Sarah Jane Smith


 * For the audio series, see Sarah Jane Smith. For other individuals named Smith, see here.

Sarah Jane Smith was a journalist who travelled with the Doctor in his third and fourth incarnations. Together with her friends she met and battled aliens that came to Earth.

Infancy
Sarah Jane Smith was born in May 1951 in the village of Foxgrove. (SJA: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith) She had the astrological sign of Taurus. (SJA: Secrets of the Stars) On 18th August 1951, her parents Eddie and Barbara Smith abandoned her in her pram and drove off in their car (in order to protect the world from The Trickster). A few minutes later on a country lane they drove into a tractor and were killed. She was then raised by her Auntie, Lavinia Smith, a virologist. (SJA: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith)

Childhood
During her youth, she developed a strong fear of clowns, derived mainly from a clown puppet that used to hang in her room and stare down upon her as she slept. During a thunderstorm the clown puppet appeared to move. In later life, she would discover that the puppet had been manipulated by the Pied Piper to instill coulrophobia in her. (SJA: The Day of the Clown)

On 13th July 1964, while off on a school outing together, Sarah Jane's best friend, Andrea Yates, slipped off of a pier to her death. The Trickster would later alter this event and create a timeline in which Sarah died, rather than Andrea; a timeline which, many years later, would eventually doom the planet Earth. In the normal timeline, the event would change Sarah, impressing onto her the importance of life. She would never forget Andrea. (SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?)


 * Just prior to the accident, Sarah Jane and Andrea briefly encountered Maria Jackson, who accidentally travelled through time as she escaped the Graske. It is not known if Sarah Jane remembered this incident, or if it was erased from history when the Trickster's plan was unravelled, although this event may be why Sarah Jane trusted Maria more than anything and gave her the silver box, so that the event could happen so Sarah Jane would remember it, causing a circular never ending paradox.



First meeting with the Doctor
As a journalist, Sarah Jane was mentored by James Stevens. (MA: Who Killed Kennedy) At age 23, when working for Metropolitan magazine, Sarah posed as her aunt, a famous virologist, in order to infiltrate a UNIT-controlled facility where some scientists had gone missing. She met Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart and UNIT's unpaid scientific advisor the Doctor. Suspicious of the Doctor's activities, Sarah Jane stowed away in the Doctor's TARDIS and traveled back in time with him to 13th century England, to defeat a Sontaran known as Linx, who had kidnapped the scientists. (DW: The Time Warrior)


 * Sarah Jane gave her age during Operation Golden Age as 23, which took place shortly after she first met the Doctor. (DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs)

Early adventures
Sarah Jane and the Doctor would have many adventures together both on Earth and on other planets. She got to know the Brigadier, Captain Mike Yates, and Sergeant Benton of UNIT (DW: Invasion of the Dinosaurs) and Jeremy Fitzoliver. (BBCR: The Paradise of Death)

She met and fought the Daleks for the first time (DW: Death to the Daleks). Faction Paradox altered the Doctor's timeline twice when Sarah Jane travelled with him. In one timeline, the Doctor died (and did not regenerate) on the planet Dust. In another, the Doctor did regenerate, an event which should never have happened at that time and place. (EDA: Interference - Book Two) Later, these events reversed, allowing history to take its natural course. (EDA: The Ancestor Cell)

In the regular timeline, the Doctor regenerated following his exposure to deadly radiation in the cave of the Great One on Metebelis III. With the Doctor dying and his TARDIS lost in the Time Vortex, he left Sarah Jane and the Brigadier to await his return for three weeks. Sarah believed he had died, but the Brigadier maintained faith. Sarah and the Brigadier watched as the Doctor's TARDIS returned to UNIT HQ and he regenerated in front of them into his next incarnation. (DW: Planet of the Spiders, Robot)

Later travels
Along with another Human companion, Harry Sullivan, Sarah Jane and the Doctor traveled off on other adventures in time and space. (DW: Robot) The Doctor, in his new incarnation, had less interest in Earth, yet he seemed to have a closer relationship with Sarah Jane herself. She was present on the planet Skaro during the creation of the Daleks by Davros and the Doctor's attempt to change or prevent it. (DW: Genesis of the Daleks)

Departure
As she later related to Rose Tyler, Sarah encountered the Skarasen (a probable candidate for "Loch Ness Monster") (DW: Terror of the Zygons), anti-matter monsters (DW: Planet of Evil) and "walking mummies." (DW: Pyramids of Mars) Earlier she had met the Cybermen. (DW: Revenge of the Cybermen)

