-Blind Old Scientist Guy...


And Sarah Jane Smith, or Lavinia Smith as she's calling herself at the moment, whom he decides to preemptively flirt with in case it comes in handy later.


Unfortunately for Sarah, the Doctor's read Lavinia Smith's papers, and if Sarah's Lavinia, she must have written those papers when she was five years old. (This does answer a few questions about what exactly the Doctor does when he's not saving the world.)


Sarah explains that Lavinia's her aunt, and is currently on lecture tour in America. Sarah, who's a journalist, took her place because she thought the conference would make a good story. There are...some flaws in this plan, but it apparently worked out so far.

Actual dialogue: "Are you going to give me away, Doctor?"


"I don't think so," says the Doctor, mischievously. Unbeknownst to Sarah, the Doctor has decided that she is a delightful young lady and she shall be his new travelling companion - she just doesn't know it yet.


"Why not?" asks Sarah, sensing her own irresistible charm at work.


"Well, you can make yourself useful. We need somebody around here to make the coffee." Now, while this Doctor can occasionally be quite chauvinistic in a "it's technobabble, you wouldn't understand" kind of way, he isn't usually outright sexist*. Conclusion: he's just riling Sarah for the hell of it. 

*It doesn't hurt that when he does get like this, his companions tend to ignore him completely.


It works. "If you think I'm going to spend my time making cups of coffee for you - "


Alas, their banter is interrupted. STOP WRITIN' ON MAH TARDIS.


"What are you going to do in there?"


"Make myself a cup of coffee. Good day to you."


Back in The Generic Middle Ages, the lord and lady of Chateau Good Guys are discussing how to deal with Irongron. Mostly you just need to know that these are the good guys, and they have no troops because the king's away at war. Handily, this means that the BBC doesn't need to pay any extras to play soldiers.


In Irongron's castle, the warlord and the alien bond over how great war is. We get a bit of exposition about how the Sontaran race has been constantly at war for milennia.


Meanwhile, back in The Seventies, the Doctor is working on a gizmo of some sort.


"What's that?" asks Sarah.
"It's my alarm clock."


"Doctor, kindly don't be so patronizing. Now what is it really?"


"It's a rhondium sensor. It detects delta particles. At a preset spectrum density of fifteen ems, it oscillates this little cylinder there, which promotes a vacuum in there, which wakes me up. Clear?" No, Doctor, it actually isn't, but whatever.


"Why do you want to be woken up when it detects delta particles?"


"Because I am very fond of delta particles! Why do you ask so many questions?"


"Because I'm a journalist! ...are you going to sleep there?" Sarah's already seen many of the Doctor's odd habits, but his habit of sleeping whilst draped decoratively over the furniture puzzles her a bit.


"If you'll allow me to do so. Good night, Miss Smith." He sends her off with a sarcastic little wave which is rather difficult to capture in a screencap. Have a comedy!face instead.


And then there's some more stuff in The Generic Middle Ages, with Lynx hypnotising a captured prisoner with a device that looks uncomfortably like a flashlight stuck in a tampon applicator. But it's not terribly important. Let's get back to The Seventies.


The Doctor's alarm goes off, alerting him that strange things are afoot. It does this without making much actual noise beyond a low hum, so either the Doctor is a terribly light sleeper or Time Lords can hear in dog-whistle frequencies or something.


Oh my God! Someone's made off with Half-Blind Old Scientist Guy! Even though he was there a moment ago!


And there's a mysterious ghostly thing on the landing!


The Doctor sets off to follow the ghostly thing in the TARDIS while the Brigadier Demands An Explanation. Apparently "someone's operating a matter transmitter. The strange thing is there's a time transferrance, too. It's being operated from several centuries ago." So there you go.


Sarah, not knowing what she's about to embark on, heads into the TARDIS to look for Half-Blind Old Scientist Guy...


...while the Brigadier expresses some very legitimate doubts about the Doctor's ability to steer the TARDIS anywhere he actually wants to go. "Brigadier," the Doctor chides him, "a straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting." And, seemingly unaware that Sarah is aboard, the Doctor heads back to the past.


Back in The Generic Middle Ages again, where the good guys' archer is trying to take out Irongron while he walks his battlements.


Sarah Jane, understandably, is a bit confused by the whole "bigger on the inside" thing. Note that the Doctor left the TARDIS before she did; he still doesn't know she's here.


Unfortunately, having never travelled in the TARDIS before, Sarah doesn't realize that she's in The Generic Middle Ages, and frightens off the good guys' archer when she tries to ask him where the nearest telephone is.


"Oh, it must be some sort of pageant. I say!" she calls, to Irongron's rapidly approaching guards.


This doesn't go so well, and she's dragged off back to Irongron's castle.


The Doctor, who is somewhat confused as to how she got here, begins to follow her when...


Lynx shows up for a stroll outside. And takes off his helmet for no obvious reason.


"Yes," says the Doctor, ducking behind a convenient cart to hide. "Yes, I thought as much."


Thus endeth the first episode! Tune in next week for our next exciting installment of et cetera et cetera.


 
Tempted? Perhaps pleasantly enticed? If you'd like me to do the rest of the episodes, RS, just let me know. Hope you've enjoyed!

And now I'm going to bed.