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 part. 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. Because of 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 and later cancelled. The webisode special "Farewell, Sarah Jane" (2020), written by the former Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies, established the character's death. Since 2021, Sladen's daughter Sadie Miller has voiced the character in Big Finish's audio dramas.
Sarah Jane is consistently ranked among the most popular Doctor Who companions. Often described as the first feminist companion, Sladen was praised by critics for bringing more depth to the role than had been seen on the series. The Doctor Who writer Toby Whithouse credited the character for redefining the role of the companion "from being a rather helpless hysteric to being a feisty, opinionated, strong equal to the Doctor". Sarah Jane is also one of the Doctor's longest-serving companions.
Appearances Television 1973–1976, 1981, 1983; introduction and classic run
Sarah Jane first appears in the Third Doctor serial The Time Warrior (1973–74), where she has managed to infiltrate a top secret research facility by posing as her aunt, Lavinia Smith, a famous virologist. Introduced as an ardent feminist, Sarah Jane sneaks aboard the TARDIS and becomes embroiled in a battle against a militaristic alien Sontaran in the Middle Ages who is kidnapping scientists from the present day. Subsequently, she accompanies The Doctor (Jon Pertwee) on several journeys in the TARDIS, and she also assists the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce led by Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) on a number of occasions. After Pertwee's departure, Sladen remains following Season 11 finale Planet of the Spiders (1974), in which The Doctor regenerates into the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker). In season 12's consecutive 1975 serials The Sontaran Experiment, Genesis of the Daleks and Revenge of the Cybermen, Sarah and male companion Harry Sullivan (Ian Marter) face the series' three iconic recurring creatures, the Sontarans, the Daleks and the Cybermen. In Genesis Sarah is present at the creation of the Daleks and meets their creator, Davros (Michael Wisher). Sarah Jane departs in the Season 14 serial The Hand of Fear (1976) after The Doctor receives a summons to his home planet, Gallifrey. Sladen has described Sarah as "a bit of a cardboard cut-out. Each week it used to be, 'Yes Doctor, no Doctor'..."
Sladen declined an offer to return as Sarah Jane for Baker's final story, Logopolis (1981), and the following season. However, she agreed to reprise the role in a pilot episode for an Earth-based spin-off series, K-9 and Company, later in 1981. In the pilot episode, titled "A Girl's Best Friend", Sarah Jane receives the robot dog K9 Mark III (John Leeson) as a Christmas present from The Doctor. The pilot did not lead to a series, but the character reappeared in Doctor Who for the 1983 twentieth anniversary story "The Five Doctors", in which she is transported to Gallifrey by Lord President Borusa (Philip Latham) to take part in the Game of Rassilon in The Death Zone devised by Time Lord founder Rassilon (Richard Mathews). Here, Sarah is reunited with the Third Doctor, and also meets the First, Second and Fifth. "The Five Doctors" shows that Sarah Jane still owns and is working with K9. The character made an appearance in the 1993 Children in Need special (a crossover with long-running British soap EastEnders), Dimensions in Time, wherein various Doctors and companions are teleported to Albert Square as part of a plot by the Rani (Kate O'Mara). Though Sladen would not make any more official Doctor Who television appearances until 2006, in the interval the actress reprised her role as Sarah Jane twice on BBC radio with Jon Pertwee, and in a series of Big Finish audio dramas, and in the unofficial direct-to-video spin-off film Downtime (1995) alongside the Brigadier, Second Doctor companion Victoria Waterfield (Deborah Watling) and Leeson in a rare on-screen role.
2006–2011, 2020, 2023, 2024; revived series and spin-off Following Russell T Davies' 2005 Doctor Who revival, Sladen returned to the show in the Series 2 episode "School Reunion" (2006). "School Reunion" revisits Sarah Jane, still working alongside K9 since "The Five Doctors", when she encounters the Tenth Doctor (David Tennant) while they both investigate mysterious goings on at a school run by Headmaster Finch (Anthony Head). Exposition in the episode reveals that, having waited years for The Doctor to return to her, Sarah Jane assumed he had died, though later came to suspect his involvement when witnessing the alien spaceship above London in Doctor Who Christmas special "The Christmas Invasion". On meeting Sarah Jane, current companion Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) reflects on her future after The Doctor. Though K9 Mark III still assists Sarah Jane, he has fallen into disrepair; after K9 Mark III sacrifices himself to save Sarah Jane and The Doctor, The Doctor leaves Sarah Jane a new K9 model, K9 Mark IV, and takes her advice by inviting Rose's boyfriend Mickey Smith (Noel Clarke) aboard the TARDIS as his second companion. The success of "School Reunion" led to the development of The Sarah Jane Adventures, starring Sladen as Sarah Jane, produced by BBC Wales for CBBC.
