Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (39 page)

After several months living on Pete’s World, and now working for their version of Torchwood, Rose hears the Doctor’s voice in her dreams. She easily convinces her parents (Jackie now three months pregnant) and Mickey to travel with her to find the source of the Doctor’s voice, which is a beach in Norway called Dårlig Ulv Stranden (Bad Wolf Bay). The Doctor has found the final breach and is burning a star just to send Rose a final message. As they say goodbye, Rose’s heart breaks and she asks if she will ever see him again. He says there is no chance; once the breach is sealed that is it. To cross the dimension again would destroy both worlds. She tells him, finally, that she loves him to which the Doctor replies ‘quite right, too. And I suppose, if it’s my last chance to say it… Rose Tyler…’ He never gets a chance to finish his sentence, as the breach closes and he is left alone in the TARDIS with a tear falling.

It is unclear how much time passes before we see Rose again, but taking into account the faster-than-normal flow of time on Pete’s World we can safely assume that more than two years have passed (two years being the time between
Doomsday
and
Turn Left
for Earth Prime). Certainly there is a confidence to Rose that was never seen before, and her voice has aged somewhat. Torchwood on Pete’s World has created the Dimension Cannon, a device that is able to send people from one world to another. They have also discovered that something is wrong with the timelines – the stars are disappearing and the darkness is approaching. For reasons Rose cannot work out the timelines are converging on Donna Noble, and they meet briefly in early 2009 in
Partners in Crime
after Donna puts car keys in a bin for her mother to find later, before heading off with the Doctor. Neither knows each other at this point and Rose looks confused. She tries to contact the Doctor directly, first on the TARDIS scanner in
The Poison Sky
and later through a television in
Midnight
.

She eventually tracks the Doctor down on Christmas Day 2007. However she ends up in Donna’s World (an alternative reality created by the Time Beetle which has latched on to Donna) in
Turn Left
. She arrives too late, and the Doctor is dead. Without Donna to stop him, he drowns when he empties the Thames to kill the Racnoss buried in the centre of the Earth. She continues to return at various points over the next couple of years, but always in Donna’s World and she realises that somehow Donna is the nexus. By this point she has learned all about Donna, clearly having studied the timelines since she knows about the raffle ticket Donna will be buying the following Christmas (2008), and is aware that Jack and his Torchwood team manage to defeat the Sontarans in 2009. She spends some time working with UNIT in Donna’s World, although she will not tell them her name, and shows them how to scrape off the surface technology of the TARDIS (found in London, left behind when the Doctor dies at Christmas 2007), enabling them to create a primitive time machine using mirrors. She convinces Donna that she has to return to Earth Prime and find a way to make her younger self turn right and head towards her ultimate destiny with the Doctor. This Donna does, and Rose is able to finally cross over to Earth Prime where she stands over the dying Donna. Rose gets Donna to pass on a message to the Doctor – two words: Bad Wolf. These words help convince the Doctor of the impending danger, and that Rose is soon to return to him.

Rose is finally reunited with the Doctor on Earth Prime, which has been shifted to the Medusa Cascade by the Daleks in
The Stolen Earth
, but not before saving Wilfred Mott and Sylvia Noble, Donna’s grandfather and mother. She is not happy being excluded from the subspace network – which links the Doctor and Donna with Harriet Jones, Martha Jones, Jack, and Sarah – but she does seem to have got over her old hang-up about the Doctor having companions other than her. She uses the Dimension Cannon to deposit her near the TARDIS, and once the Doctor spots her, the two of them run towards each other, their smiles getting bigger with each step. Unfortunately before the Doctor can reach her, a Dalek appears and shoots him – exterminating half of his body. She is not surprised by the arrival of Jack, who destroys the Dalek, and together they rush the Doctor into the safety of the TARDIS. Any chance of a happy reunion is destroyed when the Doctor begins to regenerate – Rose cannot believe it, just as she has found him again he is about to become a new man. Luckily the Doctor has his spare hand (cut off by the Sycorax in
The Christmas Invasion
and returned to him by Jack in
Utopia
) nearby and is able to feed all his regeneration into that, thus healing himself. They joke around a little, the Doctor coyly enjoying the fact that Rose came all this way just to find him. Their reunion is short-lived however since the TARDIS, its defences ripped away, is transported to the Crucible, the hub of the Dalek fleet massed at the Medusa Cascade. They become captives of Davros, while Jack is apparently exterminated. From Rose’s reaction it is clear that she does not know Jack is now immortal, but she does not comment or react with surprise when he reappears later alongside Sarah, Mickey and Jackie. She thinks Martha is ‘good’ when Martha attempts to hold the Daleks ransom with the Osterhagen key, while Martha is surprised that the Doctor finally managed to find Rose again, a comment that makes Rose smile – it is the first time she learns that the Doctor has told others about her. Once the Daleks are defeated by Donna and the Meta-Doctor (see Donna’s entry for details on the creation of the Clone Doctor) created from the Doctor’s spare hand, the Doctor and his companions return Earth to its normal place in space. It is there that Mickey finally takes his leave of Rose – he is not stupid, he knows what’s coming. Rose has her Doctor. But he is OK with that. Since his gran on Pete’s World died peacefully he walks off and joins Martha and Jack. Rose and Jackie are returned to Dårlig Ulv Stranden on Pete’s World, and she finds out the Meta-Doctor is half human, specifically the physical part. He can never regenerate, and can grow old with her. Rose is not sure, but when he tells her what the Doctor never could in
Doomsday
, Rose realises he is as much the Doctor as the real Doctor is. The Doctor and Donna leave in the TARDIS, and Rose turns to her Doctor – finally having the man of her dreams.