Finally, after many trips with him, the Doctor received a summons to return to Gallifrey, his home world; as a human, she could not accompany him (although this ban was evidently rescinded as the Doctor was later able to bring human companions to Gallifrey, possibly owing in fact to his later ascension to the position of President of the Time Lords). The Doctor attempted to deposit her near her flat in South Croydon (DW: The Hand of Fear), but mistakenly left her in Aberdeen, Scotland, instead. (DW: School Reunion)

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 life on Earth and it was in her best interests that she return to it. (DWN: Doctor Who and the Face of Evil)

The 1980s
The Doctor did not forget Sarah, as he sent her K-9 Mark III as a companion and keepsake, which she unpacked and activated shortly before Christmas, 1981. Together, with her aunt Lavinia's other ward, Brendan Richards, they uncovered the murderous cult of Hecate in the village of Moreton Harwood. (KAC: A Girl's Best Friend) Sarah Jane was also instrumental in helping Harry Sullivan. (TC: Harry Sullivan's War) Shortly after, a Time Scoop removed her (but not K-9) to the Death Zone on Gallifrey where she participated in the Games of Rassilion, and re-united with the Doctor's third incarnation. She briefly met the first, second and fifth Doctors, and introduced herself to Tegan Jovanka. Sarah also had a reunion with the Brigadier and briefly met Susan Foreman and Turlough. (DW: The Five Doctors)

The 1990s
Decades later, Sarah Jane accompanied the Doctor's seventh incarnation to a jazz concert in the Royal Albert Hall and defeated an invasion of Earth by rogue members of the insectoid Kalik species. (DWM: Train-Flight)

Then, in the mid-1990s, Sarah Jane worked with the Brigadier to defeat the Great Intelligence, which had possessed Victoria Waterfield, another one of the Doctor's companions. (BBV: Downtime)

In 1996, with the Doctor's eighth incarnation's companion, Sam Jones she fought against international human rights abuses and met her future husband, Paul Morley. (NA: Christmas on a Rational Planet, EDA: Interference) In one possible future, at least, they had a daughter together called Lauren and a grandchild called Lily. (ST: Lily)

Later, in 1997, she assisted the Doctor's seventh incarnation against the Cortez Project in Hong Kong and (seemingly) died. (PDA: Bullet Time)


 * The Council of Eight had altered history by having Sarah die well before she should have done. This seems to have been undone by the Doctor's eventual defeat of the Council. (EDA: Sometime Never...)

Sarah Jane lost another family member sometime between 1990 and 1998 as her aunt, Lavinia Smith, died.

Another account shows Sarah still alive in 1998 when her own younger self visited that year with the Doctor and Harry Sullivan. (MA: System Shock)


 * Several contradictory accounts exist of the birth, deaths and marriages that occur or do not occur in Sarah's life following this adventure.

Changes
K-9 broke down and Sarah did not know how to fix him. She also knew she couldn't find anyone else to fix him because of his advanced technology. (DW: School Reunion) Sarah Jane Smith continued to work as an investigative reporter following her departure from Planet 3 and her aunt's death. (BFSJS: Comeback) At this point in her investigations, she was joined by fellow investigators Natalie Redfern and Josh Townsend. A conspiracy to collapse her career was initiated against her by her old enemy Hilda Winters, who intended to commit a vicious bio-terrorism attack and frame Sarah for it, but Sarah and her companions thwarted this. (BFSJS: Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre)

Two years on, Sarah had become tired and morose, knowing she couldn't talk about her past with anyone and starting to think she'd imagined it. She also became involved in the machinations of the doomsday cult known as the Crimson Chapter, who believed a 400-year-old tome named the Book of Tomorrows which claimed aliens would wipe out humanity in the year 2000 - and discovered the tome made reference to her. (BFSJS: Buried Secrets) To her horror, she discovered the Chapter wanted to commit genocide solely so their prophecy would be fulfilled, and that they believed she was the human herald of the alien apocalypse. While she prevented this, she was distraught to find out the Chapter and the Book of Tomorrows had been formed due to comments she'd made to Giuliano while travelling with the Doctor. (BFSJS: Fatal Consequences)

Following this and the discovery that her friend Josh was a cold-blooded killer for the rival White Chapter cult, she admitted that she was lonely in her life and wondered if the Doctor had left her on Earth for a specific task. Needing something to believe in again, she went on the world's first commercial spaceflight, which would pass a comet that the White Chapter would bring salvation, only for the flight to be sabotaged by the last Crimson Chapter acolyte, killing Josh and leaving Sarah with failing life support and a vision of something she felt she'd been searching for. (BFSJS: Dreamland)
 * While ending on a cliffhanger that hinted death, the story mentioned NASA was intending a rescue mission.

