The Day of the Clown (TV story)

The Day of the Clown was the second serial of series 2 of The Sarah Jane Adventures. It was written by Phil Ford and directed by Michael Kerrigan. It introduced Rani, Gita and Haresh Chandra as the new occupants of 36 Bannerman Road. Also noteworthy was the guest appearance of Bradley Walsh as the episode's villain, Elijah Spellman, almost ten years before his casting as Graham O'Brien, a companion of the Thirteenth Doctor.

Synopsis
Rani Chandra is the new girl on Bannerman Road. She is haunted by a sinister clown. Does it have anything to do with local children who have gone missing? When Clyde's friend Dave disappears, the trail leads to a strange circus museum and the legend of the Pied Piper.

Part 1
A group of boys are playing football when the ball goes out of the pitch. A child goes over to fetch the ball but sees a clown. A few seconds later, the child is scared by the clown and disappears, never to be seen again.

A new family is moving into number 36 Bannerman Road, formerly occupied by Alan and Maria Jackson. Luke Smith still misses Maria, even though she's keeping in touch by e-mail. His mum Sarah sympathises and reminds him Maria will visit England soon. She'll be at her mother's wedding. Yet, as Luke notes, it's not the same.

There's a new girl at Park Vale School, the boys' comprehensive: clever and inquisitive Rani, who wants to be a journalist. Clyde is smitten — even forgetting his odd sightings of clowns, always just out of the corner of his eye — until he notices there's also a new head at the school: humourless Mr Chandra. He is determined to improve the students' scores and put an end to the recent rash of child disappearances. He is not impressed by Clyde, the class clown. Clyde doesn't make it to lunch before receiving a summons to the new head's office. While he is waiting by Mr Chandra's office, Clyde has another clown sighting. He tries to laugh it off, but he is shaken when his friend Dave ducks into a small art closet for supplies and doesn't come out. The art closet is empty; Dave has vanished into thin air.

Sarah brings the new family tea and biscuits as a welcoming gift, but when Gita Chandra's back is turned, she performs a scan to check that no alien "residue" remains from the Jacksons' previous inhabitancy, because of Clyde's earlier remark. Only Gita Chandra is there — her husband and daughter are at school, she explains — so the two women share tea. Gita describes her family. She is thrilled to learn that Sarah is an investigative journalist because her daughter Rani wants to become one herself. Clyde and Luke are walking home from school when Clyde sees another clown. Though Luke doesn't see anything, the boys give chase. They encounter only Rani, who has also been seeing clowns. Rani wonders if there is an extraordinary or supernatural explanation of the disappearances. The three are deep in discussion when they reach Bannerman Road and Luke and Clyde find out that Rani's dad is Mr Chandra. Mr Chandra is not pleased to see his daughter with Clyde, whom he has pegged as a troublemaker. On the other hand, he is delighted she has made friends with Luke, one of Park Vale's most gifted students.

Luke helps Rani unpack. In her room, they continue their talk of the missing children. The mention of clowns jogs Rani's memory: she remembers taking a ticket to see a circus museum. Rani decides to investigate. Luke feels he has no choice but to follow.

Clyde and Sarah have independently discovered the same thing. All the missing children received tickets to the same circus museum, and only children with tickets were seeing the clowns. They elect to visit the clown museum as well. Spellman's Magical Museum of the Circus is run by the strange Elijah Spellman. He shows them around and leads them to a room filled with clown mannequins. Clyde spots a picture on the wall: an old watercolour painting of a man wearing red, blue and yellow — just like the mysterious ghost clowns he'd been seeing. Sarah Jane explains that the figure depicted is the Pied Piper, a legendary figure of European folklore who stole the children from Hamelin.

Elijah Spellman agrees. He reveals that he is the Pied Piper and the mysterious clown. He has come for more children. Nor will he tolerate discovery — with a word, he vanishes, and the clown mannequins come to life and threaten Sarah and Clyde.

They run to the entrance, where they meet Luke and Rani and find that while Sarah's sonic lipstick is effective against the clown mannequins, the Pied Piper has trapped them in the building...

