Companions: Fifty Years of Doctor Who Assistants (19 page)

Even if we ignore the times she met the Doctor again, her life after leaving him is nothing less than complicated. Following on from
K9 & Company
, many prose stories deal with Sarah and K9’s further adventures, some involving the cast of the television story (most notably in the stories found in the
K9 Annual 1983
and the novelisation of the television episode – which curiously changes the location of the drama from Moreton Harwood to Hazelbury Abbas). In the aforementioned annual, Sarah’s reputation developed quite a lot, and she has become something of a celebrity. Aunt Lavinia continues to pop up from time to time. She even sends Sarah to Egypt in 1983 in the Comic Strip
City of Devils
(
Doctor Who Magazine Holiday Special 1992
), where she and K9 encounter another tribe of
Homo Reptilia
– or Silurians. Sarah continues to work with K9 for some time, including the time she and Mike Yates investigate a haunted house and find themselves up against the Master in the short story,
Housewarming
, and in the novelisation of the straight-to-video drama,
Downtime
. During this she encounters Victoria Waterfield, not realising Victoria was a former companion of the Doctor’s until a later conversation with the Brigadier when they compare notes. In a perfect example of the Expanded Universe contradicting itself, Lavinia dies twice – first in 1998 according to the novel
Millennium Shock
and then just before the start of the 2002 audio play,
Comeback
, the opening story of the
Sarah Jane Smith
series, which begins with Sarah back in Moreton Harwood attending Lavinia’s funeral.

The fate of K9 Mark III is also somewhat different to what is later revealed in the television series. In the short story,
Moving On
, Sarah finally comes to accept that she must put the Doctor out of her life and move on – and thus orders K9 to shut down. Later, in the finale of the first CD season of
Sarah Jane Smith
we discover that K9 is in pieces, his parts having been salvaged by Hilda Winters in
Mirror, Signal, Manoeuvre
, who was involved in a personal vendetta against Sarah for her part in Winters’ downfall in the television story,
Robot
.

Sarah’s friendship with Harry Sullivan carries on for many years after she leaves the Doctor, as seen in stories such as the novel,
Harry Sullivan’s War
, and the novel-duology
System Shock
and
Millennium Shock
. In the 2006 season two opener for
Sarah Jane Smith
we discover that Sarah and Harry meet once a year to talk about their time at UNIT and with the Doctor – just to remind each other that it all happened. But in
Buried Secrets
Harry fails to turn up, leading Sarah to wonder what has happened to him, especially when his step-brother, Will, turns up in his place. At the end of this season, Sarah is left alone, orbiting the Earth in the space shuttle
Dauntless
, a bright light fast approaching. The outcome of this cliffhanger has never been followed up, due in part to the commissioning of
The Sarah Jane Adventures
and the unexpected death of Elisabeth Sladen in 2011.

In comparison, Harry Sullivan’s Expanded Universe is fairly straightforward, mostly due to the nature of his television appearances. These stories run in such a tight consecutive order that they do not really allow for other adventures – not that it stops the 1976 and 1977
Doctor Who Annuals
from depicting various adventures for Harry, Sarah and the Doctor. Neither does it stop Christopher Bulis from writing
A Device of Death
and setting it in between the television stories
Genesis of the Daleks
and
Revenge of the Cybermen
. The only gap that works is before the TARDIS crew arrive in Scotland in
Terror of the Zygons
and it is before this that the comic strip,
Black Destiny
(
Doctor Who Magazine #235-237
)
takes place.

As already established, the character was referenced before his actual first appearance during the Third Doctor’s final television adventure,
Planet of Spiders
. The Expanded Universe establishes an even earlier involvement with UNIT during the 1998 novel
The Face of the Enemy.
In it we see Harry – while in the Royal Navy – assist UNIT while the Doctor is off to Peladon (as per the television story
The Curse of Peladon
). As mentioned in the television story
Mawdryn Undead
Harry goes on to work with NATO, and one of these adventures is chronicled in the
Companions of Doctor Who
novel,
Harry Sullivan’s War
. It seems that some years later Harry would go on to work with MI5, and by 1997 he is indeed a Deputy Director at MI5 in the novel,
System Shock
, finding himself working with the Fourth Doctor once more, as well as Sarah – both of whom have only recently seen Harry some twenty-plus years earlier in the television story
The Android Invasion
. He is reunited with the Fourth Doctor two years later, at the turn of the millennium in
Millennium Shock
– having returned Sarah to Earth after his unexpected summons to Gallifrey the Doctor is now travelling alone. By 2005 Harry has returned to NATO, now holding the rank of commodore, and is called upon by the Brigadier during the audio play
The Wasting
.

As inferred in
The Sarah Jane Adventures
Harry has died by 2010, and indeed in the novelisation of the episode
The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith
it is said he died sometime before 2009. However, this contradicts the 1996 novel,
Damaged Goods
(written by the executive producer and creator of
The Sarah Jane Adventures
, Russell T Davies), which mentions Harry living until at least 2015 where he discovers a possible cure for HIV.

It is unsurprising that most of Leela’s Expanded Universe focuses on her life after she left the Doctor. She appears in several short stories, comic strips and prose tales in the pages of
Doctor Who Magazine
and
TV Comic
, as well as a handful of original novels, all set during her time with the Doctor. Throughout such adventures she is the same character as seen on TV, although more in keeping with the character-arc seen in the television stories
The Face of Evil
through to
Horror of Fang Rock
, with the Doctor continuing her education. There also seems to be a trend in taking Leela through Sarah’s ‘greatest hits’ – in the Big Finish audio dramas she encounters Daleks and Kraals as well as visiting Space Station Nerva (from
The Ark in Space
), and even in the pages of the
Doctor Who Yearbook 1994
she encounters the Zygons.

