Day of the Clown - SJA 2.2

In which pupils at Park Vale school begin to see mysterious red balloons appearing around the area, as well as a sinister clown figure. One of the boys disappears after going into the woods to fetch a football. Other children begin to go missing. Meanwhile, on Bannerman Road, Sarah Jane Smith and her son Luke have new neighbours moving into Maria Jackson's old home.
At school, Luke and Clyde meet a new girl named Rani Chandra, who tells them that she wants to be a journalist. The boys discover that they have a new headmaster - Haresh Chandra - and he is Rani's father. He takes an instant dislike to Clyde, annoyed by his constant clowning around. Mr Chandra tells the school assembly that he will be assisting the police with the spate of disappearances. Clyde is summoned to the headmaster's office, and whilst he is waiting in the deserted corridor he sees the clown figure. He witnesses a friend go into a storeroom and when he fails to come out again, Clyde looks for him and finds the room to be empty.
Back at home, Luke discovers that the Chandras are his new neighbours. They have moved into the Jackson house across the road. Rani's mother Gita attempts to make friends with Sarah, but is given the cold shoulder. Gita thinks that Sarah could help her daughter in her efforts to become a journalist. Mr Chandra is not happy to see Rani with Clyde, convinced that he is a bad influence.

Whilst Luke visits Rani they discuss the missing children. Rani is convinced that something supernatural is going on, and admits that she has also seen the clown. She recalls being handed a ticket for a new clown museum which has opened in the area - Spellman's Magical Museum of the Circus. Sarah has also noted the coincidence of the clown apparitions and the opening of the museum, so they all decide to go and investigate it. Sarah seems visibly nervous amongst the clown mannequins. The museum is run by a man named Elijah Spellman, who dresses in a circus ringmaster's outfit. He gives them a guided tour, and in one room Clyde notices an old picture featuring a clown dressed like the one he saw at school. Sarah explains that it depicts the Pied Piper legend, and he was said to have stolen away all the children from the German town of Hamelin, when their parents failed to recompense him for luring away all the rats which had been plaguing them. Spellman tells them them that he is the Pied Piper, and transforms into the character from the print. He changes again into another clown - the one from the school, who is known as Odd Bob. The clown mannequins come to life as he vanishes, and Sarah and her young friends discover that they are trapped...

Spellman taunts Sarah with her childhood fears. Rani's phone rings, and this causes Spellman to freeze, giving everyone a chance to escape the building. Back home, Sarah offers Rani the chance to walk away, or to become part of the strange and dangerous world that she, Luke and Clyde inhabit. Rani chooses to join them. She can claim that Sarah is helping her with her journalistic career to cover them spending time together. In the attic, Mr Smith is called upon. He has studied the Pied Piper tale, and has traced its origins to 1283, when a meteorite fell in Germany. This is currently on loan from a Munich museum to the Pharos Institute - run by Professor Rivers, whom Sarah met when she last encountered the Slitheen. Once Clyde and Rani have gone home, Luke asks his mum about her fear of clowns. She explains it goes back to her childhood, when she had been scared by a clown puppet in her bedroom at her aunt Lavinia's house.
The next day Sarah goes to see Prof. Rivers to collect a sample from the meteorite for Mr Smith to sample. At the school, a host of red balloons descend from the sky into the playground. Anyone picking one up immediately falls into a trance. The affected children all begin to make their way towards the museum. Sarah and her friends rush there, and use their phones to freeze Spellman. However, he captures Luke and imprisons him in the hall of mirrors, where all the other missing children are kept. Realising that Spellman's power derives from people's fears, Clyde starts to crack jokes. Spellman is forced to retreat and vanishes back into the meteorite fragment. He was the personification of an alien parasite which came to Earth in the rock. Sarah locks this away as Luke and the other captive children are released.

Day of the Clown was written by Phil Ford, and was first broadcast on 6th and 13th October, 2008.
It introduces a new companion, to replace Maria Jackson. Rani Chandra is played by Anjli Mohindra. Her parents Haresh and Gita become new recurring characters. They're played by Ace Bhatti, and Mina Anwar. Batti had worked for Russell T Davies before, having appeared in The Second Coming alongside Christopher Eccleston. Anwar was best known at the time for her appearances in the Rowan Atkinson sitcom The Thin Blue Line. She later appeared in the Series 10 Doctor Who story Smile.
Floella Benjamin makes a return appearance as Professor Rivers, having been introduced in the first season finale The Lost Boy.
The story is now significant for its casting of Bradley Walsh as Spellman, Odd Bob and the Pied Piper. He was not that well known for his acting at this time, being more of a light entertainment TV presenter. He is about to return to the Doctor Who universe as Graham, one of the companions to the 13th Doctor.
Whilst the first season of the Sarah Jane Adventures had often referred back to Sarah's journeys with the Doctor, from this story on we start to delve more into her earlier history. Here she mentions her aunt Lavinia - named in The Time Warrior then seen in the K9 spin-off A Girl's Best Friend.
The clown puppet in her bedroom is significant for her as it was the first time that she thought about the fact that her parents were not around to protect her. We'll find out the circumstances of their deaths very soon.

Overall, it is quite a creepy story, let down only by Clyde's awful jokes.
Things you might like to know:

• The inspiration for Odd Bob is pretty obvious. It's Pennywise the Clown from Stephen King's It. In particular, it is Tim Curry's portrayal of the demonic clown from the two part mini-series broadcast in 1990. Odd Bob is shown to have appeared throughout history, just as Pennywise features in old photographs of Derry, Maine.
• Sarah is seen to b looking at images of clowns on her computer. One of these is a photo of Clara, as played by Carmen Silvera in 1966's The Celestial Toymaker. Quite how an image of her could appear on the internet is never explained. Then again, UNIT had a photo of Sarah on the planet Peladon in their files in the last season.
• Sarah is suffering from coulrophobia - the irrational fear of clowns. The name derives from the word kolobatheron, which is Greek for stilt. Presumably the first clowns were also stilt-walkers.
• The Doctor's companion Ace had also been afraid of clowns.
• It's probably no longer acceptable to use the term "irrational" when describing coulrophobia these days, as there has recently been a global epidemic of genuine "evil clown" sightings. It has been reported that some of these figures have attacked people, as well as scaring the bejesus out of them.
• Haresh mentions the "mysteriously disappeared" former headmaster of the school. That was Mr Blakeman, who had been a disguised Slitheen.
• Despite it being clearly the same house, the door number for Sarah's home changed between the pilot and the first episode of Series 1. Here, it is the turn of the Jackson / Chandra house to change numbers between seasons.
• The Doctor has met the Pied Piper once before - at least if you count the TV Comic strips of the 1960's. The First Doctor encountered him when he was travelling with his grandchildren John and Gillian.