| K-9 and Company | |
|---|---|
Title card |
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| Format | Science Fiction |
| Starring | Elisabeth Sladen John Leeson (voice) |
| Theme music composer | Fiachra Trench Ian Levine |
| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Language(s) | English |
| No. of episodes | 1 |
| Production | |
| Producer(s) | John Nathan-Turner |
| Running time | 50 min. |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | BBC1 |
| Picture format | PAL |
| Original airing | 28 December 1981 |
| Chronology | |
| Followed by | The Sarah Jane Adventures |
| Related shows | Doctor Who K-9 |
K-9 and Company was a proposed television spin-off of the original programme run of Doctor Who (1963–1989). It was to feature former series regulars Sarah Jane Smith, an investigative journalist played by Elisabeth Sladen, and K-9, a robotic dog. Both characters had been companions of the Fourth Doctor, but they had not appeared together before. A single episode, "A Girl's Best Friend", was produced as a pilot for a proposed programme, but was not taken up. "A Girl's Best Friend" was broadcast by BBC1 as a Christmas special on 28 December 1981. The story was released on DVD on 16 June 2008 as a double pack with K-9's first Doctor Who story "The Invisible Enemy".[1] Although a full series of K-9 and Company was not produced, the two characters did re-appear two years later in The Five Doctors, an episode of Doctor Who broadcast in 1983 celebrating the show's twentieth anniversary.
Following the successful revival of Doctor Who in 2005, Sarah Jane Smith and K-9 would be re-introduced to the show in the second series episode "School Reunion", which aired in 2006. In addition to subsequent appearances by both characters in the main programme, this became the basis for another series featuring the two characters, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which debuted in 2007. K-9 appears only occasionally in the first and second series, and becomes a regular character in series three. Another unrelated programme, not produced by the BBC and without Sarah Jane, K-9, began airing in 2010.
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The programme has its roots firmly in the desire of Doctor Who producer John Nathan-Turner to get Elisabeth Sladen back into the TARDIS. He had wanted her to have the contract eventually awarded to Janet Fielding in late 1980. John Nathan-Turner's preferred plan for the transition from Baker to Davison was to have Sarah Jane be along for the ride from Logopolis to the second story of series 19. However, Sladen had no interest in returning simply to reprise a role and function identical to the one she had left years before.
Meanwhile, Nathan-Turner was trying to figure out what to do about K-9. The robot dog was very popular among children but was difficult to deal with technically and, in story terms, made the TARDIS crew almost overwhelmingly formidable. He decided that a child-orientated spin-off series with K-9 might be just the thing. However, such a series would require a human as the lead, and his prime candidate for this role was Sladen. He pitched the part to the actress as a departure from what she had previously done: she would be returning as Sarah Jane Smith, but she would do so as the heroine and not just a sidekick. This offer Sladen accepted.
| "A Girl's Best Friend" | |
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| K-9 and Company episode | |
| Cast | |
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Others
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| Production | |
| Writer | Terence Dudley |
| Director | John Black |
| Script editor | Eric Saward, Antony Root |
| Producer | John Nathan-Turner |
| Production code | D300A[2] |
| Length | 50 minutes |
| Originally broadcast | 28 December 1981 |
Sarah Jane Smith visits her Aunt Lavinia, who was occasionally mentioned but never seen in Doctor Who. When she arrives at her aunt's house, though, she finds that her learned relative has left early for a lecture tour in America, Christmas notwithstanding. Sarah is thus left disappointed by the prospect of another holiday without family. Fortunately, Lavinia's ward, Brendan Richards, breaks her moment of reflection on her aunt's sudden disappearance. After picking him up from the train station, they return to the house and discover a large crate that has been waiting for Sarah for a number of years. When they open it, they discover a mechanical dog named K-9. Upon activation, it tells Sarah that it is a gift from the Doctor.
Brendan's curiosity about K-9 is matched only by Sarah's renewed concern over Lavinia's absence. They thus split up and follow their new-found obsessions. Sarah goes into town to question the locals, and Brendan stays behind to test the capabilities of Sarah's new "pet". In town, Sarah discovers that Lavinia has become disliked by some because of her blunt letters to the local newspaper editors about a growing practice of witchcraft in the area. Brendan, meanwhile, is attacked while using K-9 to analyse soil samples in Lavinia's garden. His attackers, George Tracey and his son, Peter, are tied in to the local coven. Unfortunately, both attackers flee before Brendan can get a good look at them.
