Sarah Jane Smith

Sarah Jane, as she appears in Invasion of the Dinosaurs

### Reason for Leaving

Forced to leave by the Fourth Doctor, due to humans not being allowed on Gallifrey.

## Behind the Scenes

### Latest Appearance

Destiny

**Sarah Jane Smith** (occasionally rendered as **Sarah-Jane**) was a companion of the Third and Fourth Doctors.

She held the honour of being one of the few people the Doctor considered one of his best friends. She met all of the Doctor's first eight incarnations at various points.

With the exception of K9, Sarah spent most of her life alone after travelling with him, but maintained previous friendships with UNIT staff; her connections to the Doctor and the Brigadier afforded her enough pull with the group to call them in to mop up messes after a threat was averted.

## Biography

### Travels with the Doctor

#### First meeting with the Doctor

While working as a journalist, Sarah posed as her aunt (who was away in the United States at the time), an accomplished virologist, to infiltrate a UNIT-controlled facility where scientists had gone missing. She met Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT's unpaid scientific advisor, the Third Doctor, who was also using an alias- the name "John Smith". The Doctor quickly cut down her fake identity and sparked her willingness to take initiative and impress him. Once Professor Rubeish disappeared, she peered inside the Doctor's police box, which he claimed housed his equipment, hoping to find him hiding inside. Instead, she was stunned to discover that it was bigger on the inside. When the Doctor piloted his ship into the past, Sarah had no choice but to stow away in his TARDIS. (TV: *The Time Warrior*) She was roughly twenty-three at this time, by her own account. (TV: *Invasion of the Dinosaurs*)

#### With the Third Doctor

Sarah travelled to 13th century England, where the Doctor had followed the disappearing scientists, including Rubeish. She initially believed the Doctor was responsible for this since the Doctor was capable of travelling back in time, but learnt this was the work of the Sontaran commander Linx, who had stolen the scientists to help repair his ship. She helped defend the Lord Edward of Wessex's castle from Linx and the robber baron Irongron's men by throwing stink bombs at them, causing them to retreat. Sneaking inside Irongron's castle while posing as a friar, Sarah drugged the food at Irongron's castle to make everyone fall asleep while trying to stop Linx from launching his ship. Lord Edward's archer, Hal, shot Linx in his probic vent with a bolt, killing him. As he died, Linx triggered the launch mechanism of his ship, resulting in a huge explosion as the rockets fired. Sarah and the Doctor fled Irongron's castle before it was swallowed by the force of the liftoff blast, and set off for Earth, where the Doctor intended to return her home safely. (TV: *The Time Warrior*)

Sarah was eager to come back to Earth, expecting the Doctor to set the TARDIS' course to the scientific research centre. The Doctor saw no point in going back there with the suspicious activities resolved, instead aiming to land in UNIT HQ, but he got the coordinates a little off, finding himself in an empty park. The Doctor and Sarah arrived in 1970s London to find it had been evacuated because of dinosaurs. The dinosaurs were brought to London by a time machine in a plan to revert London and the entire world to a pre-technological level, which would undo the existence of all living things around at the time. Sarah tried to interview Charles Grover, but when she got too nosy, he kidnapped her and placed her on a "colony ship", peopled by individuals who thought they were heading for a new life; Sarah convinced some of the crew that the "spaceship" was fake and was able to escape. The Doctor reversed the polarity of the time machine, causing Grover and his accomplice, Professor Whitaker, to accidentally send themselves on a one-way trip to the pre-technological era.

