Barbara Smith
Barbara Smith (née Wilson), (TV: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith) or, in one account, Alice Trent Smith, (PROSE: The Roving Reporter) was the wife of Eddie Smith, sister-in-law of Lavinia Smith and the mother of Sarah Jane Smith. She was killed in a road accident shortly after her daughter's birth.
Biography
Sarah Jane's mother was the daughter of a Harrogate vicar. Her husband, who was from Liverpool, used to tease her about this, calling her "the foreigner from across the border", and she would respond with traditional Yorkshire aphorisms in an exaggerated accent. (PROSE: Island of Death)
Her younger brother was George Wilson. (PROSE: The Enfolded Time)
She and her husband became the parents of Sarah Jane Smith on 1 February 1956; the couple's death in a car crash, which left Sarah Jane an orphan in the care of her Aunt Lavinia, took place either in 1961 (PROSE: The Roving Reporter) or 1951, depending on accounts. According to the account holding that he died in 1951, later time travel interference by the Trickster caused three different timelines for the event to exist.
Timeline 1
On 18 August 1951, the day of the Foxgrove village fête, Barbara and her husband Eddie drove off in their car, leaving their three-month-old baby Sarah Jane Smith behind in the street. Barbara and Eddie subsequently died when their car crashed into a tractor that had broken down in the road. Sarah Jane was subsequently reared by Eddie's sister, Lavinia.
Timeline 2
Sarah Jane and her son Luke travelled from 2009 to meet Barbara and Eddie. Sarah Jane decided to save them by deactivating their car so they would not be able to leave. However, while this change in and of itself had no major effect on the timeline, meddling with history near an unstable rift in time caused the rift to open, allowing the Trickster to fully materialise on Earth and conquer the world.
Timeline 3
After Sarah Jane returned to 1951 Foxgrove from the alternate timeline her parents' survival had created, Barbara soon worked out who Sarah Jane was after hearing her real name and witnessing the Trickster begin to manifest. Barbara and Eddie decided to restore the original timeline by sacrificing themselves to save Sarah Jane's world. (TV: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith)
Legacy
Barbara was buried at a graveyard in South Croydon. (PROSE: Managra)
Behind the scenes
- Thanks to some good intra-series continuity planning, a well-placed photograph of Barbara Smith appeared in The Mark of the Berserker, the story prior to Temptation.