At some stage, Sarah permanently moved from South Croydon to Ealing and bought a rather large house on 13 Bannerman Road. (Prior to SJA: Invasion of the Bane)

Sarah Jane and Bernice Summerfield at some point enjoyed a coffee together and shared reminiscences of their time in the TARDIS (BFBS: A Life of Surprises: A Mutual Friend),

During Christmas 2006, Sarah was a witness to the Sycorax invasion (DW: The Christmas Invasion), inwhich she would suspect the Doctor's involvement, foreshadowing her reunion with him later the next year.(DW: School Reunion)

Reunion with the Doctor
In 2007, Sarah Jane launched an investigation into strange goings-on at Deffry Vale High School, which led her to an encounter with the Doctor in his tenth incarnation. She met the Doctor's current companion, Rose Tyler, and after some initial animosity, competition, and jealousy, bonded with the young woman. She was also instrumental in convincing the Doctor to take on Mickey Smith as a companion. During the incident at Deffry Vale where she aided the Doctor in foiling the plans of the Krillitanes, K-9 Mark III was destroyed, but the Doctor constructed for her Mark IV. During this adventure, Sarah Jane came to terms with the fact she was unable to move on with her life after leaving the Doctor, and departed the Doctor's company with newfound confidence. (DW: School Reunion) He also gave her a sonic lipstick and a watch to scan for alien life hidden in a compartment in Mark IV. (WEB: The Sarah Jane Adventures website)


 * ''References in the episode tend to discount any marriage to Paul Morley, and flatly deny her having met the Doctor after he left her in Aberdeen, although other accounts imply that the defeat of the Council of Eight and the destruction of Faction Paradox negated the circumstances under which Sarah met the Seventh and Eighth Doctors.

Losing K-9 and building Mr Smith
She chose to help the Earth by quietly opposing those aliens hostile to it, while simultaneously welcoming those aliens who might befriend it. Her philosophy of alien contact stood in stark contrast to UNIT and the Torchwood Institute, whom she believed tended go in "all guns blazing". K-9's unique abilities forced their separation. He became involved with a long-term project to stabilise an artificial black hole. Amongst the residents of Bannerman Road, she was seemingly viewed as a quiet and unsociable neighbour. Kelsey Harper, though likely exaggerating, described her as a "mad woman". (SJA: Invasion of the Bane)

Sometime after her encounter with the Doctor, a geologist friend found near the site of the Krakatoa eruption, an alien crystal, around which she built a computer, which she named Mr Smith. Mr Smith possessed information on many alien species and the ability to contact any computer in the world. (SJA: The Lost Boy)


 * ''The chronology of this remains a little uncertain, though it seems to have happened after K-9 Mark IV went off to stablise the black hole, which would set it, for Sarah Jane, at some point after the incident with the Krillitanes but prior to her meeting the Bane.

Motherhood and new adventures
The Bane invasion changed all this as its events exposed her secrets to her young neighbour Maria Jackson, who moved in to 36 Bannerman Road. Along with "the archetype", an artificial Human boy created by Bane technology, they defeated the Bane Mother. In the aftermath, Sarah Jane adopted the boy as her own, re-naming him Luke. Sarah was no longer content to live alone and opted to include Maria and Luke in her adventures. (SJA: Invasion of the Bane)

She enrolled Luke at Park Vale School, which Maria also attended. At Park Vale, Luke met Clyde Langer, a friend of his and Maria's; all three helped her defeat Slitheen who had infiltrated the school. (SJA: Revenge of the Slitheen) They also helped her against the Gorgon. (SJA: Eye of the Gorgon) She and Maria saved Luke and Clyde from General Kudlak. (SJA: Warriors of Kudlak) She was almost wished out of reality by The Trickster until Maria's father Alan saved her and Maria. (SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?) She was helped by the Slitheen to defeat Mr Smith, who had turned out to be evil, but with the help of Alan, Maria's father, re-programmed him. (SJA: The Lost Boy)

