Trivia / The Sarah Jane Adventures

• Ascended Fanon: The Portmanteau Couple Name "Clani" (for Clyde and Rani) was introduced by fans, but made canon in one of the final episodes when Luke uses the term to refer to the two.
• Character Outlives Actor:
  • "Death of the Doctor" revealed that 60s Doctor Who companions Barbara (Wright) Chesterton and Ben Jackson were both still alive, despite the actors who played them having died in the 1990s. (By contrast, the character of Harry Sullivan, whose actor died in the 1980s, was referenced in the past tense enough to indicate that he's deceased.)
  • Sarah Jane Smith herself didn't die in 2011, the year Elisabeth Sladen passed away. The last episode of the series ends with the words "And the story goes on...forever."
    • The expanded Whoniverse (novels, etc.) had previously established that Sarah Jane lives beyond 2011 (the year Sladen died).
    • Finally, in 2020, Sarah Jane was given a proper in-universe sendoff, via a webcast short story in which friends of Sarah attend her funeral.
• Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: A lot of online sources, including this site, stated that "Death of the Doctor" states that Ian and Barbara haven’t aged since the 60s, and treat any media that goes against this (official or not) as a Continuity Snarl. In actuality, the dialogue is that they are merely RUMOURED to have not aged.
• Creator Couple: Harry the caretaker in "The Mad Woman in the Attic" is played by Elisabeth Sladen's real-life husband, Brian Miller.
• Dawson Casting:
  • Daniel Anthony at 20 and Anjli Mohindra at 18 play 14-year-old (at the start of the series) Clyde and Rani. Averted with Tommy Knight and Yasmin Paige being close to the age they play (though Luke was "born" in the first episode).
  • The show also serves as a good example of why Dawson Casting is sometimes necessary. The reason Maria and Luke got Put On Buses? School commitments.
  • Adult example: Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane. The actress has born in 1946, and in "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane" has revealed that her character was 13 years old in 1964, which means that Sarah Jane was born in 1950 or 1951.
• Died During Production: The series was prematurely curtailed by Elisabeth Sladen's death from cancer. Half of season five was finished by this point, but with the show revolving around her (and canon having established that Sarah Jane would live longer), they had to stop production of any future episodes then and there. The final complete episodes were aired, drawing the series to an abrupt close.
• Doubling for London: The series is set in Ealing, yet was filmed in Cardiff.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Whilst Anjli Mohindra is British Indian like her character Rani Chandra, her time shifted actress Souad Faress is Ghanaian born British Raised half Irish half Syrian.
  • British Indian Haresh and Gita Chandra are played by British Pakistanis Ace Bhatti and Mina Anwar.
• The Pete Best: Kelsey Hooper, who appeared in the first episode but never again, to be replaced by the far more likable Clyde Langer.
• Playing Against Type: Bradley Walsh plays a Pennywise-esque Monster Clown in "Day of the Clown".
• Posthumous Credit: The fifth and final season aired after Elisabeth Sladen's passing.
• Promoted Fangirl: Mina Anwar grew up watching Lis Sladen as Sarah Jane during her time as the Fourth Doctor's companion on Doctor Who, before getting to act alongside her as Gita decades later.
• Recycled Set: Sarah Jane's attic is the Witches House from "The Shakespeare Code".
• Surprisingly Lenient Censor: In "The Man Who Never Was", Luke sends a Morse code message that told "Clani" to grab Harrison's pen. Clyde stated he was never more glad to see a full stop. Gareth Roberts even tweeted how surprised he was that it got through.
• Unfinished Episode: Hoo boy...
  • Season two would have opened with "The Trial of Sarah-Jane Smith", which would have seen Sarah-Jane was put on trial by the Judoon. It was replaced with "The Last Sontaran".
  • Phil Ford pitched a story idea considered for the first and second episodes of the fourth series. Set at Park Vale Comprehensive School, it would have concerned an Aztec priestess who had lived for thousands of years and was now working there as an English teacher.
  • "Don't Sit Too Close to the Screen" by Joseph Lidster, which involved a new children's television show that causes its viewer to become possessed. The aliens responsible harness electrical impulses in the viewers' brains, their aim being to eradicate humanity so that they can live uninterrupted in the electricity.
  • "Supermarket Sweep", also by Lidster, which concerned an alien operating from a supermarket with a voice coming over a tannoy into the empty store. The focus of story would be Luke and K9, with Luke combating the alien alone like in Die Hard.
  • "Underground", also by Lidster, which was based upon the old childhood game of not standing on the cracks between paving slabs.
  • "Wallpaper", also by Lidster, which was based upon the notion of 'faces' which people used to be able to see in patterned wallpaper. While redecorating, one of the Bannerman Road gang was to strip some paint off a wall and reveal old wallpaper underneath. Faces would appear on the wallpaper; these would be aliens from another dimension trying to arrive on Earth, literally taking shape in walls and stepping through. It was noted that this notion could be adapted for patterns in wooden floors and doors.
