Sarah Jane Smith

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Doctor Who universe character

Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith
Sarah Jane Smith
Affiliated with Third Doctor
Fourth Doctor
U.N.I.T.
K-9
Race Human
Home planet Earth
Home era 20th century, 21st century
First appearance The Time Warrior
Portrayed by Elisabeth Sladen
Jessica Ashworth

Sarah Jane Smith is a fictional character played by Elisabeth Sladen in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its related spin-offs. An investigative journalist, born in 1951[1], and a companion of the third and fourth incarnations of the Doctor, she was a regular in the programme from 1973 to 1976 (seasons 11 – 14), and has returned to Doctor Who twice since, most recently in the 2006 episode "School Reunion", opposite David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor.

One of the longest serving companions, she appears as a regular character in 18 stories over four seasons, and is the first companion to appear in a spin-off, the 1981 television pilot K-9 and Company. She is the central character in the ongoing series The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Contents

[edit] Character history

[edit] Doctor Who

Sarah first appears in the Third Doctor serial The Time Warrior, where she has managed to infiltrate a top secret research facility by posing as her aunt, Lavinia Smith, a famous virologist. Sneaking into the TARDIS while the Doctor is preparing to follow the trail of a kidnapped scientist through time, she becomes embroiled in the subsequent adventure in the Middle Ages.

Sarah then finds herself working with the Third Doctor and UNIT on a number of occasions. She is present when he regenerates into the Fourth Doctor at the end of Planet of the Spiders, and continues to accompany him on his journeys through time and space.

As a companion she is confident and inquisitive, and possesses a sharp mind as well as a sharp tongue. She is also a feminist — in her first appearance she is infuriated when the Doctor asks her to make coffee, and she often verbally spars with fellow companion Harry Sullivan, who has an old-fashioned and unintentionally patronising attitude towards her. However, this does not get in the way of forming a close friendship with him. In The Monster of Peladon, the Doctor advises Sarah to share concepts of Women's Lib with Queen Thalira, whose power is limited on her planet because of her sex. In later episodes, Sarah's views become less vocalised, but she never gives the impression that she is less than capable. In spite of the dangerous and frightening situations she often finds herself in, she loves adventure and risk, and in spite of her outward complaints, is always thrilled to go off in search of more adventure. She shares a rapport with the Third and Fourth Doctors, and is consistently one of the Doctor's most popular companions among fans.[citation needed]

The exact placement of Sarah's adventures with the Doctor is part of the UNIT dating controversy. In Pyramids of Mars she states (more than once) that she was "from 1980", which implies that her adventures with the Doctor took place in the near future with respect to the time of broadcast. However, fans continue to argue whether she means 1980 as the year she came from, the year she last returned to Earth, or the year she believes it is in her personal chronology.

During her time with the Doctor, Sarah encounters Daleks, Cybermen, antimatter creatures on the most distant planet in the universe, android mummies in 1911 England, ancient evils in 15th century Italy and other dangers, until she is returned to Earth at the end of The Hand of Fear.

Her departure from the TARDIS coincides with the Doctor's summons to his home planet, Gallifrey, to which he was forbidden to take humans at that point. However, his attempt to materialise the TARDIS near her flat in South Croydon falls short of the mark. Thirty years later, when she encounters the Tenth Doctor in "School Reunion", she reveals that he had in fact abandoned her in Aberdeen, Scotland. Between being dropped off by the Fourth Doctor and meeting the Tenth Doctor, Sarah was herself summoned to Gallifrey where she was reunited with the Third Doctor, and met the First, Second and Fifth Doctors (in The Five Doctors). In the period after she was returned to Earth, she tells the Tenth Doctor, she gave up waiting for him to return and concluded that he had died on whatever mission he had been sent.

At the time of "School Reunion"', Sarah is still single, and suggests to the Doctor that she found it difficult to hold down a lasting relationship with any man following her experiences with him. At the episode's conclusion, he leaves her a new K-9 model, to replace the destroyed K-9 Mark III he sent her as a gift prior to the events of The Five Doctors.

