K9: Regeneration

The pilot episode of next year's K9 series was screened on the Disney XD channel yesterday and it left me kind of confused.

While I know the series is the brainchild of Bob Baker, who co-created the character originally as a companion for Tom Baker's Doctor in Doctor Who, and that the BBC are playing no role in this spin-off (therefore Whoniverse monsters and characters are very unlikely to appear) , I don't get why - as the show is made in Australia - it was set in a 2050's version of London?

What's wrong with a futuristic Melbourne or Sydney?

The result is a cast of, primarily young, Australian actors trying to put on British accents making the performances across the board (barring the CGI K9) universally painful to endure.

Perhaps they just need time to grow into their characters (and fake accents)?

It's not even worth making comparisons at this stage between K9 and The Sarah Jane Adventures (which, oddly, also features K9!) because the BBC show is in a totally different league, from its actors and writers to its special effects.

What passed for a plot in Regeneration (and it's always difficult in first episodes to squeeze in both introductions and a story) saw a couple of 14-year-old 'street kids' - Starkey (Keegan Joyce) and Jorjie (Philippa Coulthard) - being chased by the cybernetic police and breaking into Professor Gryffen's house; disturbing his government-sponsored experiments to build a Space-Time Manipulator (kinda like a fixed TARDIS, then?) from the salvaged parts of crashed alien spacecraft that he calls "fallen angels".

The professor (Robert Moloney) was trying to contact his family in the past - presumably we will learn more about them later - but the interruption by the kids meant, instead, four Jixen aliens were summoned into his house.

These rubbery-crustacean monsters might have looked like they'd wandered in from the set of Power Rangers but with their mucus-spraying and strange 'out of phase' appearance, they were still quite striking (if two-dimensional) mindlessly violent aliens.

And I have to admit I have a soft spot for that kind of 'Japanese TV show' design for alien races.

The next thing to appear out of the portal though was K9... the original design! He took on the Jixen, defending the humans as is his way, but then, for no explicable reason, decided to self-destruct!

Things got wierder then as, after the professor's cheeky 15-year-old Mockney assistant and supposed 'artful dodger', Darius (Daniel Webber), showed up, the destroyed K9 "regenerated" into its sleek, new sci-fi look; which, I have to say, in context, isn't as bad as I first thought it would be.

Of course, having John Leeson as the voice is a massive vote in the new-look K9's favour!

In fact, the design of the whole show generally is a lot better than I was expecting; the near-future London is well-realised (although at street level it doesn't look like any part of London that I would recognise), with it's large Blade Runneresque floating, animated advertisements.

On the other hand, the cybernetic police roaming the streets, which look slightly Dickensian in contrast to the aerial shots of the city, were sadly a bit cheap (blokes in Robocop Halloween costumes and skate pads).

This is a shame as I suspect they will be making frequent appearances in the show as Starkey is supposedly some kind of urban guerilla/hacker forever striking blows against The Department, the - possibly clandestine - government organisation which seems to be running everything.

The virtual reality prison Starkey was detained in for a while looked good, especially when Jorjie hacked in and was doing her cyberpunk bit with the various information screens, until it was revealed that Starkey could just take the VR goggles off! Not really much of a prison then?

There are seeds of interesting sub-plots scattered throughout this half-hour episode, e.g. the alien prison Jorjie was telling Starkey about and The Department's apparent 'alien-intolerance' and possible secret agenda (shades of District 9?); the 'fallen angels'; the professor's work and the fate of his family etc

However, on the strength of this single episode, the whole endeavour is looking like a jumbled mess of concepts hamstrung by some pretty shocking acting (although I am willing to give the performers the benefit of the doubt for being forced to play British characters although they are all, I'm guessing, actually Australian), awkward bits of scripting and a mixed bag of special effects.

Bob Baker has said that this K9 is the one that was left with Leela on Gallifrey at the end of The Invasion Of Time, but then its destruction and regeneration has left the tin dog with a partially-wiped memory meaning it wouldn't accidentally refer to The Doctor, Leela or anything that would actually tie this show into Doctor Who; although they have quite brazenly appropriated the presumably uncopyrightable word 'regeneration' which all Who fans will associate with the act of a Time Lord's "rebirth".

I, for one, would never have considered it in connection with K9 before!

Despite my many misgivings, K9 wasn't the unmitigated disaster I was expecting and I shall certainly be tuning in to see the full season next year.

I wish the programme makers would consider relocating the show to its native Australia so the cast can use their proper accents, but no doubt the Britishness of the Who brand they are cashing in on is hardwired into the show's concept so faux London will remain as its setting.

Nonetheless, I'm intrigued by the possibilities thrown up by some of the backstory and want to see what other interesting non-Whoniverse aliens it comes up with.

Unfortunately, K9's a long way from perfect at the moment and not looking as though it's heading that way any time soon.