Sara Kingdom

Sara Kingdom was a companion of the First Doctor.

A member of the SSS from the age of seven, Sara killed her own brother on the orders of Mavic Chen, who she later turned against. She joined the Doctor and Steven Taylor in their travels and helped them keep an emm of taranium from the Daleks. Whilst they were successful in defeating the Daleks, it was at the expense of Sara's life.

Childhood
Sara was born in the 40th century and had two brothers named David Kingdom and Bret Vyon. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan, AUDIO: The Destroyers) At the age of seven, (AUDIO: The Sontarans) she was chosen by Colonel Marc Forest and Compuvac as an agent in charge of the Space Security Service's field operations. (PROSE: The Outlaw Planet) To join the organisation, she had to sacrifice her capacity to have children. (AUDIO: An Ordinary life) Both of her brothers also joined. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan, AUDIO: The Destroyers)

SSS career
For her first mission, Sara was sent to divert the plans of the Golden Dalek from Earth to Barzilla by spreading news of its gold mines amongst Dalek spies. She was successful and the Dalek forces were annihilated, an achievement for which she was praised. (PROSE: The Outlaw Planet) Early in her career, she was sent on a mission with fellow SSS agents Jason Corey, Mark Seven and her brother David, who was kidnapped by the Daleks. (AUDIO: The Destroyers)

Sara was sent to Vara to rescue the kidnapped Professor Lomberg and thus keep the secret of the formula of a new metal from the Daleks, who could use it for a new outer casing which would make them unstoppable. She sneaked into the Dalek slave camps, found the professor and helped him give the Daleks the wrong formula, causing an explosion and foiling the Daleks' plans. (COMIC: Sara Kingdom: Space Security Agent)

Charged with investigating the leak of confidential information jeopardising the security of Earth strategic bases, Sara discovered that the new Dalek Emperor was able to read thoughts through radio waves. She used Earth's scientists as bait whilst human forces attacked and wiped out the Emperor's fleet. (COMIC: The Brain Tappers)

Mark Seven wrote a file about the mission which Mavic Chen consulted when he and Bret Vyon unexpectedly met a future version of Sara in 3999, when she was supposed to be stationed on Venus. As a result of her older self's actions, Sara received a surprise promotion and was re-assigned to Earth. (AUDIO: The Guardian of the Solar System)

Meeting the Doctor
A year later, in 4000, Chen told Sara that Bret was a traitor and was sent to stop him, the First Doctor and Steven Taylor. She shot and killed her brother but was prevented from killing the other two when the three of them were accidentally transferred to Mira by cellular transportation. There, she learnt that her unquestioning obedience had not only led her to unjustly kill her brother but had prevented him from warning Earth of a Dalek plot.

Deciding to help the Doctor and Steven, she travelled to Kembel with them and saw for herself that Chen had allied himself with the Daleks. Replacing the emm of taranium with a fake, the three left in the TARDIS with the power source to keep it away from Chen. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)

On the run
Sara's first adventures in the TARDIS were to Liverpool on Christmas Day, 1965 and Hollywood in 1921. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan) Whilst celebrating Christmas aboard the TARDIS, they smashed into an experimental space-time vessel and, after Natalie Lang attempted to pilot the TARDIS, Sara was knocked unconscious and experienced a delusion in which she was at Bret's birthday party. She knew that it was fake but was unable to resist. (AUDIO: The Anachronauts) After the crew awoke, the TARDIS kept landing on various Christmases, which they found to be due to a boy named Robert. They took him to Mars where he died in Sara's arms. (AUDIO: The Little Drummer Boy)

