Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?

TARDIS Coordinates: October 29, 2007

Every once in a while, you get a Doctor Who episode where the viewer leans back, puts his feet up, and says to the screen, “Well. How are you going to resolve this one, you smug git?”

“Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane” produces the same effect – the story is so tight and so frightening that at times it seems impossible that there’ll be a resolution without some kind of inexplicable magic to save the day, as so many Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes used. However, this sense is contained within the additional particulars of the show itself: how the hell is “The Sarah Jane Adventures” going to handle this conflict and still remain true to all we find beautiful in “The Sarah Jane Adventures?”

The answer is that it won’t, not neatly, not tidily, not cleverly; it’s going to resolve its plot, but not without sacrifice and pain, and it’s still going to be true to “The Sarah Jane Adventures.”

The Trickster has rewritten time – on a beach outing in 1964, thirteen-year-old Sarah Jane Smith and her friend Andrea Yates were playing on a closed pier, when Andrea fell into the water in a senseless and fatal accident that left Sarah Jane devastated. Now, though, Andrea Yates has bargained for her life with the Trickster and taken Sarah Jane’s place. Sarah Jane is now lost in time, and only Maria remembers her. She never grew up, never became a journalist, never met the Doctor or went to space or acquired K-9 or an attic full of mysteries, and Maria’s investigation forces Andrea to remember the bargain she made – a bargain demanded of a scared thirteen-year-old girl who had no idea what was being asked of her.

Having remembered, Andrea is asked if she wants to dispose of Maria as well, and Andrea’s affirmation sends the Graske to fling Maria into the same Limbo. Now, however, only Alan remembers his daughter. Now it’s not an overwrought teenager trying to convince her Dad that her best friend isn’t imaginary. Now it’s a terrified grown man slowly losing his sanity as he tries to cope with the worst nightmare any parent can ever have – and no one believes him. This is not small, it is not trivial, and Joseph Millson doesn’t play it as if it is.

There is no way out of this without someone getting hurt. Only one life can be lived, and Sarah Jane lived it; a thirteen year old girl is lost and her father wants her back and doesn’t care what it takes. Cornered and terrified, Andrea agrees to renege on the deal, sacrificing not just her life, but the life she’d already lived, to rescue Sarah Jane and Maria and save the world.

This is the Sarah Jane Adventures doing it the hard way. If it’s going to give you the ending that it’s tried to avoid until now, it’s not going to make it easy for you. In the end, there’s an extraordinarily bemused Alan demanding an well-deserved explanation, and we don’t blame him one bit.