Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane?

Author	Rupert Laight
Series	The Sarah Jane Adventures #5
Published	2008 (Penguin Books)
Pages	128
ISBN
Preceded by	Warriors of Kudlak
Followed by	The Lost Boy

Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane? is the fifth story of the British science fiction television series The Sarah Jane Adventures. It forms the seventh and eighth episodes of the show's first series. The first episode was aired on the CBBC channel on 29 October 2007, and the second on 5 November.

Sarah Jane receives a puzzle box from a Veron Soothsayer, with the instruction to give it to the person she most trusts. Sarah Jane gives Maria Jackson the puzzle box. A meteor is on collision course with Earth, and Sarah Jane has set up, but not yet activated via Mr Smith, a force field to deflect the meteor. The next morning Maria wakes to find that Sarah Jane and Luke Smith have gone missing, but no one besides Maria knows who Sarah Jane or Luke Smith are. A woman called Andrea Yates has apparently taken Sarah Jane's place.

Investigating, Maria finds a 1964 newspaper report, stating that a thirteen-year-old Sarah Jane Smith died after falling off a pier, where she was playing with her friend, Andrea Yates. As Maria watches, the names of the deceased and the survivor on the report switch before her eyes and, at one point, hears Sarah Jane's disembodied voice calling out to her. When Maria goes to Andrea to talk to her about the report, Andrea suddenly panics and unceremoniously shows Maria out before she rushes to her attic, where she takes out a second puzzle box. She now remembers a mysterious hooded figure, who appears and offers to make Maria disappear. After Andrea accepts, he dispatches a small alien, a Graske, who captures Maria just after Alan picks up the first puzzle box, which Maria dropped during her escape from the alien. When Alan's ex-wife comes round, he discovers she cannot remember their daughter. Meanwhile, Maria escapes from the Graske and finds herself on a beach promenade near two girls. They introduce themselves as Andrea Yates and Sarah Jane Smith.

After failing to dissuade Andrea and Sarah Jane from going to the pier, Maria is recaptured by the Graske and taken to join the adult Sarah Jane on a white misty plain, limbo. The mysterious figure explains he has removed Sarah Jane from Earth's timeline so the meteor will destroy it and create the chaos on which he feeds; the Doctor will be his next target.

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