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Mr Smith (The Sarah Jane Adventures)
Encyclopedia
Mr Smith is a fictional extraterrestrial computer
voiced by Alexander Armstrong
which appears in the British
children's
science fiction television series, The Sarah Jane Adventures
, with further minor appearances in the final two episodes of the fourth series of Doctor Who
. He is installed in the attic
of Sarah Jane Smith
's home, and is used to hack into other systems; Sarah Jane asserts that he can hack "into anything". He first appeared in "Invasion of the Bane
", the 2007 New Year's Day première special, and has appeared in all the stories except The Eternity Trap
and Lost in Time
.
as a meteorite some 60 million years in Earth's past. It was trapped underneath the surface of the Earth until the eruption of Krakatoa
brought a single, small Xylok to the attention of geologists. Sarah Jane received the crystal from a geologist friend as an aid to her studies in volcanic activity. She found that the crystal could communicate with her laptop; it revealed to her that it could help her track alien life and protect the earth.
To this end it is the core of the supercomputer known as Mr Smith.
in Sarah Jane's attic at 13 Bannerman Road, Ealing
, London
. He reveals himself on the vocal command "Mr Smith, I need you". When he reveals himself as requested a fanfare plays. Apparently diegetic, as Sarah Jane comments on it in the Doctor Who
episode "The Stolen Earth
". The fanfare is omitted if summoned by the phrase "Mr Smith, I need you quickly and quietly," or if he determines that the fanfare would be inappropriate. He can request the attention of Sarah Jane and can be heard quite clearly from her living room
, three floors below. Mr Smith can also be called through mobile phones. In The Gift (Series Three), Clyde
called Mr Smith through K-9
.
In the first season, Mr Smith's main screen displays a crystal-like visualisation when idle. While Mr Smith allowed his sinister intentions to manifest at the end of the first series, the crystal shape that rotated, grew, and shrunk on his screen on a black background, turned green in some places and black in others. After his reboot and cleansing of malicious personality traits, in the second season the main screen displays a more abstract, fluid pattern, though retaining the same basic colours as the original display.
Behind the screen is a large mass of tangled wires and electronics. Despite Mr Smith's extraterrestrial origins, his construction includes one or more universal serial bus
ports.
", Sarah Jane is somewhat unwilling to allow either Maria Jackson
or the young boy whom they rescued into her attic to see Mr Smith or her other alien technology and mementos. However, after Kelsey Hooper sneaks upstairs, Sarah Jane reveals Mr Smith to them when she uses him to hack into the Bubble Shock! factory computers in order to issue a warning to Mrs. Wormwood and the other Bane.
Mr Smith is also able to create replicas of official documents for Sarah Jane's use; for example, he created the necessary documents she needed to adopt Luke and falsified news reports to explain global blackouts. According to the official website Mr Smith has two access levels and Sarah Jane has only basic level clearance, as Mr Smith only allows the species that created him access to level two (although even basic level clearance has a very wide range of capabilities, so Sarah Jane is not hindered by this). He constantly scans all media, police, and other similar sources - even passing space ships - for reports of alien incursions and extraterrestrial information. He also scans for celebrity
gossip
for his own amusement.
Mr Smith is capable of conducting self-diagnostics and of extrapolating from orders given to generate information likely to be needed. At the end of "Revenge of the Slitheen
", he also warns Clyde Langer
against trying to investigate his capabilities, and does so in an uncharacteristically authoritarian and somewhat malevolent "voice" with a slightly menacing chuckle.
In the penultimate episode of the first series, "The Lost Boy
", Mr Smith "readopts" his "evil" persona when he reveals to Clyde that he is a Xylok and that he had manipulated the Slitheen into kidnapping Sarah Jane's adopted son Luke. In doing so, he plans to bring the Moon crashing into the Earth by using Luke - subsequent to his impending "arranged" escape by Mr Smith - in conjunction with a telekinetic energiser headset, codenamed MITRE (derived from the Greek "mitre
"), which is tuned to a human's natural telekinetic power, thereby enabling the user to move things with their mind. The gravitational pull of the Moon would tear the Earth apart, thereby freeing the Xylok race.
Sarah Jane eventually returns to her attic and confronts Mr Smith, who proceeds to monologue in the same malevolent voice as Luke pulses in agony. In retaliation, she unleashes K-9
to battle Mr Smith while she covertly enters an Armageddon code virus
acquired by Maria's father. Thanks to K-9's attack distracting Mr Smith, she is successful in her attempts to infect him with the computer virus. As Mr Smith's databanks begin to collapse, he loses his memories of his primary objective, which was originally to release other Xyloks from within the Earth, and Sarah Jane "reaffirms" Mr Smith that his objective is to save the Earth.
