Plot Outline from Wikipedia

Sarah Jane and her companions investigate claims of sightings of a ghostly nun at Lavender Lawns, the local nursing home. There an old lady gives Luke an ancient talisman, which is really the key to a portal in space and time. They find that the nuns are hiding an age-old creature, the Gorgon. When Sarah Jane refuses to give the talisman to the nuns, they kidnap Luke and Clyde and take the Gorgon and Maria to Sarah Jane's house where the Gorgon turns Maria's father to stone.

Analysis By Leather Tuscadero

Evil Nuns, Kidnapping, bondage, people getting stoned, what time does this go out at??

So anyway, Gorgons were the monsters of the week for Sarah Jane and her motley crew to deal with, mythical creatures from Greek mythology and old hammer movies who can turn people to stone with one look.

The story revolved around an old woman named Bea Nelson-Stanley who claims to have led an extraordinary life full of adventures with her husband Edgar but is now alone and suffering from Alzheimer’s in an old peoples home, some of the other residents have claimed to have seen a ghostly nun in the home at night and Sarah Jane comes in to investigate, actually the nun part of the story was just padding as the nuns weren’t the big bad in the end, it was a gorgon, the nuns were just working for her.

Gorgons might be a bit of an obscure monster for a supposedly kiddie audience, I don’t know many kids who read a lot of Greek mythology, but still I think it worked, I loved the reference to the 60’s hammer movie "The Gorgon", now who was in that again? Christopher Lee, Barbara Shelley and ummmmm oh yeah Patrick Troughton! You have to know your Hammers for that one!

Bea was a great character, played excellently by PlaySchool favourite Phyllida Law, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her when everyone just thought she was crazy and making things up which she may well have been until she mentioned Sontarans! I think I may have squeed a little bit when she mentioned that, what a great reference, and how cool was Sarah in that scene? She was bloody excellent! She did not see that coming by a long shot, sometimes it must feel she can’t share her experiences with anyone but to find out someone else has seen the same monsters must be awesome!

Sarahs reaction to Bea in this episode was excellent, it’s not a stretch to think maybe she was looking at a future version of herself in Bea, she’s had amazing adventures all over the galaxy and one day she could end up in a home being thought of as a crazy old woman, I think it’s heartbreaking actually, at least she’s found people to share her adventures with now, I hope she doesn’t end up alone at the end of it all like Bea did.

The Gorgon was nice and scary though, not too scary of course for the kiddies but I have to admit when Alan got turned to stone and they were gonna turn Sarah into the new Gorgon leader I did get a bit scared, The nuns however did get a bit annoying with their chanting, why must all possessed people chant, just once id like to meet a possessed person you can have an intelligent conversation with, Still I think they were a good plot device for the Gorgon to work through, although I thought the line about what nuns do with kids they kidnap was far to disturbing a line for childrens television.

The two boys in this episode were a bit like spare parts, I think the story was more focused on Sarah and Maria, but the boys did have their good moments, I liked Clydes opinions on getting old “by the time I'm 40 I can get my brain put in a robot and live forever”, hmm, clearly Clyde's never met a Cyberman! I loved Sarah’s reaction to that, very subtle, but good!

Poor Luke though just cant get a break, the poor guys created in a lab by evil aliens, attacked by Slitheen now he’s getting kidnapped by nuns, I have to say though I think they nabbed him a bit to easily, it’s not a very good example to set for kids in the audience is it, we get taught in primary school not to get into strangers cars, I know the poor boy hasn’t been but he is supposed to be super intelligent isn’t he?

The boys definitely work well together, especially in the second episode when they are trying to escape form the abbey; it’s a very good dynamic between the two that wouldn’t have worked as well if they’d kept Kelsey as a character.

The star of this episode was definitely Maria though, the scenes with her and her parents were just brilliant, especially when she told her mum off for thinking her friends were weird, and when she was talking to her dad about how she felt about their divorce, divorce is something a lot of kids go through and I think Maria spoke a lot of truths about how it feels, those scenes were very well written. Also when her father was turned to stone I thought she was great, It was very emotional and the way she blamed everything on Sarah was so sad, I thought that scene was excellent and I don’t think it slowed anything in the plot down at all, I think it just showed how sad Maria is and how close she is to Sarah.

I like the relationship those two have, I think it even grew stronger in this episode, Sarahs almost become a surrogate mum to her, which is good because Marias mum is bloody useless.

If it’s possible I think Chrissie became even more annoying in this episode, I think Alan was bang to rights when he told her that she split the family apart, because from what I can make out it’s very clear that she did, you cant just come storming back into the family you abandoned because you’ve had a fight with your lover, it doesn’t work like that, and yes every girl does needs her mother but when you walk out on your kids I don’t think you have any rights at all. I think it’s time Alan set some ground rules for his ex about visiting, it doesn’t seem right to me.

The kids in this series are just brilliant, there have been some people who have said their acting is terrible but I think their acting is nothing short of perfect, especially Maria and Luke, much better than in some other series on childrens television, like The story of Tracy Beaker or Lizzie McGuire, a lot of that is just terrible, and I'm not just biased I do watch a lot of childrens television, I have a lot of free time on my hands.

The ending with Bea was very well done, I’m glad the talisman didn’t cure her of her Alzheimer’s, think it would have been wrong of the writers to use that as an ending because there’s people in the world who really do have Alzheimer’s and it cant be cured, to do that would have been unfair. I think it shows some realism that some things can’t be changed, there’s no point shielding children from realities after all and I think this episode dealt with it in a decent way.

This episode was a definite improvement on the Slitheen from the last episode, I think this series can only get better, it’s funny how there’s been a report lately from Ofcom about the lack of decent British childrens television, they clearly haven’t watched The Sarah Jane Adventures have they?

The only thing that annoyed me about this episode was Mr Smith, the whole fanfare and smoke whenever Sarah Say’s “Mr Smith, I need you” is getting a little old, it was fine in the pilot when they first introduced him but it doesn’t need to be in every episode, I think they should stop that now, it’s just silly.