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Sarah
Jane Smith
(1973 – 1976, 1983, 2006, 2008 & 2010) |
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Elisabeth
Sladen |
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Born in
1946 Elisabeth Sladen spent 2 years in drama school
before joining repertory theatre in Liverpool. She
also worked with the Royal Ballet in 1959. Television
appearances then followed including Coronation
Street in 1970, Doomwatch in 1972, Some
Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em in 1973, Public Eye in
1974 and Z Cars also in 1974. On leaving Doctor
Who other television work followed including Stepping
Stones in 1977 and Alice in Wonderland in
1985. She also appeared in the 1980 film Silver
Dream Racer. She has returned to Doctor Who 7
times. Twice in 1976 in the Argo Records audio adventure Doctor
Who and the Pescatons and then in the schools
education programme "Exploration Earth: The Time
Machine" - both with Tom Baker.
Then in the 1981 spin-off programme K9 and Company:
A Girls Best Friend and then in the 20th anniversary
special "The
Five Doctors" in 1983. She was also
in two radio plays, along with Jon
Pertwee and Nicholas
Courtney, "The Paradise of Death" in 1993 and "The
Ghosts of N-Space" in 1996. She also made a brief
appearance in the Children in Need charity special "Dimensions
in Time" in 1993. Since the birth of her daughter,
Sadie, in 1985 she has made only the occasional
television appearances including The Bill in
1989. She returned to the part of Sarah once again
in the Reeltime Pictures video production Downtime along
with Deborah
Watling who reprised her role as Victoria in
1995. She was also in the Big Finish Productions
audio drama Walking to Babylon in 1998. Then
in 2006 she returned to Doctor Who, as
Sarah Jane Smith, in "School
Reunion", before starring in the spin-off
show The
Sarah Jane Adventures.
Unfortunately Elisabeth Sladen died in April 2011
at the age of 65.
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 Sarah Jane Smith was an independent and very
resourceful young freelance journalist. She first encountered
The Doctor whilst impersonating her aunt Lavina Smith, a famous
virologist, in a ploy to gain access to a top secret UNIT scientific
establishment so as to follow a lead for a story on the disappearance
of several high-ranking scientists. Aggravated by The Doctor's
apparent chauvinistic attitude towards her - informing her after
exposing her deception that she can stay because the other scientists
would need someone to make the coffee - and being anxious to
gain her 'scoop' she is suspicious of him.
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| The Time Warrior |
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Being certain that he is involved she kept a careful
watch on him, eventually finding herself inside the 'Police
Box' The Doctor kept in the dormitory shortly before The Doctor
dematerialised the ship to travel back to Medieval England.
Not realising what the TARDIS is Sarah thinks that she has ended
up in a set for a film. It takes her a long time before she
realises what has happened and that The Doctor is also not responsible
for the disappearances. Initially annoyed at Sarah for stowing
away The Doctor soon realises that she means well and that she
can be of use to him ("The
Time Warrior").
Despite
their shaky start they soon make an excellent team and they
both soon respect each other. Even though Sarah thought that
she could stand up for herself in the beginning, she did
need a bit of comfort and protection at times. She was not
frightened to get fully involved and she had ample opportunity
to demonstrate her bravery, versatility and unwillingness
to give up, a particular example of this being when she rallied
a group of prisoners to try and escape Thal captivity in "Genesis
of the Daleks". She was also quite willing and able
to use her feminist opinions to help others, as seen in "The
Monster of Peladon" when she tried to get Queen Thalira
to stand up for herself. However, this sometimes backfired
like in "The Time Warrior", when, despite eventually
realising she is in fact in the 12th Century she is horrified
about a serving woman's attitudes 'You're living in the
Middle Ages!' she yells in desperation before realising how stupid
this comment is.
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| Planet of the Spiders |
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After
witnessing The Doctor's third regeneration she continued her travels
in the TARDIS with the Fourth
Doctor, accompanied for a while by
UNIT's medical officer Surgeon
Lieutenant Harry Sullivan. They had
a good rapport together, despite Harry's insistence on calling her
'Old Thing'; indeed, it was stated on one occasion that Harry was
half in love with Sarah without consciously registering it, his feelings
pushed aside by the knowledge that Sarah mainly saw him as a slightly
irritating faithful family friend rather than a potential partner.
Despite this, the three travellers became a brief but effective team
in their time together, Sarah often handling the more stealth -based
aspect of their adventures - such as climbing along an air vent in "The
Ark in Space" - while Harry helped to handle the more physical
side of things, The Doctor as always representing his usual multitude
of talents.
