Sara Kingdom | |
---|---|
Doctor Who character | |
![]() | |
Portrayed by | Jean Marsh May Warden (non-speaking) |
In-universe information | |
Species | Human |
Affiliation | First Doctor |
Home | Earth |
Home era | 4000 |
Appears in | The Daleks' Master Plan (1965–1966) |
Sara Kingdom is a fictional character played by Jean Marsh in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who . A security officer for Mavic Chen from the 40th century, she later joined the First Doctor and Steven to work against Chen's interests. She is sometimes classed as a companion of the First Doctor [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] but the BBC's official Doctor Who website does not include her in their list of companions. [10] Her status as a companion is commented upon in its Episode Guide. [8]
Sara appeared in parts four to twelve of the twelve-part 1965 serial The Daleks' Master Plan . Only two episodes in which she appears still exist in the BBC archives. Her character took on elements of the companion role to replace the character of Katarina, who was killed off earlier in the same story.
Sara is a Space Security Agent, the sister of Bret Vyon, another agent who is aiding the Doctor in trying to defeat the Daleks. There is an implication that she was born on Mars Colony 16, where her brother had been "bred". Told that Vyon is a traitor by Mavic Chen, the Guardian of the Solar System (who was in league with the Daleks) and ordered to kill whoever is working with him, she shoots her brother and is about to do the same to the Doctor and Steven when they are transported across space to the planet Mira. There she learns, to her horror and grief, that her unquestioning obedience has not only led her to unjustly kill her brother, but also that by doing so she has prevented Vyon from warning Earth of the Dalek plot. She then joins the Doctor in his fight, briefly travelling in the TARDIS to several different locations in space and time as the Doctor and Steven try to return the ship to Kembel for a final confrontation with Mavic Chen and the Daleks.
When the Doctor activates the Time Destructor—a device that accelerates time—as part of his plan to stop the Daleks, he orders his companions back to the TARDIS for their protection. However, Sara follows him, not knowing the nature of his plan but concerned it might fail. As a result, she and the Doctor are both caught in the field of the Time Destructor as it rapidly ages everything around it. While the Doctor, being a Time Lord, can withstand the worst of the effects—merely becoming an even older man—Sara, being human, cannot. As Steven watches helplessly, Sara ages (being portrayed as an old woman by May Warden) and dies, her remains aging to dust. Steven attempts to rescue his friends; he, too, is briefly affected and ages, before he reverses the Time Destructor. This rejuvenates himself and the Doctor back to their previous ages, but does not save Sara.
Sara is 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. Meeting the Doctor changes that, and she turns her formidable skill and intellect to the defeat of the Daleks.
Jean Marsh reprised the role for the Companion Chronicles range of Big Finish Productions audio dramas, set just after the Christmas episode. In The Guardian of the Solar System , it is revealed that the TARDIS traveled back in time and Sara unintentionally met Mavic Chen over a year before the events of The Daleks' Master Plan . Sara believes her interference in this brief sidestep may have driven Chen to strike a deal with the Daleks.
In the first drama produced, Home Truths , The Doctor, Steven and Sara found a house in Ely in the far future that was so advanced, its abilities seemed like magic. It granted people's wishes. However, it did not have a conscience, and it accidentally killed its owners in response to their instinctive desires during a moment of frustration. Sara implanted a copy of her consciousness into the house to give it a human perspective to make decisions in the future, and it lived with her voice and mind and memories for over a century. Even after the civilization around it collapsed, the house lived on, a mysterious anomaly to the de-civilized humans. Many feared it, but some would explore it and Sara would make them comfortable and grant their wishes.
The third tale, Guardian of the Solar System, finds the house and Sara finally separating. She trades places with a man named Robert, to whom she had told stories and granted wishes for many years. The trade, Robert's final wish, gives him the ability to do almost anything, although it necessitates sacrificing his body. Sara is suddenly reborn in a new version of her original body, albeit slightly older and with a thousand years of memories. However, she has no idea what happened to the real Sara after she left the house. This new Sara feels lost in this new world, so Robert grants her final wish. The TARDIS materializes in front of her; inside it, the Doctor (implied to be an incarnation other than the first) wonders what force dragged it down to Earth.
Sara also features in the Early Adventures series audios An Ordinary Life , where the Doctor, Steven and Sara are forced to live in 1965 for a few weeks after damage to the TARDIS, and The Sontarans , where the Doctor, Steven and Sara encounter the Sontarans for the first time, in the form of a raid on an asteroid colony that Sara had read about in her past.
