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.

Top Five Big Damn Hero Moments: Luke Smith (The Sarah Jane Adventures)

Who’s up for a bit of Luke and his super-brain?  Definite theme here, with the clever saves.  Although the super-genius’s clever saves are generally way more impressive than that of us regular schmucks, there can be a sense of sameness to it.  However, I like that a lot of Luke’s big wins come when he really needs them, when he’s feeling insecure in his humanness and needs a reminder that he’s just fine the way he is (spoilers.)  Note:  my DVD drive needs replacing, so I can't grab screencaps at the moment.  I'll go back and add pictures when I can.

Destroying the Bane Mother (Series 1, Episode 0 – “Invasion of the Bane”)

The boy who was born running saves the world on his first day properly alive.  Way to show us up, Lukey boy!  Luke’s photographic memory to the rescue, as he recalls the insanely long code needed to defeat the power-hungry aliens who created him for their own unscrupulous profit.

Escaping the Abbey (Series 1, Episode 4 – “Eye of the Gorgon:  Part 2”)

Luke and Clyde are still getting to know each other at this point, and Clyde gets down on Luke sometimes for being a nerd.  Here, though, it pays off – imprisoned at the abbey by acolytes of the Gorgon, Luke reads up on the abbey’s history, leading him to a secret passage to freedom.

Stopping Spellman (Series 2, Episode 4 – “Secrets of the Stars:  Part 2”)

Granted, this isn’t much in terms of what Luke is physically doing, although it obviously has the enormous effect of stopping the mesmeric powers of a guy who can control people through their Zodiac signs (don’t ask.)  But even though Luke only needs to touch someone under Spellman’s thrall to “break the circuit” of the power he has over them, it’s still a great moment.  Luke is able to use something he doesn’t like about himself – the fact that he doesn’t have an actual birthday, making him feel less human as a result – and turn it into an asset.  I love it.

Using the Mona Lisa’s Power against Her (Series 3, Episode 10 – “Mona Lisa’s Revenge:  Part 2”)

As far as Luke’s clever saves go, I like this one a lot.  He puts a number of different threads together – the key the Mona Lisa needs to release the Abomination, her power of bringing artwork to life, the drawing of K9 in Clyde’s sketchbook – to make a pretty savvy plan.  He smashes the real key but tells the Mona Lisa Clyde can draw a copy and she can bring it to life, knowing she’ll accidentally do the same to K9 on the next page, and then everyone’s favorite tin dog can take her out.  Nicely done, Luke!

Operating Serf (Series 5, Episode 6 – “The Man Who Never Was:  Part 2”)

This tagteam with Sky is great fun.  While Sarah Jane helps the enslaved Skullions escape Serf Systems, Luke and Sky buy them time by performing the Skullions’ ordinary task:  operating the real-time hologram of Joseph Serf.  Now, they’re two (admittedly brilliant) kids doing what it takes a whole team of aliens to pull off, so the result is obviously ridiculous, but I love it all the same, and it’s terrific to see the Smith siblings working together.

Favorite Characters: Luke Smith (The Sarah Jane Adventures)

“I was born running…”  Does it get much more companion than that?

Anyway, this is Luke, adopted son of the one and only Sarah Jane Smith.  In some ways, he’s the “sci-fi shortcut” character, the easy way to fit in some technobabble or do the unexplainable on occasion.  But he’s also a great kid learning about the world and who he is within it, and his lovely relationship with Sarah Jane is made of win.  (A few pilot spoilers.)

Luke is “born” in the first episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures.  Though made from human DNA, he was bioengineered by a nefarious race called the Bane for the purposes of studying humans.  He’s been growing but dormant for some time, and it’s not until Sarah Jane and Maria come along that he’s activated and finally wakes to the world.

Given his unconventional origins, Luke isn’t your typical kid.  His Bane-made mind is both photographic and off-the-charts brilliant (shades of Zoe, without the occasional arrogance,) while his social skills are non-existent.  The latter isn’t surprising, since he’s experiencing everything for the first time and doesn’t know how people behave.  Now, socially-awkward geniuses are a dime a dozen in fiction, but the characterization really works for Luke.  Understanding people is his Achilles heel, and in interactions, he can be sweetly ignorant, startlingly earnest, or shyly hesitant, depending on the situation.  The difficulty of saying or doing the right thing can be a source of worry for him; while he’s not especially concerned with the usual teenage preoccupation of “fitting in,” he sometimes equates his social struggles with proof that he’s not “properly” human. 

These fears and frustrations really add to the character.  This archetype has a tendency to be portrayed as largely emotionless – particularly when you get up to walking-supercomputer-level geniuses like Luke – but he has a ton of emotions he’s still trying to figure out.  He can be scared, confused, and concerned, he can feel like an outsider who doesn’t know where he belongs, he can be curious, he can laugh, mess around, and be reckless, he can be stubborn and hyper-focused, and he can be caring, brave, and selfless.  He has intense reactions to getting into a quarrel or having to say goodbye because he’s never experienced these things before, and he’s not sure what’s going to happen.  In this way, despite his brilliance, he’s still kind of childlike.  His relationships with Sarah Jane, Maria, Clyde, and later Rani are so important to him, because to them, he’s not a lab rat or a weirdo or a freak.  He’s just Luke, and whoever that is, it’s okay.

Oh yeah, and he saved the world on the day he was born, did I mention that?  Luke is an instrumental member of the team, and, sci-fi shortcut or not, his knowledge is often the key to saving the day.  Whether he’s remembering a crucial, little-known fact of vital importance, doing insane mathematics in his head under extreme pressure, or rigging up neat bits of cool technology, the gang would rarely get the job done without him.