Race For Life

Taken from Sandy Knight's Race for life page here. Please give anything you can in memory of Elisabeth Sladen.

"Following Lis Sladens premature death from Cancer this week, we, the ladies of Tommy Knight's immediate family have decided to participate in this years Race for Life in her memory, and in support of Tom's feelings over it all.

Please give anything you can, so that in her untimely passing, Lis may still help others beat this awful disease.

Events like Race for Life are vital in funding Cancer Research UK’s life-saving work into preventing, diagnosing and treating cancer. By sponsoring us now you can help more people survive cancer..

Gift Aid it!.

If you are a UK taxpayer, please remember to tick the Gift Aid box when donating as this will increase your donation by at least 25% at no cost to you..

Every pound you donate really does make a difference – so please sponsor us now!.

Together we will beat cancer.

Thanking everyone who helps,

Sandy, Hanna, Emily, and Guinevere xx"

Good luck girls! I hope you reach your target.

It's Competition Time!

As those of you who follow us on Twitter will know, Sarah-Jane.tv will be redesigning the website over the next couple of months. We will be sad to see the old design go, but as they say, out with the old and in with the new.

In an attempt to get fans of the blog more involved with the site, we have decided that you will be given the chance to design the new Sarah-Jane.tv logo that will appear on our brand new banner!

So here is your chance to get in on the action and leave your mark with us. The competition is open to everyone, all ages, any skills. If you're good at graphic designing, why not jump on to Photoshop and get stuck in? If not, we will be happy to receive hand drawn logos and work with you to digitalise your design. Your design must include the words “Sarah-Jane.tv” but the rest is up to you. It can be any size, any shape, any form. You can design the whole banner, or just the logo - it is entirely up to you.

But if that's not enough for you, the winner of the competition will receive a Classic Who box set, Doctor Who: The BBC Radio Episodes, worth £48 courtesy of BBC Audio Go.

The competition will run until 29^th May and will be judged by Joe Lidster, author of The Sarah Jane Adventures “The Nightmare Man” and “Mark of the Berserker.”

You can send your designs to us at kirstyjay12@hotmail.com along with your name and contact email address. The winner will be contacted via email at the end of May. You are allowed to submit as many designs as you like to us, so let your creativity flow.

Good luck! We look forward to seeing what you come up with.

Doctor Who Magazine Holiday Special 1992

I looked at my collection today and I forgot all about this beautiful magazine from 1992. It's packed full of some gorgeous photos and wonderful writing and I thought I would share a comic by SJA's script editor and author, Gary Russell. The scans are quite big, so apologies for that. You can double click on them to make them bigger so it's easier to read them. Enjoy!

The Undiscovered Country

Like everybody, I was completely shocked and a great deal shaken by the news of Elisabeth Sladen's passing last week. Through Doctor Who she's been a part of my life for as long as I can remember; and it's hard imagining a world without her.

Through Doctor Who and the SJA she's always been there. It's no secret that Sarah Jane Smith is my all time favourite companion. I doubt that will ever change. She's such a fantastic character, fleshed out magnificently by Sladen in what I believe to be some of the very best adventures of Doctor Who's initial 26 year run.

When it was announced she would be returning to the series, 30 years after she originally left, I was over the moon. Forget the return of the Cybermen that same year, or rumours of an all out Dalek-Cyberman war during the season finale, it was that little moment in episode three, "School Reunion" that had me most excited of all. Sarah Jane! Back on my telly! In proper Doctor Who.

I cried, you know, during those closing moments of "School Reunion". Not just because those closing scenes outside the TARDIS between Sladen and David Tennant were so brilliantly written, but because, in my gut, I feared that was it: The end of Sarah Jane Smith. The character walked off into the sunset with K9 and I feared we'd never see her again - and it broke my heart.

I needn't have worried. Rumours soon started (and with them, so did this blog) that Sarah Jane was coming back. First, maybe, in Torchwood. Then... Sarah Jane Investigates! Months later, the name was changed, but the spin-off arrived on a New Years Eve afternoon over on BBC One. It was rather good, wasn't it?

In a world where children's television is vanishing fast, thanks in part to television executives who don't understand its importance, The Sarah Jane Adventures is such an important (and iconic) series for its channel, and audience. It's not easy getting intelligent programming onto your children's TV screens. Think yourselves lucky. We've had 4 series worth of absolutely fantastic drama-adventure. No dumbing down, or filmed cheap as chips lowest common denominator.