In 3999, she met Bret and destroyed the Great Clock after it attacked her mind, unwittingly causing the power crisis that led Chen to make his deal with the Daleks. She also brought about her own promotion and posting to Earth. (AUDIO: The Guardian of the Solar System) She helped rescue miners on an asteroid with a sentient silver sea (AUDIO: The Drowned World) and visited a house in Ely where she left a copy of her mind to save the Doctor, Steven and the TARDIS. (AUDIO: Home Truths) They also visited 1916 where they found that the Battle of the Somme was a month overdue and time was compensating for those who were meant to be dead. (AUDIO: Men of War)

Sara and Steven lived a normal life in 1950s London for two weeks after the Doctor fell into a coma thanks to an anemone changeling and disappeared. They befriended Joseph Roberts, whose niece Audrey Newman helped Sara adjust to living in the past, and she attempted unsuccessfully to get a job at a police station after Steven was fired from the docks. She looked after Audrey's daughter, Josetta, and protected her from changelings, who she managed to kill. Before leaving, she promised that she would not let Steven forget what had happened there despite his memory loss. (AUDIO: An Ordinary Life)

Instead of landing on Kembel as the Doctor intended, the TARDIS landed in the Sulgrave Asteroid Belt where they encountered the Sontarans and a group of SSS agents whom Sara knew from future knowledge would not survive. She helped them fight the Sontarans and was tortured by Slite to get the Doctor to open the TARDIS. Once the Sontarans were defeated, the travellers left in the TARDIS, which detected an unidentified time machine following them, leading them to return once more to the struggle against the Daleks. (AUDIO: The Sontarans)

The TARDIS landed on Tigus alongside the other time machine, which they found to belong to the Monk. The Monk followed them to Egypt and took Sara and Steven as prisoners to Chen and the Daleks, who handed them over to the Doctor in return for the taranium. Having stolen the Monk's directional unit, they went after the Daleks to reclaim the taranium. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)

Death
The Daleks turned against Mavic Chen (who intended to betray them) and killed him. The Doctor had returned to Kembel to activate the Time Destructor to finally stop them. The Doctor ordered his companions back to the TARDIS for their protection. However, Sara followed him, not knowing the nature of his plan but concerned that it might fail. She was caught in the field of the Time Destructor and, being a human rather than a Time Lord, aged to death. As Steven and the Doctor watched helplessly, Sara died, her remains ageing to dust. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)

Undated events
A photograph existed in UNIT's Black Archive showing Kingdom standing next to UNIT Captain Mike Yates, who was primarily associated with the Third Doctor. (TV: The Day of the Doctor)

At some point, Sara was abducted by Adam Mitchell as part his plan to get revenge on the Doctor, in collaboration with. She was placed in stasis alongside the Doctors' multiple other companions, before being released by the Doctors first eleven numbered incarnations with the help of Frobisher. (COMIC: The Choice, Endgame)

Legacy
The death of Sara, as well as their other allies Bret Vyon and Katarina, caused Steven to confront the Doctor about the violence that seemed to follow him. (TV: The Massacre)

In his seventh incarnation, on the ruined planet Adeki, the Doctor thought that he had found Sara among others of his companions alive again and desperate to leave in the TARDIS. He learnt that one of a race of shape-shifting Gwanzulum had used his sentiment in order to manipulate him into helping it escape the dead world. (COMIC: Planet of the Dead)

Later, while in a Hell-like world composed of the Seventh Doctor's mind, Ace met an eerie, ghost-like recreation of Sara along with other companions of his who had died because of him. Ace did not recognise her. (PROSE: Timewyrm: Revelation)

On the Space Security Service Station 7, the Eleventh Doctor told Tranter that he had worked with Sara and Bret, prompting the station commander to comment that he had impressive credentials and must have started fighting the Daleks at a very young age. (COMIC: The Only Good Dalek)

Reincarnation
The copy of Sara's mind left behind in the house in Ely lived on into an age of Earth's history in which advanced technology had become almost non-existent. An academic named Robert befriended her, interested in hearing stories from her past. When a terrible disease struck mankind, she saved the life of his daughter in exchange for him staying in the house for life. (AUDIO: Home Truths, The Drowned World)

