Playtime (short story)

 was a Brief Encounter short story published in DWMS Holiday 1992.

Summary
On a day trip to London with her Aunt Lavinia in November 1963, Sarah Jane, a young girl with an enquiring mind, nips off to explore while her guardian goes off to buy sweets for her. Behind some double gates she finds a junkyard full of shop window dummies, broken chairs, picture frames and, strangely, a police box. Lost in her own world, during which she briefly pretends to be a reporter at one point (thus sowing the seeds for her future career!), she suddenly remembers her aunt and races off as a car pulls up and an older girl runs into the junkyard.

Characters

 * Sarah Jane Smith
 * Susan Foreman (unnamed)
 * Lavinia Smith

Continuity

 * The story presents some of the events of TV: An Unearthly Child from the viewpoint of Sarah Jane Smith. The story can only work if it is assumed that the UNIT stories took place in the "near future". TV: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? shows Sarah Jane as thirteen years old in 1964, and she clearly gives her age as "twenty-three" in TV: Invasion of the Dinosaurs. Therefore, these make the events of the story impossible — unless changes to the timeline are assumed.
 * As Playtime cannot fit into current continuity for the reasons mentioned above, it would perhaps be best to class the story as "imaginary".