In the lead-up to the broadcast of "School Reunion", Sladen was quoted in The Daily Mirror being somewhat critical of the characterisation of Sarah Jane in the original programme: "Sarah Jane used to be a bit of a cardboard cut-out. Each week it used to be, 'Yes Doctor, no Doctor', and you had to flesh your character out in your mind — because if you didn't, no one else would." She spoke more favourably of the characterisation in the new series.[2]

[edit] The Sarah Jane Adventures

The Sarah Jane Adventures, starring Sladen as Sarah Jane, is produced by BBC Wales for CBBC. It began as a 60-minute special, "Invasion of the Bane", written by Russell T. Davies and Gareth Roberts shown on 1 January 2007 with a weekly series of ten episodes beginning on 24 September.

In the time between "School Reunion" and "Invasion of the Bane" (at least a year and a half), K-9 has left Sarah Jane to close off a black hole but occasionally passes close enough to contact her. Although K-9 appeared in the special and in a scene in one episode, he will not appear as a recurring character: [3] the rights to the character of K-9 are owned by writer Bob Baker, who is developing a separate Australian tv-show entitled K-9, an independent production with no other ties to Doctor Who.[4][5][6]

Sarah Jane drives an emerald green Nissan Figaro[7] and investigates alien interactions with Earth aided by a sentient supercomputer named Mr Smith. A watch that scans for alien life and a lipstick-shaped sonic screwdriver were, according to the show's website, gifts from the Doctor, hidden inside K-9 Mark IV when it was left for her at the end of the events shown in "School Reunion". Her low-key methods of investigation have helped protect the Earth from alien attack, which contrast to the more abrasive and militaristic approaches of UNIT and the Torchwood Institute, who, according to Sarah Jane, tend to go in "all guns blazing". Her investigations are covert and remain unknown to her neighbours in Bannerman Road, Ealing which has encouraged her reputation for being formidable and reclusive.

The 13-year old Sarah Jane
The 13-year old Sarah Jane

In "Invasion of the Bane", she adopted a son, Luke Smith, and befriended neighbour Maria Jackson during her investigation of the Bubbleshock manufacturing plant, remarking that since meeting them she is no longer content to live alone. When asked why she never married, she replies that there was only one man for her, to whom no one could ever compare.

During the course of the first series she learns how to be a mother to Luke and starts to become more "mumsy" as she puts it. She and Maria share a close friendship to the point where Maria is the person Sarah "trusts the most". Along with Luke and his friend Clyde Langer they defeat various threats to Earth such as the Bane, the Slitheen, the Gorgon and General Kudlak.

In Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? we meet thirteen year old Sarah Jane, played by Jessica Ashworth, in 1964. It is revealed that Sarah witnessed the death of her friend Andrea Yates who fell from a pier they were both playing upon and who Sarah Jane was unable to rescue. It was this event that gave Sarah Jane a thirst for justice, and a strong desire to fight against loss of life.

[edit] Reprising the role

Elisabeth Sladen reprising the role of Sarah Jane in "School Reunion".
Elisabeth Sladen reprising the role of Sarah Jane in "School Reunion".

Elisabeth Sladen has returned to the role of Sarah ten times since she left Doctor Who in 1976:

  1. In a 1981 pilot for a proposed spin-off television series titled K-9 and Company where Sarah was given K-9 Mark III. She was also said to have worked for the Reuters news agency. However, the planned series never materialised.
  2. Sladen played Sarah again in the 1983 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors, appearing alongside Jon Pertwee once more (K-9 also made a brief appearance, directly referring to the events of K-9 and Company).
  3. Sladen also appeared as Sarah in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time.
  4. In 1993 Sladen voiced the character of Sarah in BBC Radio audio play The Paradise of Death (Radio 5) together with Pertwee as the Doctor and Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart.
  5. Another BBC Radio drama, The Ghosts of N-Space, was made in 1994 (although not broadcast until 1996, on Radio 2), again featuring Sladen with Jon Pertwee's Doctor and Nicholas Courtney's Brigadier.
  6. In 1995 Sladen appeared as Sarah in the Reeltime Pictures' video production Downtime, together with Courtney as the Brigadier and Deborah Watling as Victoria Waterfield.
  7. Big Finish Productions has also produced a series of nine Sarah Jane Smith audio adventures set in the present day.
  8. In the third episode of the 2006 series of Doctor Who, "School Reunion", Sladen reprised the role of Sarah on television. K-9 also appeared.
  9. In 2007, Sladen received her own series again in The Sarah Jane Adventures.
  10. In 2008, she is scheduled to reprise the role in the final story of the fourth series of Doctor Who.[8]

[edit] Appearances in other media

Between seasons 13 and 14, Sladen appeared as Sarah, with Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, in the audio play LP The Pescatons (1976). She also appeared with Baker in "The Time Machine", episode three of the BBC Radio series Exploration Earth on 4 October 1976.