A lot of people are worried that series 5 won't be broadcast. Don't be. Russell T Davies knows, as does Sladen's family, how much the world loves Sarah Jane Smith. Be patient, and your patience shall be rewarded.

As for what comes next... Some fans want to see the series mark the death of Sarah Jane Smith. I feel this is fundermentally the wrong thing to do. Not because children can't cope with or understand the death of the character (they are intelligent enough to do both) but because... well, it isn't fair. Consider this: the character has been handled by three very different production teams (Barry Letts/Terrance Dicks, Philip Hinchcliffe/Robert Holmes, and Russell T Davies) - is it fair that any one person therefore decides the ultimate fate of the character?

Here's what I think should happen: End the series with the episodes already shot. Have Sarah Jane look up to the sky one last time, surrounded by her children, giving one last fantasticly beautiful speech. Roll credits.

The open-ended conclusion then allows fans to take control of her destiny. You're free to imagine what comes next. Maybe she dies the very next week in a heroic battle against any race of evil. Maybe she continues to live a fantastic life, and dies in bed an old lady in her 90s surrounded by family, friends, and a certain Time Lord. Or perhaps, maybe, she simply lives forever - Sarah Jane Smith immortal, and undefeated.

I quite like the idea of that last one, myself.

Whatever, CBBC's Barney Harwood is right: We should celebrate what a person did, instead of being upset about what a person didn't do. Celebrate Elisabeth Sladen. Buy the DVDs of her classic Doctor Who adventures, or tune into the SJA whenever they're on. Keep those posters of her up on your wall, or on your desktop. Write on the forums, and visit sites like this. Keep the memory going - but most important of all, do it with a smile on your face.

The ultimate tribute to Elisabeth Sladen, then. She isn't gone - and she never will be.

Thanks for reading.

My Sarah Jane: A Tribute to Elisabeth Sladen from CBBC

Those outside of the UK who are unable to play BBC iplayer can see the tribute here from Blogtor Who.

Sarah-Jane.tv's Twitter

Follow us here on Twitter, we would very much appreciate your views on what you would like to happen to the blog.

"Don't Forget Me" A Tribute To Elisabeth Sladen

Elisabeth Sladen came flying on to our screens in 1973 as that plucky young journalist, Sarah Jane Smith, and has been the nations favourite companion ever since.

From the moment she passed herself off as her aunt in UNIT with Jon Pertwee, to the moment she said “Don't forget me” to the fourth Doctor, Tom Baker, Sarah Jane Smith was adored.

It is with great sadness that we say goodbye to Elisabeth Sladen, but she will live on in the hearts of Classic Who fans and a whole new generation of fans that she touched the lives of.

“The universe was lucky to have Sarah Jane Smith; the world was lucky to have Lis" said Russell T Davies, creator of The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Lis was born in 1948 and attended drama school at the Liverpool Playhouse repertory company as an assistant stage manager. However, she really wanted to get in to acting but because she was such a good stage manager, she never managed to land herself any roles. She began deliberately doing things wrong so she would be given more acting, but her first appearance as a corpse got her in to trouble thanks to Brian Miller [now her husband] due to the fact that she giggled when he whispered "Respiration nil, Aston Villa two.”

Lis's first major role came in 1970 when she appeared in Coronation Street as a barmaid for six episodes, followed by Z-Cars in 1971. She continued to make guest star appearances right up until 1973 when she landed herself the role of Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who when Rod Craddock, producer of Z-Cars, gave her an enthusiastic recommendation.

It is safe to say that I fell in love with her from her very first Doctor Who episode, Time Warrior, and she continues to be “my companion.” Many Classic Who fans will have grown up with Sarah Jane and Tom Baker, and I can recall my mum telling me about how she would hide behind the sofa every time she heard the Doctor Who music, but squeal when our heroine saved the day.

Elisabeth Sladen and Ian Marter in Doctor Who

Sarah Jane was everything a good Doctor Who companion should be. She was clever, brave, outspoken, plucky and never did what the Doctor told her to do.

When Lis left the series in the 1976 episode, The Hand of Fear, it made front page news, where previously only a change of Doctors had received such attention. I am sure there were many a fan to shed a tear for her when she clutched her suitcase and little owl and left the Tardis.

