Plot Analysis by Wikipedia

Sarah Jane tells Maria, Luke and Clyde about a meteorite on course with Earth but reassures them that Mr Smith will be able to deflect it the following day. Sarah Jane gives Maria an alien puzzle box to cheer her up; she falls asleep that night holding it, as a mysterious cloaked figure approaches Sarah Jane's house. The next day, Maria finds that Sarah Jane, Luke and Mr. Smith have all disappeared, and she alone remembers them. A woman named Andrea Yates is living in Sarah Jane's house.

Investigating, Maria finds a 1964 newspaper report stating that a thirteen-year-old Sarah Jane Smith drowned after falling from a pier, where she was playing with her friend Andrea Yates. As Maria watches, the names of the deceased and the survivor keep switching. When Maria confronts Andrea, the panic stricken woman rushes to her attic and finds a second puzzle box. The cloaked figure appears and offers to make Maria disappear. After Andrea accepts, he dispatches a Graske, who captures Maria just after Alan picks up the first puzzle box. When Chrissie comes round he discovers his ex-wife cannot remember their daughter. Meanwhile Maria escapes from the Graske and finds herself on a beach promenade near two girls. As the first episode ends, they introduce themselves as Andrea and Sarah Jane Smith.

Alan accompanies Chrissie to Andrea's birthday party. Remembering Maria's suspicions, he questions Andrea, who takes him to the attic and tearfully reveals the truth. When she fell off the pier and Sarah Jane was unable to save her, a voice offered to switch the girls' places, and she accepted. The figure appeared and gave her the puzzle box, then removed himself from Andrea's memory; Maria’s questions made Andrea remember. Alan is now chased into the street by the Graske but knocks it down and ties it up, then uses its device to bring back Maria.

Having gotten Maria back, Alan and Maria rush to Sarahs attic where Sarah Jane appears in the mirror and explains to Andrea that witnessing her death gave her the resolve to fight pointless deaths herself. When the figure reappears (called “the Trickster” by Alan), Andrea explains she has changed her mind about the deal and throws her puzzle box at the mirror, smashing both. Back in 1964 Andrea falls to her death, while Sarah and Luke reappear in the attic and activate Mr Smith. The party guests, including Clyde and Chrissie, have learnt from television news about the incoming meteorite, and are relieved to see it suddenly diverted from its fall. The episode ends with Alan demanding an explanation of his daughter’s involvement with aliens and supercomputers.

Plot analysis by Leather_tuscadero

What would the world be like if Sarah Jane wasn’t in it...? Well for one thing my life would be a lot more boring.

That was the basic premise of this episode though, a world without Sarah Jane, and boy does it suck! Not only is there some weird woman living in her house but the world is about to be destroyed by a meteor too!

I think this episode has been the best one yet, it was sort of in the same vein as the Doctor lite episodes of Doctor Who, except this one was Sarah lite, well the first half was anyway, the second episode had a bit more for her to do.

The first part was definitely all about Maria, Yasmin Paige certainly shines in her role and this episode was very heavy on her scenes, she does extremely well in this episode especially when everyone just thinks she’s mad, my favourite bit was her speech to Andrea about getting Sarah Jane back, it reminded me of the speech the Doctor said about the Daleks in “The parting of the ways”, it was definitely Who worthy!

I love any scene between Maria and Sarah Jane, I wish Sarah would just adopt Maria too and be done with it, I’ve said it before, those two are way to friendly with each other, I don’t think Sarah ignores Luke but I do wish there were more scenes in the show with her spending time with him.

As for Maria being the person Sarah trusts the most, well I can see her point there Luke probably hasn’t quite grasped the idea of secrets yet, but it still kinda sucks for him.

That whole idea of the puzzle box looked like it was stolen straight from the movie Hellraiser, I’m sure most kids wont get the reference there [I certainly hope they don’t anyway, that films horrible], but I kept expecting Pinhead to come creeping around the place.

The Trickster was a creepy looking monster, definitely one of the best in the series so far, I have my suspicions though that he’s not all he seems, I was told in confidence by one of my contacts before the series started that The Black Guardian from Doctor Who would be making an appearance, I didn’t believe him at the time but I think that was him, the whole deal he made with Andrea and the box thing was totally reminiscent of the deal he made with Turlough in Mawdryn Undead, I’m not saying it is him, but it did remind me of him and all the clues point to him so hey, make up your own minds about it!

Andrea was an interesting character, I think Jane Asher was a great bit of casting, [still obsessed with cake though I noticed], by the end of the episode I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for her or not, she seemed like a nice lady but the way she can so easily take someone out of the world was a bit mean of her, I understand where she’s coming from though, we all want to live and she had the chance to change things for herself, I’m sure anyone in the same position would do the same thing as she did.

The only thing that bugged me is that I think Jane Asher and Elisabeth Sladen look to similar to each other, it kinda threw me a little.

Sarah was awesome in this episode, especially when she was confronting the Trickster, I think it’s great how protective she still is over the Doctor, she’d never let any harm come to him if she could help it.
She was great too in the scene where she had to convince Andrea to go back on her deal, I mean how do you ask someone to die to save the world? It’s harsh, but she did it, she was sympathetic to Andrea but she knew that the world was gonna end if she didn’t make her change her mind. That scene was one of the best in the series so far.

I think this episode worked really well even though there wasn’t much Sarah Jane in it, the story definitely held my attention and the other characters stole the show, especially the scenes with Maria and Alan.

Alan really came into his own in this episode, I’m glad he got given more too do, he’s awesome! I especially loved his skateboarding scenes, who says older people can’t skateboard eh! He was great in his confrontational scenes with Andrea too, getting her to admit everything she’d done and then saving Maria, he’s a great character and an awesome father. Chrissie though is still as annoying as ever unfortunately, I almost wished that meteor had hit her; just the fact that she admitted that she doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body makes her character even less sympathetic, well in my opinion anyway.

The scenes set in the 60’s were great, I just wish there had been a few more of them, the girl who was playing young Sarah was a good likeness, especially when you compare her to Sarah in the 70’s, the voice was all wrong though but hey what can you do! Young Andrea was a bit annoying, she should have listened to Maria instead of going wandering about dangerous places, still it’s kinda harsh that she died.
Actually that bugged me a little, how come she died falling off that pier? It didn’t even look that big of a drop, I suppose if the tide was out she could have smacked her head on a rock, but it did seem a bit far fetched.

There were a few things I didn’t like about this episode, the first was The Graske, I think he seemed a bit tacked on, I never bothered to play that attack of the Graske game and I didn’t really remember what the Graske did in it, I suppose it makes sense, I mean he does mess with time but I thought that anyone who did see it wouldn’t have understood why he was there, it just seemed like he was put there to show off a Doctor Who monster.

Also, the Meteor, that whole thing was just bollocks! I’ve seen that movie Deep Impact, that meteor took like months to reach earth, and it was the size of New York City, that one in this episode didn’t even look that big, what were they worried about?
The only other let down was that there wasn’t enough Luke or Clyde, Lukes my favourite character other than Sarah and he was only in it for like 5 minutes out of the two episodes, it’s a shame because I really like his character as well. Clyde could have done more as well but I suppose without knowing Sarah or Luke he wouldn’t be involved in any of it at all, we were lucky he was in this episode at all really.

This was definitely the best episode so far, it was dark, creepy, mysterious, had a great monster and some of the best speeches in the who world, what more could you want from a kids show?