K-9 |
|
K-9 - John Leeson Starkey - Keegan Joyce Professor Gryffen - Robert Maloney Jorjie - Philippa Coulthard Darius - Daniel Webber 
Both seasons of the show were released on DVD and can still be found in some online stores or reseller marketplaces. 
DOCTOR WHO The Sarah Jane Smith Years The Tom Baker Years The Christopher Ecclestone Year The David Tennant Years The Matt Smith Years Peter Capaldi Years Jodie Whittaker Years Ncuti Gatwa Years SARAH JANE ADVENTURES SERIES Sarah Jane Adventures TORCHWOOD Torchwood |
REGENERATIONIn a near-future London, ruled over by the shadowy Department and its robotic policemen, one young lad called Starkey fights back, pursued by a would-be cohort Jorjie. When they stumble into the workshop of Professor Gryffen during a critical experiment with time, they end up facing off against alien turtle men and a mechanical dog called K-9. Anyone who was a fan of the classic DOCTOR WHO probably has a fondness for the Fourth Doctor's mechanical dog K-9. Though the prop rarely worked well in real life and was increasingly sidelined as he made it too easy for the Doctor to solve things, the character was a lot of fun and sparked well with Tom Baker. Now, the dog returns in this entirely separate spin-off show that owes a huge debt to the parent show, but without being able to mention it for entirely earthly legal reasons. Thus we have a completely redesigned version that can fly and make the most of the new computer effects, but still speaks with John Leeson's voice, providing the necessary through line. K-9 has lost his memory, avoiding all those legal wrangles and has a whole new set of friends. They are child-friendly archetypes (plucky girl, rebellious boy, shady boy who will no doubt have a heart of gold, dotty professor and shady mother who will probably also turn out to have a heart of gold) and possess little depth on this first outing, though there is time for that. The setting is more interesting; a dystopian future London where alien tech is used to oppress the citizens and aliens themselves are locked away for no other reason than being alien. There's a promise there that might save the show from this less than stellar opening episode. Still, K-9 is here now. Let's see what he can do. Top LIBERATIONStarkey is now the target of a Jixen who will not stop until he is dead. He is also wanted by Earth security forces. When they learn that the Jixen in imprisoned with other aliens Starkey, and Darius investigate, but K-9 is weakened by the defences. The aliens in this episode are distinctly unconvincing and all the distorting of the frame isn't going to change that. The way in which the boys break into a high-security alien prison is laughable. Making Jorjie's mum the head of the bad guys is a ncie move though. Top THE KORVENStarkey is living on the streets and still causing the authorities trouble. A Korven warrior comes through the time portal to take all the information from the Professor's head. The alien is another man in a mask, but to be fair it's an initially impressive mask. The plot is very, very thin and the final confrontation barely amounts to anything. It is also disappointing that everything K-9 does seems to wipe out his energy reserves. Darius reveals that he's not the out and out baddie he at first appeared, but that's hardly a surprise. Top THE BOUNTY HUNTERA bounty hunter claims that K-9 is a murderer and he is unable to deny it since his memory circuits are incomplete. The show may be aimed at children, but that is no excuse for the ridiculously over-the-top depiction of the bounty hunter, who is never believable for a second. He fits in with the Department agent he teams up with who is also not very believable. Top SIRENS OF CERESA 'suppression' device damages K-9 and Jorjie is placed in a school with interesting discipline techniques. This is a reworking of THE STEPFORD WIVES concept with touches of the Superman and Kryptonite story thrown in and not very original at all. It tries to play on the fears of a new school, but fails to make an impact. It is also completely predictable. Top FEAR ITSELFFThe people of London are being driven insane with fear. The source appears to be a wardrobe in a junkyard. To help find the answer, K-9 is given access to fear itself. The alien threat is much more interesting than the usual man with a mask on. The resolution is also open-ended as to what really became of the source of the problem, a source that is never really explained. The lack of clarity makes up for the simplistic nonsense spoken about feelings and system errors. Top FALLEN OF THE HOUSE OF GRYFFENA storm activates the space-time portal and brings back Professor Gryffen's missing family, but are they all they appear to be. An attempt at a creepy haunted house movie fails spectacularly by being not the slightest bit creepy despite borrowing imagery from THE SHINING and the fact that the whole cast of characters are required to be stupid. Top JAWS OF ORTHRUSK-9 attacks an important authority figure live on TV. Starkey refuses to believe it despite K-9 being unable to prove his innocence. Friendship means not needing proof of innocence to stand by someone. This message is hammered home by a script that is a complete stranger to the concept of subtlety. It's blindingly obvious what's going on and the robot police being defeated by a plastic bowl and being made to disco dance is just embarrassing. Top DREAM EATERSEveryone