Unfortunately, Sarah would have to face the departure of a friend at UNIT, Captain Mike Yates, who was convinced to join the cause of the Operation Golden Age group and assist them, betraying his colleagues. When Yates saw the error of his ways, he quickly reconciled with UNIT, but had caused enough trouble and distrust that it signalled the end of his career with them. Lethbridge-Stewart prevented him from facing legal repercussions by arranging for him to have extended sick leave and a chance to resign quietly. (TV: *Invasion of the Dinosaurs*)

Mysteriously drained of all power, the TARDIS landed on the planet Exxilon. There, they encountered Marine Space Corps members seeking Parrinium, a cure for a space-plague. The Daleks also landed for the same purpose. The Doctor and the Daleks discovered the Great City of the Exxilons, a large city with a power-disrupting tower preventing technology from working. The Doctor sought to disrupt its functions and remove the power-disrupting facility. The Daleks ordered humans to place bombs around the city's central tower to destroy it. The city was destroyed, as was the Dalek spaceship. (TV: *Death to the Daleks*)

The Doctor took Sarah to Peladon during the reign of Queen Thalira. At this point in Peladon's history, its feudalistic society had remained static despite the many decades since the planet's induction into the Galactic Federation, with the lower classes having access to neither socio-economic progress nor to advanced technology. At the time the Doctor and Sarah arrived, the uneducated Pel miners were in the middle of a joint trisilicate mining operation with the alien and technologically sophisticated Federation. The miners, fearing enslavement by the Galactic Federation and faced with the sudden appearance of and attacks by their deity, Aggedor, took Sarah hostage in an attempt to acquire advanced weaponry through blackmail.

Sarah escaped only to be immediately recaptured (along with the Doctor) and thrown into a pit by the conservative Chancellor Ortron. Thalira then successfully commanded their release, Ortron having previously ignored her requests. Shortly thereafter, Sarah had a conversation with her about gender egalitarianism.

The ever more discontented miners soon disrupted trisilicate production and the Galactic Federation, fearing the loss of a vital resource during its current war with Galaxy 5, sent in the Ice Warriors to force the mining to recommence. Since this was the Ice Warriors' only apparent purpose in sending an army to Peladon, Sarah convinced the planet's leaders to address the miners' grievances about the lack of social progress. In return, they would resume mining and no force would be necessary.

However, when the Ice Warriors arrived, they took over the primitive Peladon anyway. They had incited the riots which caused the Galactic Federation to send them there by using advanced technology to deceive the miners into believing their god was punishing them for the mining. After they conquered the planet and were then finally rebuffed, Queen Thalira asked the Doctor to be the new Chancellor. He recommended Gebek, the miners' leader, for the newly vacated Chancellor position. Seeing that Thalira was appalled at the Doctor's suggestion, Sarah pointed out to her the similarities between class and gender disparities. (TV: *The Monster of Peladon*)

At the request of Mike Yates, who had attempted to make amends for his betrayal of UNIT by becoming more spiritual and peace-loving, Sarah investigated a Buddhist meditation centre which was being influenced by the Eight Legs of Metebelis III. During her investigation, Sarah was accidentally transported to Metebelis III and was eventually captured by the Eight Legs and their human servants. After being rescued by the Doctor and returning to Earth, it was revealed that Sarah was under the psychic control of one of the Eight Legs. Under the instruction of K'anpo Rimpoche, Sarah escaped the Queen's control by staring into a Metebelis crystal and focusing on the concept of her own freedom. After this, the Doctor journeyed to the cave of the Great One on Metebelis III to return the Metebelis crystal he had stolen, where his body was wracked by deadly radiation. While he was dying and his TARDIS was lost in the Time Vortex, Sarah and the Brigadier awaited his return for three weeks. Sarah believed he had died, but the Brigadier kept faith. As the Doctor's TARDIS returned to UNIT HQ, he stumbled out and regenerated before them into his next incarnation. (TV: *Planet of the Spiders*, *Robot*)

#### With the Fourth Doctor

Immediately after his regeneration, the Fourth Doctor was put under the care of UNIT physician Harry Sullivan. While he began to adjust to his new incarnation, Sarah went off to investigate Think Tank following several incidents where a machine had been breaking into various places to steal parts for a disintegrator gun. It was here that Sarah had her first encounter with Hilda Winters, leader of the Scientific Reform Society, a group of radical elites trying to establish a new world order using Professor J.P. Kettlewell's greatest creation, Experimental Prototype Robot K1. K1 could think for himself and make his own decisions, but was programmed with the prime directive to never harm a human. Regardless, Kettlewell had lent K1 to the SRS after years of putting up with a society that refused to heed his warnings about environmental protection.