  • Gareth Roberts pitched a story idea for the seventh and eighth episodes of the fourth series where Sarah Jane would have, as a result of a lightning storm, come face to face with her father who has been dead for over 55 years.
  • Roberts pitched another idea which would have seen Sarah Jane being kidnapped and replaced by an identical look-alike. It was ultimately replaced by "The Empty Planet" as the production team was concerned it had too much of the feel of UFO (1970).
  • "The Children of Blackmere Rise" by Rupert Laight, which would have seen Rani investigating a strange council estate, as part of her Journalism course, to find all its inhabitants possessed by an alien egg.
  • "The Web of Lies" by Gary Russell, which would have seen Sarah Jane being controlled by a trio of giant spiders from Metabelis III, an alien race previously featured in "Planet of the Spiders".
  • "Sarah Jane and the Return of the Spiders" by Joseph Lidster, a variant of the above.
  • "Servant of the Spiders" by Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman, a second variation of the "Web of Lies" proposal.
  • "Miracle on Bannerman Road" Gareth Roberts and Clayton Hickman. It was originally planned that series four would conclude with a Christmas Special. It would have been a pastiche of A Christmas Carol, with Sarah Jane being shown Christmas past, present and future by a guide. Tom Baker was considered at one point for the role of the guide.
  • "Everyone's Asleep" by Gareth Roberts, where an alien causes the entire population of the UK to fall asleep in order to execute a bizarre plan. This idea later formed the basis for "The Empty Planet".
  • "Sarah Jane Goes Back to the Future" by Lidster, where Rani, Clyde and Luke return to the 1970s in order to save the lives of Rani's parents.
  • "Sarah Jane in Prison" by Hickman, which would have seen the return of Mrs. Wormwood and her new plan to take control of a new brood of Bane by framing Sarah Jane for bank robbery so she would be jailed, with the gang having to clear her name.
  • "School Trip" by Roberts. During a school trip, the youngsters find an alien in distress and have to help it without revealing its presence to the rest of their friends. This notion was conceived as a 'Sarah Jane-lite' narrative which would allow Elisabeth Sladen a break in production.
  • "Time Team" by Roberts, where an archaeological dig would have raised Sarah Jane's distinctive Nissan Figaro from where it had been buried thousands of years ago.
  • "Trinity Wells Investigates" by Roberts, which would have seen the character of Trinity Wells, an American news anchor previously featured in Doctor Who, investigating a series of strange events occurring in Ealing and surrounding Sarah Jane.
  • Gareth Roberts pitched a story idea for the fourth series which would have seen Rani's parents being abducted by the Russian counterpart of Torchwood.
  • Sladen's untimely passing left numerous scripts and story ideas unused:
    • "Meet Mr. Smith" by Roberts and Hickman, which would have seen Mr. Smith adopting a human form.
    • "The Thirteenth Floor" by Ford, a Clyde-Rani focused story which would have seen them trapped in a lift in a tower block. Ford reworked the script into a Wizards vs. Aliens episode.
    • "The Battle for Bannerman Road" by Russell T Davies, which would have featured the revelation that Sky was the child of the Trickster, seen the return of Katy Manning as Jo Grant Jones and the destruction of Bannerman Road.
    • "Full Moon" by Hickman, a Halloween Episode which would have seen an encounter with the Pagan Gods Gog and Magog, who attempt to escape from a decaying alien prison ship.
    • "The Station" by Hickman", another Halloween Episode which would have seen the gang transported back to the years 1911 and 1934.
    • Hickman pitched another Halloween Episode which would have seen an encounter with an hideous gargoyle-like creature.
    • "Night of the Spectre" by Ford, another Halloween Episode which would have seen the return of former series regular Maria Jackson and her father Alan who had since moved to the USA.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Matt Jones, writer of "The Impossible Planet"/"The Satan Pit", pitched a "Cyberman invasion of Bannerman Road" which was rejected by Russell T Davies, who deemed that the Cybermen were too big an enemy for the CBBC spin-off, remembering that Torchwood only just fought off a half-Cyberman. The Daleks were also ruled out for the same reason, though both Sarah Jane and Torchwood get to assist the Doctor in fighting the all-out Dalek invasion in "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End".
  • "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith" was supposed to guest-star Nicholas Courtney as the Brigadier, thus giving us a potential meeting between the Tenth Doctor and him. Alas, Courtney suffered a stroke before the shooting, and his part was scrapped. It still managed to be included in the novelisation of the episode, which adapted the idea in, as a book isn't limited by such things.
  • Conversely, the episode that did feature the Brigadier, "Enemy of the Bane" was originally written for Martha Jones, and was rewritten for the Brigadier when Freema Agyeman became unavailable.
  • The CBBC originally approached Russell T Davies asking for a Doctor Who spinoff involving a young Doctor on Gallifrey. Davies rejected the idea, feeling it would take away from the "mystery" of the Doctor, and proposed The Sarah Jane Adventures after a positive experience working with Elisabeth Sladen in "School Reunion".