When the Daleks transported Earth to the Medusa Cascade, Sarah Jane worked with Torchwood Three to contact the Doctor by having Mr Smith cause every telephone on Earth to ring the Doctor's TARDIS. She reluctantly left her son behind and found herself first confronted by two Daleks (DW: The Stolen Earth). She again met Mickey Smith and made the acquaintance of Jackie Tyler who teleported in and saved her from the Daleks, and was then transported to the Dalek base, the Crucible. In the heart of the Crucible, she once more met Davros, and working with Jack Harkness threatened to destroy the Crucible using a warp star she owned. After the defeat of the Daleks, she helped to drive the TARDIS and bring the Earth back home and said another farewell to the Doctor, commenting that, although he often spoke of being lonely, his wide range of companions gave him essentially the largest family on Earth. (DW: Journey's End) Again with Luke, Clyde and Maria, she saw off the Sontaran known as Kaagh (the last survivor of the Sontaran invasion of Earth) who wanted to take Sarah Jane back to Sontar to stand trial in the Doctor's stead. During that adventure, Maria announced that her father had a job offer to move to America and had decided to let him take it. Six weeks later, she moved out. (SJA: The Last Sontaran)

Shortly afterwards, Rani Chandra, an aspiring teenage journalist, and her parents Gita and Haresh moved in to Maria's former address and joined Luke and Clyde in defeating a child-stealing energy entity which had inspired the Pied Piper myth. Reluctantly, she took Rani into the team. The entity thrived off of Sarah's fears of clowns which started one night in childhood. (SJA: The Day of the Clown) Afterwards, Rani joined the team permanently. Together, they defeated the Ancient Lights (SJA: Secrets of the Stars), the Berserker (SJA: The Mark of the Berserker) and even the Trickster when he attempted to manifest corporeally in Foxgrove in 1951. In the later adventure Sarah Jane learns why her parents abandoned her and is immensely proud of them. (SJA: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith) Later, Mrs Wormwood returned to Earth alongside the Sontaran Kaagh in an attempt to summon Horath, the immortal tyrant of the Dark Empire. With help from Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and due to infighting between Kaagh and Mrs Wormwood, they were able to stop this potential apocalypse. (SJA: Enemy of the Bane)

In 2009, Sarah Jane and her friends then later fought Androvax, a Veil who took possession of Sarah Jane's body but thanks to Luke, Rani and Clyde, as well as a Judoon, she got it back (SJA: Prisoner of the Judoon). She and the gang also helped a lonely alien named Eve get back to her ship and fly away with her friends. During this incident K-9 was able to complete his mission relating to the black hole and return to Sarah Jane's side (SJA: The Mad Woman in the Attic). Sarah Jane later met Peter Dalton and they got engaged, much to Luke, Rani and Clyde's surprise. At her wedding she got two very special, uninvited guests, her greatest ally and arch enemy. She was teleported to limbo by the Trickster and was separated from her companions and the Doctor. She had to allow Peter to sacrifice himself to defeat the Trickster, seemingly forever. She had genuinely been in love with Peter and when she and the others returned to Earth, she was left heartbroken, with tears in her eyes, saying that the wedding was off before she went home. She was checked up on by Luke, Clyde and Rani as well as the Doctor who allowed Sarah Jane's gang to have a look inside the TARDIS. She then bid another farewell to the Doctor a la their original departure (SJA: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith).

Sarah Jane's next challenges would be against unique aliens which were unlike any she had previously faced: her beliefs regarding ghosts were tested by her encounter with Erasmus Darkening (SJA: The Eternity Trap), and the Mona Lisa would come to life shortly after Sarah Jane and Luke argued for the first time about average teenage habits (SJA: Mona Lisa's Revenge). Later Sarah Jane would attempt to thwart another Slitheen plot which threatened the Earth. Despite the best efforts of her, Luke, Rani, Clyde and K-9, the Slitheen could not be stopped. Fortunately members of the Blathereen Family arrived in time to stop the Slitheen. They then tricked Sarah Jane into accepting a gift: a Rakweed plant. It mutated over night and began to spread across London and threatened to kill anyone infected by its spores, Luke being the first to inhale the spores and coming close to death as a result. This frightened Sarah Jane a great deal. Fortunately a way for Mr Smith to destroy the Rakweed was discovered but Sarah Jane was forced to kill the Blathereen, an act she immediately regretted (SJA: The Gift).

