The Sarah Jane Adventures - Background and Development

Background and Development

In 2006, Children's BBC expressed an interest in producing a Doctor Who spin-off. Their initial idea was "a drama based on the idea of a young Doctor Who", but Russell T Davies vetoed this. "Somehow, the idea of a fourteen-year-old Doctor, on Gallifrey inventing sonic screwdrivers, takes away from the mystery and intrigue of who he is and where he came from," said Davies. He suggested instead a series based on the Doctor's former companion Sarah Jane Smith.

The character of Sarah Jane Smith, played by Sladen, appeared in Doctor Who from 1973 to 1976, alongside Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor and later Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. A pilot episode for another Doctor Who spin-off series, K-9 and Company, made in 1981, featured Sarah Jane and the robot dog K-9; however, a full series was never commissioned. Sarah Jane and K-9 returned to Doctor Who in various media many times over the years, most notably in the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors (1983), and in episodes "School Reunion" (2006), "The Stolen Earth" (2008), "Journey's End" (2008) and The End of Time (2010).

Sarah Jane is frequently voted the most popular Doctor Who companion by both Doctor Who fans and members of the general public. The prospect of a new television series focusing on Sarah Jane was first rumoured in The Sun in March 2006, prior to the airing of "School Reunion"; the report at that time suggested that Sarah Jane and K-9 would both appear in the series. The fact that a Sarah Jane series was being developed was first confirmed in the BBC's in-house newsletter, Ariel, in early August 2006. These early rumours were associated with the working title Sarah Jane Investigates.

K-9's only appearances in the show's first two series were a cameo in the special and an appearance in the last episode of the first series. This was due to the concurrent development of the independently produced children's series, K-9, which features a remodelled version of K-9 with only indirect nods to Doctor Who. However, in 2009 the robot appeared with the Sarah Jane Adventures cast in a sketch for Comic Relief, and K-9 appeared in 6 episodes of the third series, followed by two more appearances in the fourth series. He did not appear at all in Series 5.