From Iron Lady to Tin Dog (this isn’t just randomly flung together you know!) and long before sweary old Torchwood with its scantily-clad Cyberlady, Doctor Who had already dipped a tentative toe into the ‘spin-off’ waters, with 1981’s Christmas special/pilot of K9 & Company.
The star, you might think from the title, was cute-but-with-attitude robot dog K9 but in fact the real star, billed as “& Company” due, I can only assume, to a momentary lapse by her agent, was none other than the gorgeous Sarah-Jane Smith. It aired for fifty minutes at Christmas 1981, was repeated at Christmas 1982, and then disappeared forever having failed to make any kind of impact whatsoever on the viewing public.
Alas, it gets almost everything wrong, from the characters, to the tone, to the plot, and it very quickly flounders due to the limitations of a tin dog who can’t cope with anything other than a perfectly flat studio floor – yet, at least to a Doctor Who fan, it remains a curiously cosy bit of festive viewing.
There’s fun to be had from the opening titles on – aspiring for glamorous and presumably intended for filming on a gloriously bright Summer day, they achieve ludicrous due to being filmed on a grey and damp Autumn one. There’s also mileage in speculating whether endearingly-OTT guest character Juno Baker is in charge of the local wife-swapping committee. And it’s entertaining to imagine just how a series could ever conceivably have worked, given that this special ends with almost the entire village locked up for black magic.
But it’s oddly likeable, in a lazy, end-of-the-year TV sort of way – and of course by pairing up Sarah-Jane and K9, it got things ready for that David Tennant chap to bump into them a mere twenty-five years later.
Andrew Curnow's Ramblings 