"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Sunday, July 29, 2018

Relationship Spotlight: Luke & Sarah Jane Smith (The Sarah Jane Adventures)


I think plenty of people are suckers for a good “it’s the family you choose” narrative, and in this case, the chosen family is very literal.  Sarah Jane Smith and her adopted made-by-aliens son provide a lot of heart for The Sarah Jane Adventures, especially in its first season as both muddle along together, figuring out how to be a family (a few Sarah Jane-Luke spoilers.)

Sarah Jane’s appearance on new Who in “School Reunion,” prior to The Sarah Jane Adventures starting up, shows us one important aspect of her post-companion life that carries over into her own series:  she’s maintained her spirits of adventure, curiosity, and justice, investigating and combatting minor alien threats on Earth after parting with the Doctor.  However, it shows us a more unhappy aspect as well – since her time with the Doctor, she’s been largely isolated, fighting the fight with only Mr. Smith and K9 for company.  The first season of The Sarah Jane Adventures, in large part, is about her journey to letting non-mechanized/computerized people into her life again, learning not to resist the friendship offered by her new young acquaintances and allowing them a window into her adventures.  Naturally, Luke is instrumental to this plot.

While Sarah Jane has intentionally isolated herself because she doesn’t know how to relate to people after her incredible experiences with the Doctor, Luke awakens to the world fully formed and completely alone.  A human boy grown by the Bane in order to study humans for the purposes of perfecting their invasion, Luke is a science experiment, never intended to live in his own right.  When a freak situation in the lab brings him into consciousness, however, he comes into life with no experiences but ready to absorb everything like a brainy sponge.  Language, mathematics, and facts come easily enough for him, but social interactions are an ongoing struggle.  That said, if he doesn’t understand at first how humans interact, it in no way lessens his desire to do so.  When their initial adventure is over and the Bane have been defeated, Sarah Jane is the warier of the two about the prospect of her adopting him.

But as I said, Luke and Sarah Jane’s early relationship is about learning together how to be a family, and the two quickly begin puzzling out what works for them.  There are growing pains on both sides – Sarah Jane not wanting Luke to call her “Mum,” Luke distressing over the ways he’s different from other children, trial and error over the best means of giving Luke a normal human life – but it’s also clear that the affection is there pretty much from the start.  Even as both make mistakes and are unsure what to do, both of them want to make the effort to get there and they find their way together, accepting that it’s okay for each to admit these uncertainties to the other.  In this way, their relationship grows by leaps and bounds.

On this sci-fi show featuring a kid who was grown by aliens, it’s actually a really nice story about adoption.  Because, despite how Luke came into the world, and even though we only see a few seasons of them becoming and being a family, they love each other absolutely, and there’s no doubt that they’re family through and through.  These two are one another’s biggest fans and would do anything for each other.  While you can never really forget that Luke isn’t exactly a standard-issue human, you could easily forget that Sarah Jane has only been his mom for a few years.

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