Sarah Jane's Alien Files

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This article refers to the webisode and television series. For the in-universe Alien Files, see Alien Files.

Sarah Jane's Alien Files (also known as SJA Alien Files, formerly The Alien Files[1]) was a series spun off from The Sarah Jane Adventures. It started during the programme's third series as a series of webisodes on the programme's website, similar to the Monster Files. During The Sarah Jane Adventures Series 4, it became a half-hour spin-off show featuring more thorough detail of past Sarah Jane Adventures aliens and recaps of the episodes in which they appeared.

Online version

Opening title card online version.

The original version of the series was The Alien Files, a series of five webcasts presented by Mr Smith with Clyde Langer and Rani Chandra. The webisodes, each under three minutes in length, featured Rani, Clyde, or both accessing Mr Smith's video vaults to review aliens they had encountered previously.

The webisodes were streamed via the official The Sarah Jane Adventures website. As with other video content on BBC websites, the webisodes were "geofenced" due to licensing and are technically not viewable outside of the UK.

Webisodes

Television version

Opening title card television version.

Alongside Series 4 of The Sarah Jane Adventures, The Alien Files was expanded to a weekly television programme to complement the Sarah Jane Adventures and recap its previous series. Now known as Sarah Jane's Alien Files, the six-episode series was presented by the BBC as "the ultimate guide of everything you could possibly need to know when facing hostile aliens."[2] The series was broadcast on CBBC Monday evenings, immediately following part one of that week's two-part The Sarah Jane Adventures story.

The series portrayed the Alien Files as a database started by Sarah Jane Smith and Mr Smith, collecting what she and her companions have learned about the aliens they've dealt with, in order to serve as a permanent record of their knowledge for future generations. Each episode featured Sarah Jane or one of her gang in the attic of 13 Bannerman Road, recounting their past adventures and the aliens involved to Mr Smith. Mr Smith uploads the resulting data about the aliens into the Alien Files. Their narration was illustrated by clips from the relevant episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures. While the original Alien Files webisodes each focused on events from a single Sarah Jane Adventures story, the television episodes of Sarah Jane's Alien Files featured material from and references to multiple stories in which the aliens being discussed appeared.

The programme was not continued after Series 4 of The Sarah Jane Adventures. There have not been repeat broadcasts, and the series did not follow its parent Sarah Jane Adventures onto home video or VOD releases.

Episodes

External links

Footnotes

  1. The programme's title is listed as "Sarah Jane's Alien Files" in BBC websites, programme guides, and the iPlayer. As displayed in the logo on-screen, however, the title reads "SJA Alien Files." The former title is in more general use. The programme is an expanded version of what was originally a feature on the official The Sarah Jane Adventures website called "The Alien Files."
  2. [1]