Sarah Jane Smith and the eleventh Doctor

Sarah Jane Smith was a companion without compare, following Jo Grant’s departure to marry a long haired hippy in The Green Death, she joined the third Doctor on his adventures in the 1973 serial The Time Warrior and then – post regeneration – the fourth Doctor, before finally parting company in 1976′s The Hand of Fear.

During that time she met Sontarans, Daleks, Cybermen, even Davros himself.

Although only in the show – initially at least – for three years, she became popular with the fans and it is this popularity that lead to her later appearances.

She first returned to the role in a pilot for K-9 And Company which although unsuccessful at the time would be reborn decades later in a much more successful format.

Her proper return to Doctor Who though, took place in 1983′s The Five Doctors, where she joined a number of other companions and the first five Doctors in playing the deadly Game Of Rassilon.

This wasn’t the end for Sarah Jane Smith though, it would be a while before she would return again to the role of Sarah Jane Smith but when she did it was explosive.

Riding high on the success of his rejuvenation of Doctor Who and its popularity with a new generation of kids, Russell T Davies brought back Sarah Jane – still an investigative journalist – in the tenth Doctor’s 2006 adventure School Reunion. It was this reintroduction of Sarah Jane that lead to the best kid’s science fiction show ever; The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Elisabeth Sladen played Sarah Jane with conviction and sincerity, without her the character wouldn’t have been as strong and believable. She will be greatly missed.

Karen Gillan: lover of anagrams.

It would appear that the new Doctor Who production team loves anagrams as much as Russell T Davies.

Shit.

BUt we here you ask, how do we know this information? From whence did the revelation come?

Well, blame The Guardian – which it seems is the hot place for Doctor Who info these days – they’ve got an interview with Karen Gillan and in it she describes the audition process and her recall, which is where the anagram nonsense comes to light.

Young Ms Gillan comes clean and reveals just how auditioning for Doctor Who works.

Then I got the recall, the second audition. That was when I started sweating. This huge thing. And it was so secretive I couldn’t even tell BBC reception where I was going, had to pretend it was for something called Panic Moon, which is an anagram of companion.

Panic Moon? Jesus.

Let’s hope it’s just for the audition process and they abandon it in the show, huh?

Still at least a bit of hope comes from the fact that young Gillan admits that she’s not a huge follower of Doctor Who. This can only be a good thing after all who wants her trying to be all cow-eyed like Billie Piper or dim and shouty like Catherine Tate?

As odd as it sounds – coming from us at least – there were a few incidents that reminded us of classic Who and offered a glimmer of hope that things might have gotten better.

They were few and far between but it’s only fair that we list them. This shouldn’t take too long…

Dalek – The Doctor Gets Scared
This was genius! The reintroduction of the Daleks in series one of new Who, needed to tick so many boxes that it was always going to be difficult.

The job of introducing them to a new, younger audience was never going to be straightforward, things have moved on since the sixties. The Daleks seemingly hadn’t though, their design remained resolutely the same as always. Lights on the head, an eye stalk and plungers and egg whisks for weapons.

It was going to be tricky conveying the menace and power a Dalek held, when they still looked like this.

Unchanged in nearly fifty years.

So with an unchanged design what was needed was a bit of the old acting! Which is what Christopher Eccleston gave us. In spades!

Not so cocky now are we?

Thanks to Eccleston’s mad, scrambling fear at coming face to face with just one Dalek, the kids – who, this was all new to remember – were going to be under no illusions; Daleks are evil!

Blink – Easter Eggs!

Brainy specs on!

Everybody loves Blink. Everybody. Ask them their reasons for loving it and we’ve no doubt they’ll say it’s the Weeping Angels.

Now as good a villain as they are, they’re not the reason it rocks so hard. No, it’s the easter eggs that solidify this storyline.

Those easter eggs are so neatly tied together and underpin the episode so well, that – as mad as it might sound – you often don’t really notice their criticality to the plot furthermore, in taking the retrospective lacing of hidden extras into a DVD as a starting point, Moffat managed to subtly introduce the Novikov self-consistency principle into Doctor Who. Good lad!

This girl could go far.

Another reason for the success of Blink is Sally Sparrow (played by Carey Mulligan), she more than makes up for the absence of the Doctor and thanks to her it never feels like we’re being short changed.

You see the reason why the Doctor and Martha appear in it so infrequently is that, in order to save the pennies, this episode was filmed simultaneously with the episode Human Nature. Cutting costs on a flagship show? It could only be the BBC!

Blink won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form and Carey Mulligan received the Constellation Award for Best Female Performance in a 2007 Science Fiction Television Episode. Both awards were thoroughly deserved.

The Doctor’s Daughter – The Seven Day War
Now this was very neat, very neat indeed. Two warring factions engaged in a never ending struggle that neither side can remember the reason for.

The two sides have been going at it for generations and it’s only thanks to Donna’s mathematical genius – which also enabled her to pick up the Dewey Decimal system in two days, ho hum – that the Doctor works out exactly what’s been going on.

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You see this never ending, ever lasting war has in reality – thanks to cloning and accelerated growth – has only been going on for seven days. Brilliant!

Silence In The Library – River Song, Echoes Of The Future
This is River Song, by all accounts you’ll be seeing more of her.

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That little book she’s reading from? That’s her diary, a diary that looks more than a little like the TARDIS. Here’s a closer peek.

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You see the implication here is that River Song has already met the Doctor, although as the Doctor can’t remember this having happened we can only assume that she’s met a future regeneration. How cool is that?

It’s a lovely little twist and we must admit that we’re amazed it hadn’t happened sooner.

Rise Of The Cybermen – Rose Tyler (In A Maid’s Outfit)
Phwoar! We know it’s bringing the tone down but come on. This is fantastic stuff, Rose, dressed like a maid! Knick-knack-noo!

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Let’s leave it there shall we?