THE SARAH JANE ADVENTURES: WARRIORS OF KUDLAK
Written By: Phil Gladwin
Directed By: Charles Martin
Warriors of Kudlak bases itself around this alien war general in association with his business partner Mr Mark Grantham, kidnapping young children who come to play their laser tag game "Combat 3000". It's not just in London, kids who play this game go missing all across the country. So what's going on? What has Kudlak got to hide? why is he kidnapping children? what does he need them for? why is Grantham helping him? and what's all this got to do with laser tag?
Warriors of Kudlack is the third installment of series one of SJA, I have to say, I look back on this one as not being a fond favourite of mine. I'm not quite sure what the definitive reasoning towards why that is, I'm not that keen on it as I am on other stories. It's on par with "Whatever happened to Sarah Jane?" as being the weakest story in the first series for me, which is a shame in follow-up to "Eye of the Gorgon" which is a very good story.
It's the first story to have a male director because, for the first three stories, they've all been directed by Alice Troughton. This is the first time that a male director steps up to the plate, and in this case, it's Charles Martin. Philip Gladwin is the writer of this story, I think this is the only story he wrote for SJA, he never wrote for the series again. So you've got the combination of Gladwin's material and Martin's directing into the mix. I think in regards on commenting on that combination briefly, I think the directing is a lot better than the actual story and script because it makes the story have more life to it. True, you can say that about any script, but I mean, that Martin gives the story a sense of exciting essence about it, the story as a story reading it on paper wouldn't interest me at all. But it's the director that gave much more life to the story which helps it a lot.
The story goes that this laser game, a bit like Quazar if you've ever played that, Combat 3000 is the centre point of kidnappings of young people, all of whom are going missing as a result of Mr Kudlak, an alien, transporting off somewhere else. So these kids are going missing, no one knows all the answers yet, what brings this to Sarah Jane's attention is when one of the boys Lance, goes missing and his mother is worried sick about him, so she agrees to help her. What's interesting here is Sarah Jane doesn't suspect anything straight away, she has assumptions but nothing concrete to make her sure of the facts. In Lance's disappearance Luke feels bad because he made fun of his name, and that causes Luke to think that maybe he is partly to blame for Lance going missing, he goes off and Clyde follows after him leaving Sarah Jane and Maria to work out what actually happened.
I liked all the sciency stuff behind the entanglement shells, I thought that was explained really well and gives an actual reasoning behind the storms, because every time someone goes missing, it's been raining, so when it rains it means that someone is about to be teleported. Sarah Jane and Maria work this out and then with the help of Mr Smith pin it down to Combat 3000. At the same time, Luke and Clyde have gone to play that very same game.
Impressed by their skills in the game, Kudlak decides he wants Luke and Clyde to be his next selection of children to kidnap. So when they get teleported its a question of working out who Kudlak is and where has he been teleporting the children to, and can Sarah Jane and Maria get them back?
Essentially the main message behind this story is 'don't take war games too seriously' you have games today like Call of Duty, amongst many other fighting games, that young people become addicted to, and with the graphics and stuff you can do today, those games a very life like and war in real life is very real, you have wars that go on today which have many casualties. The aliens in this see the children play their games, not realising it's just a game and think 'oh these are skilled fighters, we can use them in our war' when in actual fact and Maria says this in the story, "We've seen what adults and their wars have done to world and we don't want any part in that." So yes, don't take war games too seriously, even if you like shooting virtual people and blowing stuff up.
This episode very much belongs to Luke in the sense that at the very beginning, he feels as if he doesn't fit in or has been finding it hard to fit in, he tries to master being funny but can't quite do that and he also doesn't understand games so that's why he and Clyde go and play Combat 3000. He's also the one that when all the kids get kidnapped and sent up to the spaceship, he's the leader, he's the one that takes all the action and helps get them back home. So it just goes to show, Luke's starting to feel like everyone else in the sense that he is still trying to work out his place in this world and work out how things in the world work.
This is also the first story partly set not on earth, we get to up into space for a change. It's great to have a change of scenery, my favourite scene is the bit where Sarah Jane and Maria are looking down on the earth and they're both very reflective on such an incredible sight.
Overall, there are bits of this I enjoy, I'm just not overly keen on the story as a story and the conclusion was a bit rushed as well.
4/10.
Next week: Whatever happened to Sarah Jane.
