There are three Law & Order shows and three CSI shows, so why not three Doctor Who shows? Hell, why not three-hundred Doctor Who shows? Russell Davies doesn't need to sleep, does he?

You might not have heard, since it's been kinda low-key, but there's a third Doctor Who series on the air in England: The Sarah Jane Adventures. And now it's coming to the Sci Fi Channel, debuting tomorrow, Friday, April 11, at 7:30 pm (ET). It's a 90-minute premiere, with ten more half-hour episodes to follow. Next Friday, April 18, there's one SJA at 8 pm followed by the 90-minute Doctor Who premiere at 8:30 pm; after that, it's two SJAs at 8 pm followed by DW at 9 pm. Battlestar Galactica follows at 10 pm every Friday. Like my Friday nights weren't dorky enough already.

I've seen all of SJA already, of course -- in, ahem, the usual way that we enormous Doctor Who dorks have been doing when we don't want to wait -- but I'm still gonna watch 'em again on Sci Fi. It doesn't have the Doctor or David Tennant like Doctor Who does, and it's not sexy like Torchwood, but still: it's pretty much Doctor Who. The idea is that journalist Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), who traveled with the third and fourth Doctors (Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker) so long ago, has been revitalized by her meeting with the Tennant Doctor in the episode "School Reunion," and now she's back in the fighting-aliens swing of things, working out of her cool-creaky old suburban house with the help of her 13-year-old neighbor, Maria Jackson (Yasmin Paige), and a strange boy of around the same apparent age named Luke (Thomas Knight): he's a kind of cross between Kyle XY and Starman, and Sarah adopts him as her own child at the end of the first episode (though I'll let you wait to see how that comes about).

As the presence of the youngsters suggests -- never mind the fact that the show was produced for Children's BBC, or CBBC -- SJA is much more in the vein of the original Doctor Who. It's aimed at 6- to 12-year-olds, and the stories are commensurately simpler, but its frequent bubble-gum brightness does not mask some deeper, tougher issues. Maria lives with her divorced father (Joseph Millson) -- her mother (Juliet Cowan) is a minor pain in the ass who shows up once in a while to make a nuisance of herself -- and the problems of kids and parents coping with divorce isn't ignored. Nor is Sarah Jane's difficulties in coping with motherhood for the first time in her 50s.

The aliens up to no good include some familiar faces from Doctor Who -- the Slitheen are back, for one -- and the stories hit some social commentary on life in the Western world in the 21st century, and offer, as well, some very perceptive insight into adolescence. But it's Sarah Jane who's the most interesting aspect of the show, from the perspective of an adult fan. Oh, how she still pines for the Doctor: that much is perfectly obvious. When she tells herself -- and tells us -- that "life on earth can be an adventure, too, you just need to know where to look," it sounds an awful lot like wishful thinking, even giving all the actual adventure and danger she manages to find without leaving the planet. Poor Sarah Jane...

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MaryAnn Johanson (email me)
reviews, reviews, reviews! at FlickFilosopher.com

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