Part 2
Spellman frightens Sarah Jane Smith with insights on her childhood whilst Clyde, Luke and Rani try to escape from the museum. Luke and Clyde get outside whilst Sarah remains terrified inside the circus museum. Rani's phone rings and she is confronted by a dilemma as Mum appears on the screen. While the phone rings, Spellman freezes. After a few seconds, Rani declines the call and runs out of the circus. Sarah Jane follows and the gang get inside Sarah's car to drive back to Bannerman Road. Once there, Sarah gives Rani a choice: live across the road and not interfere with her life, or go with Sarah and a whole world of adventure. Rani chooses to join Sarah and says she will explain to her mum that she is completing some work experience with her.

Sarah, Rani, Luke and Clyde go into Sarah's house. Rani is amazed at the alien gear in Sarah's attic, particularly the alien supercomputer, Mr Smith. The new team quickly determines the history of the Pied Piper is traceable to a meteorite that fell to Earth in 1283. The extrasolar meteorite originated in the Jeggorabax Cluster, a region of space known to house entities that feed off of emotions. To confirm this, Mr Smith will need a sample of the meteorite. Fortunately, it is on loan from the University of Munich to the Pharos Institute.

Luke confronts Sarah about her fear of clowns. Why should his mum, who has seen some of the strangest things in the universe, be frightened of clowns? Sarah explains that she was frightened of a clown marionette owned by her Aunt Lavinia when she was a child. It was one of the few times she missed having parents she could call on for comfort.

Sarah visits the Pharos Institute and borrows a piece of meteorite to give to Mr Smith. Whilst she is there, Spellman appears and tells Sarah that families will perish at the deaths of a nation of children.

Meanwhile, at Park Vale School, a host of red balloons fall from the sky. As the children grab them, they seem to lose free will, and mindlessly walk out of school towards Spellman's museum. Sarah remembers when Rani's phone rang earlier, Spellman froze. She gets Mr Smith to ring all the children's mobile numbers, breaking the spell, but Spellman kidnaps Luke and imprisons him in the hall of mirrors. Currently, he is sleeping with the other missing children whom Odd Bob has caught and after a while, "they just fade away". Sarah demands the children be brought back, but Spellman correctly deduces she is still afraid of him and says he has been responsible for her lifelong fear of clowns. Spellman and she face off, unaware that Rani and Clyde have entered the building.

Clyde faces Spellman unafraid. He begins to tell jokes. The humour loosens the grip that fear has on Sarah, which in turn weakens Spellman, who feeds on fear. Spellman weakens and Sarah forces him back into the fragment of the meteorite, which she puts into an alien box from which nothing can escape from.

Rani is a little shaken by her odd experiences, but vows to help Sarah, Luke and Clyde in their adventures.

Cast

 * Sarah Jane Smith - Elisabeth Sladen
 * Maria Jackson - Yasmin Paige (Voice)
 * Luke Smith - Tommy Knight
 * Clyde Langer - Daniel Anthony
 * Rani Chandra - Anjli Mohindra
 * Voice of Mr Smith - Alexander Armstrong
 * Gita Chandra - Mina Anwar
 * Haresh Chandra - Ace Bhatti
 * The Pied Piper / Elijah Spellman / Odd Bob the Clown - Bradley Walsh
 * Dave Finn - Jem Brownlee
 * Tony Warner - Aaron Shosanya
 * Mr Cunningham - Huw Higginson
 * Steve Wallace - Elijah Baker
 * Professor Rivers - Floella Benjamin
 * Young Sarah Jane - Jessica Mogridge
 * Clowns - Alan Ruscoe and Sean Palmer

Individuals

 * Haresh is attracted to a woman named Dawn French.
 * Albert G Wicks is a senator in Springfield.
 * Keith Hartridge is the chief constable of the Ealing police.
 * Barbara Knorr asks for help in a newspaper after her daughter Elizabeth Knorr vanished.
 * Francis Lincoln and Thomas C. Kent are journalists.
 * Edwin Cleaver is a major in Littlewood
 * Kevin and Marie Warner are the parents of Tony Warner.
 * Jeremy Larsson and Tricia Chan are kidnapped by the Pied Piper in 2009. Louis Arbourne, Melissa Deaver are kidnapped in the 1930s or 1940s.
 * Miss Webster organises the National Schools Science Challenge.
 * Sarah Jane and Johnny Depp have coulrophobia.

Cultural references from the real world

 * Gita mentions Captain Bligh.
 * Luke read about Johnny Depp's coulrophobia in Heat.
 * Clyde makes a joke about Dracula.

