Sarah Jane Smith

Sarah Jane Smith is a fictional character played by Elisabeth Sladen in the long-running BBC television series Doctor Who and two of its televised spin-offs. Sarah Jane is a dogged investigative journalist who encounters the Doctor, an alien time traveller, and becomes his travelling companion on a series of adventures throughout space and time. After parting ways with the Doctor, she continues working as a journalist, uncovering sinister developments on Earth and defending the planet from alien invasions alongside her neighbours. She occasionally reunites with the Doctor during her own adventures. Sarah Jane was introduced in the 1973 Doctor Who serial The Time Warrior as a new companion of Jon Pertwee's Third Doctor; Sladen continued in the role after Tom Baker took over the lead role. After four seasons, she made her final regular appearance in The Hand of Fear (1976). Sladen reprised the role in the spin-off television pilot K-9 and Company (1981), the 20th-anniversary Doctor Who episode "The Five Doctors" (1983), the 30th-anniversary television special Dimensions in Time (1993) and the direct-to-video spin-off film Downtime (1995). Sladen also reprised the role in audio dramas, co-starring with Pertwee in the The Paradise of Death (1993) and The Ghosts of N-Space (1996), and starring in Big Finish Productions' licensed spin-off series Sarah Jane Smith (2002–2006). After Doctor Who's television revival in 2005, Sladen reprised the role in "School Reunion" (2006) opposite David Tennant's Tenth Doctor and made further guest appearances from 2008 to 2010. She also starred in a CBBC television spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–2011), which included guest appearances by the then-incumbent actors to play the Doctor, Tennant and Matt Smith. Due to Sladen's ill health, and her death in April 2011, production on the latter half of series 5 of The Sarah Jane Adventures was postponed...