Sarah, the Doctor and Harry became involved in an investigation which resulted in a confrontation with the SRS and K1, with the help of Lethbridge-Stewart, newly promoted Warrant Officer Benton and UNIT troops. Because Sarah showed kindness and sympathy to K1, it took a liking to her, and refused to harm her in any way. Despite the SRS' attempts to override its primary directive, K1's mind began to deteriorate from its conflicted morality. Kettlewell similarly faltered in his loyalties to the SRS, and tried to stop K1 from killing people. K1, in an act of confusion, killed his creator with the disintegrator gun built from the parts he stole. K1, no longer answering to a father figure, overcame an Oedipus complex and turned against the SRS. When the Brigadier used the disintegrator gun against K1, the robot instead grew to tremendous proportions and kidnapped Sarah.

In UNIT HQ, the Doctor and Harry worked on developing a metal virus that would dissolve the giant robot using Kettlewell's research. Arriving with the solution, he dumped it on K1, and the robot corroded away until nothing was left of him. After the robot and its power-hungry controllers were defeated, Sarah felt saddened by the loss of K1, thinking it could have been avoided. The Doctor offered her some comforting words, along with a jelly baby, his new favourite snack. Choosing to duck out of the formal rituals that came with his job at UNIT, the Doctor wanted a fresh start in his fourth incarnation, and planned to leave UNIT behind. Sarah agreed eagerly to continue travelling with the Doctor to other adventures in time and space. Although sceptical, Harry Sullivan went with them, when he caught the two about to depart and didn't believe the truth about the TARDIS. As the TARDIS dematerialised, the Brigadier caught it just in time to watch it vanish and glumly faced the prospect of the Doctor ditching him, not yet aware two more of his personnel had followed suit. (TV: *Robot*)

Sarah's first trip with this Doctor was side-tracked when Harry interfered with the console controls. Instead of landing on the Moon as intended, the TARDIS materialised on Space Station Nerva far in the future, where humanity had been cryogenically suspended to await Earth's recovery from solar flares. The three of them quickly learned the space station had been robbed of its power supply, and as a consequence, its air supply. Sarah lost consciousness from the lack of oxygen, but slowly came to once the Doctor had fixed the power, reactivating the Nerva's oxygen generators. The Doctor and Harry unknowingly sat her down on a transmat chair, linked to the Nerva's hibernation systems, to recuperate. She was beamed to a tranquiler couch that lulled her to sleep, then put in stasis and transmatted to a cryogenic pod, outfitted in a crewmember's uniform.

After stumbling upon Sarah, the Doctor was unsure if he could revive her. Luckily, with power restored to the space station, the crew started coming out of cryogenic suspension, the first being Vira, the Nerva's level one medtech, to reawaken the rest of the crew. As more emerged from hibernation, one of them, Noah, was infected by an alien larvae on the space station and started transforming into a monstrous creature. The Nerva had been invaded by Wirrn, which posed a substantial threat to the return of humanity, in retaliation for their destruction of the Wirrn's breeding colonies in Andromeda. They wished to use the humans as food and incubators for their kind, and tampered with its inner workings to stop the crew from being revived.