Since Tracey is actually Lavinia's gardener, he is naturally called in the next morning to investigate the damage the scuffle with Brendan caused to the garden. After Brendan attempts to brag about the pH balance of the soil, Tracey sharply comments that gardening is more about respect for nature than scientific theory. Otherwise, though, he doesn't betray his more sinister intent towards Brendan. Later that night, he sends his son out to kidnap the sleeping Brendan from the house.
This time, Brendan's attacker is successful, stealing him out from under Sarah, who is elsewhere in the house, reading up on the local practice of witchcraft.
Sarah is now increasingly suspicious of Tracey, believing he would have the opportunity to commit the crime, even if she can't yet put her finger on the motive. She therefore finds a way to hide K-9 in Tracey's house. K-9 quietly monitors the household, until he eventually listens in on a conversation that implicates Tracey as a member of a coven. He also discovers that Tracey intends to kill Brendan in an act of ritual murder.
When Tracey leaves his cottage, Sarah is able to retrieve K-9, who alerts his new mistress to the impending crime. Unfortunately, she has no way to enlist the aid of the local police or, really anyone else in the town, because she can't substantiate her claim of overhearing the conversation without also then having to explain who and what the anachronistic K-9 actually is.
Realising that she and K-9 are effectively on their own, she tries to figure out how to stop the sacrifice. Her first order of business is determining the when of it. Using Lavinia's books on witchcraft, she and K-9 deduce it must occur at midnight on the winter solstice, now just a few short hours away. The where of it is more elusive, however, causing the duo to drive around the shire looking at all the churches. As the last few minutes before midnight tick away, they finally realise that there's an abandoned chapel on Lavinia's property. Rushing home, K-9 and Sarah are briefly upset at missing something that was right under their noses all along.
They arrive just in time for K-9 to use his blaster to stop the coven's Priest and Priestess from plunging a knife into Brendan's chest. Now stunned, the group's ringleaders are easily apprehended by the police.
Finally able to celebrate Christmas, Sarah receives a call from her Aunt Lavinia. She's surprised that Sarah was worried about her, since she left instructions for her business partner to send Sarah a cable. As he turned out to be the High Priest of the coven, Sarah merely laughs and tells her aunt that she has a story to tell her about why that message never reached her. Meanwhile, K-9 tries to connect with the human holiday in his own way, teaching himself to sing "We Wish You a Merry Christmas".
K-9 is referred to as "Mark III" in this story because it is presumably the third to be owned by the Doctor. As chronicled in the main series, the first K-9 chose to stay with Leela on Gallifrey, while K-9 Mark II was forced to stay with Romana in E-Space due to being damaged by time winds. Commonly assumed to be a gift of the Fourth Doctor, this fact was confirmed in the 2006 episode "School Reunion" when the Tenth Doctor responded to Sarah Jane's comments on his apparent regeneration with the line "half a dozen times since we last met", indicating that this was the first time the two had met since the Doctor was in his Fourth incarnation. K-9 reveals that the Doctor left him on Earth for Sarah Jane in 1978. When K-9 tells Sarah Jane that he is a gift from The Doctor, a leitmotif of the Doctor Who theme music plays briefly.
K-9 Mark III is still functioning and residing with Sarah Jane in The Five Doctors.
When K-9 reveals that he is a gift from the Doctor, Sarah Jane remarks, "Oh, Doctor, you didn't forget." Their parting words in The Hand of Fear were admonishments not to forget each other, as later reprised nearly verbatim in The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith.
The episode's setting is stated in dialogue and a newspaper masthead as being 18–25 December 1981, and Sarah Jane's experiences with the Doctor and UNIT are in her past, indicating that the Third and Fourth Doctor serials took place more or less contemporaneously to their original broadcast dates. Depictions of Sarah Jane's childhood in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? and The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith support this. But see UNIT dating controversy.
There appears to be a continuity error in a section where Sarah and K-9 go out to look for Brendan in Sarah's car. Sarah leaves her aunt's house when it is dark and arrives at the Church in the dark, but the driving scene that takes place between the two is in daylight.
