Plot

Maria moves into her new home and meets her neighbour Sarah Jane Smith. It isn't long until both of them find themselves at the local Bubble Shock factory and in terrible danger.

Maria Jackson and her divorced father Alan move into a house opposite that of Sarah Jane Smith, a rather secretive woman who is an investigative reporter, currently looking at Bubble Shock, a very influential soft drink, manufactured very speedily at a factory run by the elegant Mrs. Wormwood. In fact Mrs. Wormwood is an alien in human form, a member of a race known as the Bane, who intend to invade Earth. She is making an 'Archetype', a human boy, from the DNA of the many school-children who visit the factory. One of these is Maria, who meets Sarah Jane whilst the latter is investigating its activities. Sarah Jane ultimately destroys the building and the aliens working there, except Mrs. Wormwood, who escapes in an underground lift, vowing revenge. Sarah Jane takes the 'Archetype' home and adopts him, calling him Luke. He is extremely intelligent but has no memory of his creation. Sarah Jane is forced to admit to Maria that she is an erstwhile time traveller, who was friendly with a Time Lord from another planet, Doctor Who, and that she has a vast experience of alien behaviour.—don @ minifie-1

In Ealing, London, U.K., newly single father Alan Jackson moves into a new house with his daughter Maria while an advertisement for Bubble Shock, an extremely popular pop drink, plays on the TV. Across the street, a car pulls into the drive of a tall house, number 13. Maria tries to greet the middle aged woman who steps out, but is given only the barest of acknowledgments in return. Maria's mother, Chrissie, helps with the move in, and soon after leaves to meet her boyfriend. Maria is upset about her parents' recent divorce and having to move, but remains optimistic. That night, Maria is woken up by strange sounds and lights coming from number 13. Curious, she gets up and goes to investigate. She peeks through the door to the back garden, and is awed to see a beautiful, glowing alien creature communing in a melodic language to the woman she saw earlier. The alien flies into the sky, and Maria, suddenly terrified, races home. In the morning, she tries to find a way to tell her father what she saw when the doorbell rings and a local girl named Kelsey introduces herself to the new neighbors. Kelsey is pushy and presumptuous, but accepts Maria as an instant friend and invites her to go into town for a day out. Maria goes, and after Alan says goodbye outside, he tries to introduce himself to the woman across the street. She greets him somewhat coldly, but nevertheless returns his introduction with her own: Sarah Jane Smith. Upon hearing that Maria and Kelsey plan to take the free bus to the Bubble Shock factory for a tour, Sarah Jane cuts the conversation short and gets in her car to follow them.

In town, Kelsey explains that Sarah Jane has a bit of a reputation as a loner and eccentric, as well as being a crack journalist. They board the brightly decorated Bubble Shock bus, which offers free bottles of the energy drink. Maria says she finds it disgusting, and Kelsey responds that Maria must be one of the 2% of the population that doesn't like Bubble Shock. The bus arrives at the factory, Sarah Jane following close behind. She gets out of her car out of sight of the employees and opens her watch, revealed to be a scanner, which picks up traces of something foreign. As the tour group enters, they are asked to step through a "security", but as each of the guests file through, a scan has been taken of their brains. In a control room, the scans are compiled and transmitted to a humanoid shape, the Archetype, wired up to machinery and covered with a sheet. The woman in charge, Mrs. Wormwood, declares him almost ready.

Outside, Sarah Jane uses a variation of the Doctor's sonic screwdriver disguised as a lipstick to unlock a door, but runs right into two workers. Upon hearing that the intruder is famed journalist Sarah Jane Smith, Mrs. Wormwood approves a meeting. The tour guide, Davey, leads the group into the factory proper and instructs them to turn of their cell phones, claiming the equipment is sensitive. He offers them yet more free samples of Bubble Shock, and notices Maria hasn't taken any. She tells him she is part of the 2% who doesn't like it, and Davey assures her they are working on a solution to make the entire world love the drink. Upstairs, Mrs. Wormwood meets with Sarah Jane, who has apparently been trying to get an interview with the enigmatic new company for some time. She questions how Bubble Shock was able to get approval to market a new drink so quickly, especially when it contains an unheard of ingredient: Bane. Wormwood claims they are only satisfying the world's need for food, and tells her that Bane is an organic substance that has existed for a long time. She insists Sarah Jane try some Bubble Shock for herself, but she adamantly refuses. She tells Wormwood she had some scientists try analyzing a bottle, but is seems to resist them. She implies that Bane could not have done that if it originated on earth.