Luke told Sarah Jane that he would be doing his A levels a year early whilst Sarah Jane was being held captive by a Slitheen. Rani and Clyde quickly defeated the Slitheen with a bucket of vinegar and Sarah Jane said Luke should go to university. (SJA: The Nightmare Man)

After the incident with the The Master Race, Sarah Jane asked Mr. Smith to create a cover story so that everyone would not become suspicious of more alien activity, using a fake story of how the wifi system had encountered a major technical malfunction all around the world that caused everyone to have hallucinations She was later told by Luke that the Doctor had arrived and saved his life. She then watched as he waved goodbye before entering the TARDIS, and smiled, showing signs of knowing what was about to happen (DW: The End of Time).

After Luke
When the time came, Luke passed his A Levels with flying colours. Luke would then be plagued by nightmares and the Nightmare Man. Luke, Clyde and Rani were all able to enter the same nightmare to be together and defeat him by overcoming their fear. Alive and well, Luke would later leave for the University of Oxford along with K9 in Sarah Jane's former car that she had given him. (SJA: The Nightmare Man)

Although Luke was no longer with Sarah Jane, Clyde and Rani had stayed behind and the trio continued to have adventures in 2010. Androvax returned to Sarah Jane and asked her for help. Along with the Men in Black, they saved Earth from hyperdimensional cataclysm, allowing Androvax to leave Earth without destroying it and find a new home planet for the remnants of the Veil species. (SJA: The Vault of Secrets)

Sarah Jane attended the Doctor's staged funeral and helped unearth the Shansheeth plot. She met Jo Jones for the first time and they bonded over stories of traveling with the Doctor before later running into the Doctor himself. She and Jo were eventually captured by the Shansheeth who tried to use a Memory Weave and their memories to create a TARDIS key. However with the help of the Doctor, the two women together overloaded the machine and hid in a lead-lined coffin when the device self-destructed. (SJA: Death of the Doctor)

Andrea Yates' World
The Trickster swapped Sarah Jane's destiny with that of school friend Andrea Yates. Consequently, Sarah Jane, not Andrea drowned in 1964 on a school trip to a pier and never led the life she would have alongside the Doctor. Had her life not been restored, life on Earth would have been likely destroyed by an asteroid that only Mr. Smith could have stopped. (SJA: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?)

Donna's World
In this universe, time was altered as the Doctor's companion Donna Noble was assaulted by a member of the Trickster's Brigade who coerced her into turning right instead of left six months prior to when Donna first met the Doctor, leading to her never meeting and saving the Doctor.

Sarah Jane investigated the Royal Hope Hospital with Maria, Clyde and Luke, apparently meeting Martha Jones. When the hospital was teleported to the moon by the Judoon, Sarah Jane tried to step into the Doctor's role and defuse the situation. Though she did manage to deactivate the MRI weapon, she could do nothing about the hospital's dwindling supply of oxygen; and, along with everyone else, she suffocated. (DW: Turn Left)

The Trickster's Earth
The Trickster used an elaborate plan to entice Sarah Jane into preventing the death of her parents. This gave him the chance to manifest himself fully in our reality and take control of the planet in yet another alternate timeline. Sarah Jane's actions made her a notorious figure in this dystopian world. In the end, Sarah Jane's parents chose to sacrifice themselves in order to circumvent the Trickster's plan, erasing the alternate timeline. (SJA: The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith)


 * For a list of Sarah Jane's adventures after she left the Doctor, see Sarah Jane Smith - Timeline.

Family

 * Barbara Smith - Mother (deceased)
 * Eddie Smith - Father (deceased)
 * Lavinia Smith - Aunt (deceased)
 * Africana Smith - Uncle (deceased)
 * Brendan Richards - Adoptive cousin
 * Luke Smith - Adopted son

Personality
As a companion, Sarah Jane was confident, inquisitive and possessed a sharp mind as well as a sharp tongue. She was also something of a feminist; she was infuriated when the Doctor asked her to make coffee (DW: The Time Warrior) and she often verbally sparred with fellow companion Harry Sullivan over his 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, or later with the Doctor himself. She shared a strong rapport with the Doctor, and her subsequent life has been shaped by her finding him a tough act to follow; she stops short of saying that she had fallen in love with the Doctor, though several of her exchanges with him after their reunion in addition to the context of one of her conversations with Rose strongly implies that she indeed had developed feelings for him (DW: School Reunion). Despite the passage of time she maintains her can-do personality, and since reuniting with him, remains a close friend of the Doctor.

Rani once pointed out to the Doctor that Sarah Jane doesn't like being called just "Sarah", though he replied that "she does by me" (SJA: The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith) Indeed, during her years traveling in the TARDIS the Doctor, along with a few other individuals such as Harry, and even Mike Yates, referred to her numerous times simply as "Sarah". To date, the Doctor remains the only person to still consistently call her this without her objection.

