The Sarah Jane Adventures: Death of the Doctor

Chapter the 330th, in which Doctor Who appears to be dead, but returns before you know it (let's hope life imitates art).

Plot:

Sarah Jane, Clyde and Rani are invited to the funeral of the Doctor, held in a UNIT base within Mount Snowdon. Sarah Jane does not believe the Doctor is dead, which the others put down to denial. Another old friend of the Doctor, Jo Jones, attends with her grandson Santiago. She also doesn't believe the Doctor is dead. The funeral is arranged by the Shansheeth, an alien race that look a bit like vultures who act as undertakers across the galaxy. Clyde's body keeps crackling with energy that he absorbed from the TARDIS when he last met the Doctor: suddenly, he changes into Matt Smith. The Doctor has been stranded without the TARDIS on a planet, but has constructed a gizmo to let him switch places with Clyde temporarily. He takes Sarah Jane and Jo with him when he goes back to the planet, and they help him to cross back permanently. The Shansheeth and UNIT Colonel Karim conspired to strand the Doctor and steal his TARDIS, but they don't have the key. They capture Sarah Jane and Jo and wire them up to a device that will create a new key from their memories. The Doctor, the kids and a Groske that works for UNIT are trapped outside of the room when this is happening. Through the door, the Doctor encourages his two ex-companions to remember everything of their adventures. This overloads the machine. It explodes, killing the villains.

Context:

I gave this spin-off a pre-screening screening by asking the usual set of questions. Does it star the Doctor? Yes. Was it released as an official Doctor Who or spin-off story (i.e. its not an unofficial fan-made proposition)? Yes. Is there a dramatic context to the story (i.e. it's not just a skit)? Yes. Was it released with the intention of being the main attraction for audience engagement (i.e. it's not just an extra on a DVD or Blu-ray)? Yes (it did end up being an extra on the Blu-ray collection season 10 box set disc, from where I viewed it this time, but it wasn't created to be so). Have I already covered it in passing with another connected story? No. A full house of correct answers means that the story adheres to the - somewhat arbitrary, I grant you - rules of suitability for inclusion in this blog. I watched the episodes one a day on the last two days of May 2025.

Milestone watch: I've been blogging new and classic Doctor Who stories in random order since 2015, and I'm now closing in on the point where I finish everything and catch up with the current stories being broadcast serially. When not going off piste with stories like Death of the Doctor, I have completed 11 Doctor's televisual eras, Doctors 1-4, 7-9 and 11-14, which entailed completing 37 out of the 41 seasons to date (at the time of writing): classic seasons 1-18, 20, 21, 23-26, and new series 1, 2, and 4-14.

First Time Round:

I can't remember the details, but I remember the feels. I watched this when it was first shown in October 2010, probably from a recording on the PVR later on each of the days of transmission. I was probably accompanied by the Better Half, but not by either of our only two children at the time as they were still a little too young. I enjoyed it immensely, as I did again on this recent watch, and for the same reasons: it's fun, well paced and celebratory. Whisper it, but it was probably the most enjoyable Matt Smith story of 2010 for me (I'm not as keen on Matt Smith's first season as many are).

Reaction:

What a difference a year makes. Death of the Doctor is a loose 2010 sequel to the last Sarah Jane Adventures story that featured a guest appearance from the Doctor in 2009. In that instance, as I mentioned when I blogged it in January 2025, the story scaffolding surrounding the guest casting was pretty flimsy. Just having David Tennant appear seemed enough, without having to construct a strong story in which he could feature. The writer of Death of the Doctor Russell T Davies puts a lot more into this and it's therefore much more rewarding to watch. The masterstroke is to have another guest star appear as well as Matt Smith. This is Katy Manning as Jo Jones née Grant, another companion from the same era as Sarah Jane. Manning gives every scene she's in a lift; Lis Sladen is very good within a narrow range, and can do the dynamic moments, but she's not so good at emotion. Manning can handle the emotional moments perfectly: witness the scene where she asks the Doctor why he never came back to see her again. This then leads into a wonderful revelation that Tennant's pre-regeneration victory lap towards the end of his last episode, where he visited lots of new series companions - which would have been relatively fresh in the audience's memory after its original broadcast on the 1st January of 2010 - extended to his catching up with every one of his companions. Obviously, on one level it's fanwank, but it's also lovely. The little moments talking about other companions (Liz Shaw working on a moonbase, Ian and Barbara having got married, Ace setting up her own charity, etc.) are also great. The story then climaxes with loads and loads of archive clips. What more could one ask for? Davies might never have written for the Doctor again after this story, and he clearly wants it to be a celebration of Doctor Who and the Doctor's positive impact on people.