The newspaper in which Aunt Lavinia's disappearance is reported is the Wiltshire and Gloucestershire Standard.[3]
Continuing Doctor Who's tongue-in-cheek references to the Doctor's name, Brendan asks, "Who is the Doctor?" to which K-9 responds, "Affirmative."
Lavinia describes Sarah Jane as being "never in one place long enough to lick a stamp." Sarah Jane describes Lavinia with the same words, twenty-seven years later, in The Sarah Jane Adventures episode, "The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith". Similarly, Lavinia Smith's spinsterhood, lack of biological children of her own, and her eagerness to care for orphans (i.e., Sarah Jane and Brendan), are traits passed on to Sarah Jane.
In the 2002 Big Finish audio drama, Sarah Jane Smith: Comeback, Sarah Jane (voiced by Sladen), states that Lavinia has recently died and Brendan is living in San Francisco, and mentions Juno Baker. The canonicity of the story is uncertain. Lavinia's death is implied periodically in The Sarah Jane Adventures: Sarah Jane laments in 2007's "Invasion of the Bane" that she is "all alone". Clyde refers to "the money her aunt left her" in 2009's "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith"; neither Lavinia's nor Brendan's absence from Sarah Jane's aborted wedding is addressed.
Peter is seen polishing his crash helmet with Mr. Sheen, a proprietary brand of furniture polish often used by motorcyclists. This is an unusual example of a product's brand name being visible in a BBC drama.
| Episode | Broadcast date | Run time | Viewership (in millions) |
|---|---|---|---|
| "A Girl's Best Friend" | 28 December 1981 | 50:00 | 8.4 |
| [4][5][6][7] | |||
Bill Fraser previously appeared with Tom Baker and K-9 Mark II in the Doctor Who story Meglos.
Many Doctor Who fans remember A Girl's Best Friend most clearly for its electronic theme music, composed by long-term Doctor Who enthusiast and record producer, Ian Levine, with his musical partner Fiachra Trench.[8] Both the theme music and title sequence have been ridiculed by some fans. Levine, who was also the unofficial continuity consultant for Doctor Who in the 1980s, said in an interview with Dreamwatch Bulletin that the music was intended to be an orchestral score, but was instead arranged directly from his electronic demonstration arrangement by Peter Howell (who also arranged the 1980s version of the Doctor Who theme music) without Levine's knowledge.
The viewing figures for the pilot were strong, achieving a viewership of about 8.4 million Britons on its premiére[9] This meant that it attracted more viewers than the average episode of Doctor Who during John Nathan-Turner's era as producer.[10] It was even more popular than the other seasonal special of the era, The Five Doctors, which posted a rating of 7.7.[11] Only when one looks narrowly at Season 19 – the one which immediately followed the broadcast of K-9 and Company – can one find a period where sustained ratings in the parent show were higher than the ratings for this spin-off pilot.
Despite these above-average ratings, the show did not go to series. The proximate cause for this was a changeover in channel controllers at BBC One. Bill Cotton, who had approved the pilot, vacated his position soon thereafter. He was replaced by Alan Hart, who simply disliked the idea and the resulting product. Further episodes were therefore not commissioned. The show was repeated once on BBC2 during the Christmas period of 1982.
The pilot episode was novelised in the late 1980s as the last in the Target Books series called The Companions of Doctor Who.
The story was released on video in the UK on 7 August 1995 as Doctor Who: K-9 and Company. It first appeared in the US in August 1998. Neither version is currently available. It was released on DVD on 16 June 2008 alongside The Invisible Enemy in the Doctor Who: K9 Tales (The Invisible Enemy / K9 And Company) box set.
The pilot attracted 8.4 million viewers on its original broadcast.
In Doctor Who Magazine's The Mighty 200 fans gave K-9 and Company 51.55% likeness.[12] The title sequence came first in TV's Top 5 worst title sequences as part of David Walliams' Awfully Good TV.
While the pilot did not lead to a series on the BBC, the concepts introduced in A Girl's Best Friend were retained by later Doctor Who writers. Subsequent nods to the team-up continue to the present series of the programme. These references appeared in virtually every medium in which Doctor Who stories have been told. In production order, the somewhat linked narrative begun with A Girl's Best Friend was:
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