Sara's first use in tie-in material was in The Dalek Outer Space Book (cover dated 1966), the last of three Dalek annuals containing short stories and comic strips licensed by the BBC between 1963 and 1965. Here she is sent on the first SSS mission, tricking the Daleks into attempting to invade Barzilla by claiming there is a large seam of pure gold. When the Daleks attack, they are defeated by a surprise force.
John Peel's two-book novelisation of Master Plan indicates that some six months elapsed between the seventh and eighth episodes of the serial, during which Sara, Steven and the Doctor travel together and have other adventures; Peel stated that this was in order to allow future writers to develop stories involving Sara. Sara subsequently appears in a short story entitled The Little Drummer Boy by Eddie Robson from the Big Finish book Short Trips: Companions . She is then heard in a trilogy of audio dramas in the Companion Chronicles range of Big Finish Productions. Written by Simon Guerrier, they feature Jean Marsh reprising her role as Kingdom.
She also returns in an audio adaptation of The Destroyers , an unmade script which, for Kingdom, takes place before she met the Doctor.
A ghost-like illusion of Kingdom, alongside Katarina and another deceased companion, Adric, appears in the Virgin New Adventures novel Timewyrm: Revelation by Paul Cornell. This sequence takes place largely inside the Seventh Doctor's mind, showing that the Doctor still bears the guilt of some deaths.
A race of shapeshifters known as the Ganazalum impersonate various companions, dead and living, in the Doctor Who Magazine comic strip Planet of the Dead (DWM #141-#142), Kingdom among them. Generally, the canonicity of the various Doctor Who spin-off media is open to interpretation.
The character was created largely because the production team decided that the character of Katarina, introduced in the previous serial The Myth Makers , would not work as a regular. Thus, Sara has some of the attributes and narrative function of a traditional Doctor Who companion. However, the official BBC website cites as "myth" the notion that Sara was created as a companion to replace Katarina. There were no plans to have Sara continue as a character beyond The Daleks' Master Plan. [11] Marsh herself said in a 2003 interview for the Loose Cannon telesnap reconstruction that she would "definitely not" have continued in the role past Master Plan, even had it been offered to her.
A Production Diary compiled by David J. Howe, Mark Stammers and Stephen James Walker from contemporary memos and correspondence notes that producer John Wiles and story editor Donald Tosh employed Sara Kingdom as a "short-term companion...[to] be killed off at the end of [The Daleks' Master Plan]". [5]
Jean Marsh had previously appeared in Doctor Who playing King Richard's sister, the Princess Joanna, in The Crusade . Marsh would return to the programme in the 1989 serial Battlefield , playing Morgaine, coincidentally with Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, thus appearing in both his first and last regular Doctor Who episodes. Courtney also played Bret Vyon in Master Plan. In 2007 she appeared opposite the Sixth Doctor and Mel in the Big Finish Productions audio drama The Wishing Beast.
According to The Official Dr. Who & the Daleks Book, Sara Kingdom was originally devised by Terry Nation as a supporting character in a proposed American-produced spin-off of Doctor Who that would have focused on Kingdom and her colleagues fighting the Daleks. A 30-minute script titled The Destroyers was created for a potential pilot episode which was never produced. [12] This pilot script was later adapted by Big Finish into an audio production.
Susan Foreman is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The granddaughter of the Doctor and original companion of their first incarnation, she was played by actress Carole Ann Ford from 1963 to 1964, in the show's first season and the first two stories of the second season. Ford reprised the role for the feature-length 20th anniversary episode "The Five Doctors" (1983) and the 30th anniversary charity special Dimensions in Time (1993).
Nyssa is a fictional character in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. She is played by Sarah Sutton. Although Nyssa was created by writer Johnny Byrne for the single Fourth Doctor serial The Keeper of Traken, the production team subsequently decided she should be retained as a continuing character. Nyssa returned in the following serial, Logopolis, in which the Fourth Doctor regenerated, and remained as a companion of the Fifth Doctor. She was a regular in the programme from 1981 to 1983.
Victoria Waterfield is a fictional character played by Deborah Watling in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A native of Victorian England, she was a companion of the Second Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1967 to 1968. Only two complete serials to feature her exist complete in the BBC archives. However, DVDs of all her adventures have still seen release, with both official animation and photo reconstructions utilizing the original surviving audio taking the place of the missing episodes.
