Posted in: BBC, Doctor Who, TV | Tagged: doctor who, elizabeth sladen, jon pertwee, sarah jane smith, tom baker

Doctor Who: A Celebration of Sarah Jane Smith, Our MVP Companion

Elizabeth Sladen made Sarah Jane Smith the quintessential Doctor Who companion and her appearances reflected the series' evolution.

While we're waiting for more news about the next season of Doctor Who, the BBC brought out another video of Sarah Jane Smith (Elizabeth Sladen), the Best Companion. She wasn't the first companion, but she's become the quintessential companion, the template from which every companion after her is drawn with variations. She's also the companion in canon, ie the TV series, who has met the most Doctors of them all.

Doctor Who: The 1970s Were Both Good and Bad Times for Sarah Jane

Sarah Jane's appearances on Doctor Who are like a prism for the continued evolution of the series. When she first blagged her way into a story and her first meeting with The Third Doctor (Jon Pertwee), she was touted as a "feminist," an independent career woman who has to fight the sexism of the men she met, including the Doctor's. That's right, even the Doctor in the early 1970s was a sexist jerk who condescended to his companion all the time. You can try to retcon it in your headcanon by saying he was testing her, but all the time? No, The Third Doctor was a sexist jerk, and so were the writers at the time.

By the time the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) came along, their relationship was on an equal footing; though The Doctor still messed with her a lot, it was more of a brother and sister vibe now because Baker and Sladen were closer in age. Her air of mischief made her a better foil for the Baker's prickly childishness more than Pertwee's patrician condescension. The writing didn't always do her many favors since it often relegated her to damsel-in-distress status, and she sure got mind-controlled by the baddies a lot. It was said that the original plan for her exit was for her to die in The Doctor's arms when she was shot by aliens in the middle of a war. That story was scrapped for various reasons, probably budgetary, and her final story was "The Hand of Fear" instead. The scene where The Doctor and Sarah Jane parted ways was said to have been written by Baker and Sladen and is considered one of the classics by fans.

The 1980s and Beyond

Sarah Jane appeared in the 1984 crossover special "The Five Doctors" without missing a beat and in the pilot K-9 and Company, where she and a new K-9 investigated mysteries together. Being a journalist made her the perfect character for generating Science Fiction stories. When the series was canceled in 1989, Sarah Jane appeared in several unofficial non-canon spinoffs and some of the spinoff audio dramas where she and other former companions encountered old baddies and monsters from the series.

Russell T. Davies' 2005 revival of the series also brought back Sarah Jane because she was always the fan's favorite companion, and to give her closure from their parting. Her appearance on the show was so popular that Davies created her spinoff series The Sarah Jane Adventures, where she worked with K-9, her adopted alien son, two kids, and a supercomputer named Mr. Smith to battle alien baddies. She reunited with the 10th Doctor again (David Tennant) and even met both the Third Doctor's companion Jo Grant (Katy Manning) and the 11th Doctor (Matt Smith). Doing right by Sarah Jane and Sladen was the start of Davies' campaign to rehabilitate past companions who were treated badly by the show and its writers. She was no longer the damsel in distress, asking what was going on. She was the leader, the mother, and the teacher now.

Elizabeth Sladen passed away in 2011, which put an end to any more appearances by Sarah Jane on TV. There was even a short story written during the COVID Lockdown, which served as an epilogue to The Sarah Jane Adventures. Sarah Jane's legacy lives on, with Rani continuing to investigate alien invasions and appearing in other spinoff audio dramas. Sladen's daughter Sadie Miller now plays Sarah Jane in the new Big Finish audio dramas set during the Fourth Doctor's era. Sarah Jane forever.

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