It is here that Rose’s story appears to end. Although she is due to return to
Doctor Who
in the anniversary story in November 2013.

That Sarah would return seems, in hindsight, to have been inevitable. Her return had originally been planned for season eighteen, to help smooth the transition from Fourth to Fifth Doctor, but actress Elisabeth Sladen declined the offer. However, she did accept a pilot for a potential series, and so returned in 1981 for
K9 & Company: A Girl’s Best Friend
. Although the series did not transpire, Sarah returned again for the twentieth anniversary adventure,
The Five Doctors
in 1983 and later in the
Children In Need
charity crossover with the cast of popular soap opera
EastEnders
,
Dimensions in Time
in 1993. The popularity of Sarah is beyond question, and she has appeared in many official and unofficial productions beyond the parent show, so when it came time to bring an old companion back for the twenty-first century continuation of
Doctor Who
, Sarah seemed the obvious option. So successful was her return, both on screen and behind the scenes, that when Children’s BBC asked executive producer Russell T Davies to create a new spin-off show, the obvious choice was one based around Sarah. Thus
The Sarah Jane Adventures
was created, and proved to be the most successful show on CBBC. It ran for four and a half series, cancelled only by the untimely death of Elisabeth Sladen, and featured the Doctor on two separate occasions. Sarah, herself, returned to
Doctor Who
twice more, both times with her adopted son, Luke.

Sarah Jane Smith
–
Elisabeth Sladen,
continued... (
School Reunion
and
The Sarah Jane Adventures
, plus
The Stolen Earth
to
Journey’s End
and
The End of Time
)

It has been over twenty-five years since Sarah heard from the Doctor (Christmas 1981, in
K9 & Company: A Girl’s Best Friend
), so she is in for quite a surprise when, in early 2007, she investigates the strange goings-on at Deffry Vale High School. Ostensibly she is there to do a piece on the new Headmaster, Mr Finch, and he introduces her to the faculty which includes the substitute science teacher, Mr John Smith. She is delighted to meet him, and confesses to him that there is no harm in doing a little investigating while she is there – John Smith agrees totally. She also tells him that she once had a friend who went by that name. She has no idea that it is the Doctor she is talking to, and once she walks away from him, he remains looking at her, his face beaming, ‘Oh good for you, Sarah Jane Smith.’

Later that night Sarah breaks into the school, and finds herself looking in a utility room adjacent to the gym – there she finds the one thing she never expected to see. The TARDIS! She is beyond stunned, and staggers out, having dropped the crowbar. It is perfectly clear that a part of her wants to run, but as she turns around she comes face-to-face with ‘John Smith’. ‘Hello, Sarah Jane,’ he says, probably reminding her of those few tender moments of past years, and she immediately knows who he is, greeting him with the same two words she uses upon meeting the Third Doctor in
The Five Doctors
(not that she remembers such an event – more of that later); ‘It’s you,’ she says, her voice breaking with the shock. ‘Doctor. Oh my god, it’s you, isn’t it? You’ve regenerated.’ The Doctor points out that he has regenerated ‘half a dozen times’ since they last met (thus in his fourth incarnation, ignoring the brief meeting between the Fifth Doctor and Sarah in
The Five Doctors
). She thinks he looks incredible, but she believes she looks old, although the Doctor disagrees. Over twenty-five years of fear and hurt escape when she says; ‘I thought you’d died. I waited for you and you didn’t come back and I thought you must have died.’ In a moment of absolute perfection, the Doctor finds himself about to open up entirely about the Time War; ‘I lived. Everyone else died.’ It is telling of the bond the Doctor and Sarah share that ever since the Time War, the Doctor has been very reticent about discussing it, and any information garnered has been eked out of him. But with Sarah it seems obvious that he is about to pour it all out, that is until they are interrupted by a scream from Mickey.

