Judgement Day (SJA audio story)

Judgement Day was the tenth and final Sarah Jane Adventures audiobook release. It was written by Scott Gray, produced for AudioGO and read by Anjli Mohindra. It accompanied the CBBC broadcast of series 5, and was one of only two releases in the range read by someone other than Elisabeth Sladen, as the actress had died earlier that year.

Publisher's summary
Sarah Jane finds herself on trial for her life, in this exclusive audio story read by Anjli Mohindra.

"The lie betrays life. The truth defies death."

The Veritas are an ancient force for justice. For centuries they have pursued criminals across the universe, showing them no mercy. Now they have come to Earth, and found the worst law-breaker of all... Sarah Jane Smith.

Why are creatures made of living flame rampaging through a shopping mall? Who is the mysterious magician Clyde and Sky must overcome? And why does the entire crisis seem to revolve around Rani's mother Gita?

Sarah Jane's past has finally caught up with her. It's judgement day...

Plot
Gita opens a second Bloomin' Lovely store at the White Cross shopping mall. Haresh Chandra wants to help her to bring the flowers there, but the Chandras' car doesn't start and Sarah Jane helps with her sonic lipstick. Happily Haresh and Gita drive of.

A short time later Mr Smith announces that an alien ship landed at White Cross shopping mall. Sarah Jane, Clyde, Rani and Sky go there to find out why the ship has landed there. At the shopping centre they see the magical show of Zando when suddenly something mysterious happens. Flame figures appear and the humans are scanned by the aliens. When they scan Gita, they find out that the memories of the aliens she had met were erased. Soon they hear that Sarah Jane is responsible for erasing the memory. They realise that Sarah Jane had lied a lot to keep the existence of aliens hidden in front of humans.

Since all of their species, besides them, have died because of a single lie, they have devoted their lives to catch liars and punish them. They came to Earth because they wanted to catch the magician Zando. In their point of view magic is just another form of lying.

The Veritas catch Zando and Sarah Jane. They show Sarah Jane her former lies and want to punish Sarah Jane for her lies. When the Veritas see the chaos that is caused, as the humans in the shopping centre get to know about aliens they realise that Sarah Jane only lied to protect the humans. Sarah Jane convinces the aliens that Zando also wasn't lying and that his magic show was only a kind of entertainment. The Veritas find both of them not guilty and leave Earth. The people who have been at the shopping centre soon find the silliest explanations for the things that have happened there.

Characters

 * Sarah Jane Smith
 * Sky Smith
 * Rani Chandra
 * Clyde Langer
 * Gita Chandra
 * Haresh Chandra
 * Edward Sheppard
 * Zando
 * Veritas
 * Mr Pritchard

Worldbuilding

 * Rani wrote an essay about the Watergate scandal.
 * Gita opens a Bloomin' Lovely store at the White Cross shopping mall.
 * Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are journalists of The Washington Post.

Continuity

 * Sarah Jane fixes the engine of Gita's van with her sonic lipstick. She previously used it to disable and then fix her parents' car (TV: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith) and later tried to fix her own engine without success. (AUDIO: The Shadow People)
 * Rani's parents have been put in danger on more than one occasion. (TV: Enemy of the Bane, Prisoner of the Judoon, The Vault of Secrets)
 * Gita has had a memory block placed on her mind. (TV: The Vault of Secrets)
 * Sarah Jane and Rani see holograms of Sarah Jane writing cover stories explaining dinosaurs in London (TV: Invasion of the Dinosaurs) and the destruction of North Sea oil rigs by the Loch Ness Monster. (TV: Terror of the Zygons) They also see themselves using Mr Smith to jam the feed from a NASA mars probe as it comes across a pyramid. (TV: The Vault of Secrets)
 * Sky was created by an alien race as a weapon. (TV: Sky)