Doctor Who spinoffs have often had a rocky road, but it was during the Russell T Davies era where they found their best success with both Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures tying into Doctor Who and broadening the universe. I think the reason the Sarah Jane Adventures is the best spinoff is because of the broad nature of its appeal; It attracts modern fans because of the revitalisation of Sarah Jane and K9 after School Reunion, whilst also appealing to fans of the original series who have a long history and connection with the two characters. A spinoff like this had been attempted before with K9 and Company and hadn’t worked, and yet the Sarah Jane Adventures is a great success. It manages to completely rethink that concept from K9 and Company, and I’m going to have a look at how that happened.
It's not like Sarah Jane and K9 weren’t popular enough in the 1980s to have a successful spinoff. Sarah Jane was part of the golden era of Doctor Who in the Tom Baker years and was the most beloved companion and K9 became a core part of the identity of Doctor Who for a long while, so putting the two together on earth adventures did make a lot of sense. However, whilst Elisabeth Sladen is brilliant as always in K9 and Company and she works very well alongside John Leeson as K9, the story itself just isn’t up to scratch. It’s very poorly structured and incredibly isolated, and I struggle to think of what a second instalment in this series would look like. It does not set the status quo for the series up very well which I think was its ultimate failure.
Yet the spinoff had potential as shown many years later when Sarah Jane and K9 returned in the revived series of Doctor Who under Russell T Davies. School Reunion was a good idea for a story; not only in bringing the original and revived versions of Doctor Who together but tackling the idea of what happens to a companion after they leave the Tardis. Looking at how they adjust to life back on earth compellingly explored untapped territory for Doctor Who and made for an interesting story to tell. Elisabeth Sladen has a natural magic to her as a person and an actor and won over the hearts of another generation quite naturally, and the combination of Sarah Jane and K9 set up the potential of a spinoff very well. It was something that fans wanted to see and therefore made a great amount of sense to put together.
A lot of credit must go to Russell T Davies for coming up with the idea and putting the wheels in motion however he wrote very few episodes of the spinoff himself. It was Phil Ford, Gareth Roberts, and even Joseph Lidster who wrote many of the fan favourite episodes. Yet I would like to acknowledge the transphobic comments and beliefs of Gareth Roberts who was a core part of the series. His offensive and disgraceful behaviour since has made me lose all respect for him as a person and I do not support him.
When the Sarah Jane Adventures came about the key thing was that it knew its audience. It was primarily aimed at children and the new audience who had fallen in love with Sarah Jane from School Reunion. This made sense with Doctor Who being the parent show appealing to both children and adults, and Torchwood being aimed at a purely adult audience. The Sarah Jane Adventures focused on a child audience as it was aired on CBBC, and with the setup and premise of Sarah Jane and a bunch of schoolkids helping defend the earth from alien threats, the idea fits with the viewership with the kids being the surrogate audience characters looking up to Sarah Jane. Everything seems to align and fit together perfectly as all the components feel like they belong with one another. It’s a fittingly lighter version of Doctor Who and manages to work in a lot of hopeful and optimistic messages about growing up and dealing with life, mixed in with alien adventures in a rather organic way.
It can be a little cheesy and overly sentimental at times, but I am more forgiving of that given the audience it’s aimed at. Whilst it is a children’s series, it still treats children with a lot of intelligence and does not talk down to them. What I especially like about the Sarah Jane Adventures is that it grows up with the kids on screen, and with the audience in a fulfilling way. There is a dark scariness and bold complexity to the storytelling in Series 4 and 5 you wouldn’t have found in that first series. So long as you accept the fact that it’s a children’s show, then I think there is a great amount of enjoyment from the Sarah Jane Adventures as an adult; there are exciting and well-told stories which you can appreciate at any age, and it has a strong and wide appeal.
The Sarah Jane Adventures got the central pilot special with the Invasion of the Bane just right where K9 and Company had failed before, it does a perfect job of introducing all the central components of the show so you are excited to see where the series goes. The introduction of the Attic and Mr Smith, Maria as the companion character and Luke with the idea of Sarah Jane becoming a mother brings in exciting new elements which the audience is intrigued to see further developed.
