It was a much better episode than part 1 and I found the whole concept of the alien mineral in the art very clever. Bring on next week!

I much preferred this one to last week. If Luke was overreacting to his tiff with Sarah Jane, I loved the little reminder of his youth when it was mentioned that they’d never argued before. Sadly, it makes me want to write about his initiation into normal human life and the continuance of his submersion in a culture he’s not grown up with, but there you go. I’ll try and restrain myself.

The Mona Lisa’s altogether graceless and blatant manner was brilliant. Reminiscent of a certain moment in The Shakespeare Code: “You should never meet your heroes.”

The constant “mia bella” got on my nerves, if only because I study Italian and know that unless you’re referring to a member of your family, you use “la mia” or “il mio”, not just “mia” or “mio”. But I’ll let them off. I get ‘Harders’ wasn’t really a linguist. And I can be insufferably pedantic.

The reappearance of the Slitheen - sorry, Blathereen - next week made me feel slightly disappointed. I know that they’re the SJA equivalent of the Daleks, but I’m not sure how they achieved that status. The third series of DW didn’t bring the Daleks in for the finale; couldn’t SJA have done the same?

But overall, loved this week! And anything with Haresh or Gita in is brilliant. And the best moment of the episode was Sarah Jane talking to Mr Smith about motherhood, if only because insights into parenthood in children’s TV are few and far between.

@TSG
I have to agree with you about the slitheen, but there reappearance next week will be two years after their last one because they didn’t appear in series two.