DRINK IT. DRINK IT.

Sarah Jane and crew*

Doctor Who is spinning shows off like mad. Bleary eyed, I caught the series premiere Friday night of the second recent spin off of the show in three years, The Sarah Jane Adventures. Unlike DW (premiering next Friday night on the SciFi Channel before Battlestar Galactica), which is generally a family-oriented show, and the much more overtly sexual Torchwood (on BBC America right now), SJA is geared specifically towards children (the CBBC - think a British PBS Kids - has its own Blogger page about the show). The show is centered around the popular character Sarah Jane Smith (Elisabeth Sladen), a journalist who has always carried a torch for her favorite time-and-space-travelin' title character. She was one of the first women on the show who insisted on not standing around screaming and waiting to be rescued every episode (you go girl). This was back in 1974. It's now over 30 years later, and after having a guest appearance on an ep of the recent version of the show, she's bAAAAaaack.

Her first episode defies description, so just read about it here. But one thing in it disturbs me: the leading antagonist to our heroine and her motley crue of kiddie crusaders is a living, parasitic alien creature that gets into people by hiding in a soft drink. When they were ready, their commander-in-chief commanded everybody who drank it to turn into soda-wielding zombies ready to force the rest of the world to DRINK IT, DRINK IT. It's like a mash-up of Doctor Who and Night of the Living Dead for children.

And it makes me never want to drink Fanta again, that's for damn sure. Those Fanta people are crazy!

* Picture is linked from the page "Live and Kicking", from the CBBC's SARAH-JANE.tv blog. Please don't sue me.