Noah, resisting conversion into a Wirrn, gave everyone a chance to escape, if they fled the Nerva on its sole transport ship and left the dormant humans to the Wirrn. When the group refused, the Wirrn cut the Nerva's power again. Sarah put forth a plan to hook up the ship's power supply to the space station. To make it work, a power cable was fed from the ship to the cryogenic chamber through a conduit, safe from the Wirrn. A job meant for a mechanical cable runner, which the Nerva lacked, Sarah, being small and nimble, elected to crawl through the vents while in radio communication with crewmember Rogin as he instructed her movements using a map of the conduit systems. However, Sarah misjudged the size of the conduits and kept getting stuck. Upon approaching the exit port for the cryogenic chamber, she heard the Doctor's voice nearby, but got trapped, causing her to panic.

The Doctor, tired of Sarah's "whining", suddenly quit coaching her through the vents and berated her as a useless, stupid, foolish girl only pretending to act tough, lacking the guts to back up her promises. Strongly enraged at the Doctor's insults, Sarah, blinded by her anger at him, stopped thinking about being stuck in the vent, broke free and scrambled to the exit with intent of coming after him. As the Doctor helped her out, she wrenched herself away from his arms and attempted to smack him in anger. However, the Doctor revealed he was actually very proud of her and simply used reverse psychology on her. Realising she had been "conned again", Sarah called the Doctor a "brute", before forgiving him, knowing he meant no insult to her character. With Sarah's plan successful, the Wirrn were lured into the transport ship by Noah, who retained his humanity and tricked the Wirrn into suicide by making sure the rocket stabilisers were not set, destroying the vessel moments after liftoff. Rogin also sacrificed his life to send the ship into space, stepping in for the Doctor against his wishes when he tried to do so. On behalf of the space station, the Doctor went down to Earth with Harry and Sarah to fix the relay. (TV: *The Ark in Space*)

The trio found the Earth appeared uninhabited at first glance, but soon encountered survivors of a group of GalSec human colonists that had been tricked into landing on the planet, experimented on and slowly killed off. Sarah was protected from a robot patrolling the fields for humans to capture by Roth, a straggler from the marooned crew. Roth kept them both out of sight, having escaped from an experiment. However, the robot did another sweep around the landscape and found them. It brought them to a familiar-looking ship, and the Sontaran Field Major Styre emerged. He had been sent to analyse the weaknesses of humans before the Sontarans invaded the barely populated planet. Sarah initially mistook him for Linx, since, hailing from a clone race, they looked almost identical. Roth, refused to be experimented on again and fled, but Styre immediately killed him with a blaster.

The Sontaran assessed Sarah's strengths and weaknesses. After noting she lacked military value, he decided to make her his seventh experiment- resistance to fear. Styre placed Sarah inside a force field, bound up with a device linked to her mind, which made her hallucinate her worst fears, such as snakes, the nearby rock cliffs caving in, and being swallowed up by mud. The Doctor found Sarah and disabled the torture device, but she had passed out from fright. Once Sarah was awake again, Harry, under the Doctor's instructions, removed the terullian diode bypass transformer from Styre's ship, which caused the energy Styre fed on in his ship to feed on Styre instead. The Doctor, Sarah and Harry attempted to return to Nerva Beacon using the transmat. (TV: *The Sontaran Experiment*)

The transmat was intercepted by a Time Lord, pulling the Doctor, Sarah and Harry to the planet Skaro in its distant past. On behalf of the Time Lord race, the messenger sent them on a mission to intervene in the creation of the Daleks, giving the Doctor a Time Ring that would send him and his companions back to the TARDIS when it was completed. The Doctor was either to prevent it or to induce the Daleks to develop into less dangerous creatures. Sarah was captured by the Thals and put to work in a labour camp, under conditions that were guaranteed to kill off the workers after a while by having them move dangerous materials without the protective equipment to protect them from deadly exposure, with the Thals having fought for so long they were running out of supplies and had none to spare for prisoners. She made friends with one of her fellow prisoners, Sevrin, a Muto, who aided her in her escape and against the Daleks.

