With Just Sarah: More Than Fifty Years of a Doctor Who Companion out now from Candy Jar Books, and available from other retailers like Amazon and Waterstones, it‘s the perfect time to revisit Sarah Jane Smith’s first ever adventure, The Time Warrior — from Sarah’s perspective!
“Really Doctor, must you be so patronising?”
Setting: The Middle Ages.
Originally broadcast 15th December 1973 to 5th January 1974
Written by Robert Holmes and directed by Alan Bromly.
Key Cast
Sontaran Commander Lynx played by Kevin Lindsay, Jeremy Bulloch plays Hal the Archer.
Plot
20th Century scientists have gone missing, prompting the Doctor and UNIT to investigate. Sarah Jane Smith enters the Doctor’s world, winding up in the Middle Ages, dealing with bandits, and encountering a Sontaran commander.
Episode 1
Half a dozen scientists have gone missing. The United Nations Intelligence Taskforce has set up a base and brought in experts in order to get to the bottom of the problem. These events prompt journalist Sarah Jane Smith to investigate. Posing as her aunt Lavinia, a noted virologist, Sarah infiltrates the UNIT base where she meets Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and some of the scientists, including absent-minded, near-sighted professor Rubeish. She then meets a colourful character known as the Doctor. Upon introducing herself, the Doctor quickly sees through her deception, noting that she’s far too young to be the virologist. Sarah reveals her true identity. The Doctor has no time for journalists, but no matter, she can fetch coffee!
Later, Sarah finds the Doctor working on a piece of machinery that will hopefully track any phenomena that may be tied into the disappearances. She asks about it but the Doctor dismisses her and she goes to bed, soon to be awakened by a strange sound. The Doctor’s machine indicates that another scientist is being abducted right there, in fact in Rubish’s own room. They investigate and the professor’s gone. While the Doctor updates the Brigadier, Sarah, searching for Rubeish, pops into the TARDIS, thinking it’s just a closet. Not realising what she’s seeing, she wanders around, allegedly going into the inner corridors, unaware that the Doctor then entered and set the controls to follow the signal from his device. The police box dematerialises.
When Sarah finally exits the police box, she finds herself in a forest. Totally mystified, she wanders off in search of a phone. She instead comes upon an archer readying an arrow to fire at a castle in front of them. She distracts him, ruining the shot, and he runs off. Moments later, a group of men run out of the castle with weapons. Sarah, automatically thinking it’s some type of fancy dress party and tries to step aside, but one of the men grabs and drags her, kicking and screaming, into the castle.
Episode 2
The man drags a furious Sarah in front of the man in charge: a rough brute named Irongron. Sarah’s yelling that the joke’s gone on long enough, then the archer she saw in the forest earlier is brought in and dragged in front of Irongron, who threatens to kill the archer for his assassination attempt earlier. He sends him off to the dungeon. Sarah tries to understand what’s happening. Is it a film set? A tourist attraction? Just then, a short, squat, thick man in black and silver armour and helmet arrives; Irongron refers to him as Lynx and the stranger’s shocked to see Sarah. He speaks as if he’s never seen a female before. Such reproductive methods are inefficient, he states. Never mind: he hypnotises Sarah to find out what she knows. She tells the strange warrior about the Doctor and his mysterious box. When she snaps out of it, she sees the warrior showing Irongron a robot of some sort, and she grabs the moment and escapes. She flees through the castle, and runs into the Doctor, but not knowing if she can trust him, escapes the other way.
She eventually finds an open courtyard, where Irongron has forced the archer to battle the robot to test it out. His arrows have no effect on it. Irongron controls the metal man by a hand controlled unit. When the robot finally has the upper hand on the archer and moves in for the kill, from out of nowhere, an arrow knocks the controller out of Irongron’s hand. The archer takes the opportunity and escapes, with Sarah waving him over. Meanwhile, Irongron is left to deal with the out of control robot.
Hal, the archer, brings Sarah to the neighbouring Redwoods Castle, to meet Sir Edward and his wife Eleanor, the enemies of Irongron. As they compare notes about the strange warrior from the stars and the robot, Sarah determines that the Doctor is the key to everything and may very well be working with both Irongron and this Lynx character, actually delivering the missing scientists to him! Now on a roll, Sarah suggests that Sir Edward form a small commando force to go to Irongron’s castle and kidnap the Doctor so they can interrogate him. Soon, Sarah, Hal, and a few men sneak over to the castle. Upon nearing a certain window, they overhear Irongron talking with Lynx, who’s given him modern rifles, hundreds of years too soon. With these amazing new weapons, Irongron plans to attack Edward’s castle in the morning.
Episode 3
Moving up to a balcony overlooking the courtyard, Sarah and Hal see the Doctor racing about the area, fighting Irongron’s men, but there are far too many and then the Doctor’s cornered. As Irongron makes for the killing blow, his axe is shot out of his hand by one of Hal’s arrows. The Doctor escapes and when they meet up, with the Doctor thanking Sarah, she tells the men to actually take him away. He’s their prisoner! Back at the castle, Sarah questions the Doctor as to why he’s helping Lynx, but the Doctor sets her straight. Sir Edward wants the Doctor to help them defeat Irongron and he agrees, as he has a plan to thwart the next attack.
