Me and Sarah Jane

To celebrate the new series of the Sarah Jane Adventures, the Beeb have updated the official Who new series website with an introduction to Sarah Jane, which is about time really, considering that the classic series Who website only has a small gallery of images from the new SJ Adventures... and none of her original series stuff. Check it out here

Anyway, it's an excuse for a few more pics of Sarah Jane, and a brief look at the character.


Elisabeth Sladen portrayed determined journalist Sarah Jane Smith from the beginning of The Time Warrior (1973) through the end of The Hand of Fear (1976).

When she left the series in 1976, it made front page news, where previously only a change of Doctors had received such attention. Bob Baker and Dave Martin intentionally left Sarah's departure scene in The Hand of Fear unwritten, and Sladen and Tom Baker co-wrote Sarah's departure scene themselves. When Sladen announced her intention to leave the series, it was originally planned to killed Sarah off in a pseudo-historical story involving aliens and the French Foreign Legion, to be written by Douglas Camfield. Luckily the script didn't materialise, the Hand of Fear replaced it, and SJ got dropped off in Aberdeen.


New Doctor Who Producer John Nathan-Turner had asked her to return to the series to ease the transition between Tom Baker and new Doctor Peter Davison. She declined the offer, but accepted his second offer of doing a pilot for a spin-off series called K-9 and Company, co-starring with K-9, the popular robot dog from Doctor Who. However, the pilot was not picked up for a series. Sladen would reprise the role of Sarah in 1983 for the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors. Until the return of the new series, Sladen's last television appearance as Sarah was in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time. [In 1995 she played the role once again in the independent non-BBC film Downtime which was her last on-screen appearance as the character until 2006.]

Sladen also portrayed Sarah in numerous audio dramas. Two of them were produced for BBC Radio: The Paradise of Death (1993), and The Ghosts of N-Space (1996), together with Pertwee as the Doctor and Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier.

Check out more info here.