Sarah appears in several spin-off Doctor Who novels and short stories, notably in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novels Interference: Book One and Interference: Book Two by Lawrence Miles; and the Past Doctor Adventures novel Bullet Time by David A. McIntee, all taking place after she stops travelling with the Doctor.

Interference and the Virgin New Adventures novel Christmas on a Rational Planet, also by Miles, suggest that Sarah married someone named Paul Morley sometime between 1996 and 1998 and took his name. In the short story Lily by Jackie Marshall, in Big Finish's Short Trips: A Christmas Treasury, the Fifth Doctor pays a visit to an older Sarah, who has a daughter, Lauren, and an autistic granddaughter, Lily; Lauren's father is named Will.

In the Past Doctor Adventure Bullet Time, Sarah is apparently killed in 1997, contradicting her other spin-off appearances. However, the novel takes place during a story arc where enemies of the Doctor were attempting to eliminate his companions from the timeline, and Sarah's death may have been reversed when those enemies are defeated. In any case, other stories have shown her alive after 1997.

Sarah was mentioned in the prologue of the Virgin Publishing novelisation of The Power of the Daleks by John Peel. It revealed that Sarah was working as UNIT's official chronicler and that in 1986 (although the novel says 1996) she covered the aftermath of the Cybermen's failed attempt to drain Earth of its energy and the technology left behind in their wake (The Tenth Planet).

The canonicity of Sarah's appearances in the audio dramas, novels and websites, like all Doctor Who spin-off media, is unclear, and they may not even take place in the same continuity as one another. For example, the novels' mention of Sarah as having been married is contradicted by the Sarah Jane Smith audio play Dreamland, and the Sarah Jane Adventures episode "Invasion of the Bane".

Sarah also appears in two audiobook stories based on the Sarah Jane Adventures (released in November 2007) on CD: The Glittering Storm by Stephen Cole and The Thirteenth Stone by Justin Richards, with both stories read by series star Elisabeth Sladen. This is the first time that BBC Audiobooks have commissioned new content for exclusive release on audio.[9].

A number of Sarah Jane action figures have been made as merchandise aimed at children following her appearances in "School Reunion" and The Sarah Jane Adventures respectively. The first action figure is part of a set with K-9,[10] a Sarah Jane Adventures series depicting her as she appears in each of the series one stories: alongside the star poet seen in "Invasion of the Bane",[11] alongside a Graske as in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane,[12] with General Kudlak as in Warriors of Kudlak,[13] and with a Slitheen as in Revenge of the Slitheen and The Lost Boy.[14]

[edit] List of appearances

[edit] Television

Doctor Who
Season 11 - (1973-74) {Third Doctor)
Season 12 - (1974-75) {Fourth Doctor}
Season 13 - (1975-76)
Season 14 - (1976)
20th anniversary special (1983)
30th anniversary special (1993)
Series 2 (2006)
Series 4 (2008)
K-9 and Company (1981)
The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007)

[edit] Video

[edit] Audio dramas

Argo Records
BBC Radio
Big Finish Productions
Series One
Series Two
BBC Audiobooks

(both Sarah Jane Adventures audiobook CDs were read by Elisabeth Sladen)

[edit] Novels

The Companions of Doctor Who
Virgin Missing Adventures
Virgin New Adventures
Eighth Doctor Adventures
Past Doctor Adventures