The Doctor and Harry found and rescued Sarah. However, the Doctor had learnt that the mad Kaled scientist Davros turned traitor to his own people by selling out the location of the Kaled Dome to the Thals and would have them bombed by a neutronic missile, since they opposed his plans to guide their war weapon-induced mutations into the Dalek species, which they disapproved of. Sarah and Harry, along with Sevrin, ran off to warn the Kaleds, but the Dome was bombed while they were en route through the wilderness of Skaro.

The Doctor feared his companions had been killed until they managed to reunite with him and inform him of what happened. While trying to infiltrate the bunker beneath the ruined dome, Sarah, the Doctor and Harry were all captured and tortured by Davros, who wanted to know the Doctor's foreknowledge of the Daleks' defeats so he could plan against them. The Doctor complied and Davros released his companions, and was soon overpowered by the Doctor momentarily. He had an opportunity to destroy the embryonic Dalek mutants and prevent any Daleks from existing, but though Sarah urged him to go through with blowing them up, the Doctor saw how fear of the Daleks had brought worlds together under noble reasons which otherwise never would have united and chose to let the Daleks survive. Sarah and Harry instead helped him capture Nyder, Davros's assistant, to turn the tables against him.

Davros released the first batch of Daleks he created to wipe out the Thals and any remaining dissidents among the Kaleds who disagreed with his plans to mutate them into such creatures of pure hatred, but soon learned they refused to obey anyone who wasn't a Dalek because of the way he programmed them, and watched them kill Nyder when he tried to shut down their production. Davros was soon struck down by his own creations as everyone else in the bunker fled for their lives. Although the Doctor was morally unable to commit genocide by destroying the entire race, he delayed the Daleks' advancement for 10,000 years by helping the Thals bury them underground. Nearly losing the Time Ring that would let him leave Skaro, the Doctor finally managed to get himself, Sarah and Harry off the planet by using the ring. Sarah gave her best regards to Sevrin and the surviving Thals before leaving. (TV: *Genesis of the Daleks*)

After departing Skaro, the Doctor, Harry and Sarah ended up on Space Station Nerva when it orbited Jupiter. While waiting for the TARDIS to catch up with them, the Doctor was involved with stopping a Cyberman attack on Voga, the planet of gold, an element they were highly vulnerable to. He saved Sarah from the fatal bite of a Cybermat, which snuck up and attacked her. The Doctor managed to transmat Sarah to Voga, which filtered the Cybermat's poison out of her bloodstream. Kellman, a traitor to the Nerva crew, was trying to lure the Cybermen to Voga, where they would be attacked by a missile waiting for them.

Sarah escaped the wrath of the native Vogans who disapproved of outsiders invading their secluded lifestyle, having fled to the innermost depths of Voga to avoid further conflicts with the Cybermen after suffering repeated onslaughts by them in the past. She returned to Nerva, where she tried to spy on the Cybermen, but was caught and tied up on Nerva as the Cybermen tried to crash it into Voga. The Doctor stopped them from blowing up the station and the planet Voga and saved Sarah's life. The Vogan Vorus attempted a counterstrike with a missile, but the Doctor lured it away from Nerva and into the fleeing shuttle of the Cybermen. His TARDIS at last managed to hone in on Nerva and materialise, allowing the crew to go home to Earth, only to be greeted with a message from Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart through the space-time telegraph the Doctor left him, indicating a grave emergency. (TV: *Revenge of the Cybermen*)

When the Doctor was called back to Earth, Sarah and Harry were reunited with the Brigadier and Sergeant Benton. The Zygons were trying to bring the legendary Loch Ness monster under their control. During their investigation of attacks on oil rigs by the monster, a Skarasen, a creature native from the Zygon homeworld, Harry was grazed in the head after the Duke of Forgill's gamekeeper, the Caber, shot at him for trespassing. When UNIT found him and had him hospitalised, Sarah was attacked by a Zygon posing as a nurse and imprisoned. When she was rescued by the Doctor, her holding cell was gassed, forcing him to place her in a temporary trance to survive without oxygen. Later, she was attacked again by Madra, impersonating Harry, who fled and dove into a barn while running away, where he transformed and attacked her with a pitchfork, but stumbled while trying to reach for her from atop a haystack, fell over, and impaled himself.