There is some initial friction between her and Rose, who does not take well to the fact that the Doctor once travelled with someone else, whereas Sarah is a little hurt to learn that the Doctor has never mentioned her. After showing him K9 (who has not functioned for a long time) they take a moment to regroup in a nearby cafe where the Doctor repairs the robot dog. In a quiet moment, Sarah asks the Doctor the questions she never got to ask before. She wants to know if she did something wrong because he just dumped her and never came back. She waited for him. The Doctor responds by saying he doesn’t think that Sarah needed him, since she got on with her life. Sarah disagrees; ‘You were my life.’ She says it was difficult readjusting to life on Earth, after having seen so many wonders. She tells him, ‘You could have come back’, but he doesn’t agree. She goes on to tell him that it was not South Croydon where he deposited her in
The Hand of Fear
, but was in fact Aberdeen. ‘That’s close to Croydon,’ he responds jokingly.

Mickey realises that he is the ‘tin dog’; the one who stays behind, is called on from time to time. This is what leads to Mickey joining the Doctor and Rose for a short while. Sarah also has a revelation or two for Rose. She helps her see that travelling with the Doctor does not last forever – there was a time when Sarah and the Doctor were as close as he and Rose, but it came to an end. When the Doctor is tempted by the idea of being able to stop the Time War by using the Skasis Paradigm, it is Sarah who convinces him that it is a bad idea: ‘No. The universe has to move forward. Pain and loss, they define us as much as happiness or love. Whether it is a world or a relationship, everything has its time. And everything ends.’

One such ending falls to K9, who sacrifices himself to stop the Krillitanes. This upsets Sarah greatly even though he was only a ‘stupid dog’.

She gets to see the interior of the TARDIS and, although she prefers how it was back in her time, she likes it. Finally she gets to say goodbye to the Doctor, to give her the closure she needs. ‘Please, say it this time,’ she tells him, not willing to leave without a goodbye again. ‘Goodbye,
my
Sarah Jane,’ the Doctor says, giving her a huge bear hug. Turning away from the TARDIS she fights to hold back the tears, probably convinced she will never see him again, but he has left her a gift – once again it is K9, a brand new Mark IV version, and a few helpful tools including two sonic lipsticks.

She does not see the Doctor again until sometime in 2009 in
The Stolen Earth
but in the meantime she is not idle. Indeed, having met the Doctor again, her entire life is re-energised and she sets herself up doing her best to protect Earth and help stranded aliens in
The Sarah Jane Adventures
. As seen in a flashback in
SJA: The Lost Boy,
she is sent a crystalline structure by geologists who cannot define it, and it communicates with her via her laptop, telling her that it is a Xylok and can help her to defend Earth. Together they rebuild her attic in Bannerman Road, Ealing, creating the super computer Mr Smith (possibly a nod to the Doctor) which houses the Xylok. It is just as well she has Mr Smith to aid her, since K9 ends up secreted in a safe in the attic, where he is occupied in a long-term attempt to stabilise a black hole – he does return on occasion, however, when the need arises (including in
Journey’s End
when he is required to upload the TARDIS base code to Mr Smith). She survives on her late aunt Lavinia Smith’s inheritance, as well as using the income she gets from being one of the most prestigious journalists in the United Kingdom (
SJA: The Man Who Never Was
). She has a reputation for being an odd woman among the residents of Bannerman Road, and actively keeps herself to herself, not willing to risk anyone else’s life, until a girl called Maria Jackson moves into a house across the road, and becomes curious about Sarah, in
SJA: Invasion of the Bane
. Maria helps Sarah defeat Mrs Wormwood and the Banemother, who are trying to create the perfect human – the Archetype – to assist in their invasion attempt. They rescue the Archetype, a human boy who appears to be about fourteen-years old, but is ‘born’ on the day he is rescued by Maria and Sarah. Sarah adopts him, with the help of her contacts at UNIT (most likely the Brigadier –
SJA: Enemy of the Bane
makes it clear that Sarah’s only real contact with UNIT is either directly with him, or with people he trusts), and calls him Luke. Joined by another teenager, Clyde Langer, the four of them defend the Earth, while Sarah learns what it is to be a mother. In some ways she finds fighting against attempted alien invasions easier than being a mother to Luke – an experience she is unprepared for. During 2008 she comes up against a rogue group of Slitheen, twice, as well as meeting Bea Nelson-Stanley, whose late husband once met the Sontarans, and has her first encounter with the Trickster, what is left of the Pantheon of Discord, who seems particularly interested in altering Sarah’s timeline, using her to feast on the Doctor’s timeline.