Lance Metcalf, a classmate of Maria, Luke and Clyde's, goes missing following a visit to Combat 3000, a popular new laser tag facility. Investigating, Sarah Jane discovers that there have actually been a number of disappearances associated with Combat 3000 locations across the country. The abductor is the alien General Kudlak, who is using the game arena to identify young people with the greatest aptitude for becoming warriors. Unbeknownst to Sarah Jane, however, Luke and Clyde decide to participate in Combat 3000 -- and they soon become Kudlak's latest targets.

Some time prior to becoming the producer of The Sarah Jane Adventures, Matthew Bouch had collaborated with writer and script editor Phil Gladwin on a project which drew upon the ghost stories of MR James. Although the programme never came together, it gave Bouch reason to believe that Gladwin was a writer suitable for The Sarah Jane Adventures, and an invitation was extended in mid-2006 for him to develop story ideas. Gladwin eventually settled on a notion which was inspired by the music video for Cloudbusting, a single from Kate Bush's 1985 album Hounds Of Love, which was directed by Monty Python alumnus and filmmaker Terry Gilliam. Based upon an alleged incident in Maine in 1953, it depicted psychiatrist and experimentalist Wilhelm Reich and his son Peter trying to perfect a rainmaking device, prior to the elder Reich's arrest and imprisonment. Gladwin now imagined a narrative which involved a failed inventor and his son, whose work accidentally drew the notice of a lonely alien. The alien kidnapped the inventor, but the son offered to take his father's place.

The Sarah Jane Adventures executive producer Russell T Davies didn't feel that Gladwin's initial notions were entirely suitable, and he encouraged the writer to take them in new directions. Over time, the inventor vanished from the plot, while the son became Lance Metcalf, whose disappearance set the story in motion. The alien evolved into Uvlavad Kudlak, whose plan at one point was to collect schoolchildren for an intergalactic zoo. Gladwin also conceived a sequence in which the alien was stalked through a shopping mall by the Bannerman Road gang. Late in 2006, Gladwin shelved this storyline altogether and proposed an alternative concept, but he was back working on the Kudlak serial by December. Things finally gelled when the laser tag setting was introduced. Nonetheless, some echoes of the original Cloudbusting idea survived, most notably in the scene on the hilltop where Sarah Jane and Maria induced a shower of entanglement shells.

Charles Martin had directed installments of My Life As A Popat, which also featured Yasmin Paige

By February 2007, Gladwin's serial was firmly in the schedule for the first season of The Sarah Jane Adventures. Eventually called Warriors Of Kudlak, it would be made as part of the year's third and final production block alongside the finale, The Lost Boy. Before recording began, Phil Ford -- who had already written Eye Of The Gorgon and The Lost Boy -- performed an uncredited polish of the scripts. It was planned that Warriors Of Kudlak would be third in the broadcast order, preceding Whatever Happened To Sarah Jane?, which was being made as Block Two. Charles Martin was assigned to direct Block Three; his credits to date included several installments of My Life As A Popat, which also featured Maria Jackson actress Yasmin Paige.

Production on Warriors Of Kudlak began on June 16th with the scene in Lance's bedroom, which was taped at a house on Wood Street in Penarth. Martin's team then concentrated on The Lost Boy for several days. They returned to Gladwin's adventure on June 26th, with Luke and Clyde chatting at St David's Crescent Park in Penarth. On the 27th and 28th, recording took place at the Evolution nightclub in Cardiff's Red Dragon Centre, for Combat 3000 material in the armoury, transmat area, lobby and side door area, and for Luke and Clyde's arrival on the Uvodni scoutship. Meanwhile, the Combat 3000 arenas were actually located in the former Nippon Electric Glass UK site at Trident Park in Cardiff Bay; the first day of work there was June 29th.

Next in the shooting schedule was a day at the programme's regular studio facilities in Upper Boat, where sequences in Sarah Jane's attic were taped on July 2nd. It was back to Trident Park on the 3rd and 4th, for material in the Combat 3000 control room and Grantham's office. Monster performer Paul Kasey, playing Kudlak, also recorded the appearances of the Mistress and the Emperor there. July 5th was spent in Penarth, first at Larkwood Avenue for the exterior of the Metcalf home, and then at Clinton Road for scenes on Bannerman Road. The 6th saw cast and crew head into Cardiff, where the entrance to Combat 3000 was found on Womanby Street, and the arcade was the Black & White Cafe.

The last major location for Warriors Of Kudlak was the Johnsey Estates in Pontypool's Mamhilad Park Industrial Estate, where various scenes in the scoutship were taped from July 9th to 12th. Filming on the 13th began at Grangemoor Park in Cardiff for Sarah Jane and Maria on the hilltop, before continuing with more attic scenes back at Upper Boat. Production for the year concluded on July 14th, when Martin focussed on the attic set at Upper Boat. A ten-month break would follow before The Sarah Jane Adventures went before the cameras again.

• Doctor Who Magazine Special Edition #23, 24th December 2009, “Episode 1.5/1.6: Warriors Of Kudlak” by Andrew Pixley, Panini Publishing Ltd.