  • The villain in "Secrets of the Stars" would originally have been a tool of the Mandragora Helix from the Doctor Who story "The Masque of Mandragora", in which Sarah Jane was the companion. It was then decided that it would have been too old and obscure a continuity reference.
  • Davies mentions in his behind-the-scenes book The Writer's Tale that Catherine Tate was very interested in appearing on this show as her daughter loved watching it. Davies had no idea how to reconcile Donna's fate in Doctor Who with a guest appearance in this show so it got declined.
  • At one stage, the production team intended to write Rani out at the end of season four. A concern had developed that the show's younger castmembers were outgrowing the target audience, and so Rani would be recruited for a journalism internship in Manchester, with Anjli Mohindra making only occasional appearances from then on. This would have to led Haresh and Gita Chandra fostering a younger boy named Alfie at the start of season six.
  • According to Doctor Who Magazine, Matt Smith was to have appeared as the Doctor in the first episode of Series 5, "Sky". Due to his commitments filming the parent series, he was unavailable so the previously established character of The Shopkeeper replaced him.
  • Word of God (primarily series creator Russell T Davies and scriptwriter Neil Gaiman) is that the character of The Shopkeeper is the Corsair, a gender-changing Time Lord first referenced on screen in Gaiman's Doctor Who episode "The Doctor's Wife" This was a retroactive decision, given the Shopkeeper's introduction predated Gaiman's episode, however Davies had intended for the Shopkeeper to make further appearances on SJA.
  • The death of Elisabeth Sladen, which led to the cancellation of the series out of respect for her, resulted in many planned storylines going unmade, as at the time of her death it was fully expected that the series would continue into a sixth season.
    • As revealed in a Doctor Who Magazine special issue focusing on the show's cancellation, if the second half of Series 5 had been completed, the first story entitled "Meet Mr Smith" would have seen Mr. Smith become human and the season finale "The Battle of Bannerman Road" would have revealed Sky as being the child of the Trickster, who had interfered with the Fleshkind's creation of her; he would be finally vanquished after possessing Sky while Sky ascends to a higher level of existence. (Dialogue hinting at this was recorded for "The Man Who Never Was" but cut from the broadcast episode.) Oh - and Rani and Clyde would have got together. (RTD was less keen on completely detailing what the second story, "The Thirteenth Floor", would have entailed in the special issue because he decided to transplant the story over to Series 2 of the show's non-Doctor Who Spiritual Successor Wizards vs. Aliens.)
    • According to Doctor Who Magazine, other episodes planned prior to Sladen's death included an appearance by Ace from the classic era of Doctor Who (which would have finally revealed the characters canonical fate after she was last seen in 1989) in season six, a live Halloween episode (which might not have involved Sladen), and an episode featuring Tom Baker, though not necessarily as the Doctor.
    • As revealed by RTD on the DVD Commentary of "Death of the Doctor" included on the Special Edition DVD release of the Doctor Who story "The Green Death", Luke would have come out of the closet if the series had continued.
    • Clayton Hickman says he and Gareth Roberts tossed around story ideas for the return of the spiders from "Planet of the Spiders', but they couldn't make it work. He also revealed that they storylined a Christmas special featuring on-screen flashback to Sarah Jane's Aunt Lavinia, and that Brendan from "K-9 & Company" was referenced in a line in "The Wedding of..." that was ultimately cut.
    • In 2014, Tom Baker revealed that he had been asked to reprise his role as the Fourth Doctor for an episode of SJA, and had more or less agreed to do it, when Elisabeth Sladen passed away.
• Word of Gay: According to Russell T Davies' audio commentary on the DVD of "Death of the Doctor", had the series continued, Luke would have come out as gay on the show. This would eventually become reality in "Farewell, Sarah Jane".
  Tommy [Luke Smith] refers to his friend Sanjay. Now had we continued, Sanjay would have been Luke's boyfriend. Because children's BBC [CBBC] wanted to have — I've never said this in any interview anywhere — wanted us to have a gay character on children's BBC. Just a normal gay character. And so they said to us, "Can you do that with [The] Sarah Jane [Adventures]" and, I don't even think some of the writers on the show know this, because obviously we got taken off air sadly. Tommy [Knight, who played Luke Smith] wanted to come back into the show and we were going to approach him and say, 'Do you mind if he's gay and has a boyfriend?' So that was the plan, because of Steven Andrew [then Head of Drama and Acquisitions for CBBC] wanted it but it never came to pass. Isn't that sad? It's a shame.
• Word of Dante: According to Phillip Lawrence of the website Action Figure Theatre, the actors playing the Slitheen in the season 1 premiere made up their own national anthem dubbed “Slitheenia”.
• You Look Familiar: The Shopkeeper was played by Cyril Nri, who later went on to play the Chair in Class (2016), which also takes place in the Whoniverse. It is currently unknown as to whether there is any connection, or if it is purely a coincidence.

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