Children all over London are disappearing after seeing visions of a clown holding a red balloon. Clyde and new student Rani are also getting visions of this clown. Those who see the clown were given tickets to a museum of circuses. Sarah Jane and Clyde visit this museum where they meet Elijah Spellman, who commands an army of mechanical clowns and can shapeshift into Odd Bob, the clown who has been abducting children. While there, they learn that Spellman was the inspiration for the legend of the Pied Piper, who abducted all the children in a village.
Scanning one of the tickets, Mr. Smith finds that Spellman comes from a nebula populated by creatures made of emotion. He also finds that the historical village in which the Pied Piper story takes place was the crash site for a meteor from the same nebula, now housed at the PHAROS Institute. Sarah Jane goes to the Institute and obtains a sample of the meteor.
Spellman feeds off the emotion of fear. He abducts children in order to produce fear in their parents. He uses his power to lure all the children from Luke's school to the museum but Sarah Jane and Mr. Smith use cell phone signals to interfere with his powers, freeing the children. However, Spellman is able to capture Luke.
Sarah Jane confronts Spellman, who feeds off her childhood fear of clowns. Rani realizes that the best way to fight fear is with laughter. Clyde tells several jokes, weakening Spellman and allowing Sarah Jane to suck him back into the meteor fragment. The children he captured, including Luke, are released.
This story marks the first appearance of Rani Chandra and her family.
Tropes
- All Myths Are True: Not only was the Pied Piper of Hamelin real, but he was actually the embodied consciousness of a sentient meteorite that feeds on fear. And he's still doing his thing in the present as both Odd Bob the Clown and Elijah Spellman.
- Ancient Evil: The Jeggorabax fear entity has been on Earth since the 13th century and has cultivated an instinctual phobia of clowns in most of the human population ever since the people of Hamelin refused to pay him.
- Circus of Fear: Elijah Spellman runs an intentionally disturbing one filled with Uncanny Valley robotic clowns.
- Continuity Nod:
- When Sarah Jane is looking at pictures of clowns on her laptop, one of the pictures she pulls up is Clara the clown from "The Celestial Toymaker".
- The PHAROS Institute previously appeared in "The Lost Boy", and now owe Sarah Jane a favour for not exposing their part in the events of that story.
- Mr Blakeman, the previous headteacher at Park Vale, is said to have disappeared following the events of "Revenge of the Slitheen".
- Death of a Child: All the kidnapped children that weren't taken recently by Odd Bob "fade[d] away". This does allow the plot to not have to deal with the consequences of children from as far back as the Middle Ages appearing in the modern day.
- Invasion of the Baby Snatchers: The fear entity has kidnapped thousands of children throughout European and American history without a trace.
- Little Known Facts:Luke: Johnny Depp has [coulrophobia].Clyde: What encyclopedia did you read that in?Luke: Heat.
- Monster Clown: The fear entity's disguise as Odd Bob plays this trope to the hilt. It's implied that the very phenomena of coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, is directly attributed to him, if his loving lecture to Sarah Jane on the history of clowns is anything to go by.
- Red Pill, Blue Pill: Sarah Jane offers the choice to Rani Chandra after she saved her from the murderous clown.
- Serial Killer: Spellman/Odd Bob/the Pied Piper is essentially one, abducting thousands of children and imprisoning them in its realm until they undergo Cessation of Existence in order to feed off of the parent's fear.
- Shout-Out: A good deal more than "99 Red Balloons" signify pending tragedy.
- There Are Two Kinds of People in the World:Sarah Jane: When it comes to getting a true glimpse of the universe, there are two types of people: those who refuse to believe, that would tell themselves anything to deny the evidence of their eyes, and those that embrace the universe and just how special life is. I want it to stay that way by keeping it safe and secret.Rani: And that's me?Sarah Jane: That's all of us.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The episode is essentially It if it were a kid's show.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Sarah Jane has a childhood fear of clowns. Guess what she has to go up against.
- Would Hurt a Child: The fear entity, which exclusively abducts and ultimately kills children in order to scare their parents and feed off their fear.