[edit] Short stories

[edit] Comics

  • "Doomcloud", artist unknown (Doctor Who Holiday Special 1974)
  • "Perils of Paris", artist unknown (Doctor Who Holiday Special 1974)
  • "Who's Who?", artist unknown (Doctor Who Holiday Special 1974)
  • "Death Flower!" by Gerry Haylock (TV Comic 1204 – 1214)
  • "Return of the Daleks!" by Martin Asbury (TV Comic 1215 – 1222)
  • "The Wreckers!" by Martin Asbury (TV Comic 1223 – 1231)
  • "The Emperor's Spy!" by John Canning (TV Comic 1232 – 1238)
  • "The Sinister Sea!" by John Canning (TV Comic 1239 – 1244)
  • "The Space Ghost!" by John Canning (TV Comic 1245 – 1250)
  • "The Dalek Revenge!" by John Canning (TV Comic 1251 – 1258)
  • "Virus" by John Canning (TV Comic 1259 – 1265)
  • "Treasure Trail" by John Canning (TV Comic 1266 – 1272)
  • "Hubert's Folly" by John Canning (TV Comic 1273 – 1279)
  • "Counter-Rotation" by John Canning (TV Comic 1280 – 1286)
  • "Mind Snatch" by John Canning (TV Comic 1287 – 1290)
  • "The Hoaxers" by John Canning (TV Comic 1291)
  • "Dredger" by John Canning (Mighty TV Comic 1305-1311)
  • "Woden's Warriors" by John M. Burns (TV Comic Annual 1976)
  • "The Tansbury Experiment" by John Canning (TV Comic Annual 1977)
  • "Jackals of Space!" by John Canning (TV Comic Annual 1978)
  • "The Psychic Jungle" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1976)
  • "Neuronic Nightmare" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1976)
  • "The Body Snatcher" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1977)
  • "Menace on Metalupiter" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1977)
  • "The Rival Robots" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1978)
  • "The Traitor" by Paul Crompton (Doctor Who Annual 1978)
  • "Train-Flight" by Andrew Donkin, Graham S. Brand and John Ridgway (Doctor Who Magazine 159 – 161)
  • "Black Destiny" by Gary Russell, Martin Geraghty and Bambos Georgiou (Doctor Who Magazine 235 – 237)
  • "Ground Zero" by Scott Gray and Martin Geraghty (Doctor Who Magazine 238 – 242)
  • "Doctor Who and the Fangs of Time" by Sean Longcroft (Doctor Who Magazine 243)
  • "City of Devils" by Vincent Danks and Gary Russell (1992 Sarah-Jane Holiday Special)
  • "The Naked Flame" by Warwick Gray and Charlie Adlard (Doctor Who Yearbook 1995)

[edit] References

  1. ^ Stated in Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
  2. ^ Robertson, Cameron. "Dr Who's 'cut-out' girl back", The Daily Mirror, 2006-04-18. Retrieved on 2006-04-21. 
  3. ^ BBC (2006-09-14). "Russell T Davies creates new series for CBBC, starring Doctor Who's Sarah Jane Smith". Press release. Retrieved on 2006-09-14.
  4. ^ Milmo, Cahal. "Doctor Who's K-9 sidekick is dragged into 21st century in computer-designed cartoon", The Independent, 2006-04-24. Retrieved on 2006-04-24. 
  5. ^ Lyon, Shaun (2006-07-18). More on K9 Series. Outpost Gallifrey News Page. Retrieved on 2006-08-02.
  6. ^ Nazzaro, Joe. "Who's Sarah Jane Gets Own Show", Sci Fi Wire, Sci Fi Channel, 2006-09-28. Retrieved on 2006-09-28. 
  7. ^ "11 December, 2006". Blue Peter. CBBC. 2006-12-11.
  8. ^ Sarah Jane – The Return. Again. SFX magazine (2008-01-25). Retrieved on 2008-01-25.
  9. ^ The Sarah Jane Audios. BBC Doctor Who website. Retrieved on 2007-10-02.
  10. ^ Sarah Jane Smith and K-9, Amazon.com
  11. ^ Sarah Jane Smith and Star Poet action figure, ForbiddenPlanet.com
  12. ^ Sarah Jane Smith and Graske, ForbiddenPlanet.com
  13. ^ Sarah Jane Smith with General Kudlak, ForbiddenPlanet.com
  14. ^ Sarah Jane Smith and Slitheen, ForbiddenPlanet.com

[edit] External links

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The Sarah Jane Adventures
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Sarah Jane Smith  • Maria Jackson  • Luke Smith  • Clyde Langer  • Mr Smith
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