Sarah Jane Smith
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Biography
Early life
- Sarah Jane Smith's birth seems to have taken place in the early 1950s.
On July 13, 1964, while off on a school outing together, Sarah Jane's best friend, Andrea Yates, slipped off of a pier to her death. The Trickster would later alter this event and create a timeline in which Sarah, not Andrea died, which many years later, would eventually doom the planet Earth.
In the normal timeline, the event would change Sarah, impressing onto her the importance of life. She would never forget Andrea. (SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?)
Travels with the the Doctor
Early adventures
First meeting with the Doctor
At the age of 23 or younger (DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs), in her capacity as a journalist for Metropolitan magazine, Sarah posed as her aunt, Lavinia Smith, a famous virologist, in order to infiltrate a UNIT-controlled facility where some scientists had gone missing. She met Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT's unpaid scientific advisor the Doctor and traveled back in time with him to the 12th century England to defeat the Sontaran known as Linx, who has kidnapped the scientists. (DW: The Time Warrior)
Early adventures
Sarah Jane and the Doctor would have many adventures together both on Earth and on other plants. She deepened her relationship with the Brigadier and with Captain Mike Yates. (DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs) On one occasion, she met and fought the Daleks for the first time. (DW: Death to the Daleks). In an altered timeline, Sarah saw the Doctor die (and not regenerate on the planet Dust, an event manipulated into existence by Faction Paradox. (EDA: Interference: Book Two (The Hour of the Geek)). Later, the Doctor's death reversed itself. (EDA: The Ancestor Cell).
- In terms of the larger world, the dates of Sarah's adventures with the Doctor is part of the UNIT dating controversy.
Following the Doctor's fatal exposure to radiation on Metebelis III, the Doctor left Sarah Jane and the Brigadier to await his return for three weeks. The Brigadier believed he had died. Sarah still maintained faith. Sarah and the Brigadier watched as the Doctor's TARDIS returned to UNIT HQ and he regenerated in front of them into his next incarnation. (DW: Planet of the Spiders, Robot)
Later adventures
With another Human companion, Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane and the Doctor traveled off on other adventures in time and space. (DW: Robot) The Doctor, in his new incarnation, had less interest in Earth, yet he seemed to have a closer relationship with Sarah Jane himself. She was present on Skarocreation of the Daleks by Davros and the the Doctor's attempt to change or prevent it. (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)
- Retrospectively, the Doctor's mission to stop or alter the creation of the Daleks would count as the first act of the Last Great Time War between the Daleks and the Time Lords.
The departure
Eventually, after many trips with him, the Doctor received a summons to return to [[Gallifrey, his home world, to which she was forbidden from accompanying him. Attempting to deposit her near her flat in South Croydon (DW:The Hand of Fear). The Doctor, however, mistakenly left her in Aberdeen, Scotland, instead. (DW: School Reunion)
The Doctor would later suggest he did not return for Sarah because he feared becoming too attached to any individual human, given that the differences in their life expectancies meant he would almost inevitably have to watch them grow old and die (DW: School Reunion)). There is also evidence that he believed Sarah was growing too detached from her Earth life and it was in her best interests that she return to it. (DW: The Face of Evil (Novelisation))
Life on Earth
The Doctor did not forget Sarah, but rather sent her K-9 Mark III as a companion and keepsake. Together they uncovered the murderous cult of Hecate in the village of Moreton Harwood (K-9 & Company: A Girl's Best Friend).
Sarah had numerous adventures during this time. In the early 1980s, a Time Scoop removed her to the Death Zone where she participated in the Game of Rassilion, re-united with the Doctor's third incarnation. (DW: The Five Doctors).
She accompanied the Doctor's seventh incarnation to a jazz concert in the Albert Hall (DWM: Train-flight). She worked with Victoria Waterfield and the Brigadier to defeat the Great Intelligence (MA: Downtime). In 1996, with the Doctor's eight incarnation's companion, Sam Jones she fought against international human rights abuses and met her future husband, Paul Morley (EDA: Interference). Later, in 1997, she assisted the Doctor's seventh incarnation against the Cortez Project in Hong Kong. Apparently, she died at that time, though this seems not to have happened. (PDA: Bullet Time)
By the time she encountered the Tenth Doctor then much of this would seem to have been lost from her timeline. Her husband was never married and her children never born as she instead considered the Doctor to have been the only man for her. Similarly her solo adventures appear never to have happened, traded in for a normal life of rain and electric bills. That, however, was all about to change.
