Last month Sarah Jane Smith nearly got married. That might not sound like earth-shattering news, but for a dedicated Whovian, it would have been a deeply traumatic moment. For those not in the loop, Sarah Jane Smith is, for a multitude of fans, the finest of all the myriad companions of Dr Who, through his various manifestations in space and time over the last 46 years. In a comeback that must surely be unprecedented in the annals of TV drama, not only was the character of Sarah Jane reintroduced to interact with the current, reinvented Dr Who, but she was played by the same actress, Elizabeth Sladen, returning to a role she had first taken on over 30 years earlier.

So successful was that initial comeback that the ever-resourceful Russell T Davies created an entire spin-off series around the character, The Sarah Jane Adventures, for BBC Children’s television. And it was in an episode of that series that, a few weeks ago, Sarah Jane came within a gnat’s crotchet of sealing the knot with, of all people, Nigel Havers. Of course, it all turned out to be a dastardly plot engineered by a multi-dimensional troublemaker called the Trickster. Fans everywhere breathed a sigh of relief as the wedding ceremony collapsed into time holes and space warps. As The New Adventures of Superman proved, a few years ago, marrying off your central character(s) is rarely good for ongoing dramatic tension, especially when they’re a super-hero.

I’m indulging my lifelong love of Dr Who (yes, I really did hide behind the sofa for that very first episode in 1963) for two reasons. The first is to make the very simple point that The Sarah Jane Adventures is a colourful, witty, intelligent, over-the-top riposte to those who say that children’s television is in serious decline. On the contrary, there’s some brilliant work going on right now in the world of CBBC and CBeebies, and you don’t have to be a parent (I’m not) to relish it.

The bigger point, and where I can bring the matter back to the Highlands and Islands, is that the Sarah Jane phenomenon, and indeed the whole reinvention of the Dr Who franchise, is a wonderful example of the merits of continuity and the long view. For years Whovians world-wide clamoured for the reintroduction of their hero to the BBC schedules, and for years benighted bureaucrats ignored their demands. Until, that is, a Welsh wizard proved them wrong and delivered a world-wide hit that has, almost single-handedly, reinvigorated BBC family drama.

Sadly, we live now in a world of the quick fix. ‘Innovation’ is the buzz word. And every ‘innovative’ project is expected to show quick results, or risk being condemned out of hand. In the arts, funding from all public sources is increasingly tied to short-term themes and initiatives, and the impacts of those themes and initiatives are assessed almost before they’ve been completed.

HI~Arts, on the other hand, has had the excellent fortune to work for almost twenty years now with Highlands and Islands Enterprise, and to be allowed, through that time, to take the long view. We started a music development project, called MIDAS (like the Tardis, an anagram, for Music Industry Development and Support—many thanks, Phil Cunningham!) way back in 1996. Its aims are still being carried on by our sister company Go Events, and the Go North annual showcase, itself now ten years old. In the 13 years since the launch of MIDAS we’ve seen the emergence of Rock Ness, Tartan Heart, and Loopallu, all initiated and run by people who were involved in MIDAS from the early days. And those same people now run the Ironworks in Inverness, one of the best custom-built popular music venues in the country.

This month there have been celebrations for the 75th birthday of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. Back in 1977 Max and a few like-minded visionaries started Orkney’s St Magnus Festival, and I’m sure that in those early years there were times when they could have been forgiven for throwing it all up and walking away, given some of the scepticism and even hostility they encountered. Now, the cultural life of Orkney—and of Scotland—is unthinkable without it. Sadly, the Northlands Festival in Caithness wasn’t given the chance to make it beyond its tenth birthday, and it does seem that events like these do need at least a decade to bed in successfully.

And also this month dancer and choreographer Frank McConnell, and composer and singer Michael Marra, revived, for the Year of Homecoming, their theatre piece A Wee Home from Home—the first time it had been restaged in 21 years! And, like Sarah Jane herself, the show wore its years very lightly indeed—in fact, for those, like me, who didn’t see it first time round, it could have been devised yesterday, so fresh, inventive and relevant did it seem.

Like Dr Who, we all have the capacity to regenerate. The St Magnus Festival is about to do just that—its long-serving, and inspired, Director, Glenys Hughes is standing down after the 2010 event, and the Festival is boldly splitting the post in two to take a new approach to running the event—change within continuity.

As we move towards the establishment of Creative Scotland, maybe that should be our mantra—change within continuity. It would be a great shame if any babies got thrown out with the bathwater, after all. And while it might be a bit ambitious to hope that the current recruitment campaign for the Chief Executive of Creative Scotland will attract a Time Lord, we can at least hope for someone with the vision to look back as well as forwards!

© Robert Livingston, 2009