Steven Taylor is a fictional character played by Peter Purves in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. A space pilot from Earth in the future, he was a companion of the First Doctor and a regular in the programme from 1965 to 1966. Steven appeared in 10 stories.
Jean Lyndsey Torren Marsh is an English actress and writer. She co-created and starred in the ITV series Upstairs, Downstairs (1971–75), for which she won the 1975 Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her performance as Rose Buck. She later reprised the role in the BBC's revival of the series (2010–2012).
The Daleks' Master Plan is the fourth serial of the third season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by Terry Nation and Dennis Spooner and directed by Douglas Camfield, the serial was broadcast on BBC1 in twelve weekly parts from 13 November 1965 to 29 January 1966. It was the show's longest serial until 1986 and remains the longest with a single director and production code. In the serial, the First Doctor and his travelling companions Steven Taylor and Katarina become embroiled in the Daleks' scheme to design the ultimate weapon. They are joined by Bret Vyon and Sara Kingdom.
Battlefield is the first serial of the 26th season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts on BBC1 from 6 to 27 September 1989. It was the last to feature Nicholas Courtney as Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart in Doctor Who.
The Myth Makers is the third serial of the third season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Written by Donald Cotton and directed by Michael Leeston-Smith, the serial was broadcast on BBC1 in four weekly parts from 16 October to 6 November 1965. In the serial, based on Homer's Iliad, the First Doctor and his travelling companions Vicki and Steven land in Troy during the Trojan War. The Doctor is captured by the Greeks and forced to formulate a plan for taking the city, while Steven and Vicki are captured by the Trojans and forced to devise a means of banishing the Greeks; the latter duo meet Katarina, who becomes a companion by the serial's end.
The First Doctor is the original incarnation of the Doctor, the protagonist of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He was portrayed by actor William Hartnell in the first three series from 1963 to 1966 and the tenth anniversary story The Three Doctors from 1972 to 1973. The character would occasionally appear in the series after Hartnell's death, most prominently as portrayed by Richard Hurndall in the 1983 multi-doctor special "The Five Doctors", and as portrayed by David Bradley in the 2017 Twelfth Doctor episodes "The Doctor Falls" and "Twice Upon a Time" and in the 2022 Thirteenth Doctor episode "The Power of the Doctor", the latter previously having portrayed Hartnell himself in the 2013 biopic An Adventure in Space and Time.
The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The mutated remains of the Kaled people of the planet Skaro, they travel around in tank-like mechanical casings, and are a race bent on universal conquest and destruction. They are also, collectively, the greatest adversaries of the Time Lord known as the Doctor, having evolved over the course of the series from a weak race to monsters capable of destroying even the Time Lords and achieving control of the universe.
The Invasion is the partly missing third serial of the sixth season of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in eight weekly parts from 2 November to 21 December 1968.
The Time War, also called the Last Great Time War, is a conflict within the fictional universe of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The war occurs between the events of the 1996 film and the 2005 revived series, with the Time Lords fighting the Daleks until the apparent mutual destruction of both races. The war was frequently mentioned when the show returned, but was not directly seen until the show's 50th anniversary special.
In the long-running BBC television science fiction programme Doctor Who and related works, the term "companion" refers to a character who travels with, or shares adventures with, the Doctor. In most Doctor Who stories, the primary companion acts as an audience surrogate by providing the lens through which the viewer is introduced to the story, and often, the series itself.
Vicki is a fictional character played by Maureen O'Brien in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. An orphan from the 25th century, she was a companion of the First Doctor and a regular in the programme in Seasons 2 and 3 in 1965. Her last name was never revealed during the series. Vicki appeared in 9 stories.
Doctor Who: The Adventure Games is an episodic adventure video game based on the BBC television series Doctor Who and developed by Sumo Digital.
The twelfth season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 28 December 1974 with Tom Baker's first serial Robot, and ended with Revenge of the Cybermen on 10 May 1975.
The Five Companions is a Big Finish Productions audiobook based on the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It is free to subscribers and released with Army of Death.
The third season of British science fiction television series Doctor Who began on 11 September 1965 with the story Galaxy 4 and ended on 16 July 1966 with The War Machines. Only 17 out of 45 episodes survive in the BBC archives; 28 remain missing. As a result, only three serials are complete.
Doctor Who: The Early Adventures is a series of audio dramas based on the British television series Doctor Who and produced by Big Finish Productions.
{{cite journal}}
: Cite journal requires |journal=
(help)