Matt Smith gets some great gags, but also some more melancholy material like the line about regeneration "It always hurts" that he almost throws away, making it all the more powerful by doing so. The younger regulars are their usual good value. You could lift the Santiago Jones character out of proceedings and not impact the plot one jot, but it's great to have Rani and Clyde with their own sort-of companion, comparing their adventures with his life supporting family members in environmental protesting. Rani and Clyde have the benefit of always going back home after their escapades to normality and safety (a metaphor perhaps for the enjoyable but safe escapism of Doctor Who and associated Whoniverse shows). There's even time for the script to say a few simple but nonetheless true things about grief and loss. There's fun villains and monsters to provide some salt and avoid things becoming too saccharine. The Groske, friendly aliens who look like nastier cousins that the Bannerman Road gang have encountered before, are also pretty superfluous to proceedings; they do, though, provide a few nice moments of comic relief that it would be a shame to lose. For example, there's the sequence where a Groske encourages Rani, Clyde and Santiago to hurry along to its hidden sanctuary, only to reveal that it has no plan beyond hiding, and just wanted to hurry so its pizza wouldn't go cold. Laila Rouass has a lot of fun playing a UNIT officer gone rogue, tempted with the chance to leave Earth behind. The sneering delivery of her put-downs directed at Sarah Jane ("Frankly, I've never met anyone so staggeringly pious in all my life") are worth the price of admission on their own.

The Shansheeth are also a fun enemy race, if a little bit too Jim Henson in their look to be truly scary. Their motivation, though, is nicely original; tired of the ravages of mortality witnessed in their work as space undertakers, they want to prevent death in the universe. Davies mentioned in the commentary for the story that the Shansheeth's nefarious plan to nab the TARDIS broke his rule that the Doctor's time machine should never be the antagonists' prize (drawing attention to the power of the TARDIS too much would invite audiences to wonder why the villain every week didn't abandon whatever plan they had on hearing about it, as it would be more valuable than anything they'd previously had in their sights). It does help to up the ante at the end, though. The effects work to visualise a base in Mount Snowdon and a rocket ready for blast off are pretty good for the minimal budget of a CBBC show. There's great voice work from Jon Glover and David Bradley as the Shansheeth (the latter would be invited back a few times to appear in person in the main show). There's lots of fun continuity references for those that like that sort of thing (Jo mentions Karfel, tying up a loose end of continuity from the Sixth Doctor story Timelash, which sees the Doctor return to a planet that he'd previously visited with Jo in an unseen Jon Pertwee adventure). Beyond all of that, this is the story that depicts the first ever meeting of Sarah Jane and Jo Grant, and for that it gains special status and should always have a place in fans' hearts.

Connectivity:

Both Death of the Doctor and The Story and the Engine feature the Doctor as played by Matt Smith (he's in a blink and you'd miss it clip in the Ncuti Gatwa tale). Both stories involve the antagonists trapping the Doctor in another time- and space-zone away from other characters, but in both his companion(s) eventually join him to help him escape the trap. In a reasonably sizeable coincidence - Doctor Who doesn't do such a thing that often -  both stories climax with a sequence featuring lots of clips of Doctor Who representing the memories of characters being used to overload a machine.

