Sarah Jane Smith

Sarah Jane Smith
Doctor Who character
Sarah Jane Smith in "School Reunion", her return episode of Doctor Who (2006)
First appearance	The Time Warrior (1973)
Last appearance	The Man Who Never Was (2011)
Portrayed by	Elisabeth Sladen
Shared universe appearances	K-9 and Company (1981) Downtime (1995) The Sarah Jane Adventures (2007–2011)
Non-canonical appearances	Dimensions in Time (1993)
Duration	1973–1976, 1981, 1983, 1993, 1995, 2006–2011
In-universe information
Species	Human
Affiliation	Third Doctor Fourth Doctor Tenth Doctor Eleventh Doctor K9 UNIT
Family	Luke Smith (adoptive son) Sky Smith (adoptive daughter)
Home era	20th and 21st centuries

Sarah Jane Smith is a fictional character played by Elisabeth Sladen in the long-running BBC Television science fiction series Doctor Who and two of its spin-offs. Sarah Jane is a dogged investigative journalist who first encounters alien time traveller the Doctor while trying to break a story on a top secret research facility, and subsequently becomes his travelling companion on a series of adventures spanning the breadth of space and time. After travelling with The Doctor in four seasons of the show they suddenly part ways, and after this she continues to investigate strange goings-on back on Earth. Over time, Sarah Jane establishes herself as a committed defender of Earth from alien invasions and other threats, occasionally reuniting with The Doctor in the course of her own adventures, all the while continuing to work as a freelance investigative journalist.

Sarah Jane is one of the Doctor's longest-serving companions, co-starring in 18 stories (80 episodes) with the third and fourth incarnations of the Doctor, on the programme from 1973 to 1976 (seasons 11 – 14). She and robotic dog K9 appear in the 1981 television pilot K-9 and Company. She returned in the 20th-anniversary Fifth Doctor story "The Five Doctors" (1983) and the 30th-anniversary story Dimensions in Time (1993), then co-starred in two BBC radio serials with the Third Doctor (The Paradise of Death and The Ghosts of N-Space), and starred in a series of spin-off audio dramas entitled Sarah Jane Smith for independent production company Big Finish. After the television revival of Doctor Who in 2005, she appears in several episodes with the Tenth Doctor, and as the central character of her own series The Sarah Jane Adventures from 2007 to 2011, which included appearances by both the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors.

In April 2020, former Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies released an epilogue to Sarah Jane's story on the anniversary of Sladen's death, detailing various characters attending Sarah's funeral.^[1]