Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?

This is my first exposure to SJA: I missed it as a kid, and didn't see much point in taking the time to watch a children's spinoff, until the theories about Ruby Sunday's paradoxical existence potentially being related to The Trickster started popping up. What can I say? A story that's incredibly silly and illogical plot-wise, yet on an emotional and tonal level almost reaches Torchwood levels of morbid. Certainly feels like a first draft run-through of Turn Left: the difference is that, whereas the Doctor's untimely death in TL understandably lead to cataclysmic events pretty soon that were prevented by his adventures in the original timeline, the idea that Sarah Jane Smith is the only person on Earth capable of stopping a meteor wiping humanity out is absurd to the point where it almost takes away from the intended emotional impact. We like to joke that continuity doesn't matter, and to an extent in a fictional universe so expansive that's true, but there was a UNIT book on Sarah Jane's shelf. So UNIT must exist, even if Torchwood (presumably for obvious reasons) don't. If Sarah Jane owns a supercomputer powerful enough to deflect an apocalyptic meteor, then how come UNIT, the international organisation charged with protecting the planet from all extraterrestrial threats, don't have their own Mr. Smith that could do the job nicely? Why is Sarah Jane so important to the Trickster? (On a Watsonian level. "She's the protagonist of the show" doesn't count.) Yeah yeah, she used to be the Doctor's companion. Then why, if he's so powerful, is he going after her instead of targeting the Doctor directly? Seems like a far more surefire way to jumpstart the end of the world. Oh wait. Donna's beetle? Part of the Trickster's brigade. Turn Left. I'm describing the plot of Turn Left. Ah well, apparently gaping plot holes are excused when it's a show for kids, and being a nitpicky nerd is generally frowned upon - maybe not on the whovian website, but who am I to take any more chances? That's the cons nearly over, on to the pros.

First of all, I am inclined to partially believe the Ruby theory now. Malicious fantasy foes erasing people from time before they had the chance to grow up and affect the future - that's the plot of The Church on Ruby Road. In fact, the scene where Maria's mum forgets her and tells her husband tearfully that she "never had a maternal bone in her body" is practically a 1-to-1 mirror of a similar scene in TCORR, when the Doctor speaks to the cold and jaded version of Carla that never adopted Ruby. It's certainly possible. The Trickster is quite a compelling villain, menacing enough in his lust for chaos, and would slot quite neatly into Russell's new Pantheon of unpredictable primordial deities, perhaps even under the alias of The One Who Waits. He'd need a minimal revamp in both design and motivations. It could work. Only time (ha ha) will tell.

As for Andrea Yates: god, what a human, complex, sympathetic antagonist. Really, her role in this episode inspires pure existential terror in the way only a Who story is able to: the real magnitude of the hopelessness only sets in after you peer through the veneer of whimsical charm and sci-fi babble. Doctor Who goes out of its way to tell audiences that every person's life is equally significant ("Nine hundred years and I've never met someone who wasn't important before") but on a meta level this episode proves otherwise. Sarah Jane is important. She has to grow up to become a journalist, to meet the Doctor and travel in the TARDIS, to save the world multiple times with her son and his friends. Her narrative role is to become the Main Character. Andrea Yates' role in the narrative is... to die. To die as a child, afraid and without hope as her best friend looks on, so that she can become an 'inspiring memory' and 'motivate' Sarah Jane to 'cherish the value of every innocent life'. How sweet. How ironic. Imagine being told that your entire existence and its abrupt violent end is a plot device that somebody else's wild and adventurous future hinges on. But death is nothing special, death is a mundane eventuality, even a teenager's death. What's worse is living a full life and sharing it with people only to never be remembered. The idea that our memory lives on is what keeps many of us optimistic even in the face of the great maw that inevitably consumes us all, but nobody will remember the adult Andrea Yates. All those forty? fifty? years-that-never-were, for nothing. Gone. She died at 13. Wouldn't you make a Faustian bargain too? Not knowing about the meteor, not knowing about the grand design? I would. I know I would.

Mixed feelings. Strange brew. Distinctly Doctor Who, haunted by the phantom of that persistent question: does the universe revolve around the Doctor? Are his companions more important than everybody else? Where does that leave us "Andreas"? Mere mortals. Clara knew that. Ruby doesn't. Yet.

It makes sense that a Doctor Who spin off would eventually travel back in time but I didn’t expect it to happen in series one. Through a delicious sci-fi twist we see a 13-year-old Sarah-Jane’s friend become twisted by trauma and become a pitiful, yet abusive and powerful villain. The fact that Angela, at a glance, looks so similar to Sarah-Jane is spooky! The return of the Graske is unexpected and cute - but it’s the faceless Trickster that imprints itself on the mind's eye of a child.