Sarah Jane Smith

Personality
As a companion, Sarah was confident, inquisitive and possessed a sharp mind as well as a sharp tongue. She was also something of a feminist &mdash; in her first appearance she was infuriated when the Doctor asked her to make coffee, and she often verbally sparred with fellow companion Harry Sullivan, who had an old-fashioned, chauvinistic and unintentionally patronising attitude towards her. Her feminism was more practical than fanatical, and did not get in the way of forming close friendships with Harry, however, and a more personal feeling for the Doctor himself. These views became less prominent as the series went on, but Sarah never gave the impression that she was less than capable. In spite of the dangerous and frightening situations she often found herself in, she loved adventure and risk, and in spite of her outward complaints, was always thrilled to go off in search of more adventure. She shared a strong rapport with the Doctor, and her subsequent life has been shaped by her finding him a tough act to follow (DW: School Reunion)

Travels with the Third Doctor
In her capacity as a journalist for Metropolitan magazine, Sarah posed as her aunt, Lavinia Smith, a famous virologist, in order to infiltrate a UNIT controlled facility monitoring the whereabouts and status of a group of scientists.

Following a brief meeting with both Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT's scientific advisor the Doctor, she came to believe that the Doctor was responsible for the kidnapping of the scientists and followed him into his TARDIS where it travelled back to medieval England. (DW: The Time Warrior)

Whilst there she was confronted with both the reality of time travel and of extraterrestial life as she encountered Linx, a Sontaran Commander. She then assisted the Doctor to stop Linx and help the kidnapped scientists back to the 20th century. (DW: The Time Warrior)

When Sarah and the Doctor returned to Earth they returned to an evacuated London. Sarah took it upon herself to investigate various people including Charles Grover in a conspiracy involving time travel and dinosaurs in central London. (DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs)

Sarah then found herself working with the Doctor and UNIT on a number of occasions. Believing he must defeat the Great One at any cost, the Doctor left Sarah Jane on Earth. Lost in the Time Vortex and dying from radiation exposure, the Doctor did not return for several months, during which time Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart believed him dead and Sarah maintained he still lived. The TARDIS materialized, the Doctor began to change and Sarah was present when he regenerated into the Fourth Doctor.(DW: Planet of the Spiders)


 * ''The exact placement of Sarah's adventures with the Doctor is part of the UNIT dating controversy.

Travels with the Fourth Doctor
Traveling with with the Doctor, Sarah would encounter Cybermen, antimatter creatures at the edge of the universe, robotic mummies in 1911 England, ancient evils in 15th century Italy, and many other dangers. Crucially, she would be there at the start of the events that would lead to the Last Great Time War (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)

Eventually, the Doctor received a summons to his home planet to which she was forbiiden from accompanying him. Attempting to deposit her near her flat in South Croydon(DW:The Hand of Fear), the Doctor typically got the coordinates wrong and left her in Aberdeen, Scotland.

The Doctor would later suggest he did not return for Sarah because he feared becoming too attached to any individual human, given that the differences in their life expectancies meant he would almost inevitably have to watch them grow old and die (DW: School Reunion)). There is also evidence that he believed Sarah was growing too detached from her terrestrial life and it was in her best interests that she return to it. (DW: The Face of Evil (Novelisation))

The Wilderness Years
The Doctor did not forget Sarah, but rather sent her K-9 Mark III as a companion and keepsake. Together they uncovered a murderous Pagan cult in the village of Moreton Harwood (K-9 & Company).

Many contradictory accounts exist of the birth, deaths and marriages that occur or do not occur in Sarah's life following this adventure. This is perhaps to be expected as she has been present at number of points where history has been altered -


 * Sarah accompanied the Third Doctor to Dust where the involvement of Faction Paradox caused him to regenerate an adventure too early. (EDA: Interference).
 * This timeline was further muddied by the Faction Paradox's actions on Gallifrey. (EDA: The Ancestor Cell)


 * Sarah was involved in the earliest stages of the Last Great Time War (DW: Genesis of the Daleks). As Time Wars invariably involve past victories and losses being rewritten and refought (BNA: Walking to Babylon, FP: The Book of the War) then her presence at such a key strategic moment will likely have caused her past to be altered several times.
 * The Council of Eight altered history by seeming having Sarah die in 1997, well before her time (PDA: Bullet Time). This seems to have been undone by the Doctor's eventual defeat of the Council (EDA: Sometime Never...).
 * The 'Trickster' caused Sarah to drown when she was thirteen years old and extracted her adult self from time (SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?).


 * Given so much potential damage to her personal history, the Doctor's truly ecstatic reaction to meeting her again in his tenth life might be considered to come from not just his pleasure at seeing an old friend, but from elation at the fact her timeline still exists and that she's recognisably still the woman he cares about.

Sarah Jane Smith continued to work as an investigative reporter following her departure from Planet 3 and her aunt's death. (BFA: Comeback)

Reunited and Refocused
Sarah's life would get back on track following an inspirational reunion with the Doctor (DW: School Reunion).

In the time after Sarah's newest adventure with the Doctor (at least a year and a half), K-9 has left Sarah to close off a black hole, occasionally passing close enough to contact her, leaving her entirely alone. Sarah Jane has developed a reputation on Bannerman Road as being unsociable and quiet, keeping her investigations into alien life a secret. Acquiring a sonic lipstick, a watch to scan for alien life, sentient supercomputer assistant Mr Smith and various other futuristic and extraterrestrial devices in the meantime, she has helped the Earth and alien life forms in a much less violent way to organisations such as UNIT and the Torchwood Institute, who she remarks tend to go in "all guns blazing". Sarah Jane has also adopted a son — Luke Smith, and befriended neighbour Maria Jackson, remarking that since meeting them she is no longer content to live alone. When asked by several characters why she has never married, she remarks that there was only one man for her, to whom no one could ever compare. (SJA: Invasion of the Bane)