Is There a Doctor in the House?

Or
Goodbye, Mistress
Elisabeth Sladen, who spent 4 years shrieking and giving the Doctor a reason for extensive exposition, has died of cancer at the age of 63. As Sarah Jane Smith on Doctor Who, Sladen endured Jon Pertwee’s old man smell and Tom Baker’s unhealthy obsession with his own scarf while bouncing around time and space for three and a half years in the TARDIS. The most popular traveling companion for the Doctor in viewer polls, Smith’s departure made front page news in England, but most importantly, she took K-9, TV’s most annoying robot this side of Twiki, with her. Despite leaving, Sladen kept reprising the role – in a spin-off pilot K-9, several specials, BBC radio plays, a few cameos on the mother ship and then, 30 years after leaving the series, getting her own show, The Sarah Jane Adventures, which ran 4 seasons on BBC, which is like 15 ½ episodes. In the series, Smith leads a bunch of kids to defeat monsters and aliens, suggesting the whole nigh-immortal Time Lord deal is pretty overrated.