The Sarah Jane Adventures

The Sarah Jane Adventures is a spin-off series, produced by BBC Wales for CBBC, to star Elisabeth Sladen and created by Russell T. Davies. The programme and will focus on the adventures of investigative journalist Sarah Jane Smith. The series will debut on BBC One with a 60-minute special on 1st January 2007.1 A full series of ten 30-minute episodes will follow later in the year. 2

The series is set in present-day West London. In addition to Sladen, the programme will star Yasmin Paige as Sarah Jane's 13-year-old neighbour Maria, Porsha Lawrence-Mavour as Kelsey and Thomas Knight as the young boy, Luke. The pilot episode will feature Samantha Bond as the scheming Ms Wormwood.

The executive producers for The Sarah Jane Adventures are Davies and Julie Gardner. Susie Liggat will produce the pilot, but Matthew Bouch will produce the series; Phil Collinson will hold the title of Series Producer.

Co-writer Gareth Roberts, writing in Doctor Who Magazine, said, "We're all determined that this will be a big, full-blooded drama; that nobody should ever think of it as 'just' a children's programme."

Background and development
In 2006, Children's BBC expressed an interest in producing a Doctor Who spin-off. Their initial idea was "a drama based on the idea of a young Doctor Who", but Russell T. Davies vetoed this. "Somehow, the idea of a fourteen-year-old Doctor, on Gallifrey inventing sonic screwdrivers, takes away from the mystery and intrigue of who he is and where he came from," said Davies. He suggested instead a series based on the Doctor's former companion Sarah Jane Smith.

The character of Sarah Jane, played by Sladen, appeared in Doctor Who from 1973 to 1976, alongside Jon Pertwee as the Third Doctor, and later Tom Baker as the Fourth Doctor. A pilot for another Doctor Who spin-off series, K-9 and Company, made in 1981, featured Sarah Jane and the robot dog K-9; however, the option to make a series was not picked up. Sarah Jane and K-9 returned to Doctor Who in various media many times over the years, most notably in the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors (1983) and in the 2006 episode School Reunion. Reports of a spin-off series first appeared around the time of "School Reunion"'s original airing, with the series having the working title of Sarah Jane Investigates.

K-9 will appear in the special, but not in the series. This is due to the concurrent development of K-9 Adventures, which is not associated with the BBC and will not feature any Doctor Who connections beyond K-9 himself.

Pilot
The 60-minute pilot, titled Invasion of the Bane, is co-written by Russell T. Davies and Gareth Roberts. The story will focus on Sarah Jane's investigation of a popular and addictive soft drink called Bubbleshock. The Highest Science, a 1993 Doctor Who novel by Roberts, featured an addictive drink named bubbleshake.