Sarah
had the uncanny ability to quickly put together minor pieces of
information to realise what was happening, as seen on occasions
such as her quick deduction that a ‘spaceship’ she was
travelling in was actually a fake despite her ‘fellow passengers’ being
able to provide possible explanations for all her objections ("Invasion
of the Dinosaurs"). Despite this, she always ended up having
to rely on The Doctor when things got out of hand. She was also
able on occasions to be there by his side reminding him of what
is right and wrong. This is well demonstrated in a famous scene
in "Genesis of the Daleks" when The Doctor was having
second thoughts about destroying the embryonic Daleks, Sarah trying
to remind him of the evil that the Daleks would commit in the future
even as The Doctor contemplated whether he had the right to wipe
out an entire species. She always managed to bring out the best
of those she met; even a giant K1 Robot developed a fondness for her,
as well as such diverse individuals as a Muto - a victim of the
radioactive mutation caused by the prolonged civil war on Skaro
("Genesis of the Daleks") - and a London gang leader ("Amorality
Tale").
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| The Ark in Space |
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This aspect of Sarah’s personality can even be
seen in her relationship with The Doctor after his regeneration
into his fourth incarnation; although the Fourth Doctor was less
interested in working at UNIT than he had been in his previous body
- reflecting that he was too old to be constantly running around
in response to The
Brigadier’s calls for help ("Pyramids
of Mars") -, he simultaneously appeared far closer to Sarah
than before, to the point where he once described her as his ‘best
friend’ ("The
Seeds of Doom") after previously referring
to his companions as just his friends. For her part, Sarah later
implied that she had actually fallen in love with the Fourth Doctor,
commenting to the Tenth
Doctor when he asked if she had ever had
children that she had travelled with this ‘one man’ who
was a ‘tough act to follow’ ("School
Reunion"),
and mentioning to her new friend Maria Jackson that there was only
ever one man for her ("Invasion of the Bane"), although
she never expressly said ‘I love you’ to the Time Lord
or admitted her love for him to anyone else.
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| Terror of the Zygons |
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She was a strong willed and very independent companion.
Being a plucky journalist allowed her to be inquisitive,
and so legitimately ask questions, without appearing to
be unintelligent. Used to getting her own way her curiosity
frequently got her into trouble as she insisted on going
where she was not supposed to and finding out things that
others wanted kept hidden. Her inquisitive nature allowed
her to become fully involved in dangerous situations without
the need to be continually alongside The Doctor, ranging
from working undercover as a barmaid in 1952 to investigate
strange gas-related deaths ("Amorality Tale")
to infiltrating an asylum to question a man who may have
witnessed strange events that had occurred a month before
her and The Doctor’s arrival ("Wolfsbane").
With an infectious smile she had an air of conviction about
everything she did, even though she had a habit of jumping
before thinking, such as trying to photograph a captured
Tyrannasaurus Rex and unintentionally provoking it into
escaping its bonds ("Invasion of the Dinosaurs")
or digging down to investigate what appeared to be Harry
Sullivan's grave - wanting to ‘prove’ to
The Doctor that she and him would go back in time to save
Harry so that he would only be assumed to be dead - only
to be nearly buried alive ("Wolfsbane"). She could
be aggressive when called upon, but was nevertheless down-to-Earth
when she had to be.
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| The Hand of Fear |
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Despite
this talent for connecting with people, Sarah found herself
hypnotised by a Sontaran, nearly sacrificed twice, cocooned
in the larder of the Giant
Spiders of Metebelis 3, trapped
in a decompression chamber and stalked by service robots
that looked like Egyptian mummies. She was also impersonated
by the Kraals, stalked again - this time by a hideous monster
while blind - ("The
Brain of Morbius"), nearly
infected by a Krynoid ("The Seeds of Doom") and
taken over by Eldrad ("The
Hand of Fear"). Unfortunately,
perhaps as a result of these continued attacks, towards
the end of her time in the TARDIS, Sarah began to develop
an almost over-reliance on The Doctor, tending to simply
stick close to him and follow his lead rather than taking
action herself, her clothing appearing almost childish compared
to the attire she wore in the beginning as though to reflect
this lack of her original independence, although she regained
her old maturity after departing from The Doctor and being
encouraged to stand on her own once again.
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| The Five Doctors |
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Her
long association with The Doctor did however come to an abrupt end.
