Elisabeth Sladen, RIP

Since Tuesday, 19 April 2011, many thousands of words have been written and said about Elisabeth Sladen. In the news, BBC websites, blogs, Twitter, Facebook – private and very public. Video tributes on YouTube, and profile pictures changed to show Lis as Sarah Jane Smith. An extraordinary outpouring of feeling. Tears shed. Memories shared. A feeling of shocked numbness.

Then there’s Tom Baker’s words, and the words of many, many children.

There are a few themes and common stories emerging. You will not read anything different here. I am not alone in not being easily moved to tears over the deaths of people I barely know. I feel regret, empathy of their passing. Possibly a twinge of cosmic angst… but as I’m writing this, several days later, my eyes are still prickling when I think of Lis.

I am of that generation of Aussie kids who was at exactly the right age to experience what seemed to be the endless repeat cycle of Doctor Who in the late 1970s – starting with Spearhead from Space, diving directly to the Jo Grant stories, then Sarah Jane, and lost Jon for Tom many times. We missed some stories – Invasion of the Dinosaurs, Brain of Morbius – because they fell victim to the Australia censor or a concern that we couldn’t cope with black and white TV. Without needing the nascent personal recording technologies, we grew to know and love those stories of a plucky little journalist whose ambitious drive threw her into adventures beyond her wildest dreams.

Scott Matthewman captured the charm beautifully in his obituary when he described how when Sarah Jane was scared it became okay for him to be scared, too. But, more importantly, she tried to do what was right. It’s best if you read his words directly.

Oddly, I think I now really understand something intrinsic about what makes Doctor Who work. Yes, the companions are ciphers. They have to be. They are the audience identification points. The hooks to get a wide audience normally resistant to Sci-fi and fantasy into a realm of impossibilities. I’m not sure any of the actors who played any of the companions were particularly brilliant, but pretty much each one did have a particular quality in common – they were people who were believable. People in whom the audience could identify something and thus be drawn into the perils of the adventure.

I don’t buy the whole Doctor Who girl was a screaming bimbo myth. Not now I’ve watched quite a few stories from the 1960s. That’s not to say that Doctor Who was a trailblazer in feminism – far from it – but that each actor was enough of a performer to have made their mark.

So, what made Sarah Jane Smith so special? I think in part it is a generational thing. So many of us who are now middle aged adults were kids when Sarah Jane was travelling in the TARDIS. She’s ‘our’ girl. We weren’t fans then, but kids, absorbing what was going on. And John Nathan Turner brought her back three times, and Lis was there those times, and threw herself back in the part. We were older then – either fans, or becoming fans, and absorbing it all in a different way than when we were kids – and we remembered Sarah Jane. I first saw the Five Doctors on a stormy night in Sydney in 1983. I was excited to see some of the companions I only knew through the Target novelisations but had never consciously seen; but Sarah Jane Smith was welcomed as someone familiar to see again after (for us) a brief break.

So, of course she was the one who Russell T. Davies would turn to as a bridge to the old series from the new. And Sarah Jane came back into our lives and brought adventure into the lives of our generation’s children, who are of that age when they’re absorbing those stories as kids, but not yet as fans…

But, it’s not the loss of Sarah Jane Smith I mourn. She will live on, thanks to DVD, the books, and the creativity of the thousands of people involved in making the magic that is Doctor Who.

It’s the loss of Lis.

I was lucky to meet her a few times. First in 1996 when she, Brian Miller and their daughter Sadie were guests of honour at Whovention in Sydney. I was on the organising committee for that convention and so got to have dinner with them a few times and chat a little behind the scenes. Lis was everything that so many others have written about – warm, charming, welcoming. She paid attention to you, and would remember you. Her smile was always full and lit up her whole face. She put so many people at ease you felt like you could have a chat and on some level you were friends. I had thought I might have been a little starstruck with her, but because of how she is, that never happened.

About a year later I was at the last Manopticon in Manchester with my then partner. We were in the bar chatting to some friends, when Lis arrived. She saw my then partner and I and came over to give us a big hug. She insisted that we catch up when we could during that weekend. We did, and we were glad to. She never had to do that, but she did. And at subsequent conventions when we met, or during trips to the UK and she was around, she was always generous with her time.

But, she was also fiercely protective of Sadie, and a fierce businesswoman. Looking back, I feel that made her more human, somehow. Yes, she was an actress, a performer, at once open but private. She could be a luvvie with the best of them, but at the end of the day, it was a job and she needed to get the best for her and her family.

When the news came through this Tuesday just gone, I was, like so many, utterly gutted.

The number of messages by children left on the BBC website, and the tributes and obituaries by people no longer children is testament to the love people felt for someone who gave so much to more than one generation of kids. Others have put what I feel much better than I can.

Thank you, Lis, for everything.