Elisabeth Sladen
Elisabeth Sladen (1st February 1946, Liverpool, England - 19th April 2011) played Sarah Jane Smith. She appeared as a regular on Doctor Who with both Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, and also appeared in the pilot for the spin-off series, K9 and Company. Most recently, she reprised her role as Sarah Jane both on Doctor Who and in its spin-off series, The Sarah Jane Adventures.
Early career
An only child, Sladen developed an interest in performing at an early age, beginning dance lessons when she was five and dancing in one production with the Royal Ballet. She eventually turned to acting, and after finishing grammar school, attended drama school for two years.
Following this, she began work at the Liverpool Playhouse repertory company as an assistant stage manager. Her first stage appearance was as a corpse. However, she was scolded for giggling on stage, thanks to a young actor, Brian Miller, whispering the words, "Respiration nil, Aston Villa two" in her ear while he was playing the doctor. Sladen was so good as an ASM that she did not get many acting roles, a problem she solved by deliberately making mistakes on several occasions. This got her told off again, but she started to get more on-stage roles.
Sladen eventually moved into weekly repertory work, traveling around to various locations in England. Sladen and Miller, now married, moved to Manchester, spending three years there. She appeared in numerous roles, most notably as Desdemona in Othello, her first appearance as a leading lady. She also got the odd part on Leeds Radio and Granada Television, eventually appearing in 1970 as Anita Reynolds, barmaid of The Flying Horse, in six episodes of the long-running soap opera Coronation Street.
In 1972, Miller was appearing in a play that moved down to London, and they had to move along with it. Sladen found city life a bit of an adjustment, but eventually adapted. Her first television role in London was as a female terrorist in an episode of Doomwatch. This was followed by guest roles in Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em and Z-Cars.
Doctor Who
In 1973, Katy Manning, who was playing the Third Doctor's assistant Jo Grant opposite Jon Pertwee, was leaving the series. Producer Barry Letts was growing increasingly desperate in his search for a replacement when Z-Cars producer Ron Craddock gave Sladen an enthusiastic recommendation. Sladen arrived at the audition not knowing it was for the new companion role and was amazed at Letts's thoroughness. She was introduced to Pertwee, whom she found intimidating at the time. As she chatted with Letts and Pertwee, each would give the other a thumbs-up signal when her back was turned. She was offered and accepted the part of investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith.
Sladen stayed on Doctor Who from the start of Season 11 to mid-way through Season 14. She worked with both Pertwee as the Third Doctor and Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor, receiving both popular and critical acclaim. When she left the series in 1976, it made front page news, where previously only a change of Doctors had received such attention. Bob Baker and Dave Martin intentionally left Sarah's departure scene in The Hand of Fear unwritten, and Sladen and Tom Baker co-wrote Sarah's departure scene themselves. She was sad to be leaving Doctor Who and cried on her last day.
Sladen was heartbroken upon hearing of Jon Pertwee's death in 1996, and cried for weeks afterwards. In an interview, Sladen stated that Pertwee was her Doctor. (BBC interview 1997)
In October 2009, Sladen paid tribute to her boss and friend, Barry Letts, who had died that month, calling him one of her best friends.
Later career
Sladen returned to Liverpool with her husband and did a series of plays. Notable appearances following that include a two-year stint as a presenter for the children's programme Stepping Stones, a role as a stand-up comic's spouse in Take My Wife, and a small part in the movie Silver Dream Racer as a bank secretary in 1980, her only motion picture appearance to date. The new decade also marked her first appearance at a Doctor Who convention, Who 1, in March 1980, along with Ian Marter, who had played companion Harry Sullivan on the programme. In 1981, Letts cast her as the female lead in the BBC Classics production of Gulliver in Lilliput. She continued to appear in various advertisements and in another Letts production, Alice in Wonderland (in which she played the Dormouse), and attended Doctor Who conventions in the United States. After the birth of her daughter Sadie Miller in February 1985, Sladen went into semi-retirement, placing her family first, but still found time to appear occasionally on television.
Reprising Sarah
Until School Reunion, Sladen's last television appearance as Sarah was in the 1993 charity special Dimensions in Time. New Doctor Who Producer John Nathan-Turner had asked her to return to the series to ease the transition between Tom Baker and new Doctor Peter Davison. She declined the offer, but accepted his second offer of doing a pilot for a spin-off series called K-9 and Company, co-starring with K-9, the popular robot dog from Doctor Who. However, the pilot was not picked up for a series. Sladen would reprise the role of Sarah in 1983 for the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors. In 1995 she played the role once again in the independent non-BBC film Downtime which was her last on-screen appearance as the character until 2006.
Sladen also portrayed Sarah in numerous audio dramas. Two of them were produced for BBC Radio: The Paradise of Death (1993), and The Ghosts of N-Space (1996), together with Pertwee as the Doctor and Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier. In the early 2000s, Sladen reprised the role once again for a Big Finish Productions audio series, Sarah Jane Smith, set in the present day.
Sladen was one of several "classic series" cast and crew who were interviewed for Project Who, a BBC Radio documentary on the revival of Doctor Who that aired in March 2005.
On 25th July 2005, the BBC confirmed that Sladen would indeed be appearing as Sarah Jane Smith in Series 2 of the revived Doctor Who. The BBC subsequently announced that John Leeson would also be returning as the voice of the robot dog K-9. The episode, School Reunion, served to finally cement the link between the revival and the original series. The postive response to Sladen's appearance led to the BBC commissioning another attempt at a Sarah Jane spinoff series, this time created by Russell T Davies. Invasion of the Bane (not technically a pilot, as the BBC had already agreed to a season), a special premiere episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, aired on 1st January 2007 and was followed by a ten episode series later in the year. Series 2 aired in 2008, followed by Series 3 in 2009, and Series 4 in autumn 2010. A fifth series has been confirmed, though its status has yet to be revealed following Sladen's death.
Sladen also narrated a series of non-fiction behind-the-scenes audio releases from BBC Audio dubbed Doctor Who at the BBC.
In July 2008, Sladen returned to Doctor Who once more for the two finale episodes The Stolen Earth and Journey's End. Sladen, in an interview with Doctor Who Magazine in 2008, said she expected her appearance in the two-parter to be her final appearance on the parent programme. Her prediction was proven incorrect, however, as she later made an appearance in DW: The End of Time, Part 2.
While that may have been her last appearance on Doctor Who, it wasn't the last time she had an adventure with the Doctor. David Tennant appeared as the Tenth Doctor in the third series episode The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith, and Matt Smith appeared as the Eleventh Doctor in the fourth series episode Death of the Doctor. That made it nine Doctors she had worked with, thanks to The Five Doctors and Dimensions in Time.
Elisabeth Sladen died on Tuesday 19th April 2011 from cancer. She was 63 years old.[1] A number of people paid tribute to Sladen, including: Russell T Davies, David Tennant, Matt Smith, Alexander Armstrong[2], Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Damian Kavanagh, Keith Jones, Roger Carey, Stephen Fry, Steven Moffat[3] and Tom Baker.[4]
The Doctor Who story The Impossible Astronaut was dedicated to Sladen. It was followed immediately by a tribute show on the CBBC channel.
External links
- Elisabeth Sladen at the Internet Movie Database
- BBC confirm return of Sarah Jane Smith
- BBC Norfolk webTV interview with Elisabeth Sladen