The Doctor gets several ingredients from Edward and Eleanor’s supply store and sets to work, while Sarah and the others create dummy heads to fool Irongron into thinking they’ve got more soldiers than they do. Sarah sits down with the Doctor to find out more about him, and the Doctor informs her that he’s a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey and travels through time and space in his police box called the TARDIS. Now, everything makes a certain amount of insane sense to Sarah. At that point, they hear battle horns. To arms!
Upon arrival, Lynx is heartened to see so many warriors atop the castle — more glory to be had. But Irongron hesitates, seeing far more enemies than he’d hoped. Lynx has no time for nonsense, as he takes one of the rifles and shoots one of the dummy heads, ruining the illusion. He takes his leave. Irongron’s men attack, bringing ladders and their new weapons, but the Doctor throws crude flash bombs and stink bombs he’s concocted that see them off. At their victory dinner, the Doctor warns that they’ll be back, though, and won’t be fooled again, so instead of waiting for Irongron to come take their castle, they will take his. The Doctor converses with Eleanor about certain ingredients to make a strong sleeping potion.
Soon, Sarah and the Doctor, disguised as monks, slip into Irongron’s castle and then they make their way to Lynx’s workshop. There they find all the missing scientists, being worked to death trying to repair the engines on Lynx’s spaceship so he can leave Earth. But the hypnotised pawns are exhausted and starving, dropping like flies. Rubeish is the only one not hypnotised as he lost his glasses and the procedure didn’t work on him.
The Doctor explains that once Lynx’s ship is repaired, when it takes off, it will destroy the castle and everything in it. They’ve got to break through the hypnosis to free the scientists, then send them back to the 20th Century. The Doctor eventually makes progress snapping them out of it with a series of flashes via a pen light, when Lynx barges into the workshop. Sarah, the Doctor, and Rubeish hide, but when Lynx threatens to kill one scientist if he doesn’t get up and back to work, the Doctor emerges and challenges him, saying that if Lynx will let everyone go safely, he will help Lynx fix his ship and leave. A generous offer. Lynx shoots him.
Episode 4
Sarah jumps up and knocks the weapon out of Lynx’s hand before he can finish off the Doctor. Lynx faces off against the two of them, who keep him talking. Meanwhile, Rubeish sneaks around behind the Sontaran, brandishing an iron pipe. As he’s keeping Lynx occupied, the Doctor mentions the one Achilles’ heel of a Sontaran, the phobic vent at the base of his skull, and Rubeish knocks him out. They tie him up and then, with Rubeish continuing to free the scientists, the other two split up.
Sarah mixes in with the cooks in the kitchen, and when she gets the chance, she pours the sleeping drug into the stew that Irongron’s men will eat. Suddenly, she hears gunfire, and upon hearing that the Doctor’s been captured, she comes running, only to come out overlooking a large storage room where Irongron’s men are learning to better use their new weapons, taking target practice at the Doctor himself. Although he’d been dodging shots successfully, it would only be a matter of time before one of the bandits got off a lucky shot. Seeing a large, wrought iron chandelier hanging over the scene, she motions to the Doctor, who sees her grabbing the chandelier, and runs up the opposite stairs. Sarah swings the chandelier over to the Doctor, who grabs it and swings out of the line of fire and right through the crowd.
Then, safely back at Redwoods Castle, they must wait until Irongron and his men eat their stew and let the drug take effect, and then they can return to help the scientists escape before Lynx takes off, destroying the castle. Later, upon returning to Irongron’s castle and watching from a distance, the Doctor, Sarah, and Hal see the outer guards drop and they move in. In Lynx’s workshop, the Doctor sets up the equipment to send the now-wide-awake scientists back home, and has Rubeish activate the controls. Lynx, having been freed earlier by Irongon, attacks the Doctor, but the Doctor has a specially made shield against his weapon now. Irongron, sluggish from the sleep drug, attacks Lynx, believing him to have betrayed him, but Lynx kills him with his blaster. Hearing his ship is fully powered up, he enters, ready to go. With the remaining scientists sent safely back, and the castle starting to crumble under the power of Lynx’s engines, the Doctor tells them to run. But not before Hal gets off one arrow, straight through the open hatch of Lynx’s ship and bullseye, right in the phobic vent. Lynx drops dead. They clear the castle as the whole thing goes up in a massive explosion.
Arriving back at the TARDIS, the Doctor and Sarah say goodbye to Hal and depart…
Just Sarah: More Than Fifty Years of a Doctor Who Companion, which features chapters on horror tropes in Doctor Who, Sarah vs Sontarans, Sarah’s “forgotten” companions, Elisabeth Sladen’s life and career outside of Doctor Who, The Sarah Jane Adventures, saying goodbye, and much, much more is available now.