During the tour, Kelsey, who's done it before, gets bored and decides to use her phone to call a friend to meet them after. She breaks off from the group, but when she dials, the phone shorts out and sets off a great many alarms all over the factory. Meanwhile, Mrs. Wormwood ends the interview with Sarah Jane and dismisses her as crazy. While she is in the elevator, Mrs. Wormwood gets on her earpiece and orders her assistant to kill Sarah, but she sees it coming and counters the assistant to get away. While the alarms are going off, equipment in the control room starts malfunctioning, and the Archetype opens his eyes. Kelsey, who has retreated further into the factory, comes across a giant, tentacled creature suspended in the ceiling: the Bane Mother. Realizing her friend hasn't returned, Maria runs back in to try and find her while the rest of the tour group are evacuated. She and Sarah Jane run through the factory avoiding the many workers, who find Kelsey cowering from the alien in the ceiling and crush her cell phone, which ends the alarms and appeases the Bane Mother. However, Maria tries to call Kelsey and sets them off again. In the control room, the machines explode, and the Archetype bolts upright, fully conscious. He disconnects himself from the equipment, revealing a young, seemingly human boy. Confused by his surroundings, he runs away from the control room. He eventually runs into Maria, an initially seems only able to talk by copying her. The workers close in, and they both continue running. Maria suggests they hide in the ladies bathroom, since the male workers won't look for them in there, which the Archetype does not understand. Sarah Jane has the same idea, and upon finding the two teens helps them escape outside to her car. Hot on their trail, Wormwood orders them to close the gates to the car park, but Sarah Jane uses her sonic lipstick to hold them open long enough for them to get away.

At Bannerman road, Sarah Jane takes the Archetype inside and orders Maria to return home and forget everything she's seen, for her own safety. Maria returns home miserable. At the Bubble Shock Factory, Mrs. Wormwood questions Kelsey about the intruders. Kelsey refuses to believe the Bane Mother was real, and is too busy demanding compensation for her destroyed phone to give them any useful information. Mrs. Wormwood turns off her disguise and reveals her true Bane form to Kelsey, who faints. Wormwood scans her brain and discovers where Sarah Jane lives. She sends Davey to return a mind-wiped Kelsey home, then Kill Sarah Jane and retrieve the Archetype.

At number 13, Sarah Jane asks the Archetype where he came from, but he cannot remember anything before waking up in the Bane facility. He also has almost no knowledge of basic concepts, such as eating or what a home is. Sarah Jane scans him, and finds that while physically he is a normal teenage boy, he is only hours old. Davey drops Kelsey off on Bannerman Road, and she goes to find Maria, who has been worried about her. Maria finds out that Davey brought her home and realizes the Bane have found Sarah Jane. Meanwhile, the Archetype has already learned how to read after picking up a single book. Sarah finds out he has no navel, and surmises that the boy must have been grown by the Bane. Maria runs in to warn her about at Bane as Davey attacks in his squid-like form. Sarah orders the kids upstairs as the alien breaks into the house, but forbids them to enter the attic while she goes to get a can of spray which repels Davey. Kelsey sneaks into the attic and the others follow her, finding it full of alien artifacts, articles, and curios. Realizing it's too late to keep them out of it, Sarah Jane explains the existence of alien races across the universe. She tells them about her time spent traveling with the Third and Fourth Doctor many years ago, and meeting him again recently as the Tenth Doctor. Since that reunion she has made it her mission on Earth to help the aliens who are lost, such as the poet Maria saw her sending home the other night, and fight the ones that are hostile. Maria and the Archetype are fascinated, but Kelsey still refuses to believe it. An alarm beeps, and Sarah Jane opens a wall safe to a viewing portal to outer space, where her robot dog companion, K-9, has spent a year and a half sealing off a man-made black hole. After a quick meeting, K-9 has to continue his work, and Sarah sadly closes the safe again. Since he left, she has been on her own.

