Elizabeth Sladen - 1948 - 2011 RIP Sarah Jane (Dr Who, Sarah Jane Adventures...)

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s7/doctor-who/news/a315484/elisabeth-sladen-dies-aged-63.html

Doctor Who and Sarah Jane Adventures star Elisabeth Sladen has died at the age of 63.


Twitter and Facebook are alight with rumours that Elisabeth Sladen has passed away.

The Doctor Who star, who is best known as Sarah Jane Smith and also stars in the spin off CBBC show The Sarah Jane Adventures, is said to have passed away earlier today.

The actress was a regular on BBC’s Doctor Who with both Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, and has reprised her role many times. She first joined the sci-fi show in 1973 and stayed on for three and a half seasons, before leaving in 1976.

After numerous appearances through the 80s and 90s, Elisabeth returned in 2006, acting opposite the then Doctor David Tennant in an episode titled “School Reunion”.

Following her successful appearance in the series, Sladen was then asked to front The Sarah Jane Adventures, written by Russell. T Davies for CBBC. The show ran for four series, with a fifth scheduled to air later in 2011.

Sources say the 63 year old star died because of complications arising from a battle with cancer.

Goodbye:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-iUnwzR9zIE
- I'm gutted, so young. Sarah Jane has gone... :(

Oh, Christ, that's a shock.

G section wrote:

Oh, Christ, that's a shock.

I wanted to hold off posting until it was confirmed but I feel truly that this is for real at this point.
My childhood slips away before my tearful eyes...


EDIT:
ITV News Sources confirm actress Elisabeth Sladen, who has starred in Doctor Who and spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, has died.

Sad news that seems to have caught everyone by surprise. The news outlets are still scrambling to put together obituaries.

And not too long after Nicholas Courtney's death. Such a shame. I ought to watch some 70's Who in tribute.

G section wrote:

And not too long after Nicholas Courtney's death. Such a shame. I ought to watch some 70's Who in tribute.

I'm doing that right now, one of my fav episodes: Invasion of the Dinosaurs.

http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/241771/Doctor-Who-actress-Sladen-dies/

Doctor Who actress Elisabeth Sladen has died, sources said.

Liverpool-born Sladen joined the BBC television series in 1973 as Doctor Who's assistant Sarah Jane Smith.

She went on to star in spin-off The Sarah Jane Adventures, four series of which have been broadcast on children's channel CBBC.

Sladen had been suffering from cancer, BBC entertainment reporter Lizo Mzimba said. It had not been widely known that the actress was in ill health.

He said: "She was one of the most popular Doctor Who companions of all time, and one of the people who managed to do both old Doctor Who and Doctor Who when it came back."

Sladen first starred as Sarah Jane opposite Jon Pertwee. The pair worked together for three seasons, before Pertwee left the show in 1974.

She then became the assistant for Tom Baker. When the show relaunched, she appeared alongside modern-day Doctor Who David Tennant.

In a 2006 interview with the BBC ahead of rejoining Doctor Who, she spoke of her love for the programme, saying: "I think it has lovely layers and I'd defend the programme to anyone.

"I'm very emotionally part of that programme and I think a lot of the people who worked on it are. You used to love going to work every day."

In a statement, the BBC said: "It is with much sadness that we can announce Elisabeth Sladen, the much-loved actress best known for her role as Sarah Jane Smith in Doctor Who and CBBC's The Sarah Jane Adventures, passed away this morning. She was 63."

more here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1378645/Doctor-Who-star-Elisabeth-Sladen-dies-cancer-battle.html


Sladen is survived by her actor husband of 42 years, Brian Miller and their actress daughter Sadie.

Sad news indeed, enjoyed her appearances in NuWho very much.

Will watch 'School Reunion' tomorrow night in tribute. R.I.P.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-13137935?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
Russell T Davies pays an audio tribute

Russell T Davies, who brought her back to Doctor Who, said of working with her: "We found ourselves with a new friend... as we shot that episode I remember thinking 'I'm not letting her go'."




mistress..mistress..

Shocking news I remember watching a few classic episodes with her and Tom Baker. R.I.P

Paying tribute, Russell T Davies, who created The Sarah Jane Adventures, said: "I absolutely loved Lis.

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

"The universe was lucky to have Sarah Jane Smith; the world was lucky to have Lis."

