Elisabeth Sladen, Doctor Who’s Sarah Jane, Dies at 63 | Underwire | Wired.com

Elisabeth Sladen, Doctor Who’s Sarah Jane, Dies at 63

I'm not a Dr Who devotee (never seen more than 30 seconds of it), so I'm going to use the eloquent obit written by the guy who submitted the link:

"The last great adventure in time and space has arrived for Sarah Jane Smith and for once she precedes the Doctor. Elisabeth Sladen is dead at the age of 63.

I suppose it is impossible for anyone under the age of 30 to understand what a desolate, wasteland Science Fiction was in the mid 1970s. If you were a fan of the genre your options were: the 72 episodes of the original Star Trek you had long since committed to memory; Space 1999; or reruns of the Thunderbirds. As for the high end stuff, Harlen Ellison put it best: “Star Wars is adolescent nonsense; CloseEncounters is obscurantist drivel; Star Trek can turn your brains to puree of bat guano; and the greatest science fiction series of all time is Doctor Who! And I'll take you all on, one-by-one or all in a bunch to back it up!" True, Ellison had written for Star Trek and he was done with that shit, but he had a point. The production values were bad but the ideas (on occasion) stretched the imagination, particularly if reception was bad that night. Douglas Adams got his start writing for the Doctor. You can see a lot of what became Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy in Pirate Planet. And there was a respect for the science part of science fiction that couldn't be found any place else.

Doctor Who had been broadcast from literally the day JFK was assassinated, but the Doctor's early assistants were all maguffins. Their job was to get in trouble, scream, wait for rescue and then have things exposited to them. Sarah Jane Smith cracked that mold. She was no Emma Peele but she was no pushover either. She could be relied on. Sarah could use her initiative and not screw it up. And Sarah never once brought the Doctor coffee when he wanted to have a word alone with the boys.

Xena, Buffy and female Starbuck all owe a debt to Sarah Jane. I’ll miss you dear lady."