The Vault of Secrets - SJA 4.2

In which Androvax of the Veil has escaped from prison and returned to Earth. Taking over the body of a girl, he tries to break into a vault in the basement of an old abandoned hospital. He has discovered that he needs two keys to open the vault, but only has one. He is chased off by the arrival of three men dressed in black suits, who have powerful energy weapons built into their arms. These are androids known as the Alliance of Shades. They gather up alien technology and guard it in places like this - their appearances giving rise to the mysterious Men in Black who are seen around UFO sightings. Androvax exits the girl and runs off, leaving her unharmed, and the Shades delete her recent memory.
Meanwhile on Bannerman Road, Gita Chandra is dragging her reluctant husband Haresh off to a meeting being held by BURPSS - British UFO Research and Paranormal Studies Society. The group is led by a woman named Ocean Waters and her friend Minty. Gita has been obsessed by aliens, ever since her encounter with the Judoon the year before. On their return from the meeting, they see Androvax hiding in Sarah's garden and alert her. The alien takes over Rani's body but he is chased up to the attic where he is placed in a containment field by Mr Smith. He releases Rani, then surprises everyone by asking for Sarah's help.

Androvax explains that he is dying, but has discovered that he is not the last of his race. There is a spaceship full of his people held in stasis and imprisoned in the vault at the hospital - and he wants Sarah's help in freeing them. The ship crashed on Earth some 40 years ago, and the Alliance of Shades captured it and locked it away. Sarah, Clyde and Rani go to the hospital and encounter the Shades, who are led by Mr Dread. He demands that Androvax be handed over to them, along with the vault key which he possesses. Sarah and her friends flee back to Bannerman Road where they meet Ocean and Minty, who are tracking alien signals on the street. Sarah uses her sonic lipstick to disable their scanner. It transpires that Ocean had met the Shades in the past following a UFO encounter, and this is what led her to becoming obsessed by aliens. She has the other key to the vault. As Mr Dread and his associates burst into the house, Androvax grabs both keys and runs off, hijacking Clyde's body - leaving the others about to be destroyed by the Men in Black...

Androvax has transferred to Gita's body and run off, so the Shades call off their attack. Sarah sabotages Mr Dread's car and they set off for the hospital. Dread requisitions another vehicle and follows. Sarah confronts Androvax, who has now exited form Gita. She tells him she cannot help him as the Earth could be destroyed if the Veil spaceship is released. Mr Dread puts himself into his regeneration cubicle to recharge, whilst his colleagues accidentally destroy each other when they try to shoot Clyde. Androvax takes Sarah's body and pretends to be her, so that her friends won't stop her from opening the vault. Once the doors are open, they see that the vault is hyper-dimensional - bigger on the inside - and contains many huge spacecraft. Androvax releases Sarah then locks himself in the vault. Sarah wakes Mr Dread and convinces him to help them. He gives up several hundred years of energy to teleport the Veil spaceship into space just as it begins to take off - saving the planet from destruction. Mr Dread puts himself into extended hibernation but before doing so he wipes Gita's recent memories.
Back at Bannerman Road, Ocean and Minty are dismayed when Gita tells them she doesn't believe in aliens. Ocean knows that she has been "got at" by them, but leaves with Minty.
meanwhile, out in space, Androvax leads his people to find a new planet on which to rebuild the Veil race...

The Vault of Secrets was written by Phil Ford, the series lead writer, and was first broadcast on 18th and 19th October, 2010. It is a sequel to Ford's third season story Prisoner of the Judoon, in that it sees the return of the reptilian body-swapping alien Androvax (once again played by Mark Goldthorp), and shows us the consequences of Gita Chandra's encounter with the Judoon in that story.
We also have similar scenes where one of the "aliens" purloins a vehicle from a startled motorist in each story.
The Vault of Secrets is also connected to the animated Tenth Doctor adventure Dreamland (2009), which had also featured Mr Dread and the Men in Black, this time at Area 51 in 1947. Dreamland was also written by Ford, and had featured a glimpse of Androvax's spaceship as seen in Prisoner of the Judoon.
We mentioned last time that Tommy Knight had left the series as a regular in the previous story, but Luke Smith makes a cameo already at the beginning of this story, as we see him on a video-link talking to Sarah, Clyde and Rani from his digs in Oxford.

In Dreamland, Mr Dread had been voiced by Peter Guiness, but in this story he is played by Angus Wright. Wright has voiced Magnus Greel in two audio productions for Big Finish.
Fans suspected a possible River Song connection with Ocean Waters, leader of the BURPSS group, but this was not to be. She is played by Cheryl Campbell. Minty is David Webber.
The story gives bigger roles for Gita and Haresh - for comedic effect as usual.

Overall, another great story with a nice blend of excitement and humour. Mr Dread and the Men in Black never returned to the series, which is a shame. Likewise, it would have been nice to have had Ocean and Minty as returning characters in another story or two, as a rival group to the Bannerman Road gang.
Things you might like to know:

• Sarah interrupts the video link to Luke as she has to stop a NASA rover from seeing something alien on the surface of Mars - a large pyramid. This is obviously an Osiran structure - presumably the one that she and the Fourth Doctor visited in Pyramids of Mars.
• The Alliance of Shades become yet another organisation in the Doctor Who universe who gather up and conceal alien technology on present day Earth. Once upon a time there was just UNIT, but since the series returned in 2005 we can add Torchwood, Sarah Jane Smith herself, and now the Men in Black - plus we have a couple of stories where wealthy individuals also have private collections of alien material - such as Joshua Naismith (The End of Time) or Parker (TW: A Day in the Death).