Merry Christmas, it's K9 & Company
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Merry Christmas, it's K9 & Company
Well, it's Christmas Eve, so I've just completed a little personal Christmas ritual I make a point of every year: watching what amounts (in my opinion, anyway) to the first real doctor Who Christmas Special...or at least, the first since The Feast of Steven in 1965, which sadly no longer exists...the magnificently daft K9 & Company: A Girl's Best Friend, first broadcast on BBC1 on December 28th 1981! It's a bit of an oddity, this one: Producer John Nathan-Turner had only recently decreed that K9 be written out of Doctor Who, since he didn't really fit the direction he wanted to take the show in, but the metal mutt still had a pretty strong following, so he decided to try him out in this pilot for a proposed new series, partnered with the Doctor's former companion Sarah Jane Smith (Lis Sladen returning to the role for the first time in five years). Unfortunately, while it's a lot of fun in its way, the pilot has pretty much no budget, and setting it in a country village beset by sinister cowled modern day witches rather than on, say, a space station under attack by aliens doesn't exactly play to K9's strengths (half the tme he's pretty much immobile, since he can't really move on uneven surfaces and the village of Morton Harwood suffers from a sad deficit of metal floored corridors). Sarah isn't really playing to her strength's, either. She's supposed to be an investigative journalist, but she's actually pretty clueless throughout, so much so that when the aforementioned sinister cowled witches are unmasked, pretty much everyone she's spoken to since arriving in the village-from her missing aunt's business partner to the kindly postmistress-turns out to be in on the plot except the only two people she actually suspected, who just want to invite her round for Christmas dinner!
Still, as I said, it is fun, and there are a number of scenes which always bring a smile to my face, not least the one where the wonderfully surly Colin Jeavons, playing the sly, perpetually smirking George Tracy, introduces himself to Sarah with a gruff "I'm Tracy"...which, in my mind, should really have been followed by Sarah saying "Oh, really? Tracy who?" Sadly, while the viewing figures were pretty good (which is why the pilot was repeated a year later at Christmas '82) a change in management at the BBC scuppered plans for a series, and Sarah and K9 (as the show was originally to have been titled) weren't seen again until The Five Doctors in 1983, in which K9 has only a brief cameo. But it's interesting, I think, to think what might have been if J N-T had had his way...
Still, as I said, it is fun, and there are a number of scenes which always bring a smile to my face, not least the one where the wonderfully surly Colin Jeavons, playing the sly, perpetually smirking George Tracy, introduces himself to Sarah with a gruff "I'm Tracy"...which, in my mind, should really have been followed by Sarah saying "Oh, really? Tracy who?" Sadly, while the viewing figures were pretty good (which is why the pilot was repeated a year later at Christmas '82) a change in management at the BBC scuppered plans for a series, and Sarah and K9 (as the show was originally to have been titled) weren't seen again until The Five Doctors in 1983, in which K9 has only a brief cameo. But it's interesting, I think, to think what might have been if J N-T had had his way...
Last edited by tony ingram on Sun Mar 13, 2016 8:27 am; edited 1 time in total
tony ingram- Admin
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Re: Merry Christmas, it's K9 & Company
tony ingram wrote:the magnificently daft K9 & Company: A Girl's Best Friend,
The entire thing is on Youtube!
Mbast1- Posts : 1709
Join date : 2012-02-02
Re: Merry Christmas, it's K9 & Company
It is? Ooh...
Lucy Ingram- Posts : 2447
Join date : 2010-03-12
Age : 36
Location : Ipswich, UK
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