Mr Smith shuts down, and the Moon returns to its regular orbit. In the episode's dénouement, Sarah Jane promises that when Mr Smith reboots, his new purpose will be "to safeguard the Earth", meaning he will resume his previous role in the series.
Mr Smith makes an appearance in the two-part Doctor Who
episode, "The Stolen Earth
", along with Sarah Jane and Luke, helping the two of them to contact other past companions such as Jack Harkness
and Martha Jones
. When former Prime Minister
Harriet Jones
asks them to help her send a signal to the Doctor, Mr Smith hacks into every telephone line on Earth, allowing the entire world to phone the Doctor - currently using Martha's old mobile phone - simultaneously, thus breaking through the barrier that Davros
and the Dalek
s had erected around Earth. Mr Smith further assists the team in the finale episode, "Journey's End
", with the help of K-9 and Torchwood Three, by creating a lasso of temporal energy around the TARDIS to tow Earth back to its proper location in space.
Since the reboot, his visualisation has changed into a distorted, liquid like, version of his original one and some of his controls have been slightly altered, although in the Doctor Who episodes the visualisation is still the same as in through most of the first series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. The reprogramming also had an effect on his personality; Previously, not counting the time when he went "evil" and turned on Sarah, he was much colder and more emotionless, more like the computer he resembles rather than the living organism he is. Since then, he has become kinder, seems to be somewhat sensitive to other's emotions, and even has developed a sense of humor.
Mr Smith appeared to start to self-destruct in "Prisoner of the Judoon
" when ordered to do so by Sarah Jane while she was under the control of an alien entity, but Luke was able to override the self-destruct by pointing out the conflict with that order and Mr Smith's prime directive to protect humanity, given that the resulting explosion would destroy several city blocks.
He demonstrated displeasure and sarcasm in "The Mad Woman in the Attic
" when told that K-9 Mark IV
would return to residing with the Smith family. Mr Smith was initially openly resentful of K-9, a feeling which was mutual. The two of them engaged in a sort of rivalry, frequently bickering and trying to outdo each other in their technical support of Sarah Jane. When Clyde Langer secretly borrowed K-9 in order to cheat on a school exam, he asked Mr Smith not to tell Sarah Jane and Luke; Mr Smith readily agreed and graciously thanked Clyde for taking the dog. However, despite their animosity towards each other, Mr. Smith once seemed to show genuine concern for K-9 when it appeared the latter might've been broken beyond repair. When it was decided K-9 would accompany Luke to Oxford University, Mr. Smith told K-9 "good-bye" and "you could always contact me if you need to", to which K-9 replied "I knew you would miss me".
Mr Smith also has control of two powerful fans which he can power up on command; in "The Gift, Part 2
" it severely reduces his power packs. They are located behind the screen of Mr Smith and the screen slides up out of the way. Mr Smith states "Every computer has a cooling system."
In one timeline, Mr Smith will "die" [sic] several years before 2059.
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
voiced by Alexander Armstrong
Alexander Armstrong (comedian)
Alexander Henry Fenwick Armstrong is a British comedian, actor and television presenter.-Early life and career:Armstrong was born in Rothbury, Northumberland, the youngest of three children, to Henry Angus Armstrong and his wife Emma Virginia Peronnet Thompson-McCausland, daughter of Lucius...
which appears in the British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
children's
Children's television series
Children's television series, are commercial television programs designed for, and marketed to children, normally scheduled for broadcast during the morning and afternoon when children are awake. They can sometimes run in the early evening, for the children that go to school...
science fiction television series, The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures
The Sarah Jane Adventures is a British science fiction television series, produced by BBC Cymru Wales for CBBC, created by Russell T Davies and starring Elisabeth Sladen...
, with further minor appearances in the final two episodes of the fourth series of Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
. He is installed in the attic
Attic
An attic is a space found directly below the pitched roof of a house or other building . Attic is generally the American/Canadian reference to it...
of Sarah Jane Smith
Sarah Jane Smith
Sarah Jane Smith is a fictional character played by Elisabeth Sladen in the long-running British BBC Television science-fiction series Doctor Who and its spin-offs K-9 and Company and The Sarah Jane Adventures....
's home, and is used to hack into other systems; Sarah Jane asserts that he can hack "into anything". He first appeared in "Invasion of the Bane
Invasion of the Bane
-Sladen and Doctor Who:Elisabeth Sladen, who previously played Sarah Jane between 1973 and 1976. In 1981, she was offered the role again to ease the transition between the Fourth and Fifth Doctors, which she declined, but agreed to star in the pilot for the spin-off series K-9 and Company, which...
