Tuesday evening saw the National Film Theatre play host to a special showing of the forthcoming Sarah Jane Adventures story featuring special guest stars Katy Manning and Matt Smith, Death of the Doctor. I won't spoil the story for people, but suffice it to say it was very enjoyable and a veritable nostalgia-fest for us oldies who remember Jo Grant from our childhood!

It was followed by a Q&A with Elisabeth Sladen and Katy Manning, plus script editor Gary Russell, SJA writer Joseph Lidster and branding manager Edward Russell. Plenty of discussion about the series, not to mention the influence of Russell T Davies. At the end of the panel both Katy and Lis paid tribute to Barry Letts, who was responsible for the creation of both of their characters alongside Terrance Dicks (and Robert Holmes - who wrote both their first stories, they forgot that!).

A sample of photos, there are some more on Facebook!


Katy Manning and Elisabeth Sladen pay tribute to the late, great Barry Letts

Less than a week to go, and here's a more extensive preview for the series:

For those that missed them, here are the original CBBC clip and then teaser trailer:

Of course, which version of the series on television will be the best to watch - we'll have CBBC, BBC1 and BBCHD to choose from? The HD version will of course be the best quality picture, but there's the danger of DOGging for the "kept" version. CBBC will almost certainly be DOGged, so mayhaps the BBC one will be cleanest - though of course they all might be prone to verbal diarrhea!!!

Also next week there's a special showing of "Death of the Doctor" at the BFI which I've got tickets to go to - I know it'll be a couple of weeks before transmission but it feels like a "can't wait" story!

Finally got around to transferring the episode off the old Sky+, its only been sitting there since New Year's Day! This was the BBCHD repeat, packaged up as a nice feature rather than two individual episodes.

A little walk down memory lane, I almost feel nostalgia from it, which is slightly odd being it is less than a year since original transmission! Maybe it was Sarah with the Doctor again that helped, or even the fact that it was seeing David Tennant as the Doctor again. I haven't really watched any of his episodes since Matt Smith arrived on our screens, and it felt a little off having him there doing his allonsies! It's also strange to think that this was his last venture as the Doctor, too, and having his moment with Sarah Jane at the end still evokes a little tear to the eye! (It'll be interesting to see how the eleventh Doctor fares in Sarah's company in a couple of months).

Its a shame K9 was missing for so much of the previous series, as the repartie between him and Mr Smith is great fun. Also a shame we never got to see his "hover-mode" down the stairs in episode one (cop-out!). More of this next series hopefully!

Spit spat!