Fed up with travelling she announced to The Doctor that she wanted
to leave the TARDIS. However, as soon as she learned that The Doctor
had been urgently summoned back to Gallifrey she changed her mind
as she wanted to visit his home planet. Unfortunately for Sarah,
The Doctor insisted that this was not possible and so she found herself
back in her own time, in 1977, even though it was not South Croydon
as The Doctor had stated ("The Hand of Fear"). The Doctor
however, never forgot her and sometime later he sent her a rather
unusual present, a Mark 3 K9. However, her association with The Doctor
was not quite over. Ignoring the advice of her mechanical protector
she found herself transported to the Death Zone on Gallifrey and
involved with four incarnations of The Doctor, The Brigadier and
some of her fellow companions ("The
Five Doctors"). She
went on to have a brief meeting with the Eighth
Doctor in 1996 when
investigating an alien group called the Remote, subsequently providing
The Doctor’s current companion Samantha
Jones with a place
to live until she could return to her family (Sam having vowed to
leave the next time the TARDIS landed on Earth but forced to wait
until her past self left with The Doctor in 1997). In a later trip
to Hong Kong, Sarah was briefly reunited with the Seventh
Doctor,
currently posing as a Triad gang leader to help a group of Tzun soldiers
repair their ship. After The Doctor was forced to discredit Sarah’s reputation to stop some of his criminal contacts eliminating her as a threat, the two of them had to thwart a rogue branch of UNIT called the Cortez Project who believed that
all aliens were an automatic threat even if they had no hostile intentions
towards Earth.
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Sometime
Never...
(Justin Richards) |
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Sarah ultimately had to shoot herself to avoid her being used as a hostage against The Doctor as the Tzun attempted to leave Earth while the Cortex Project threatened to shoot down their vessel as it departed, allowing The Doctor to take control of the nuclear battleship the Cortex Project had been using. The machinations of the Eighth Doctor's enemy the Council of Eight ("Sometime Never...") nearly led to Sarah's death in this time as part of the Council's effort to eliminate The Doctor's companions, but the Eighth Doctor's defeat of the Council undid their efforts.
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Sarah Jane Smith: Comeback
(Terrance
Dicks) |
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In the early 2000s, Sarah was forced to go into hiding after her latest undercover expose was discredited after it aired, to the extent that the company she had been investigating claimed that she made everything up. While conducting unofficial investigations with Josh Townsend, a witness to a potential robbery while she was working as a bank teller ("Comeback"), Sarah found herself targeted by a conspiracy led by Hilda Winters, one of the heads of the organisation that created the K1 Robot ("Robot"). Winters' actions included warning Sarah about a plan to unleash a biological attack on the London Underground while also making sure she wouldn't have time to actually stop it, although Sarah's allies helped her defeat the attack anyway ("Test of Nerve"). As Sarah confirmed that her previous 'failure' had been set up by Winters and her associate, Winters attempted to frame Sarah for a larger attack in the form of releasing a biological weapon, but Sarah and her allies were able to prevent the attack, even if Sarah's journalistic reputation was still officially compromised ("Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre").
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Sarah Jane Smith: Dreamland
(David Bishop) |
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After Sarah met Will Sullivan, the step-brother of Harry (who she hadn't seen for years since he left on an unspecified classified assignment) ("Snow Blind"), Sarah then found herself facing a new challenge when she learned that she had unintentionally inspired two different doomsday cults during her visit to Italy with The Doctor ("The Masque of Mandragora"), with these groups believing that aliens would come to Earth in 2000; the White Chapter believed the aliens would bring a new age of enlightenment while the Red Chapter believed they would bring about the End of Days. Sarah was able to stop their planned genocide ("Fatal Consequences"), but was shaken when she realised that Will was a member of the Red Chapter (albeit one not in favour of their more extreme policies) and Josh was a killer who had been protecting Sarah for the White Chapter. When Josh was able to get Sarah a seat on the Dauntless, the shuttle that would take Earth's first commercial space flight, it turned out that this was part of a further conspiracy by both Chapters, as the shuttle was passing close to a comet that the White Chapter believed would bring salvation while the shuttle pilot was the last of the Red Chapter. This flight ended with Josh and the pilot killed and Sarah left drifting in the shuttle with failing life support, although NASA were shown planning a rescue mission ("Dreamland").
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| School Reunion |
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Having returned to Earth under unspecified circumstances, and with her journalistic reputation restored, Sarah's subsequent investigation into strange goings-on in a local school led to Sarah discovering the TARDIS in the basement of the school, followed by a reunion with the Tenth Doctor ("School Reunion"). Sarah swiftly joined The Doctor and his new companions, Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith, to investigate the current Krillitane invasion, The Doctor also managing to fix K9 and restore him to working order. Although Sarah had a briefly confrontational relationship with Rose due to their initial jealousy of each other, the two eventually formed a certain friendship with each other, Sarah and The Doctor reconciling over his abrupt
departure from her life while she and Rose bonded over their
amusement at some of The Doctor's antics (After an ‘argument’ over
the creatures they'd encountered with him ended when Sarah
revealed her meeting with the Loch Ness Monster ("Terror
of the Zygons")). Following the Tenth Doctor’s
departure, she began to take a far more active role in her life
once again, using alien technology - such as the sentient supercomputer
known as ‘Mr Smith’ and a ‘sonic lipstick’ The
Doctor had given her as a gift in the rebuilt K9 - to help defend
Earth against alien threats, using more subtle methods than
UNIT’s current, more violent policy of dealing with alien
invaders. She has even adopted a young boy who was genetically
engineered by a group of aliens called the Bane, naming him ‘Luke’,
and tackling various alien excursions with the aid of Luke and his school friends, Maria Jackson - Sarah's immediate neighbour - and Clyde Langer, who took it upon himself to teach Luke how to be 'cool' and fit into school. As the 'Bannerman Road Gang' came together, K9 initially was only able to offer intermittent assistance as he was operating outside of time to negate an artificially-created black hole, although the black hole was later drained away to power a crashed alien ship ("The Mad Woman in the Attic"). While Maria eventually left the group after her family moved to America when her divorced parents decided to give their relationship another chance, Sarah, Luke and Clyde gained a new ally in the form of aspiring journalist Rani Chandra.