", the 2007 New Year's Day première special, and has appeared in all the stories except The Eternity Trap
The Eternity Trap
The Eternity Trap is a two-part story of The Sarah Jane Adventures which was broadcast on CBBC on 5 and 6 November 2009. It is the fourth serial of the third series. The story involves the scientific investigation of a haunted castle.-Part 1:...
and Lost in Time
Lost in Time (The Sarah Jane Adventures)
Lost in Time is a two-part story of The Sarah Jane Adventures which has been broadcast on CBBC on 8 and 9 November 2010. It is the fifth story of the fourth series.-Part 1:...
.
Character history
Mr Smith is a Xylok, a member of a crystalline race which crashed to EarthEarth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
as a meteorite some 60 million years in Earth's past. It was trapped underneath the surface of the Earth until the eruption of Krakatoa
Krakatoa
Krakatoa is a volcanic island made of a'a lava in the Sunda Strait between the islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. The name is used for the island group, the main island , and the volcano as a whole. The island exploded in 1883, killing approximately 40,000 people, although some estimates...
brought a single, small Xylok to the attention of geologists. Sarah Jane received the crystal from a geologist friend as an aid to her studies in volcanic activity. She found that the crystal could communicate with her laptop; it revealed to her that it could help her track alien life and protect the earth.
To this end it is the core of the supercomputer known as Mr Smith.
Portrayal
Mr Smith is hidden behind the Chimney breastChimney breast
A chimney breast is a portion of a wall which projects forward over a fireplace. Chimney jambs similarly project from the wall, but they do so on either side of the fireplace and serve to support the chimney breast. The interior of a chimney breast is commonly filled with brickwork or concrete....
in Sarah Jane's attic at 13 Bannerman Road, Ealing
Ealing
Ealing is a suburban area of west London, England and the administrative centre of the London Borough of Ealing. It is located west of Charing Cross and around from the City of London. It is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in the London Plan. It was historically a rural village...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. He reveals himself on the vocal command "Mr Smith, I need you". When he reveals himself as requested a fanfare plays. Apparently diegetic, as Sarah Jane comments on it in the Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
episode "The Stolen Earth
The Stolen Earth
"The Stolen Earth" is the twelfth episode of the fourth series and the 750th overall episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The episode was written by show runner and head writer Russell T Davies and is the first of a two-part crossover story; the concluding episode is...
". The fanfare is omitted if summoned by the phrase "Mr Smith, I need you quickly and quietly," or if he determines that the fanfare would be inappropriate. He can request the attention of Sarah Jane and can be heard quite clearly from her living room
Living room
A living room, also known as sitting room, lounge room or lounge , is a room for entertaining adult guests, reading, or other activities...
, three floors below. Mr Smith can also be called through mobile phones. In The Gift (Series Three), Clyde
Clyde Langer
Clyde Langer is a fictional character played by Daniel Anthony in the British children's science fiction television programme The Sarah Jane Adventures...
called Mr Smith through K-9
K-9 (Doctor Who)
K-9, or K9, is the name of several fictional robotic canines in the long-running British science fiction television series, Doctor Who, first appearing in 1977...
.
In the first season, Mr Smith's main screen displays a crystal-like visualisation when idle. While Mr Smith allowed his sinister intentions to manifest at the end of the first series, the crystal shape that rotated, grew, and shrunk on his screen on a black background, turned green in some places and black in others. After his reboot and cleansing of malicious personality traits, in the second season the main screen displays a more abstract, fluid pattern, though retaining the same basic colours as the original display.
Behind the screen is a large mass of tangled wires and electronics. Despite Mr Smith's extraterrestrial origins, his construction includes one or more universal serial bus
Universal Serial Bus
USB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
ports.
Appearances
In "Invasion of the BaneInvasion of the Bane
-Sladen and Doctor Who:Elisabeth Sladen, who previously played Sarah Jane between 1973 and 1976. In 1981, she was offered the role again to ease the transition between the Fourth and Fifth Doctors, which she declined, but agreed to star in the pilot for the spin-off series K-9 and Company, which...
", Sarah Jane is somewhat unwilling to allow either Maria Jackson
Maria Jackson
Maria Jackson is a fictional character played by Yasmin Paige in the British children's science fiction television programme The Sarah Jane Adventures, a spin-off from the long-running series Doctor Who. She is a 14-year-old girl who discovers that her new neighbour, Sarah Jane Smith, is aware of...
or the young boy whom they rescued into her attic to see Mr Smith or her other alien technology and mementos. However, after Kelsey Hooper sneaks upstairs, Sarah Jane reveals Mr Smith to them when she uses him to hack into the Bubble Shock! factory computers in order to issue a warning to Mrs. Wormwood and the other Bane.