Sarah later did research in Forgill Castle and discovered a secret passage to a Zygon ship. There, she found Harry being held prisoner and freed him. They snuck back into the castle to reconvene with the Doctor and the Brigadier, who hatched a plan to free everyone held hostage on the Zygon ship and then caused it to explode. However, their leader, Broton, was elsewhere, luring the Skarasen to London with a trilanic activator, which it would destroy along with the target, the basement of Stanbridge House.

The Doctor found Broton and summoned UNIT soldiers to his aid. The Brigadier shot and killed Broton, and the Doctor fed the activator to the Skarasen, which then swam back to Loch Ness — the only home it knew. Sarah and Harry witnessed the creature rise from the River Thames before it fled and caused panic in the streets of London. After this incident and being shot, Harry decided not to board the TARDIS again when the Doctor insisted on giving everyone a ride back to London when he went back to a Scottish plantation to retrieve his ship. Sarah bid goodbye to Harry, who wished to return to UNIT, and continued her adventures with the Doctor while the Brigadier had arranged a lift for himself, Benton and the Duke of Forgill by train. (TV: *Terror of the Zygons*)

Sarah found they had landed on Zeta Minor instead of London. She immediately noticed the strange effects being there had on her person, comparing it to the soul being drawn from the body. Sarah and the Doctor were blamed by Controller Salamar for the deaths caused by the anti-matter creature and were close to being ejected into space when they were saved by Vishinsky, who seized control from the Controller. (TV: *Planet of Evil*)

While still trying to get back UNIT, Sarah encouraged the Doctor to resign from his position if he was getting tired of working for them. However, after landing in a priory in 1911 that would become the future site of UNIT headquarters, they ended up getting involved with stopping the Osiran Sutekh from escaping his prison in Egypt. Though unsuccessful in stopping Sutekh's servant Marcus Scarman from releasing Sutekh, the Doctor was able to delay Sutekh's trip through a time corridor to the priory by moving the corridor's threshold to the far future, thus effectively ageing him to death. Not realising his actions would cause the thermal balance to equalise, the Doctor accidentally set the priory on fire. (TV: *Pyramids of Mars*)

They landed in Devesham, a town in which Sarah had previously done interviews. However, they were not on Earth at all but Oseidon. The Kraals had replaced the populace with androids and were planning to take over Earth. With the help of UNIT, the aliens were stopped. (TV: *The Android Invasion*)

Upon landing on the *Space Station Abraxas*, Sarah helped the Doctor in re-stabilising the ship after an attempted attack by the Sontarans. When they were about to leave, they were attacked by the partially cyber-converted Sontaran major Raal and his second-in-command, Srik. Sarah helped to distract the Sontarans whilst the Doctor tried to get the crew away, almost being shot in the commotion, but was saved in the nick of time by Bernice Summerfield, Liz Shaw and the Third Doctor, the latter of whom she was disappointed did not recognise her. She joined the Fourth Doctor in heading to Old Marley, where she also encountered his Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth incarnations and helped in fighting off the Cybermen when they attacked the church. After evacuating the church when it was about to explode, she departed with her incarnation. (TV: *Destiny*)

The Doctor and Sarah visited London to find that the Pescatons were invading Earth. He discovered their weakness to high-pitched noise and set a trap for their leader, Zor, killing him. When he died, all the other Pescatons died as well. (AUDIO: *Doctor Who and the Pescatons*)

The TARDIS was forced to land on Karn. Sarah was temporarily blinded by the Sisterhood of Karn when they mistakenly accused the Doctor and her of being thieves sent to take the Elixir of Life. She helped the Doctor defeat the resurrected Time Lord Morbius and was allowed by the Sisterhood to give the Doctor some of the elixir to save his life in gratitude for having defeated Morbius. (TV: *The Brain of Morbius*)