Several contradictory accounts exist of the birth, deaths and marriages that occur or do not occur in Sarah's life following this adventure. This is perhaps to be expected as she has been present at number of points where history has been altered -
- Sarah accompanied the Third Doctor to Dust where the involvement of Faction Paradox caused him to regenerate an adventure too early. (EDA: Interference).
- This timeline was further muddied by the Faction Paradox's actions on Gallifrey. (EDA: The Ancestor Cell)
- Sarah was involved in the earliest stages of the Last Great Time War (DW: Genesis of the Daleks). As Time Wars invariably involve past victories and losses being rewritten and refought (BNA: Walking to Babylon, FP: The Book of the War) then her presence at such a key strategic moment will likely have caused her past to be altered several times.
- Mortimus implies at one point that UNIT's contradictory chronology is a product of his meddling with history (NA:No Future). This would necessarily involve alterations to Sarah's past.
- The Council of Eight altered history by seeming having Sarah die in 1997, well before her time (PDA: Bullet Time). This seems to have been undone by the Doctor's eventual defeat of the Council (EDA: Sometime Never...).
- The Trickster caused Sarah to drown when she was thirteen years old and extracted her adult self from time (SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?).
- Given so much potential damage to her personal history, the Doctor's truly ecstatic reaction to meeting her again in his tenth life might be considered to come from not just his pleasure at seeing an old friend, but from elation at the fact her timeline still exists and that she's recognisably still the woman he cares about.
Sarah Jane Smith continued to work as an investigative reporter following her departure from Planet 3 and her aunt's death. (BFA: Comeback)
She has been depicted as having married a man named Paul Morley (NA: Christmas on a Rational Planet, EDA: Interference) and having both a daughter called Lauren and a grandchild called Lily (ST: Lily).
Reunited and Refocused
In the early Twenty-First Century, Sarah-Jane and Bernice Summerfield enjoyed a coffee together and shared reminiscences of their time in the TARDIS (BFBS: A Life of Surprises: A Mutual Friend), a time that for Sarah was shortly to be revisted, as an inspirational reunion with the Doctor (DW: School Reunion) put her life back on track.
In the year and a half following this, Sarah acquired a sonic lipstick, a watch to scan for alien life, Mr Smith (a sentient supercomputer assistant) and various other futuristic and extraterrestrial devices that the Doctor had left in K9's side compartment. Using these technologies and her experience she has helped the Earth and its alien visitors in a much less violent way than organisations such as UNIT and the Torchwood Institute, who in her estimation tend to go in "all guns blazing". (SJA: Invasion of the Bane)
Her ameteur operation has more in common with that which Issac Summerfield ran during the Ninteen-Eighties, being as likely to assist stranded aliens in returning home or in integrating as it is to oppose hostile incursions.
Keeping her investigations into alien life a secret, Sarah developed a reputation on Bannerman Road for being unsociable and quiet, and with K-9 away closing off a black hole, only occasionally passing close enough to contact her, she was left entirely alone. The Bane invasion changed all this as its events exposed her secrets to her young neighbor Maria Jackson and left Luke, the living product of a Bane experiment, in her care. Befriending Maria and adopting Luke as her son, Sarah is no longer content to live alone and continues her adventures alongside her young friends. (SJA: Invasion of the Bane)
Personality
As a companion, Sarah was confident, inquisitive and possessed a sharp mind as well as a sharp tongue. She was also something of a feminist — in her first appearance she was infuriated when the Doctor asked her to make coffee, and she often verbally sparred with fellow companion Harry Sullivan, who had an old-fashioned, chauvinistic and unintentionally patronising attitude towards her. Her feminism was more practical than fanatical, and did not get in the way of forming close friendships with Harry, however, and a more personal feeling for the Doctor himself. These views became less prominent as the series went on, but Sarah never gave the impression that she was less than capable. In spite of the dangerous and frightening situations she often found herself in, she loved adventure and risk, and in spite of her outward complaints, was always thrilled to go off in search of more adventure. She shared a strong rapport with the Doctor, and her subsequent life has been shaped by her finding him a tough act to follow (DW: School Reunion).