What works about the Sarah Jane Adventures is the sense of magic from both Sarah Jane as a character and Bannerman Road as a setting. Her house has an automatic sense of adventure to it, and she has an intriguing sense of mystery to her. The Attic has a similar feeling to the Tardis as this gateway of magic and adventure and a peek into another world, which is exciting and feels like a cool place to hang out when you are watching it as a kid. Mr Smith is a properly good addition and device as this super-computer who helps Sarah Jane in her battles against alien threats. Alexander Armstrong has this calmness and rational nature to his voice that just fits a computer, he has a good presence and works well as a source of knowledge and information for Sarah Jane. The Attic, Mr Smith, and the amount of technology Sarah Jane has with the Sonic Lipstick and her watch which scans for alien activity gives her this effective sense of resources to battle with. It makes her feel capable and efficient at doing her job and a reliable pair of hands and raises her up to feel prepared and trustworthy in battling alien threats.
I mentioned before that Elisabeth Sladen has a certain magic to her as she has an indefinable quality where you are drawn to her. Sarah Jane has this natural strength, dominance, and a powerful leadership quality. Yet I think it was incredibly progressive not just to have a female-led children’s show, but led by an older and more mature woman which is still rare. Elisabeth Sladen is rightfully given a good amount of range and a strong chance to expand her role as Sarah Jane Smith.
Very few companions I think would have the chops to lead a show of their own, but Elisabeth Sladen just had that charisma and character about her to take it into her own hands, and the nature of the series surrounds her enthralling presence. I like seeing her take on the similar function of the Doctor in the parent show. You have the leadership role, but she also has a great mystery, magic, and sense of responsibility to her in the Sarah Jane Adventures. She has an isolated loneliness to her that makes her feel fittingly unusual, it gives her a compelling quality with an interesting sense of danger and yet there is a twinkle and magic to Sarah Jane that captures the attention of the audiance.
I think the loneliness of Sarah Jane gives her a strongly sympathetic quality. It’s compelling seeing how her travels with the Doctor have given her a difficulty in relating to people cutting herself off from other people and relationships because of her life with aliens. When we first meet Sarah Jane within that first series, in a similar way to when Hartnell and Eccleston’s Doctors are first introduced, Sarah Jane has a distant sense of coldness and a spikiness to her that makes her an interesting character. It makes sense for someone who has isolated themselves. Yet I like that through the influence of Maria, Luke and the rest of the Bannerman Road gang Sarah Jane slowly opens herself up to people and becomes this supportive maternal figure of reliable strength. I love seeing Sarah Jane slowly taking the group of kids under her wing and becoming more comfortable letting people into her life, it’s an effective piece of character development. She also has an affectionate and motherly quality in her relationships which adds a different dynamic to Doctor Who and freshens things up.
It's satisfying across Series 1 and really the entire series of the Sarah Jane Adventures to see Sarah Jane slowly step into the responsibility of a mother with Luke. It’s rewarding and you feel very happy for her that she has finally found someone she is devoted to and cares about emotionally. You can tell it’s difficult for her to let Luke go in the Nightmare Man which is the natural progression of that relationship.
Sarah Jane is my favourite Doctor Who companion and yet during her original run, character-centric stories weren’t much of a trend in television. Therefore, it made a great amount of sense to give Sarah Jane the stories she deserved in her own series and give her more personal stories to tell. The Trickster trilogy does good work fleshing out Sarah Jane’s life and childhood very well. Its the Temptation of Sarah Jane Smith I think that gives the character strong and challenging personal struggles with the difficulty of meeting her parents and dealing with the forbidden nature of changing history. It shows her rightly as a flawed character and unveils the fragile nature of her as a person with very powerful emotion.