Their next adventure had them battling the Krynoids, a plant-like species who planned to conquer Earth. (TV: *The Seeds of Doom*)

One adventure had them fighting the Mandragora Helix and its servants in Italy, 1492. They befriended Duke Giuliano and helped him keep his throne while his evil uncle was killed by the servants of the Helix, who had become energy beings. Draining them of their power, Sarah and the Doctor departed. (TV: *The Masque of Mandragora*)

Sarah was possessed by the Kastrian Eldrad, who forced her to take his severed hand to a nuclear power station to regenerate into a form based on her. After taking the alien back to its home planet and tipping it into a pit when it planned to conquer Earth, Sarah and the Doctor returned to the TARDIS to continue travelling. However, she had become tired of how the Doctor barely paid attention to her emotional distress. (TV: *The Hand of Fear*)

#### Departure

After many trips with Sarah, the Fourth Doctor received a summons to return to Gallifrey, his home world, and told her he couldn't take her with him. Their final words to each other were pleas to not forget them. Standing in the street, watching the TARDIS dematerialise, Sarah realised that, in attempting to take her home, the Doctor had not only missed landing on Hill View Road, but had not landed in South Croydon at all. She remarked to a nearby dog, "He blew it," before walking off toward her new life. (TV: *The Hand of Fear*)

### After the Doctor

#### The 1980s

In 1978, the Doctor sent a crate to Sarah, in care of her Aunt Lavinia on Hill View Road, in South Croydon. Sarah had already moved out by that time and was travelling extensively, "never in one place long enough to lick a stamp," as Lavinia put it. Lavinia herself left the following year, and took the crate with the rest of her furnishings to the manor house she had purchased in Moreton Harwood, Gloucestershire, where it stayed in the attic for another two years.

On 18 December 1981, Sarah arrived for Christmas at Lavinia's new home, only to find that Lavinia had left early for her American lecture tour, leaving Sarah and Lavinia's new ward, Brendan Richards, to celebrate the holidays without her; Sarah had, in her own words, "been abroad for the last fortnight". The pair promptly opened the crate to discover K9 Mark III who explained that he was a gift from the Doctor, prompting Sarah to happily remark that he *didn't* forget. With the help of K9 and Brendan, Sarah uncovered and stopped Moreton Harwood's murderous cult of Hecate. (TV: *A Girl's Best Friend*)

One morning, on her way out to catch a bus, *circa* 1983, Sarah dismissed K9's sense of danger and declined to either stay home or take him with her. She was quickly swept up by the Time Scoop which removed her to the Death Zone on Gallifrey. There, she took part in the Games of Rassilon and reunited with the Doctor's third incarnation, though at first was puzzled by how he could be there when she saw him regenerate, not realising from his perspective that that hadn't happened yet. She met the First, Second, and Fifth Doctors (though she was confused as to who the Fifth Doctor was, which the Third Doctor promised to explain later, something contradicted by a prior, if brief, meeting), and introduced herself to Tegan Jovanka. Sarah also had a reunion with the Brigadier and briefly met Susan Foreman and Vislor Turlough. Once the crisis had passed, Rassilon returned her to Earth. (TV: *The Five Doctors*)

## Personality

As a companion, Sarah was confident, courageous, benevolent, jolly and inquisitive. She had a sharp mind and tongue. She was also something of a feminist; she was infuriated when the Third Doctor asked her to make coffee (TV: *The Time Warrior*) and she often sparred verbally with fellow companion Harry Sullivan over his old-fashioned and unintentionally patronising attitude towards her.