is falling asleep and having bad dreams. An ancient threat has returned to feast on human dreams and gain a crystal from Gryffen. The crystal in question is a very poor plastic prop and the alien terror is pretty unterrifying. In fact, only the reaction of the kids to having to wear tin foil hats is noteworthy. Top CURSE OF ANUBISAn alien pyramid comes to Earth with a crew that kneel before K-9 despite his not knowing them. The Egyptian-based alien outfits are impressive and the story harks back to an earlier K-9 design in a funny fashion, but the impressive opening soon descends into an uninteresting and uninventive story of mind control. The book depicting the history of the aliens shows them subjugating several alien races from DR WHO. Top ORUBOROSThe time/space portal opens by itself, allowing a time snake to invade Gryffen's mansion causing time jumps that start to affect all London. At the same time, Starkey's blood starts to produce strange antibodies. A few time jumps, hints about Starkey's parents and a reasonably well rendered giant CGI snake help improve this episode, but the creature's shed skin is utterly unconvincing as is the manner in which it is lured to its doom. Top ALIEN AVATARInvestigating a rare chemical that is poisoning the Thames, the gang intercept a message from some trapped aliens who A few time jumps, hints about Starkey's parents and a reasonably well rendered giant CGI snake help improve this episode, but the creature's shed skin is utterly unconvincing as is the manner in which it is lured to its doom. Top AEOLIEANThe time/space portal opens by itself, allowing a time snake to invade Gryffen's mansion causing time jumps that start to affect all London. At the same time, Starkey's blood starts to produce strange antibodies. A few time jumps, hints about Starkey's parents and a reasonably well rendered giant CGI snake help improve this episode, but the creature's shed skin is utterly unconvincing as is the manner in which it is lured to its doom. Top THE LAST OAK TREEThe last remaining Oak Tree in England disappears from its museum home and aliens appear to be responsible. K-9 and the gang are soon on their trail. There's an ecological message at the heart of this episode, but it's far from a new one. It certainly isn't helped by the very poorly realised giant CGI caterpillar alien that is amongst the worst aliens that the show has come up with to date, at least until it turns into a butterfly thing that is even worse, that is. Top BLACK HUNGERAn alien lifeform used by the Department to destroy organic matter is mistakenly used by Darius to clean up the house. The cleaning microbes, however, have mutated to devour all organic matter, living or dead. It's rather ridiculous to think that Darius, when paid to clean up a room, would go out and steal a top-secret device from a restricted zone. The device itself is a cheap-looking prop mounted on the base of a rolling chair and the animated effects of the microbes themselves is pretty poor. Top THE CAMBRIDGE SPYA power surge in the space/time portal sends Jorjie back to 1963 and into the heart of an investigation aiming to reveal a Russian spy. Although based on the slightest of premises, this time travel tale had possibilities, riffing on BACK TO THE FUTURE as Darius starts fading during to the changes made in the timeline. Unfortunately, the supporting cast decide that the past time scenario is an excuse to treat it all as pantomime and so the threat is reduced and the impact minimised. Top LOST LIBRARY OF UKKOStarkey and Darius infiltrate the Department only for Starkey to be sucked into a whole world stored holographically inside a picture frame that will delete him after two hours. A moderately original idea and a ticking clock ought to make for an interesting episode, but it is spoiled by the insistence on using poor comedy, the silly glasses everyone has to wear and the plastic headpiece that fails to create a believeable alien librarian. There is also absolutely nothing for K-9 to actually do here, making him a bystander in his own show. Top MUTANT COPPEROne of the robot policemen suffers damage whilst on the run from others. The team take it in and attempt to fix the damage caused by trying to mix human dna into its nature. This episode would be a whole lot more successful had the robot at the centre been less irritating. There are themes here about what is intelligence, about fitting in, about personal freedom, but the comedy robot with the silly voice undermines everything. The audience is more likely to want to help the authorities destroy the thing. Top THE CUSTODIANSA new virtual reality video game called 'Little Green Men' is turning millions of children comatose. Is there an alien connection? There are very few surprises in this tale of a lone alien trying to recreate its race out of human children through the method of a video game. All of the elements are familiar and overused. Top TAPHONY AND THE TIME LOOPThe Professor taps into a virtual reality prison and frees the young girl locked inside, despite protestations the girl is dangerous. Taphony was created by the Professor for the Department and now he wants to save her, but the only way to do that might be to sacrifice Jorjie. Though there is a girl called Taphony in this episode, there isn't a time loop. Nothing repeats. She does have the ability to speed up and slow down time, and to steal it from others, making the Professor