Ah, yes, Sarah Jane Smith. A women still of impeccable beauty, played by Lis Sladen. An entrepreneurial reporter, one of the few women to truly pierce the doctor's shell. And a feminist?Doctor Who fans tend to brag about Smith as being one of the early representations of feminism in science fiction television and to be fair she was an improvement on the bikini clad women of Buck Rogers, running at roughly the same time in America. But I don't see Sarah Jane Smith as necessarily much of an advance for feminism. Indeed, her feminism was used as the butt of several cruel (but admittedly, very funny!) jokes in the first season of the Tom Baker era. In one episode, Sarah shakes hand with a man and greets him as Director of a science facility, only to find out that she had sexistly assumed that the man ran the facility, when in reality his female companion had (see "Giant Robot"). That same female companion ended up being a dictatorial feminist on the path to scientific world conquest. In a second episode, Genesis of the Daleks, the Doctor cleverly uses Sarah's feminism against her to persuade her to climb down a tunnel to prove that women are equal to men. So, why such mixed messages? One man: Terrance Dicks. There isn't a Doctor Who episode in existence which hasn't had Mr. Dicks's poking some fun at the feminist movement. As much as I want to take this seriously and berate Mr. Dicks for the offense of political incorrectness, he's just so darn funny about it! So, Sarah's characterization may have been a relic of an earlier era, but thank God for that. We love Sarah Jane just as much anyway.
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