Steven Moffat, Doctor Who's lead writer and executive producer, added: "'Never meet your heroes', wise people say. They weren't thinking of Lis Sladen.

"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.

"But many years later when I met the real Sarah-Jane - Lis Sladen herself - she was exactly as any child would ever have wanted her to be. Kind and gentle and clever; and a ferociously talented actress, of course, but in that perfectly English unassuming way.

"There are a blessed few who can carry a whole television show on their talent and charisma - but I can't think of one other who's done it quite so politely.”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1384292/BBC-announces-Sarah-Jane-Adventures-come-end-death-Elisabeth-Sladen.html

It was hinted that the show must go on despite the death of its leading lady.

But today, the BBC confirmed that it will not be filming any more episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures following the death of Elisabeth Sladen last month.

Reports suggested that the CBBC series would continue and scripts would be re-written to explain Sladen's absence.

However, a statement from the BBC issued this week said: 'Contrary to press reports today we can confirm that no new episodes of The Sarah Jane Adventures will be filmed following the tragic death of actress Elisabeth Sladen in April, 2011.

'As a tribute to Elisabeth, the six episodes that were recorded with her last year will be broadcast on CBBC at a date to be confirmed.'

Series writer Gareth Roberts also denied the previous reports earlier today.

Quote :

Like my kids I loved The Sarah Jane Adventures. In fact, I think I preferred it to the new Doctor Who. The problem with the new Doctor Who is that it has been freighted from the off with so much baggage: from Christopher Eccleston to David Tennant to Matt Smith each actor has striven far too showily to make the role distinctively his own; and — as I’ve grumbled many times before — it sometimes feels like a high-budget version of those ghastly PSHE classes kids are forced to do at state school (‘I must always wash my hands after doing a poo,’ ‘I must love aliens like my brother because even though they may look evil and ugly and as if they are trying to destroy the earth it will always turn out that they are much misunderstood and have hearts of gold’).

There was little of that nonsense with Sarah Jane. Sure, there was a hint of tokenism in the junior casting (one black, one white, one Asian), but that was about its only concession to the modern era. The values of Sarah Jane were the same solidly bourgeois values you would have found in, say, Blue Peter circa 1970: the kind of values that would give the BBC1’s groovy, stubbly new north-London-public-schoolie controller Danny Cohen kittens and nightmares because they’re just not relevant or in any way meaningful to a war-damaged eight-year-old Somali kid on a south London crack estate.

Setting the tone for all this fragrant, bourgeois, leafily suburban yumminess was the fragrant, bourgeois, leafily suburban and still very yummy Sarah Jane: attractive, well-spoken, gentle but tough when she needed to be with any alien life forms that got out of hand. You felt very happy to leave your children in her care: though she had a pretty nifty home computer (voiced by pukka Armstrong out of Armstrong and Miller: that’s how posh she was) and some handy gadgets (including sonic lipstick), you knew she was the type who’d have them reading books rather than playing computer games.

Yet the adventures she and her young helpers had were often quite astonishingly scary (and often impressively sophisticated) for children’s teatime TV, especially the ones involving the terrifying Trickster. The Trickster has a pallid face with skinned-over sockets where the eyes should be, no nose and horrid, pointed, shark-like teeth in his slash of a mouth. Usually, he appears — like Death — in a sinister monkish cowl. He is the creature of your nightmares. My nightmares, anyway.

And now — as unexpectedly as she came — Sarah Jane is gone and children’s TV will never be quite the same again. It wouldn’t be fair to say that all children’s TV is rubbish: there’s actually an awful lot of good stuff around from the various adventures of Dick & Dom to The House of Anubis to Horrible Histories. Even so, at its best The Sarah Jane Adventures stood out as something truly remarkable: a throwback to an age you thought had vanished years ago, in which it wasn’t thought embarrassing for polite, well-scrubbed children to enjoy perilous adventures with a middle-class, educated white woman of a certain age, unconstrained by health and safety, eco-consciousness, or any manner of socio-political worthiness, and where the idea of a happy ending is to return safely to your cosy bourgeois suburb just in time for tea.

Goodbye, Sarah Jane! We shall miss you awfully.

Excerpt from Farewell, Sarah Jane by James Delingpole, The Spectator 7 May 2011

http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts-and-culture/featured/6915838/part_3/farewell-sarah-jane-.thtml