She felt compassion for the K1 Robot and treated it as a person instead of a machine, and was saddened by its death (TV: *Robot*)

## Appearance

In her youth, Sarah was an attractive, slim, dark-haired girl. (PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Time Warrior*, PROSE: *Doctor Who and the Pyramids of Mars*)

She was 5' 4" tall. (TV: *The Masque of Mandragora*)

## Skills

Despite her later dislike of violence, Sarah was an excellent shot with firearms (TV: *Pyramids of Mars*) and knew Venusian karate. (TV: *A Girl's Best Friend*, PROSE: *Destination: Holocaust*)

Sarah could also whistle. (TV: *Revenge of the Cybermen*)

## Behind the Scenes

### Popularity and significance

Sarah Jane Smith is, arguably, one of the most popular of the Doctor's companions. Apart from Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, no other individual has maintained a higher profile as a *Doctor Who* companion. On-screen, she has appeared with the Third and Fourth Doctors, as well as with the First, Second, and Fifth Doctors in *The Five Doctors* and the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Doctors in *Destiny*. Accordingly, she and Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart are the only companions to have each appeared on-screen alongside at least eight incarnations of the Doctor. The two characters' actors, Elisabeth Sladen and Nicholas Courtney, sadly died within weeks of each other in 2011; she was honoured with an "In memory of" dedication at the start of the 2011 series première, followed by a half-hour retrospective TV special airing immediately after that episode, while Courtney was eulogised on-screen (using Lethbridge-Stewart as his in-universe proxy) in the 2011 series finale; and each was memorialised with retrospective pages on the BBC's *Doctor Who* website.

On-screen, Sarah has met the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Ice Warriors, the Master (in *The Five Doctors*) and Davros. Her début story, *The Time Warrior*, introduced the Sontarans.

She is one of the few companions to appear in the 50th anniversary trailer.

### Casting

Elisabeth Sladen was not the original actress cast to play Sarah. The role originally went to April Walker. She was fully contracted for the whole of season 11, but Barry Letts discovered that she had no real chemistry with Jon Pertwee. She was quietly paid off for her entire contract and Elisabeth Sladen was brought in to replace her. (INFO: *Invasion of the Dinosaurs*) Though it was known for years that there had been "another Sarah Jane", Letts and Sladen went to their graves without revealing her identity. Walker's name was discovered only when the DVD info text writer chanced across her name while doing research into *Dinosaurs*.

### Sarah Jane special

The *Doctor Who Magazine* special for Holiday 1992 concentrated on Sarah Jane Smith. The article *The Roving Reporter* details her life from an in-universe perspective.

### Spelling

Though rendered "Sarah Jane" in closing credits on television and in the bodies of most text-based narratives, Smith's forenames were consistently hyphenated by the letterers of Polystyle Publications, Ltd. Every *TV Comic* story held that she was "Sarah-Jane".

### Other matters

* She was originally supposed to depart in *The Lost Legion,* which would have seen her killed in a crossfire and the Doctor burning her body on a funeral pyre. This concept was abandoned when Elisabeth Sladen was insistent that she didn't want to see her character either married off or killed off.
* She was supposed to return to help the Doctor find The Key to Time. When Elisabeth Sladen refused, Romana was created.
* An early plan for *Logopolis* had Sarah Jane Smith returning, but this never came to pass*.* Instead, John Nathan-Turner decided that the new companion should be Australian, a character which eventually became Tegan Jovanka.

## Appearances

### *Doctor Who*

#### Season 11

* *The Time Warrior*
* *Invasion of the Dinosaurs*
* *Death to the Daleks*
* *The Monster of Peladon*
* *Planet of the Spiders*

#### Season 12

* *Robot*
* *The Ark in Space*
* *The Sontaran Experiment*
* *Genesis of the Daleks*
* *Revenge of the Cybermen*

#### Season 13

* *Terror of the Zygons*
* *Planet of Evil*
* *Pyramids of Mars*
* *The Android Invasion*
* *The Brain of Morbius*
* *The Seeds of Doom*

#### Season 14

* *The Masque of Mandragora*
* *The Hand of Fear*