Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith

Elis­a­beth Sladen, best-known for play­ing Sarah-Jane Smith in Doc­tor Who, died this morn­ing at the age of sixty-three. Behind the scenes, she had been qui­etly fight­ing cancer.

Sarah Jane Smith is one of the best-known Doc­tor Who com­pan­ions there’s ever been, and cer­tainly the longest-recurring – she first appeared as a com­pan­ion of the Third and Fourth Doc­tor in the sev­en­ties, recurred in “The Five Doc­tors” in 1982, recurred again in “School Reunion”, a new series episode with David Ten­nant as the Tenth Doc­tor, and starred in not one but two spin-offs of her own: the ill-fated K-9 and Com­pany, and The Sarah Jane Adven­tures.

Why was she so beloved? Because from the very begin­ning, Sarah Jane makes you notice her. Here she is in her very first appear­ance, in the Third Doc­tor story “The Time Warrior”:

Notice she’s not only self-possessed and deter­mined, hav­ing just bro­ken into a top-secret mil­i­tary instal­la­tion and retained the chutz­pah to demand she should be allowed to stay, she’s a self-confessed fem­i­nist. It’s 1973, but Sarah Jane will not make the tea.

When the Third Doc­tor regen­er­ates into the Fourth Doc­tor before her eyes, she deals with that with equanimity.

And it’s the Fourth Doc­tor she’s really asso­ci­ated with in most people’s minds, appear­ing in four­teen sto­ries with him. Unlike the com­pan­ions imme­di­ately before her, she trav­els in the TARDIS, deals with the Son­tarans, the Daleks and the Cyber­men in quick suc­ces­sion, and when, finally, she leaves the Doc­tor in “The Hand of Fear”, her part­ing words to him are: “You know, travel really does broaden the mind.”

Let’s draw a veil over the unsuc­cess­ful spin-off, K-9 and Com­pany, and “The Five Doc­tors”, in which the writ­ers a) have her dressed in the most godaw­ful out­fit imag­in­able (it’s pink, with rib­bons), and b) then give her noth­ing at all to do other than fall over her own feet. Let’s go back for a moment to 1976, her leaving…

…and skip to 2006, to the sec­ond sea­son of the series and “School Reunion”. It wasn’t Croy­don the Doc­tor left her. It was Aberdeen. And she’s waited forty years to yell at him about it, but yell at him she shall.

And here’s the thing: forty years on, Sarah Jane meets the Doc­tor again because she’s snuck into a mys­te­ri­ous facil­ity look­ing for a story. Sarah Jane is a jour­nal­ist. She went home from hav­ing her mind broad­ened and went back to doing exactly what she does best, bet­ter. You can’t tell me that’s not awe­some. And she doesn’t want to travel with the Doc­tor again, thank you very much; it was fun, but she’s got her own life now.

And that’s the last time Sarah Jane appears in Doc­tor Who – but then, her own series is much more fun for her. In The Sarah Jane Adven­tures, Sarah Jane gets com­pan­ions of her very own: her adopted son, Luke, and Maria, Clyde, and Rani. This time around she’s teach­ing them to save the world; this time around she’s the Doc­tor. She still not there to make the tea. She’s Sarah Jane.

Of Elis­a­beth Sladen, Stephen Mof­fat writes: “‘Never meet your heroes,’ wise peo­ple say. They weren’t think­ing of Lis Sladen. Sarah Jane Smith was everybody’s hero when I was younger, and as brave and funny and bril­liant as peo­ple only ever are in stories.”

Well, of course. Rest in peace, Elis­a­beth Slade, and maybe not yet, Sarah Jane:. The last aired episode ofThe Sarah Jane Adven­tures went out in Novem­ber 2010; half of the fifth sea­son had been filmed before Elis­a­beth Sladen’s ill­ness. At the moment, we don’t know if they will air and if they do, what hap­pens next.