Eventually, after his daughter left, Robert wished to take her place as the entity inhabiting the house and the alternate Sara was given human form as an older woman. She tried to leave Ely, only to find out she had no means of doing so. Robert offered to help, but only if she told him one last story, the story of how Sara, Steven and the Doctor destroyed the Great Clock. This last tale had Sara finally admitting her wish to be free, to choose for at least once in her life, and her guilt over killing Bret. Robert then abided by his word and drew the Doctor's TARDIS back to the house, allowing Sara to choose whether to join with the Doctor (in a later incarnation) or to remain on Earth. (AUDIO: The Guardian of the Solar System)

This version of Sara later joined Steven, Ian Chesterton, Polly Wright and Nyssa in being abducted by Borusa, utilising a Time Scoop, to an alternative version of the Death Zone on Gallifrey. There she met the Fifth Doctor and once again battled the Daleks as well as the Sontarans. (AUDIO: The Five Companions)

Personality
Sara was by turns aggressive, independent and ruthless in her pursuit of what was right, a single-mindedness that blinded her to the larger implications of her orders. She used to be ruthless and lacking concern for any casualties among the Dalek slaves (COMIC:  Space Security Agent) or causing riots on other planets (PROSE: The Outlaw Planet) for the sake of her missions. Meeting the Doctor changed that, and she turned her formidable skill and intellect to the defeat of the Daleks. (TV: The Daleks' Master Plan)

Steven later commented that he and Sara became fast friends over the course of their travels and that their relationship might have developed further if Sara had survived. (AUDIO: The Anachronauts)

Behind the scenes

 * In two recent interviews about her involvement with the character, Marsh has firmly and consistently maintained that Sara was not actually a companion. (DOC: From Kingdom to Queen, AUDIO extra features: The Drowned World) Despite this, over time she has come to be regarded as one in official BBC listings, reference works, and most recently by her inclusion in The Companion Chronicles series. The earliest occurrence being her brief appearance in archival footage of companions for Resurrection of the Daleks. Novelist John Peel established Sara as having spent at least six months travelling with the Doctor in the continuity of the Target novelisations. Sara was not the last character whose status is controversial, and she was joined by numerous "one-off" companions featured in the 1996 TV movie and post-2005 specials.
 * The DVD documentary Girls! Girls! Girls! - The 1960s (included on the 2008 release of The Rescue/The Romans) indicates that the character of Sara Kingdom was inspired by the character of Catherine Gale on The Avengers (coincidentally, a series created by one of the originators of Doctor Who, Sydney Newman). Marsh's physical similarity to Diana Rigg has led some to erroneously state that the inspiration was another Avengers character, Emma Peel, but Rigg had not yet made her first appearance on the series when the serial was in production.
 * Terry Nation planned to feature Sara Kingdom in an American spin-off series. Had it gone into production, the series would have concentrated on an anti-Dalek task force. Some of the concepts which would have featured in the show appeared in The Dalek Outer Space Book (in which she was featured in a short story and two comic strips). Sara appeared in the pilot script written by Nation, entitled The Destroyers. When plans for the spin-off fell through, Nation adapted his ideas and characters for The Daleks' Master Plan.
 * Jean Marsh had earlier appeared in Doctor Who, playing King Richard's sister Joanna in The Crusade. She returned to the programme in the 1989 story Battlefield, playing Morgaine, coincidentally alongside Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Courtney had played Bret Vyon in The Daleks' Master Plan).
 * Despite the character's brief tenure, there have been some spin-off works including her. John Peel, who novelised The Daleks Master Plan for Target Books, intentionally introduced a gap of several months in his adaptation into which such stories could be inserted. Most recently, Jean Marsh has reprised the character for three instalments of Big Finish Productions' The Companion Chronicles audio drama line. These stories take place between instalments of The Daleks' Master Plan and reveal that Sara has survived as an apparition.

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