What happens to Sara Kingdom now?
The Guardian of the Solar System wraps up the trilogy of Sara Kingdom stories contained within Big Finish Audio's Companion Chronicles line. When we last left our protagonists in The Drowned World, our investigator has agreed to stay trapped in the mysterious, supertechnological house in which dwells the echo of Sara Kingdom. The years have passed by and his daughter, cured of the plague raging outside, leaves the house herself and dies in an accident. The investigator contemplates that his time is at an end and asks for one last story from Kingdom.
She tells of the time that the TARDIS, still on the run from the Daleks and their master plan, materializes inside a giant clock. A few minutes of investigation yields two facts. The first is that the most integral components of the clocks are countless blind, aged men trapped within it. The second is that they have gone about a year back in time from the moment that they learned about the scheme concocted by Mavic Chen, the Guardian of the Solar System, to ally with the Daleks. The Doctor and Steven bugger off to find a way to liberate the men and Kingdom is taken to see Mavic Chen by her own brother Bret... The very same brother who she killed during the course of The Daleks' Master Plan, after he joined with the Doctor against the Daleks.
Sara Kingdom sees a critical opportunity here. The Doctor is not around to harangue her about not changing a single note of history and she has no second thoughts. Presented before her is a chance to save her brother and dissuade the Guardian from entering a partnership with the Daleks. Her great moral dilemma is only that this giant clock is the key component in governing the space lines of the human empire. Without it, humanity would be fractured across space and open to invasion by any competent alien fleet. She worries that this fact is what drive Chen into the waiting plungers of the Daleks, and so she tries to twist his ear to suggestions about technology that could do away with the clock.
The Guardian of the Solar System neatly wraps up the Sara Kingdom trilogy by directly addressing a theme running between them: Kingdom's willingness to sacrifice herself, and her underlying perception that this will allow her to escape the unforgiving clutches of causality. In The Daleks' Master Plan she ultimately gave her life to ignite the Time Destructor. In Home Truths it was an act of self-sacrifice that locked an echo of herself in the circuitry of the house. In The Drowned World she plunged into carnivorous, flesh-dissolving waters. And in The Guardian of the Solar System she unreservedly opens up her consciousness to the great clock, setting in motion events that will plague her conscience ever more.
This theme is a brilliant way to wrap a plotline that, from the outset, might seem somewhat disingenuous. After all, Kingdom did only last for one serial and bringing her in for these Companion Chronicles might smack of desperation. The house into which a copy of her consciousness is locked might come across as little more than a franchise convenience. Writer Simon Guerrier pushed the trilogy beyond what could have been cynical exploitation and crafts a more meaningful exploration of the solitary thing for which the character is best known: that she died.
In so doing, however, he also opens the field wide open again. At the end of The Guardian of the Solar System, a familiar blue box rematerializes inside the house with the promise of future adventures between Sara Kingdom and whichever of Big Finish-employed Doctors emerges.
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