The Passing of Sarah Jane Smith

I couldn’t bring myself to call this post “The Death of Sarah Jane Smith” as death is too final a word but I’m saddened to report that actress Elisabeth Sladen has passed away aged just 63 after her battle with cancer. “News at Ten” was muted when I glanced at the screen and recognised a clip from the First Series “The Sarah Jane Adventures” story “Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane Smith?”, where Sarah Jane and Maria are reunited in limbo land! I thought what on earth is this doing on the news and, in an instant, I realised. To say it took me by surprise is an understatement. “Doctor Who” actors have been dying at the rate of one a month but I didn’t expect the next one to be Elisabeth. Towards the end of last year, Graham Crowden was followed by Ingrid Pitt. At the start of this year we lost T P McKenna, who played Captain Cook in “The Greatest Show in the Galaxy”, and, after the news of Brigadier Nicholas Courtney in February, March saw the demise of “The Celestial Toymaker” Michael Gough. And now, here we are in April…

Elisabeth Sladen joined “Doctor Who” in 1973 for Jon Pertwee’s fifth and final season, in the story that also introduced the Sontarans, “The Time Warrior”. Before her first year was out, Sarah Jane saw off Daleks, dinosaurs and Ice Warriors only to watch in disbelief as the third Doctor regenerated into Tom Baker at the end of “Planet of the Spiders”. The DVD of Jon’s final regular adventure only went on sale the day before Elisabeth’s passing. A favourite image of Sarah Jane is the still featured on its cover, spider clinging to her back. She would stay with Tom for a further two-and-a-half years. One of the most memorable Sarah Jane moments came during Tom’s first year, during the seminal “Genesis of the Daleks”, when, fleeing her captors, she falls from scaffolding up which she is climbing and director David Maloney freezes her descent as the cliff-hanger! Breathtaking stuff - even if the resolution, at the start of the next episode, is a bit of a cheat. She was at her most gorgeous in “Planet of Evil” but then Elisabeth was always an extraordinarily good-looking woman.

It is often cited that Elisabeth Sladen’s Sarah Jane Smith broke the mould of “Doctor Who” companions in that she was no screaming bimbo but an investigative journalist with feminist tendencies. I’m not sure she did counteract the trend, even if that was the original intention, because there are certain requirements necessary of the sidekick in melodrama - to ask questions, get into trouble and scream in the face of danger! But Lis pulled off all of these with such great aplomb that her place in the folklore of “Doctor Who” is assured. She played other characters of course, appearing in Frank Spencer sitcom “Some Mothers do ’ave ’em” and semi-regularly in medical drama “Peak Practice”. A couple of years ago, she had the opportunity to act alongside her husband, Brian Miller, in “The Sarah Jane Adventures” Series Three story “The Mad Woman in the Attic”, one of my favourite instalments. Elisabeth also leaves behind her daughter Sadie. In the last interview I saw with her, She stated they were already filming Series Five of “The Sarah Jane Adventures” and one can only hope Elisabeth completed work on the next series and that it will air, as usual, towards the end of the year as a fitting tribute to her.

Remembering the Brigadier

Nicholas Courtney, aka Brigadier Alistair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart, is sadly no longer with us… at least in person. But he has left behind an immeasurable contribution to my favourite television series, “Doctor Who”, ensuring he will never be forgotten. It all started when director Douglas Camfield cast him as Bret Vyon, opposite first Doctor William Hartnell, in the epic twelve-part story “The Daleks’ Master Plan” in the mid-Sixties. Nick and Dougie clearly had a good working relationship because when the director was hired to oversee the reconstruction of the London Underground, for the Patrick Troughton adventure “The Web of Fear”, the actor was cast as Colonel Lethbridge-Stewart, ready to battle the Yeti in those dark, dank tunnels. A year-or-so later and Lethbridge-Stewart was back, this time promoted to Brigadier, in the eight-part Cyber-infestation “The Invasion”, engaging the silver giants down in the sewers of London and on the steps of St. Paul’s. It’s surprising the term Brigadier ever became a watchword in “Doctor Who” circles because the rank is actually a demotion from Colonel! Even more ironic is that Camfield was an ex-military man and could’ve had the error in the script corrected. But, in retrospect, maybe it’s just as well the mistake was left in because it gave birth to one of the series’ most-enduring and popular characters.

By the time the second Doctor regenerated into Jon Pertwee, and black-and-white pictures gave way to colour, Nick Courtney became a regular on “Doctor Who”. The year was now 1970. The Doctor has been banished to Earth to reluctantly work as scientific advisor to military outfit UNIT, the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce, tracking all manner of alien invasion in the style of “Quatermass”! In “Inferno”, just as Patrick Troughton had as Salamander in “The Enemy of the World”, Nicholas is given the opportunity to play an evil version of the Brigadier, the Brigade Leader, resplendent in Blofeld-style eye-patch, when the Doctor ends up on a parallel Earth. A year on sees Nick given one of his most memorable lines in “The Daemons”, “Chap with wings, five rounds rapid!” His time as a regular essentially came to an end when it was time for a new producer to be appointed. “Robot”, Tom Baker’s first story was Barry Letts’ last. New producer Philip Hinchcliffe naturally had new ideas and wanted to direct the series towards a gothic influence. Nick, however, would return occasionally, seeing off the Loch Ness Monster in “Terror of the Zygons”. By the time Peter Davison was the Doctor, Alistair was teaching maths at a boarding school for boys in “Mawdryn Undead”. The twentieth anniversary adventure, “The Five Doctors”, gave the character another of those immortal lines, describing the Doctor as a “marvellous chap, all of them!”

In the final series of classic “Doctor Who”, Alistair Gordon is now retired and married to Doris, played in episodes one and four of “Battlefield” by the lovely Angela Douglas. It was rumoured, at the time, that the Brigadier was to be killed off but, luckily, has a last minute reprieve against the Destroyer. The story includes a poignantly reverberating scene where seventh Doctor Sylvester McCoy cradles his friend’s head in his hands, believing him to be dead, and calls him a “thick-headed numbskull”. The only Doctor Nick hadn’t acted with by the end of the Eighties was the sixth, Colin Baker. Producer John Nathan-Turner corrected this omission, after the show’s cancellation, with the 1993 “Children in Need” Special “Dimensions in Time”. This wasn’t to be the last appearance of the character on television. A few years ago, the Brig resurfaced aiding-and-abetting Miss Smith in the Season Two finale of “The Sarah Jane Adventures”. This story has become his swansong. Former Doctor Tom Baker remembered Nicholas Courtney as “a wonderful companion” with “a marvellous resonant voice”. Quite a legacy and to paraphrase a line from the aforementioned “Battlefield”, Nick just did the best he could!