After Sarah Jane's departure, Sladen's career was quiet for a while as she took on many minor roles. She went in to presenting, and finally took a starring role in Barry Letts' Gulliver in Lilliput.

Sarah Jane eventually came crashing back on to our screens in 1981 when she reprised her role of Sarah Jane in K9 and Company: A girl's best friend.

After K9 and Company, Sarah Jane never really went away. Lis appeared in Doctor Who's 20^th Anniversary special, The Five Doctors, a Children in Need special Dimensions in Time and finally starred in Downtime, an independently produced video in 1995 alongside Nicholas Courtney and Deborah Watling.

Nicholas Courtney and Elisabeth Sladen; Downtime

Lis starred in several audio plays over the years, two of them were produced for BBC Radio, The Paradise of Death (Radio 5, 1993), and The Ghosts of N-Space (Radio 2, 1996), together with Jon Pertwee and Nicholas Courtney.

Possibly my favourite part of Sarah Jane came from Big Finish Productions, who produced two series of Sarah Jane Smith audio adventures set in the present day, released in 2002 and 2006. Her daughter Sadie has also appeared in the audios, playing Natalie Redfern. However, the canon of these audio books is something of a debate among fans due to Sarah Jane's next television appearance in 2006.

Lis was able to show a more “adult” side to Sarah Jane that hadn't been shown on Doctor Who before. She brought Sarah back to life and had me laughing and crying with her, which just goes to show what a fantastic actress she was as she did not rely on the screen to portray her characters.

Photo by Jason Haigh-Ellery. Actor Jez Fielder, known as Jeremy James with Sadie Miller and Elisabeth Sladen

In 2006 something marvellous happened that would shape the rest of Sladen's career. Russell T Davies brought back Doctor Who in 2005 and if that wasn't enough for fans, he asked Lis to appear in a “New Who” episode. “All the years she was off screen she did the most terrific job of defending Sarah Jane and never letting her reputation be besmirched by any sort of merchandise or stuff like that” said Russell. At first Lis was reluctant to bring Sarah Jane back as she had her own ideas about the character. However, when she first read Russell's script for School Reunion, she absolutely adored it and knew that was exactly how Sarah Jane would be. She starred alongside the 10^th Doctor and Rose Tyler and brought back the rusty but faithful K9. The nation fell in love with Sarah Jane all over again.

"I just can't believe that Lis is gone. She seemed invincible. The same woman who enchanted my childhood, enchanted my time on Doctor Who and enchanted generations who have watched her and fallen in love with her - just like I did. I feel very honoured to have shared a Tardis with Sarah Jane Smith, and I feel very lucky to have shared some time with Lis Sladen. She was extraordinary” said David Tennant, remembering his wonderful time with Elisabeth Sladen.

Billie Piper, David Tennant and Elisabeth Sladen in School Reunion.

Probably the most important thing about Sladen's late career was The Sarah Jane Adventures, without it, this blog wouldn't even exist. We owe a lot to Russell T Davies and Elisabeth Sladen for bringing us such a wonderful TV show that could be enjoyed by the younger audience, as well as us old school die hard fans.

The Sarah Jane Adventures aired in January 1^st 2007 for the pilot episode of Invasion of the Bane and since then has spanned four series with a cast of spectacular actors, lead by a woman whose life we will never forget.

Perhaps the greatest tribute to Lis's craft is that she will be so sorely missed by so many. Her passing is front page news even in a week of Political and Royal headlines.

When Sarah Jane first left the Doctor she pleaded with him not to forget her, and thanks to the superb performance of Elisabeth Sladen, we never will.

Note: The new Doctor Who episode this Saturday will be dedicated to Elisabeth sladen and there will also be a 15-minute programme 'My Sarah Jane: A Tribute to Elisabeth Sladen' at 18:45 on CBBC on Saturday, after Doctor Who.

A Tear, Sarah Jane?

I am sorry to be the one to break the news to you all as devoted Sarah Jane fans, I have just been informed of some very distressing news.

Actress and star of Doctor Who & The Sarah Jane Adventures, Elisabeth Sladen, has passed away following a battle with Cancer, aged 63.

All of us here at SJ.tv extend our thoughts and condolences go to her husband, Brian and daughter Sadie, as well as all of us whom she touched in her life, whether in person or simply through performance.

A further tribute will be prepared when the shock of her loss has passed.