‘There’s nothing “only” about being a girl!’
Name: Sarah Jane Smith
Place of Birth: Foxgrove, Hertfordshire
Date of Birth: May 1951
Address: 13 Bannerman Road, Ealing
Family: Parents - Eddie Smith, Barbara Smith (née Wilson), both deceased; Aunt – Lavinia Smith, noted virologist, deceased; Aunt’s ward – Brendan Richards; Adopted son – Luke Smith, formerly known as the Archetype
Known Associates: The Doctor, Brigadier Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart, Surgeon Lieutenant Harry Sullivan, RMS John Benton, Mike Yates, Jeremy Fitzoliver, Joshua Townsend, Natalie Redfern, Ellie Martin, Maria Jackson, Kelsey Hooper, Alan Jackson, Clyde Langer
Education: Caterham School for Girls, Journalism degree from Liverpool University
Occupation: Investigative journalist – employers include Metropolitan Magazine, The Sunday Times, Reuters, Planet Three television. Novelist – author of several successful science fiction novels. For a time she was also attached to UNIT as an assistant to their Chief Scientific Advisor, the Doctor. She is also an occasional inventor, using the alien technology she has collected to create things to help her in her investigations.
Childhood: Sarah, an only child, was raised by her Aunt Lavinia after her parents were killed in a car accident when she was three months old. Her school friends saw her as funny, and clever without being swotty. Even as a teenager she believed in the possibility of alien life. She was a member of the Girl Guides for a while.
Sarah's best friend as a child was Andrea Yates, who was killed falling off Westport Pier on a school trip, when the two of them were thirteen. Sarah was present and was unable to rescue Andrea - the incident spurred her to make the most of life and fight to defend it, and probably also contributed to her later fear of heights.
University Years: Sarah became engaged to a fellow journalism student, Andrew Lofts, but the relationship ended when it became clear that he expected her to give up her career in order to help him to further his – Sarah, a firm believer that women are entitled to equal rights and opportunities and shouldn’t let men dictate to them, found this unacceptable. She graduated with honours from her course.
Life: After university, Sarah had some success in freelance journalism, including reporting on the disappearance of astronaut Guy Crayford, before impersonating her aunt in order to sneak into a secret facility and becoming involved with a man called the Doctor. She traveled with the Doctor for some time, helping to save the world more than once, and travelling to many different planets and eras. During this time she was also involved with UNIT, a secret organisation formed to protect the Earth from alien threats - She received official training from them and was a member for a time, although it is unclear when or for how long.
Sarah and the Doctor eventually parted company, and Sarah returned to her home in Croydon – via Aberdeen - before spending some time travelling the world and doing work for Reuters, finally moving to Gloucestershire to live with her aunt and work on writing a book. It was at this time that Sarah finally opened the goodbye present the Doctor had left her, a robot dog called K9.
After a while, Sarah again moved out of her aunt’s house along with K9.
Some time after this, Sarah began to work for the television station Planet Three, fronting her own show doing undercover exposés. The show was successful for some time, until a company that she exposed turned out to be legitimate, and she was sacked. This later turned out to have been a set-up, deliberately planned to lose Sarah her job, her income and even her identity.
For some time, Sarah used false identities and moved around a great deal, aided by her former colleague at Planet Three, computer expert Natalie Redfern. Along with another associate, Josh Townsend, she and Natalie investigated and eliminated threats including terrorist plots and mutant creatures, before encountering Sarah’s very own doomsday cult – calling themselves the Orbus Postremo, they claimed that Sarah was the Herald of the Apocalypse.
Sarah was able to regain her rightful identity and her good standing as a journalist, and investigated the strange goings on at Deffry Vale High School, where once again she met the Doctor. He repaired K9, who had not been working for some time, and also gave Sarah several gifts of alien technology, which she now uses to aid her in her work - Sarah is still a journalist, and still investigates newsworthy events and writes articles, but much of her time is devoted to protecting the Earth from alien threats, and helping non-hostile aliens who encounter problems on Earth.
Perhaps the greatest challenge of Sarah's life so far came when she rescued The Archetype, a teenage boy created by aliens called the Bane as part of their plan to take over the Earth. Following the defeat of the Bane, Sarah adopted the boy and named him Luke, and is currently getting to grips with being a parent, with a little help from neighbour Alan and Luke's friends Maria and Clyde, who also help Sarah whenever the world needs saving.
Trivia:
• Foods Sarah likes include oranges, bananas, steak and kidney pudding, bacon and eggs, tripe and onions, black pudding and treacle tart and custard. She likes peppermint tea, but not ginger pop. Sarah isn’t much of a drinker – she doesn’t know much about wine and she hates brandy, but she doesn’t mind whisky
• She drives a mint green Nissan Figaro. She drove a red Volkswagen beetle named Ethel for quite a while, until it was blown up
• Sarah owns a sonic screwdriver disguised as a lipstick, and a watch which detects aliens, among other artifacts
• Sarah can whistle
• She is a stickler for proper English, and particularly hates it when people mix up “less” and “fewer”
• Sarah knows some Venusian Aikido
• Sarah likes shopping in New York
• Sarah doesn’t believe in coincidence
• Sarah speaks some Malayalam. While she travelled with the Doctor, she didn’t speak Latin, but later she developed a good working knowledge of it. Sarah also didn’t speak Italian while she travelled with the Doctor
• Sarah claims not to believe in ghosts, despite having briefly been one herself
• Sarah's home security is extremely lax, considering how many valuable things she owns - she leaves her windows open when nobody is home, and keeps a spare key under a flowerpot by the door
• Sarah is not keen on the DJ Steve Wright, or the music of The Hoosiers
Key to Sources:
All televised adventures - Doctor Who, K9 & Company, The Sarah Jane Adventures
Roving Reporter article, Kevin W. Parker, Doctor Who Magazine Holiday Special, 1992
Sarah Jane Smith Audios
Doctor Who Audios
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