old and draining Jorjie's life energy. This is because she doesn't understand the concept of friendship and the writers clearly don't understand the concept of not talking down to their young audience. This is predictable, trite and juvenile and not in any good ways. Top ROBOT GLADIATORSStarkey, Darius, Jorjie and K-9 go up against the promoter of a highly illegal robot destruction arena show in order to find out where he gets his illegal technology. K-9 will have to face the champion destroyer, but is there an even more sinister plot at work? This is utterly tedious. Anyone thinking that they might get a bit of amped up ROBOT WARS will be incredibly disappointed. The face-offs in the arena are ridiculously amateurish and make a farce of the whole thing. The directorial flashes elsewhere, attempting to give the tired, and tiresome, plot a bit of a lift with some snazzy, if inappropriate, bouncy text logos are wasted on an episode that vies to be the very worst that the show has offered. Top MIND SNAPAn attempt to recover K-9's lost memories allows the Professor and Starkey to witness episodes from the past. Yes, it's the dreaded 'clips' episode which uses the slightest of plot devices to recycle a lot of old episode clips in place of a proper new storyline. The framing device can sometimes be interesting, but here there's just not enough of it and it's thrown away on farcical comedy. Top ANGEL OF THE NORTHStrange emanations from a remote region of Canada lead Professor Gryffen to believe the missing piece of the space/time machine is still to be found in the crashed alien spaceship from which which the machine was taken. He leads an expedition to reclaim it, but the humans find they are not the only creatures there. This episode manages the curious trick of having too much story and not enough story at the same time. It takes so long to set up the Professor's exit from the house, overcoming his agoraphobia using a special suit whose workings are never explained, that the time spent on the crashed alien ship is rushed through. The alien threat appears and everyone simply runs away. There are some half-hearted hints at links between K-9's origins and the show's villains, but aside from that the episode manages to achieve very little. The sense of a frozen wasteland is nicely evoked, but a scene in which the Professor's facial reactions echo his whispered 'beautiful' cuts to a decidedly underwhelming room that is anything but beautiful. Top THE LAST PRECINCTThe Gryffen residence is taken over by a group of ex-police officers turned rebels. Their plan is to hole up in the building whilst they unleash an alien virus that will turn the robot police officers that replaced them into obedient slaves, assuming it doesn't make them want to suppress the whole human race. The short running time of the show's episodes doesn't serve this story well. It combines a hostage-taking siege storyline with revelations about Jorje's mother's role in the creation of the robot police force, the illegal use of alien biotechnology in the droids and the abortive virus causing the robots to turn on their masters. On top of all this, one of the leading lights of the rebels is Darius' father, so there's a chance to jam in some angst about absent fathers and parents in general. That's a lot to cram into a short running time. It's hard to stage a convincing story about a global robot threat to humanity when you only have six working robot costumes available. This renders the bigger theme void and concentrates instead on the father/son dynamic, which unfortunately the actors can't make interesting enough and the turnaround at the end just never convinces. Top HOUND OF THE KORVENThe Department make a deal with K-9 to exchange his regenerative unit for his lost memories and Darius' father's release from prison. This is, of course, a trap that could see the team either killed by an alien or blown up by K-9's self-destruct mechanism. There are a few surprises in this penultimate episode, mainly around the alien who was originally considered an enemy. The tension derives from the invasive programming that takes over K-9, but it is obvious that the hero of the show isn't about to blow himself up, so that tension is muted. This is a set up for the final episode and so it is not entirely successful as an episode in its own right, but there is certainly enough going on to get by. Top ECLIPSE OF THE KORVENK-9's regenerative unit is being used to create both a portal through which an invading army can arrive and a huge monster to protect it. The solution lies in Professor Gryffen breaking out from his prison of agoraphobia. It's the final episode of the season and it pulls out all the stops to provide a thrilling finale. There's a twist that isn't that much of a surprise, everyone gets to be heroic in their own way and one of our heroes faces a terminal end. This allows for tearful farewells all round before the inevitable happens. The giant (poor) CGI monster rather overeggs a pudding that didn't really need it. With the Korven coming through into our world, robot guards to be evaded and fought through, and an energy portal capable of ripping the planet apart there really is enough to be getting on with without the monster with halitosis. In fact, if the rest of the show had been able to match this, there might have been more chance of it getting a second season. In the end, though, it was not to be. Top |