Foods and beverages

 * Sarah Jane and Gita share tea and biscuits.

Locations

 * The Weserbergland meteorite falls to Earth in the Weserbergland Mountains of Lower Saxony. Hamelin is located near the mountains.
 * From 1932 and 1940, Odd Bob kidnapped children from the Millhouse community in Pennsylvania, and from Nebraska.

Objects

 * The circus museum tickets are marked with an alien enzyme.
 * Sarah Jane gives a Vorgatt defence field emitter to Rani.
 * Sarah Jane has a puzzle box made from Halkonite steel and a Cylethian distress beacon from a Cylethian scoutship inside her attic.

Other

 * The Park Vale Comprehensive School football team have been knocked out by West Hill after a 4-0 mauling at the Inter-School Challenge Cup.

Story notes

 * Gita's name was originally Sundra, Haresh's name was originally Suresh and theirs and Rani's last name was originally going to be Rakhit.
 * Luke claims that he and the Bannerman Road gang have saved the world twelve times. It's unclear if he's approximating or being literal. Even if one were to throw in AUDIO: The Thirteenth Stone and The Glittering Storm — and even TV: Journey's End — that only amounts to ten world-saving operations since Luke met Sarah. So either Luke is approximating, or there are a couple of missing adventures.
 * Gita continues the tradition of misnaming of Sarah Jane that was begun by Chrissie Jackson, albeit to a smaller degree by calling her simply "Sarah" as opposed to Sarah Jane. It is shown that Sarah Jane is irritated by this, despite the Doctor having done the same repeatedly throughout their friendship. This inconsistently is resolved in TV: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, where the Tenth Doctor clarifies to Rani that Sarah Jane only allows him to call her "Sarah".

Ratings

 * Part 1 - 0.51 million viewers (DWMSE 23)
 * Part 2 - 0.44 million viewers (DWMSE 23)

Part One's BBC One repeat gained 0.6 million with an AI score of 82, whilst Part Two's BBC One repeat gained 0.76 million with an AI score of 81.

Filming locations
to be added

Production errors

 * Clyde Langer claims that the house over the road from 13 Bannerman Road is 36 Bannerman Road. This contradicts Invasion of the Bane, where it was established that Maria and Alan lived at 12 Bannerman Road.

Continuity

 * Sometime after she meets Sarah Jane, Rani Chandra got trapped in the dark hall of mirrors of Spellman's Museum of the Circus. She went there to investigate the disappearance of the kids, but, with the help of several light sources like the sonic lipstick and a torch, she got out. (WC: Light)
 * Cylde refers to past battles with Sontarans, (TV: The Last Sontaran) the Slitheen family (TV: Revenge of the Slitheen) and the Gorgon. (TV: Eye of the Gorgon)
 * Haresh Chandra refers to the "vanished" Greg Blakeman, the previous head teacher, who was actually killed by the Slitheen and used as a skin suit by their leader. (TV: Revenge of the Slitheen)
 * Clyde refers to Kudlak when mentioning how aliens have been involved with kidnapping children. (TV: Warriors of Kudlak)
 * The First Doctor, John and Gillian encountered the Pied Piper in 1284. (COMIC: Challenge of the Piper)
 * While missing Maria, Luke looks at the photo Alan took of them and the Bannerman Road gang when they went skateboarding. (TV: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?)
 * On Sarah Jane's staircase there are several framed newspaper cuttings, appearing to have been written by her. One of them is about events at Deffry Vale High School, regarding the "explosive results" involving it being blown up. (TV: School Reunion)
 * One of the clowns shown on Sarah Jane's laptop is Clara the Clown. (TV: The Celestial Toymaker)
 * Sarah Jane tells Luke about her parents, and how they had died when she was a baby. (TV: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith)
 * Professor Rivers thanks Sarah Jane for helping the Pharos Institute with the incident involving Nathan Goss, who was actually Korst Gogg Thek Lutiven-Day Slitheen in disguise. (TV: The Lost Boy)
 * With Mr Smith, Rani will later make a record of her encounter with Odd Bob for the Alien Files. (TV: SJAF 2)

Home video releases

 * This story, along with the rest of series 2, was released on DVD on the 9th November 2009 (UK) and 10th November 2009 (North America).
 * It was also released in the Complete Collection Series 1-5 boxset release (Region 2 release: 6th February 2012).