Dr Who's Companion Sara Jane is Dead

Apologies for yet another pop culture obituary but yet another of the icons of my childhood has died, and while I wasn't a massive Dr Who as a child - he scared the bejesus out of me! - I did like Sarah Jane as a companion and Tom Baker as the Doctor and so she was always a favourite of mine.

By all accounts she was a lovely person. RIP Elisabeth Sladen, you will be missed.

Here's the obituary from the ABC website:

Doctor Who star Sladen dies

Cult role: Elisabeth Sladen with Tom Baker as Dr Who (handmadelife.blogspot.com)


British actress Elisabeth Sladen, best known for her role in cult science fiction television series Doctor Who, has died after a battle with cancer.

Liverpool-born Sladen, who was 63, first appeared on the BBC show in 1973, playing the Doctor's assistant, Sarah Jane Smith.


Sladen went on to star in her own spin-off children's show, The Sarah Jane Adventures, the latest series of which was aired late last year.


She made several guest appearances in the revived Doctor Who series with David Tennant.


"I absolutely loved Lis," former Doctor Who writer Russell T Davies, who created The Sarah Jane Adventures, said.


"She was funny and cheeky and clever and just simply wonderful."


Doctor Who's lead writer and executive producer, Steven Moffat, has also paid tribute.


"'Never meet your heroes', wise people say. They weren't thinking of Lis Sladen," said Moffat.


"Sarah Jane Smith was everybody's hero when I was younger, and as brave and funny and brilliant as people only ever are in stories.


"She was exactly as any child would ever have wanted her to be. Kind and gentle and clever; and a ferociously talented actress but in that perfectly English unassuming way."


Sladen leaves behind actor husband Brian Miller and daughter Sadie.