Transmat:SJA

Invasion of the Bane

Invasion of the Bane was the first episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, but it was not a pilot of any kind, since the whole of series 1 was commissioned simultaneously. (DWMSE 23) Indeed, the BBC One continuity announcement immediately following transmission proclaimed, "That was a taster for a brand new series that comes to CBBC later this year." Even so, it is frequently called "the pilot" in the fan community, and even occasionally by Doctor Who Magazine. The production team also occasionally think of it as something "other" than series 1, since it comprised a production block of its own, several months prior to principal photography on the rest of the series.

The episode re-introduced Sarah Jane Smith, then-familiar to BBC Wales audiences after her appearance on Doctor Who a few months earlier in School Reunion. Simultaneously, it wrote out K9 Mark IV, whom audiences would have expected to see with Sarah Jane because of his appearance in the precedent Doctor Who story. Bob Baker, co-creator and owner of the concept of K9, was interested in getting K9 a show of his own, and so didn't want to dilute enthusiasm for the character by allowing his heavy use in The Sarah Jane Adventures.

Finding your way around our Sarah Jane Adventures content is super easy. All you have to remember are three little letters: SJA.

SJA was popular enough on the CBBC to spawn its own spin-off called Sarah Jane's Alien Files. Okay, it was mostly a clip show, but there was some original content as well.

SJA is the only part of the BBC Wales Who empire to produce novelisations. An old tradition of the 1963 version of Doctor Who, the tradition was revived for SJA for many of the same reasons Target novelisations had been popular in the 1970s and 1980s: they helped kids learn to read long-form fiction.

Of course there's an action figure

You know, there aren't really action figures per se for Torchwood. But SJA got a wave of the Character Options treatment. Granted, there's no Maria, Luke, Clyde or Rani — but there's multiple versions of Sarah cavorting with various aliens.

Looking for a guest actor on SJA? Lucky for you, SJA guest actors is a lot smaller than Doctor Who guest actors. And, like all our categories about people, it's neatly alphabetised by last name.

What might have been…

The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith was due to feature Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier, but his ill health prevented him from appearing. The Brig nevertheless does feature in the novelisation, offering a tantalising glimpse of what would have been the character's only televised meeting with a 21st century incarnation of the Doctor.

Did you know that original SJA audiobooks were released every year the programme was on the air? Though most were released in print, the series ended as ebooks.

Since SJA shared much the same crew as Doctor Who, it makes that our category:SJA crew structure would be pretty similar to that of the parent programme. Wanna find SJA 2D artists? We can do that! And SJA location managers and SJA make-up department and SJA foley editors and... oh, you get the picture.