Review: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? novelisation

After four successful (and thoroughly enjoyable) books covering the first seven episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures, the series of novelisations returns with a new batch of four books. The first of these is Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?, by Rupert Laight.

Adapted from the two television episodes scripted by Gareth Roberts, the story sees Sarah Jane Smith vanishing from time and space, with only her young friend Maria able to remember her. How can Maria convince her friends and family that her memories are real? And is the new resident of Sarah Jane's house - the mysterious Andrea Yates - as innocent as she claims to be in all this? With earth seconds away from destruction, Maria has to restore the timeline, but she's entirely on her own, and she's not immune from being plucked out of time herself...

This story was arguably the most popular of the first season, and it's easy to see why. The stakes are raised higher than ever before, the scale of the adventure is grander and more epic than anything the series has shown up until this point, and Roberts' writing is simply beautiful. The scene in which Andrea consents to the restoration of the timeline - effectively sacrificing her own life for the good of mankind - is perhaps the most poignant scene of the entire season, and the writer tackles it superbly.

With the choices of one desperate woman at the centre of its plot, it's not too surprising that Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? is quite a character-driven story. Yes, there are a lot of broad plot strokes - the absence of Sarah Jane from the timeline puts the entire planet at risk, and Maria's subsequent disappearance takes things up another notch - but it's the smaller-scale changes are far more interesting. Clyde's behaviour towards Maria, for example, is totally different in the altered timeline, and we get a glimpse of a different Alan/Chrissie relationship in a world where their daughter never existed. Roberts' script is packed with strong characterisations, and brilliantly-drawn relationships, all of which is carried into Laight's book, where Andrea Yates in particular leaps vividly off the page.

In the prose form, Laight is also able to give us a little more insight into the characters' minds, which is especially beneficial in this story. He also replicates the story's sense of unrelenting jeopardy, giving us a very real threat in the arrival of the meteor, which provides an ongoing source of tension and excitement. I wonder if his approach might spoil some elements of the plot, though: the book opens with a brief prologue featuring a young Sarah Jane and Andrea, for example. If you're familiar with the epiosde, it's a brilliantly atmospheric piece of scene-setting, which starts the book in a much more intriguing way than its screen counterpart, but if the novelisation is your first experience of this story, that scene spoils the later revelation that the pair knew each other as children.

Physically, the book is just as beautiful as those from previous set. The cover is stunning (although the use of silver foiling to create a small explosion beneath the Graske's chin, and to highlight three particular strands of Elisabeth Sladen's hair, is a little bit bewildering), and there are eight glossy pages of colour photos from the episodes (with Jane Asher as the adult Andrea Yates conspicuous by her absence).

This book gets the new set of Sarah Jane novelisations off to a very strong start, and is an enjoyable read from start to finish. Understandably, it's aimed more towards younger readers, but most fans of the series should enjoy this. And, dare I say it, I think it's even better than the television version . . .