At the Bane headquarters, Davey returns defeated, and is promptly given the penalty for failure by his brethren. At number 13, Maria asks about an alien communicator given to Sarah Jane by the star poet in case of emergency. Sarah amends that the alien meant it in case she needed help with her poetry, not fighting hostile creatures. The Archetype notices Sarah's scanner watch is detecting alien life, and it's pointing directly at Kelsey's drink. Specifically at the main ingredient, Bane. She realizes that there is a piece of living Bane inside every bottle of Bubble Shock. To get answers, she calls upon Mr. Smith, a giant alien computer who emerges from the wall. Sarah Jane has him hack the Bane's frequency to contact Mrs. Wormwood and delivers an ultimatum: leave earth or she will find a way to stop them. Wormwood is nonplussed, and terminates the conversation. She tells the Bane Mother to use her powers and accelerate their plan to convert humanity into Bane servants. Across the country, civilians who have drunk Bubble Shock become entranced, and begin trying to convert the humans who have not, including Kelsey, who chases the others like a zombie trying to get them to "drink it". They retreat outside, finding Alan and most of the street with bottles in their hands chanting the same message. Sarah Jane takes Maria and the Archetype to the factory to escape the mobs and try to stop the conversion, but find it deadlock sealed against her sonic lipstick. Trapped between the locked door and the hundreds of Bane thralls, Sarah Jane has an idea.

Mrs. Wormwood plans to kill the humans who do not submit to the Bane influence, but is interrupted by Sarah Jane smashing through the wall with the tour bus. She demands once more that the Bane leave earth, but the Bane Mother attacks her from above, drawing out Maria and the Archetype. Sarah Jane questions Wormwood about the strange boy, and Wormwood reveals that he is a composite of the DNA of over ten thousand humans, the guests who came to tour the factory. He was grown to combat the reluctance of the 2% who would not partake in Bubble Shock, and tell the Bane how to modify it for universal appeal. However, since their plans have moved up, Mrs. Wormwood decides to dispose of him by activating her ring. The Archetype collapses, dying. Sarah Jane pleads for his life, but Wormwood gloats that all who oppose the Bane will be killed soon. Maria tries to use her cell phone to fight back, but the signal, while painful to the Bane Mother, is not enough to damage her. She narrowly avoids being killed as the Archetype reveals the communicator from the star poet, made for making contact across the universe. Wormwood points out that he does not know the Bane frequency, but due to him having the memory of thousands of humans, he repeats the numbers Mr. Smith stated from earlier. The amplified signal kills the Bane Mother and sets off explosions throughout the factory. The heroes manage to make it out before the entire facility is destroyed, though Mrs. Wormwood's fate is unknown. With the Bane gone, their mind control on the humans as well as the signal killing the Archetype is ended.

Maria returns home to find Alan back to normal, and Sarah Jane properly welcomes him and Maria to the neighborhood. When asked about the Archetype, Sarah Jane introduces him as her newly adopted son. Chrissie barges in and passive aggressively sends them away, the Archetype unsubtley calling her rude on the way out.

That evening, Sarah Jane and Maria relax in the backyard, and Maria tells Sarah Jane that Kelsey has gone home and is again refusing the believe in aliens. Dressed in new clothes, the Archetype enters and Sarah Jane shows him and Maria the adoption papers Mr. Smith drafted, all that remains is for him to be given a name. After a few suggestions, they settle on Luke. Sarah Jane remarks that even with all her experiences in time and space, life on earth can be just as much of an adventure.