Mr Smith is also able to create replicas of official documents for Sarah Jane's use; for example, he created the necessary documents she needed to adopt Luke and falsified news reports to explain global blackouts. According to the official website Mr Smith has two access levels and Sarah Jane has only basic level clearance, as Mr Smith only allows the species that created him access to level two (although even basic level clearance has a very wide range of capabilities, so Sarah Jane is not hindered by this). He constantly scans all media, police, and other similar sources - even passing space ships - for reports of alien incursions and extraterrestrial information. He also scans for celebrity
Celebrity
A celebrity, also referred to as a celeb in popular culture, is a person who has a prominent profile and commands a great degree of public fascination and influence in day-to-day media...
gossip
Gossip
Gossip is idle talk or rumour, especially about the personal or private affairs of others, It is one of the oldest and most common means of sharing facts and views, but also has a reputation for the introduction of errors and variations into the information transmitted...
for his own amusement.
Mr Smith is capable of conducting self-diagnostics and of extrapolating from orders given to generate information likely to be needed. At the end of "Revenge of the Slitheen
Revenge of the Slitheen
Revenge of the Slitheen is the second story of the British science fiction television series The Sarah Jane Adventures. It comprises the first and second episodes of the show's first series, aired on BBC1, broadcast in two parts on September 24 and October 1, 2007, with the second being broadcast a...
", he also warns Clyde Langer
Clyde Langer
Clyde Langer is a fictional character played by Daniel Anthony in the British children's science fiction television programme The Sarah Jane Adventures...
against trying to investigate his capabilities, and does so in an uncharacteristically authoritarian and somewhat malevolent "voice" with a slightly menacing chuckle.
In the penultimate episode of the first series, "The Lost Boy
The Lost Boy (The Sarah Jane Adventures)
The Lost Boy is the sixth story of the British science fiction television series The Sarah Jane Adventures. It forms the ninth and tenth episodes of the show's first series...
", Mr Smith "readopts" his "evil" persona when he reveals to Clyde that he is a Xylok and that he had manipulated the Slitheen into kidnapping Sarah Jane's adopted son Luke. In doing so, he plans to bring the Moon crashing into the Earth by using Luke - subsequent to his impending "arranged" escape by Mr Smith - in conjunction with a telekinetic energiser headset, codenamed MITRE (derived from the Greek "mitre
Mitre
The mitre , also spelled miter, is a type of headwear now known as the traditional, ceremonial head-dress of bishops and certain abbots in the Roman Catholic Church, as well as in the Anglican Communion, some Lutheran churches, and also bishops and certain other clergy in the Eastern Orthodox...
"), which is tuned to a human's natural telekinetic power, thereby enabling the user to move things with their mind. The gravitational pull of the Moon would tear the Earth apart, thereby freeing the Xylok race.
Sarah Jane eventually returns to her attic and confronts Mr Smith, who proceeds to monologue in the same malevolent voice as Luke pulses in agony. In retaliation, she unleashes K-9
K-9 (Doctor Who)
K-9, or K9, is the name of several fictional robotic canines in the long-running British science fiction television series, Doctor Who, first appearing in 1977...
to battle Mr Smith while she covertly enters an Armageddon code virus
Computer virus
A computer virus is a computer program that can replicate itself and spread from one computer to another. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability...
acquired by Maria's father. Thanks to K-9's attack distracting Mr Smith, she is successful in her attempts to infect him with the computer virus. As Mr Smith's databanks begin to collapse, he loses his memories of his primary objective, which was originally to release other Xyloks from within the Earth, and Sarah Jane "reaffirms" Mr Smith that his objective is to save the Earth.
Mr Smith shuts down, and the Moon returns to its regular orbit. In the episode's dénouement, Sarah Jane promises that when Mr Smith reboots, his new purpose will be "to safeguard the Earth", meaning he will resume his previous role in the series.
Mr Smith makes an appearance in the two-part Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...
episode, "The Stolen Earth
The Stolen Earth
"The Stolen Earth" is the twelfth episode of the fourth series and the 750th overall episode of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. The episode was written by show runner and head writer Russell T Davies and is the first of a two-part crossover story; the concluding episode is...
", along with Sarah Jane and Luke, helping the two of them to contact other past companions such as Jack Harkness
Jack Harkness
Captain Jack Harkness is a fictional character played by John Barrowman in Doctor Who and its spin-off series, Torchwood. He first appeared in the 2005 Doctor Who episode "The Empty Child" and reappeared in the remaining episodes of the 2005 series as a companion of the ninth incarnation of the...
and Martha Jones
Martha Jones
Martha Jones is a fictional character played by Freema Agyeman in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its spin-off series, Torchwood. She is a companion of the Tenth Doctor in Doctor Who, replacing Rose Tyler...