Skills and abilities
Sarah received training in evasion tactics from her UNIT days, which she never forgot, she stated "U.N.I.T training, never forgot it, just getting a bit older". (SJA:Warriors of Kudlak) She has gained superb leadership skills from her time with the Doctor and is very good with her Sonic lipstick. She is intelligent and very knowledgeable about many types of aliens.

Miscellaneous facts

 * Circa 2007-9 Sarah owned a car, namely a lime green Nissan Figaro. (SJA: Invasion of the Bane onwards)
 * Circa 1980/90's Sarah owned a beetle called Edith, which was blown up. However a yellow beetle appeared in SJA :The Nightmare Man  suggesting she fixed it.
 * Until she apparently overcame it, due to the incident with the clown mannequin, Sarah had a case of coulrophobia. (SJA: The Day of the Clown)
 * She also told the Third Doctor she suffered with vertigo. (DW: The Five Doctors)
 * She does not believe in ghosts.
 * She was the first person to meet the first five Doctors. She met the first, second and fifth Doctors in The Five Doctors, the third in The Time Warrior, and the fourth in Robot.

Popularity and significance
Sarah Jane Smith stands out as one of the more popular (arguably the most popular) of the Doctor's companions, as well as one of the most iconic. Apart from the Brigadier, no other individual has a higher profile as a Doctor Who companion. On-screen, Sarah has met the Daleks, the Cybermen, the Ice Warriors, the Slitheen, the Master (in The Five Doctors) and Davros. Her debut story, The Time Warrior introduced both herself and the Sontarans. On-screen, she has appeared with the Third, Fourth, Tenth and Eleventh Doctors. In The Five Doctors, she also appeared with the First, Second and Fifth Doctors. She is also the first companion to have been given her own spin-off series.

Sarah Jane spin-offs
Sarah Jane has appeared in two television spin-off's, K-9 and Company, introducing and co-starring K-9 Mark III, (which never got beyond the pilot episode, A Girl's Best Friend) and The Sarah Jane Adventures. Starting in 2002, she appeared in two seasons of an audio series, Sarah Jane Smith. The K-9 Annual gives some idea of how the K-9 and Company series might have progressed if it had gone to a full series.


 * See K-9 and Company, Sarah Jane Smith and The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Sarah Jane special
The Doctor Who Magazine special for Holiday 1992 concentrated on Sarah Jane Smith. The article The Roving Reporter details her life from a in-universe perspective, establishing several of the "facts" now made canon by The Sarah Jane Adventures, except that it uses the "near future" version of UNIT dating.

Continuity and canon
Sarah's return to television in School Reunion overwrites some previously established continuity from spin-off merchandise, such as novels. Apart from The Five Doctors, which shows Sarah meeting up with the Doctor (in the form of his third incarnation, in the Doctor Who Magazine comic Train-Flight, she shared an adventure with the Seventh Doctor. Terrance Dicks' short story Farewells also shows a reconciliation with the Fourth Doctor. School Reunion strongly implies that the Doctor and Sarah never met again after their parting in The Hand of Fear (''however, since it was the Third Doctor she met in The Five Doctors, the implication holds true as the Doctor and Sarah never met post-The Hand of Fear. Add to that; she did very briefly meet the Fifth Doctor in The Five Doctors, but there is nothing to suggest she realised it was a later Doctor, and there was barely enough time for them to say hello let alone discuss this. Dialogue in School Reunion also suggests that, for reasons unexplained, neither Sarah Jane nor the Doctor seem to recall the events of The Five Doctors (perhaps due to Time Lord interference, or the Doctor chose not to mention it'').

Lawrence Miles' Interference books One and two, set partly in 1997, has the 1997 version of Sarah seeing her future self marrying a man named Paul Morley a few years in her future and the short story Lily by Jackie Marshall shows the Fifth Doctor meeting with an older Sarah, who has a grand-daughter.

The Sarah Jane Adventures uses background from the The Roving Reporter article, with the change of pushing her birthdate back a few years to fit in better with the idea that the UNIT stories took place in approximately the years of broadcast.

The Big Finish Productions audio drama series Sarah Jane Smith published its final episode only a few weeks before School Reunion was broadcast. Its continuity is not necessarily overridden by the new series, and in fact the absence of K-9 from the audio stories is explained in School Reunion, which also establishes that Sarah Jane is still an active investigator, as profiled by Big Finish.