K-9 and Company

Hmm some people really have it in for K9 AND COMPANY the first - And to date - only spin off from DOCTOR WHO . I guess if there was any potential spin offs from the legendary fantasy show then two would spring to mind . The first one obviously being a series featuring the Daleks . Terry Nation actually approached American television studios in the late 1960s seeking funding for the metallic meanies but since America never experienced Dalekmania you can see why they wouldn't want to invest in a concept they have no knowledge of . It would have probably been too expensive anyway and almost certainly unfilmable . The recent series of DOCTOR WHO contained breath taking Dalek sequences but that's because television technology has moved on in the last 40 years . The other obvious spin off would have been a show featuring Brigadier Lethbridge Stewart and UNIT but again the amount of military hardware involved would probably have made it prohibitive on financial grounds ( though THE X - FILES isn't a million miles removed from this premise when you think about it ) so instead of what we might have got we ended up with a former journalist and a robotic dog !

I was never keen on K9 during the fourth Doctor's tenure . Every time Tom Baker would be chained to a wall about to be tortured you just knew that K9 was going to appear out of the shadows and shoot the villains with his blaster . So in other words he was a plot device used by very lazy writers during the poorest period of the show seen at that time . As for Sarah Jane Smith I always thought she was slightly overrated as a companion ( She wins every single poll as favourite companion ) possibly because she was the Doctor's sidekick when the show achieved its highest ratings and most critical acclaim in the mid 1970s . I guess John Nathan Turner thought he was onto a winner by resurrecting two popular companions in a pilot for a proposed series

What is very clear by watching this pilot is how self limiting the format is . It's set on present day Earth with no monsters with the villains being pagan worshipers . If it had gone to a full series we'd have seen Sarah and K9 and girlie boy Brendan tackle mad scientists and .. and .. and ... maybe they'd have brought back pagan worshipers for a rematch . Or maybe JNT could have had an alien invasion every third week to break up the monotony of mad scientists and pagan worshipers . No doubt Sarah could have tackled the aliens with her karate ( Where did she learn that ? ) and if that wasn't enough K9 could zap the aliens with his laser - As long as the aliens didn't run up a flight of stairs or hide behind a greenhouse or were able to run faster than three miles per hour .

Despite the poor format there are some good points to this pilot . It contains some impressive night filming which lends itself to some atmospheric moments such as the policeman gingerly walking down a lonely country lane and it's nowhere as badly acted as some people claim , I mean try watching some DOCTOR WHO from the mid to late 1980s to see what bad acting is . Sean Chapman as Peter Tracey has a scene where he bursts into tears of despair and I often think that crying must be difficult for an actor to portray convincingly but here Chapman manages it . I'm not saying he deserves an Oscar but think of all the scenes you've seen on television and in movies where an actor is supposed to be crying and you're asking yourself if their character is laughing or crying ? As for the really crap title sequence or more appropriately the music that goes with it blame Ian Levine , someone who would later produce records for Take That , aka Robbie Williams and those other blokes

Hardly brilliant but not as bad as some people claim K-9 AND COMPANY gets six out of ten

Most of the other reviewers here can't seem to get past the theme song--yeah, it's silly but hardly something you would want to commit suicide over! The producer John Nathan Turner wanted a Hart To Hart opening credit sequence and that was a bit of a bad idea considering that the two leads in this are a woman and a mechanical dog! However, there is something bizarrely funny about it that acually draws you in. Maybe it's the camera zooming in on K-9 sitting on a stone fence--just how the hell did he get up there?! All of that aside, the actual story of witchcraft in the English countryside is rather fun stuff. There is some nice nightime atmosphere surrounding the coven's ceremonies and the actors who portray the various locals are all well cast. The only real negative is the short running time which is why there is not a lot of tension built. If one reads the novel it can be seen there was much more going on in the background to create tension but this does an acceptable job. Anyone who takes this too seriously or gets mad over this needs to relax and take a few deep breaths. This is great fun in the solid tradition of Doctor Who and it is too bad it never became a series.

So K9 was written out of Doctor Who and with the furore from the fans and the media, the producers gave him a spin off show and teamed him with Sarah Jane Smith.

It seems not much attention was paid as to who this series was aimed at. It looks like there was no type of focus group evaluation, it was just quickly green-lit into production.

The final result, a mish mash of ideas that forgot K9 was popular with kids. Therefore a witches coven story line that harks back to Pertwee era Doctor Who might not be the wisest of moves.

For years K9 & Company stuck out like a sore thumb in the Doctor Who canon. Almost a quarter of century later, Russell T Davies effectively tried a second pilot, pushing Sarah Jane to the forefront, surrounding her with some kids and K9 pushed to the background. Even the Doctor turned up a few times.

In essence this pilot provided a bridge to the Sarah Jane Adventures.

After wading through several ideas for Doctor Who's one `official' spin-off (including a UNIT series I believe), John Nathan-Turner decided to base a series on K9. After all, there were times when the metal dog had received more fan mail than Tom Baker.

In short, the pilot episode has an older and wiser Sarah Jane Smith returning to her home village. She finds a box that the Doctor sent her years ago containing K9 Mark 3. Being the nosy investigative journalist she is, Sarah Jane soon become involved in stopping the activities of a coven of witches. Thank goodness she has K9 and her geeky cousin Brendan helping her.

It doesn't look promising from the first second of the theme song (something I'm sure Nathan-Turner wrote during lunch one day), and the plot is not all that engaging. In fact, there are times it seems you're watching bits of some of the Earthbound Doctor Who episodes cobbled together. Perhaps because of these factors, K9 & Company didn't make it to Episode 2.

For completists only.

Spin-offs rarely get anywhere, and "K-9 and Company" is no exception. Now that I have the videotape, I've seen this. I liked it; it's very true to the spirit of "Doctor Who," with a touch of "The Avengers" thrown in. I always was a fan of both K-9 and Sarah Jane Smith; the chance to see them together was simply irresistable.

This takes the tried-and-true "Doctor Who" formula of a mysterious cult with supernatural powers terrorizing the local populace -- "Image of the Fendahl," "Masque of Mandragora," and "Stones of Blood" all toyed with this.

This one takes a more detective-like approach, and benefits well from it.

Unfortunately, I think this pilot was doomed by its opening sequence. The theme song will make you want to beat your head against the wall, because anything else is prefereable to listening to the theme. "K-9. K-9. K-9." That's the lyrics. I think this failed pilot works quite well to support my thesis that unpopular or failed spin-offs generally have really stupid theme songs, while the original show has some terribly memorable and catchy thing.