In The Sarah Jane Adventures, Sarah Jane investigates alien activity covertly from her manor house in Bannerman Road in Ealing, driving an emerald green Nissan Figaro and with the help of her sentient supercomputer Mr Smith (voice of comedian Alexander Armstrong), as well as an alien activity scanner and sonic lipstick device. In the special premiere episode "Invasion of the Bane" (2007), Sarah Jane adopts a son: Bane creation, genetic archetype and boy genius Luke Smith (Tommy Knight), and befriends her neighbour Maria Jackson (Yasmin Paige) during her investigation of Bane leader Mrs Wormwood (Samantha Bond). Sarah Jane remarks that since meeting them she is no longer content to live alone; she discloses she never married after parting from the Fourth Doctor, to whom no one could ever compare. Sometime between "School Reunion" and "Invasion of the Bane", K9 has left Sarah Jane to close off a black hole, occasionally passing close enough to contact her; due to the concurrent development of the K-9 television series, to which creator Bob Baker owns the rights, K9 only appears in two episodes of the first series. In the first series, Sarah Jane learns how to be a mother to Luke, the while strengthening her friendship with teenage neighbour Maria, the person Sarah Jane "trusts the most". Along with Luke and his friend Clyde Langer (Daniel Anthony) they defeat and repel various threats to the contemporary Earth. Among these threats, series one introduces The Trickster (Paul Marc Davis), a cosmic being who makes alterations to the timeline to cause chaos and destruction; he becomes a recurring adversary for Sarah Jane. Sarah Jane finds a new enemy in the Slitheen, a family of criminal aliens originally seen in Doctor Who, and an ally in alien research scientist Professor Rivers (Floella Benjamin). Time travel scenes also depict 13-year-old Sarah Jane (Jessica Ashworth), for whom the death of her best friend Andrea Yates (Jane Asher) gave Sarah Jane her resolve to fight against loss of life.
Sarah Jane then reappears in Doctor Who in the two-part fourth series finale episodes "The Stolen Earth" and "Journey's End" (2008), which crosses over from Torchwood and The Sarah Jane Adventures. When Daleks invade Earth, Sarah Jane is summoned along with UNIT officer Martha Jones (Freema Agyeman) and Torchwood leader Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) by former PM Harriet Jones (Penelope Wilton) to help The Doctor save the universe. On the Dalek ship Davros (Julian Bleach) recognises Sarah Jane from their encounter in the classic series' episode Genesis of the Daleks. In The Sarah Jane Adventures second series (2008), Maria moves away to America in The Last Sontaran, and Sarah Jane befriends new neighbour Rani Chandra (Anjli Mohindra) in The Day of the Clown; the same episode features flashbacks to Sarah Jane's (Jessica Mogridge) childhood in her Aunt Lavinia's home. In The Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith, Sarah Jane saves the lives of her parents, Eddie (Christopher Pizzey) and Barbara (Rosanna Lavelle) in 1951; by doing so she plays into The Trickster's hands, creating a post-apocalyptic alternative universe in the present day. Learning of this however, her parents choose to die, becoming heroes to restore the timeline. In series two finale Enemy of the Bane, Sarah Jane's old friend Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart (Nicholas Courtney) from UNIT assists her against united adversaries Mrs Wormwood and Sontaran Commander Kaagh (Anthony O'Donnell). Sarah Jane feels threatened on a personal level by Mrs Wormwood's claim to be Luke's mother as his creator. Sladen has relatively scarce screen-time in "Sarah Jane-lite" serial The Mark of the Berserker due to back-to-back filming. Though K9 makes no appearances in series two, he appears to assist Sarah Jane against Ambassador Ranius (Ronnie Corbett) in a mini-episode for Comic Relief (2009).