Seeing Sarah Jane fall in love with Peter Dalton and then having to give him up is also strongly tragic but I think it's Goodbye Sarah Jane Smith that gets the best out of Elisabeth Sladen as an actor. Seeing Sarah Jane slowly getting older, becoming more ill, and feeling unfit, and incapable of leadership and responsibility is effectively harrowing and it deals with challenging themes regarding Sarah Jane's legacy rather well. It can be a difficult watch considering Sladen’s death less than a year after the story aired but it’s one of the best stories of the Sarah Jane Adventures.
By the end of the Sarah Jane Adventures, the show was as much about the gang as it was about Sarah Jane herself. The show properly explored each character and presented brilliant character-centric stories to be able to emotionally delve into each character effectively.
Maria played by Yasmin Paige is essentially the audience surrogate character in Series 1 you see everything through, and personally I prefer her to Rani later. Her naïve innocence but determination and inquisitive nature gives her a strong and relatable quality. I think best of all Maria has a story to tell struggling with her parent’s divorce and lacking a supportive mother in her life. Sarah Jane then fills that role and I enjoy the mother and daughter relationship of trust quite a bit. I think her Dad Alan Jackson is also a firmly likeable character and the consequences of him and his ex-wife Chrissie later on finding out about Maria’s adventures with Sarah Jane is handled very well.
Luke, played by Tommy Knight, is probably the most interesting character in the Sarah Jane Adventures and I like his insane intellect and scientific knowledge a lot. His arc during the first series of learning and picking up how the world works and learning social customs from the likes of Clyde is also rather good. I do think his character is the most poorly used out of the central gang as the strange nature of him isn't really fully explored. However, the Nightmare Man is my favourite story of the Sarah Jane Adventures, and it deals with his fears of growing up and moving on in an incredibly relatable way whilst mixing in a good scary story.
Clyde, played by Daniel Anthony, is my favourite character out of all of Sarah Jane’s companions. He functions as the joker and troublemaker of the pack, but he is given good character depth with his abandonment issues and is an effective contrast to the dynamic of both Luke and Rani and what they bring to the team. He also has some of the very best character-centric stories. The Mark of the Berserker and the Curse of Clyde Langer explore his character in unique ways, delving into his flaws, insecurities, and inner fears and doubts excellently.
Rani, played by Anji Mohindra, is presented as the replacement for Maria, but she fits into the team very well and presents a contrasting and refreshingly different character to Maria. I like her determined energy and sense of curiosity as she is always asking questions, and her open-minded nature as she is always looking to discover things. Her aspirations and desire to become a journalist means Sarah Jane is a good mentor to her, and her dynamic with Clyde is great as she does not take him seriously. I like that she can be very critical and challenges him on occasion, and also has a powerful sense of drive. The Mad Woman in the Attic is easily the best story for her, tackling the idea of her being Maria’s replacement and how she feels about that in a sincere and challenging way.
In Series 5 you do have the introduction of Sky, played by Sinead Michael, as Sarah Jane’s adopted daughter, but she didn’t last very long due to Elisabeth Sladen’s death. On the whole, whilst she has a good giddy energy, I felt the performance a little cringey to watch at times and she feels a little too young to be able to handle herself in dangerous situations. It just felt like the territory for her character had already been covered with Luke and like they were repeating past storylines, although she never really got a proper chance so I can’t fully judge her character.
The Sarah Jane Adventures is very much its own show, but it ties into Doctor Who really well. Seeing the Last Sontaran continue on from the Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky is a nice touch and makes for a fun story and a strong continuation across different shows. It's also nice to see the return of legacy characters within the show like the Brigadier and Jo Grant, and show how they have changed. I think the most fun though is the use of the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors played by David Tennant and Matt Smith. Seeing them as guest characters with Sarah Jane retaining the central role is rather special.
The reason the Sarah Jane Adventures stands out as the best spinoff for me is that it just fits into the Doctor Who universe. Elisabeth Sladen has an incredibly strong presence and leadership quality and she has an amazing group of companions by her side, and I enjoy the family dynamic between them a lot. The sense of adventure and character-centric stories make the series a joy to watch.
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