Outside the Government: Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?
It’s October 29th, 2007. Leona Lewis is at number one with “Bleeding Love,” and remains so for both weeks of this story. Take That, Westlife, Britney Spears, and Oasis also chart. So that’s depressing. In news, substantial wildfires break out in California, the UK announces that it will begin requiring passports for Irish people wanting to visit the UK, and a strike breaks out among American screenwriters, effectively ending television production for the 2007-08 season.
On television we have what is clearly designed to be one of the marquee stories of the first season, Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? The basic premise is a standard – an It’s a Wonderful Life number, only mostly staying in the world in which Sarah Jane has been removed instead of on Sarah Jane herself. This conceit is woven around a newly revealed secret origin for Sarah Jane, in which we find out that as a child she was unable to stop her friend Andrea from drowning while they snuck onto a pier during a school trip. Under the machinations of The Sarah Jane Adventures’ signature villain, the Trickster, this is reversed so that Andrea lives and Sarah Jane dies as a child, leading to a world in which only Maria knows what was supposed to happen and tries desperately to set things right.
First and foremost, then, this becomes a showcase for Yasmin Paige, who sparkles in it. Paige is in many ways the secret ingredient of The Sarah Jane Adventures’ first season, proving adept at both the plucky young female adventurer role and at selling real emotional content. She was in many ways the best thing about Eye of the Gorgon, and here she’s left with most of the first episode to anchor on her own, which she manages with aplomb. But in many ways more interesting is the second episode after Maria is similarly taken off the board (this time via a Graske, since the costume was presumably just lying around), leading to the rather charming spectacle of Alan having to save the day.
There are quibbles to be had, certainly. There may never be an entirely persuasive argument for the claim that Sarah Jane really needed a traumatic origin retconned into her life, or that the addition of a dead childhood friend she failed to save adds anything to the character. The central event here, Andrea’s death, doesn’t really fit with Sarah Jane as we know her. Secret tragedies don’t quite become Sarah Jane. It’s not that the actual idea is terribly off – it’s not. It’s just that in introducing it, the fact that Sarah Jane is really, at her core, a Doctor Who companion from 1974 introduced at a point when the female companion was being treated as a profoundly interchangeable part, and elevated to classic status more because of Elisabeth Sladen’s skill than because she was ever intricately conceived or full of nuance. Secret childhood traumas just aren’t things that fit organically with the sort of character she is.…