Elisabeth Sladen returns to the TARDIS

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• Publication: Starlog
• Date: number 77 (December 1983)
• Author: Patrick Daniel O'Neill
• Page: 25
• Language: English

It has been six years since she last stepped over the threshold of that blue police box, but Elisabeth Sladen still has happy thoughts about the time she spent traveling the cosmos with Doctor Who (see STARLOG #42 for an earlier Sladen interview).

"Looking back on it, it's quite a high point, really. Everyone looked after you on that show." She laughs at a private memory. "I will never need a psychiatrist. I stayed three years because I loved it. Originally, I was only going to stay one year, but I enjoyed it so much that I decided to stay longer."

When Sladen left her role as Sarah Jane Smith, the hero's companion in Doctor Who, she stated publicly that she would never appear in Who-related material again. But in 1981, she played Sarah once again, in a pilot episode for a series to be called K-9 and Company. The plot revolved around a gift from the Doctor to Sarah, yet another version of the Time Lord's mobile computer, the dog-like K-9. Together, K-9 and Sarah must solve a mystery in the English countryside. Sladen admits that the pilot appearance and her subsequent return for The Five Doctors special go against her original resolve. "I said I would never do Doctor Who again, but K-9 and Company was basically different— the idea of an assistant working without the Doctor. And to be asked back for a 20th anniversary celebration— well, it would almost have been bad manners not to go."

In the meantime, Sladen has kept busy with British regional theater. She is currently considering scripts for a return to television. But, certainly, nothing could compare to the excitement, the thrills and the outright danger of Doctor Who. Sladen laughs about Sarah's propensity for stumbling into trouble. "Always falling down holes! In the Dartmoor one, 'The Sontaran Experiment,' she's carefully told, 'Don't go near, Sarah.' So, she immediately does — and falls down into the hole. Stupid brat!

"But if you want a really harrowing story: We were filming 'Revenge of the Cybermen' in these caves. It was very oppressive. You couldn't stand up most of the time when you weren't working. You just had to sit there, because if you went up to daylight, you would be late for your call to come back. At any rate, there's an underground river running down there at about 30 miles an hour. No one knows how deep it is; people have been lost down the hole. They presented me with this thing which looks like two skis bound together. They put me on it, told me to ride it to the other side and beach it, then go after the Doctor — just as if that happened everyday.

"Idiot that I was, I did it.

"And then they said, 'Lis, we didn't actually see you get on it. We'll take you back to the other bank' — which is very slippery mud — 'and we just want you to push off in the thing. Don't put the motor on. Just push off. We only want a shot of you getting on. We'll come and collect you in the boat.'

'I said, 'You want me to go right, but current is running left. The nose will turn with the current and I'll go down that hole!' The fellow who made the contraption said, 'No, you won't. Whichever way the nose is pointing, that's the way you'll go.' So, I believed him, trusting person that I am. I got on it, didn't start the motor, and what happened? It starts to go down the hole! I did .what I thought was the smart thing — I jumped and trod water.

"Fortunately," Sladen continues, "one of the stuntmen, Terry Walsh, bless his heart, was there doubling as a monster. The costume lady had told him to get into costume. But he said, 'No, I'm going to stay in my wetsuit until Lis finishes this scene.' He was in like a flash and pulled me out. After that incident, I always made sure I had a double."

Sarah Jane Smith is frequently called the first of a new breed of companions for Doctor Who: bright, independent women, not just screamers. "The first who isn't quite so silly," is the way Sladen terms it. "She's the prototype for all the ones who have come since — Leela, Romana, Tegan and Nyssa. I was told by Janet Fielding, who plays Tegan, that she gets letters complimenting her on her resemblance to Sarah. I sometimes wish that Sarah could have been a little more independent, but I don't think the format was open to that idea.

"Doctor Who is about the Doctor, and that's why the show's format works — and has worked for 20 years. I don't think you can have two characters who are pushing too much their own way. You concentrate on one," Lis Sladen concludes, "and the other, the companion, must bounce off him."

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• APA 6th ed.: O'Neill, Patrick Daniel (number 77 (December 1983)). Elisabeth Sladen returns to the TARDIS. Starlog p. 25.
• MLA 7th ed.: O'Neill, Patrick Daniel. "Elisabeth Sladen returns to the TARDIS." Starlog [add city] number 77 (December 1983), 25. Print.
• Chicago 15th ed.: O'Neill, Patrick Daniel. "Elisabeth Sladen returns to the TARDIS." Starlog, edition, sec., number 77 (December 1983)
• Turabian: O'Neill, Patrick Daniel. "Elisabeth Sladen returns to the TARDIS." Starlog, number 77 (December 1983), section, 25 edition.
• Wikipedia (this article): <ref>{{cite news| title=Elisabeth Sladen returns to the TARDIS | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Elisabeth_Sladen_returns_to_the_TARDIS | work=Starlog | pages=25 | date=number 77 (December 1983) | via=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=17 May 2024 }}</ref>
• Wikipedia (this page): <ref>{{cite web | title=Elisabeth Sladen returns to the TARDIS | url=http://cuttingsarchive.org/index.php/Elisabeth_Sladen_returns_to_the_TARDIS | work=Doctor Who Cuttings Archive | accessdate=17 May 2024}}</ref>