In the 1998 novel
Eye of Heaven
, we discover much about Leela’s past. Her father was named Sole, and her mother, Neela. She also had an older sister, Ennia, who died at the age of three before Leela was born. The knife that Leela carries is, in fact, the same knife her mother used to defend Ennia. In this story we also learn that Leela would not swear on her mother’s grave – suggesting that perhaps she is still alive. However, in the 2008 audio book
Empathy Games
, we learn that Neela died while protecting Leela – doing what she could not do with Ennia.

As it is revealed in several stories across the Expanded Universe, Leela’s life in Gallifrey covers several hundred years, during which time she ages very slowly – due to the influence of living in the Gallifreyan environment (in the
Gallifrey
audio series and the audio play
Zagreus
, which tells us she lives on Gallifrey for over five hundred spans [years?]).

The first time we see Leela’s life on Gallifrey is in the 1997 novel,
Lungbarrow
, where we learn that she is still married to Andred and now has an official Gallifreyan name – Leelandredloomsagwinaechegesima. At the end of this novel we also discover that she is pregnant, carrying the first child to be born on Gallifrey for millennia. Whatever happened to this child we never discover in any subsequent stories.

We next encounter Leela in the Big Finish audio play
, Zagreus
(the fortieth anniversary adventure), when she receives a telepathic call from Rassilon and breaks into the presidential suite to see Romana – her successor in the Doctor’s long line of companions, and now President of the High Council of Time Lords (see Romana’s entry in this chapter for the full story on Romana’s appointment to that august position). She is initially considered a ‘savage’ by Romana, but over the course of both
Zagreus
and the following series,
Gallifrey
, a respectful and trusting friendship is built up between the two former companions (both of whom have a version of K9 with them).

During
Zagreus
she encounters, and ultimately plays a part in saving, the Eighth Doctor. As a result of her strength and loyalty, she becomes Romana’s personal bodyguard during the early chapters of
Gallifrey
. Although clearly not a political animal, Leela finds herself more and more drawn into the politics of Gallifrey, not always seeing eye to eye with Romana. Her husband, Andred, goes missing at one point, and she later discovers he has been killed – the person who imparted this information is later revealed to be a regenerated Andred. She never forgives him for his deceit, not even when he does finally die. During the course of a civil war on Gallifrey K9 is destroyed (thus contradicting the
K9
television series) and Leela refuses a replacement unit – unhappy with the loss of her final link to the Doctor. In the chapter,
Fractures
, she is blinded for the second time (she was temporarily blinded in the television story
Horror of Fang Rock
), and her sight isn’t returned to her until sometime later in
Annihilation.
By which time she and Romana are stuck moving from one alternative version of Gallifrey to another. Her sight is restored by the blood of a vampire, but not before she is tortured by an alternative version of herself. On another version of Gallifrey she meets an alternative Sixth Doctor, now called the Lord Burner, in
Disassembled
. She and Romana finally settle on a version of Gallifrey that hasn’t mastered time travel – and while Romana seeks to bring some time travel ability to the people of that world, Leela finds herself leading the Outsiders (as she did in
The Invasion of Time
) who were once slaves to the Regenerators of Gallifrey.

At some point Leela is sent to London in the 1890s by Romana to investigate ‘time breaks’. It is unclear at which point in Leela’s own timeline this occurs, but based on the evidence of her being able to recognise the Sixth Doctor (living in 1890s London under the disguise of Professor Claudius Dark), it must take place at some point after Leela and Romana return to the original Gallifrey (series six of
Gallifrey
), as Leela uses the time ring technology previously seen in season twelve of the television series. While in London, she teams up with Henry Gordon Jago and Professor George Litefoot (whom she befriended in the television story,
The Talons of Weng-Chiang
), and remains working alongside them for some time (from the end of series two of
Jago & Litefoot
[
The Ruthven Inheritance
] right through the following two series’ until
The Hourglass Killer
). The Sixth Doctor initially hides his true identity from Jago & Litefoot, although Leela knows, while he works to fix the time break and repair the damage made by Payne’s time experiments and defeat the Sandmen. Leela returns to Gallifrey after the Doctor repairs the time ring.

On television Gallifrey is destroyed during the Last Great Time War – and as a result the fate of some companions is left unknown. Leela, having been left on Gallifrey way back in
The Invasion of Time
is one such companion – what was her role during the Time War, did she survive it? We may never know. However, a trilogy of
Companion Chronicles
(
The Catalyst
–
The Time Vampire
) produced by Big Finish do feature an older Leela narrating a few past adventures with the Doctor, and this Leela talks about the Last Great Time War which she did, indeed, survive. At the end of the trilogy, however, Leela, after living for many hundred years, finally dies and moves on to the Great Hereafter.

Romana, especially the second incarnation, has been a popular topic for the writers of the Expanded Universe, and no matter which series you follow (be it the BBC Books or the Big Finish audios), all writers agree on one thing; she escapes E-space and ascends to the august position of President of the High Council of Time Lords. Even Russell T Davies, producer of
Doctor Who
from 2005 to 2010, agrees and states in the
Doctor Who Annual 2006
that Romana was president during the Time War, even though on television, in
The End of Time
, we saw Rassilon as president. The comic strip,
The Forgotten
, does have the Tenth Doctor saying that the Time War did not end well for Romana, so it could be that she was replaced by Rassilon after a coup? Contention among the High Council during her reign is not a new concept.