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| The Stolen Earth/Journey's
End |
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While her knowledge of alien life and technology is comparatively limited compared to The Doctor's broad range of knowledge, K9 and Mr Smith have helped Sarah compensate for that 'disadvantage', with Sarah demonstrating significant resolve in her role as the 'leader' of the Bannerman Road Gang. As well as facing familiar adversaries such as the Sontarans ("The Last Sontaran"), Sarah has faced less familiar alien adversaries such as the Slitheen ("Revenge of the Slitheen"), along with original enemies who had never encountered The Doctor, such as the mysterious 'Pied Piper' - an entity who that had influenced Sarah's past to give her coulrophobia so
that she would have trouble facing it - ("The Day of
the Clown"), the Gorgon ("The Eye of the Gorgon"),
the Ancient Lights ("Secret of the Stars"), and
the seemingly omnipotent time-manipulator known as The
Trickster ("Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane Smith" and "The
Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith"). On one occasion, Sarah was even briefly united with The Brigadier when she sought his help to infiltrate the UNIT archives to recover a dangerous alien artefact to save Luke
after he was taken hostage by the last Bane while in alliance with a Sontaran Sarah had fought previously ("Enemy of the Bane"). During the Daleks' attempt to steal Earth, Sarah not only acted as one of the many past companions who came together to defeat the Daleks, but she also had a brief, chilling reunion with Davros, who commented on how 'appropriate' it was that she, who had witnessed the creation of the Daleks, should be present at the moment of their greatest victory, before the Daleks' plans were defeated with the creation of the 'Doctor-Donna' after The Doctor's companion Donna Noble temporarily acquired Time Lord knowledge through a complex accident ("The Stolen Earth/Journey's
End"). Sarah and The Doctor met again when the
Trickster attempted to manipulate her into a wedding that
would allow him to erase her memories of her old life to
leave Earth open to attack, the Tenth Doctor working with
Luke and his friends to save Sarah, later assuring his old
companion that she and her ‘team’ still had
many more amazing adventures waiting for them in their future
("The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith"). As her adventures
in Earth's defence continued, Sarah found herself
collaborating with Jo Grant -
her immediate predecessor as The Doctor's companion
- as the two of them attended The Doctor's ‘funeral’,
the funeral being exposed as an attempt by The
Shansheeth to use Jo and Sarah's memories to recreate
the TARDIS key so that they could use the ship for their
own ends, the Eleventh Doctor praising Jo and Sarah’s
accomplishments once again before he departed.
Even after Luke departed for university, Sarah continued to be an important influence for Clyde and Rani, and even gained a new child in the form of Sky Smith, a little girl engineered to be a bomb as part of a war between the metal and organic races of a distant solar system, Sarah's actions draining off Sky's excess energy and essentially 'disarming' her ("Sky"). While there was initially some tension between Luke and Sky when they first met, the two soon came to accept each other as siblings after assisting Sarah in her latest investigation during Luke's return to Bannerman Road for a holiday ("The Man Who Never Was"), with The Doctor's words suggesting that Sarah and her group would have many further adventures. However, by 2023, it is suggested that Sarah Jane was deceased, with the Fifteenth Doctor confirming that she was gone and he needed to accept that loss to properly move on as part of his latest course of healing.
Sarah was the last of the UNIT family of companions and she was also the last human to travel with The Doctor for a considerable time. Despite her departure from The Doctor, she went on to show great strength as she took it upon herself to defend Earth while acting alone, making her own part of the world safer and teaching a new generation how to face the monsters that came to Earth without resorting to the tactics of their enemies. At a later point in The Doctor's life, the Fourteenth Doctor admitted that he loved Sarah Jane in the same manner that he had loved Rose, suggesting that his feelings for her were particularly strong even if he'd been less prepared to face them at that point in his lives. Following her death, Rani Chandra inherited Sarah's old house at Bannerman Road, but Rani chose not to live there as she felt it was too sad even if she would drop in to consult Mr Smith and other sources.
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