. When former Prime Minister
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...
Harriet Jones
Harriet Jones
Harriet Jones MP is a recurring fictional character played by Penelope Wilton in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. With the revival of Doctor Who in 2005, Jones was introduced in the two-part story "Aliens of London" and "World War Three" as an MP who aids the...
asks them to help her send a signal to the Doctor, Mr Smith hacks into every telephone line on Earth, allowing the entire world to phone the Doctor - currently using Martha's old mobile phone - simultaneously, thus breaking through the barrier that Davros
Davros
Davros is a character from the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Davros is an archenemy of the Doctor and is the creator of the Doctor's deadliest enemies, the Daleks...
and the Dalek
Dalek
The Daleks are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants from the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. Within the series, Daleks are cyborgs from the planet Skaro, created by the scientist Davros during the final years of a thousand-year war against the Thals...
s had erected around Earth. Mr Smith further assists the team in the finale episode, "Journey's End
Journey's End (Doctor Who)
"Journey's End" is the thirteenth episode of the fourth series of British science fiction television series Doctor Who first broadcast on BBC One on 5 July 2008. It is the second episode of a two-part crossover story featuring the characters of spin-off shows Torchwood and The Sarah Jane...
", with the help of K-9 and Torchwood Three, by creating a lasso of temporal energy around the TARDIS to tow Earth back to its proper location in space.
Since the reboot, his visualisation has changed into a distorted, liquid like, version of his original one and some of his controls have been slightly altered, although in the Doctor Who episodes the visualisation is still the same as in through most of the first series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. The reprogramming also had an effect on his personality; Previously, not counting the time when he went "evil" and turned on Sarah, he was much colder and more emotionless, more like the computer he resembles rather than the living organism he is. Since then, he has become kinder, seems to be somewhat sensitive to other's emotions, and even has developed a sense of humor.
Mr Smith appeared to start to self-destruct in "Prisoner of the Judoon
Prisoner of the Judoon
Prisoner of the Judoon is the first serial of the third series of The Sarah Jane Adventures. It was first broadcast on the 15 and 16 of October 2009. It features the Judoon, the intergalactic police introduced in the 2007 Doctor Who episode "Smith and Jones".-Part 1:Sarah Jane Smith continues to...
" when ordered to do so by Sarah Jane while she was under the control of an alien entity, but Luke was able to override the self-destruct by pointing out the conflict with that order and Mr Smith's prime directive to protect humanity, given that the resulting explosion would destroy several city blocks.
He demonstrated displeasure and sarcasm in "The Mad Woman in the Attic
The Mad Woman in the Attic
The Mad Woman in the Attic is a two-part story of The Sarah Jane Adventures. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 22 and 23 October 2009. It is the second serial of the third series.-Part 1:...
" when told that K-9 Mark IV
K-9 (Doctor Who)
K-9, or K9, is the name of several fictional robotic canines in the long-running British science fiction television series, Doctor Who, first appearing in 1977...
would return to residing with the Smith family. Mr Smith was initially openly resentful of K-9, a feeling which was mutual. The two of them engaged in a sort of rivalry, frequently bickering and trying to outdo each other in their technical support of Sarah Jane. When Clyde Langer secretly borrowed K-9 in order to cheat on a school exam, he asked Mr Smith not to tell Sarah Jane and Luke; Mr Smith readily agreed and graciously thanked Clyde for taking the dog. However, despite their animosity towards each other, Mr. Smith once seemed to show genuine concern for K-9 when it appeared the latter might've been broken beyond repair. When it was decided K-9 would accompany Luke to Oxford University, Mr. Smith told K-9 "good-bye" and "you could always contact me if you need to", to which K-9 replied "I knew you would miss me".
Mr Smith also has control of two powerful fans which he can power up on command; in "The Gift, Part 2
The Gift (The Sarah Jane Adventures)
The Gift is a two-part story of The Sarah Jane Adventures which broadcast on CBBC on 19 and 20 November 2009. It is the sixth and last serial of the third series. This story features "the Blathereen", a family of Raxacoricofallapatorians distinct from the previously seen Slitheen.-Part 1:The story...
" it severely reduces his power packs. They are located behind the screen of Mr Smith and the screen slides up out of the way. Mr Smith states "Every computer has a cooling system."
In one timeline, Mr Smith will "die" [sic] several years before 2059.