Deeper Thoughts:

The Story is the Engine: Anniversaries and Endings - 2. [Spoilers follow for the end of Ncuti Gatwa's second season - don't read unless you've watched The Reality War.] In the first part of this musing in the Deeper Thoughts section of the previous blog post, I talked about blogging all remaining classic and new series stories before the end of year; but, of course, anything could happen between now and the end of the year. The world could end. There might suddenly and unexpectedly be so many new Doctor Who stories created and broadcast on TV in late 2025 that I couldn't possibly write them all up before the 31st December (sadly, the world ending seems more likely as things stand). As mentioned above, when Russell T Davies wrote Death of the Doctor it probably seemed to him that he was writing for the Doctor for the very last time. In the end, that didn't turn out to be the case. As I write this in early June 2025, in the twentieth anniversary year of the new series launch, the time has come again when Davies may have reached the end of his time writing for the Doctor. All is uncertainty as we wait for news. Stories are a tool that humans have created to help them deal with the uncertainties of the world. It therefore feels a little unfair that Doctor Who fans' favourite coping mechanism has been taken away, just as the world for us has got just a little bit less good. We've been lucky up to now, though: through those twenty years, there's never before been a period when a Doctor Who season ended before the next one had been commissioned (and usually had started production). We now have that situation, and don't know exactly how long it will endure. Things could change before these words are even read. After I publish, Disney+ could confirm funding for another season the next day, the next week, the next month. The smart money (with the caveat that there is no smart way to make such a prediction) is on it taking longer than that, though: to my mind, this explains decisions taken with The Reality War's ending.

There are two facts that are certain. First, Ncuti Gatwa decided to move on from the role of the Doctor. Second, Disney+ had not made a decision about continuing to fund the series - and therefore it was not known exactly how the series would continue - before Gatwa's last episode was due to be broadcast. We don't know exactly when the decision about Gatwa's departure took place. A large amount of material towards the end of The Reality War looks to be constructed around his self-sacrifice. Too much to have been created with hasty pick-up shots? Maybe. My feeling is that he probably would have done a third year if Disney+ had not prevaricated, but we'll probably never know for sure. However it came about, the situation created a challenge for Davies in the writing of the final seconds of The Reality War. Ncuti has to be seen to regenerate, or else he'll still be associated with the role while trying to make a name for himself with other work. This would probably be true even if the regeneration was seen to start but not finish: it would leave open the possibility that he could continue (as David Tennant did after seeming to regenerate at the end of The Stolen Earth, for example). Someone brand new couldn't appear at the end without the guarantee of future work, for the same reason of unfair association with and responsibility for the show. So, it had to be someone already associated with the show in a big enough capacity that further association would not hurt the brand, and successful enough in their own right that the association wouldn't hurt their career. Any of the actors who'd played the Doctor before could have been candidates, but unfortunately Davies had already pulled that trick when David Tennant took over from Jodie Whittaker in 2023. It therefore would have to be a companion actor.

Of the small number of candidates that fit the bill, the ones with a previous working relationship with Davies probably boiled down to two, Catherine Tate and Billie Piper. As Tate had already returned in 2023 too, there was only really one choice. This doesn't mean it's not genius, though: Piper's presence harks back to the relaunch, when she was arguably the most crucial cast member of the first two years of the new series. The credits of The Reality War and the BBC's press release are careful never to refer to Piper as playing the Doctor. This leaves Davies's (or someone else's?) options open for when (if?) things resume. A quick decision on the future of Doctor Who could just about make a Christmas special for December 25th 2025 a possibility; what's more likely is a special or specials in 2026, with Piper handing over to someone else to do a series in 2027. Or it could be the end of Doctor Who altogether. It would be a shame as there are lots of ends left deliberately loose still to be tied up (who exactly is "the Boss"?) and scripts have been written for the next season and beyond. Also, the last ever image of Doctor Who being Ncuti Gatwa turning into Billie Piper is not as fitting as the Doctor and Ace walking off into the sunset (which served as the final image from 1989 to 1996). It certainly feels like there's confidence that the wait won't be too long (but then, one might have thought that about a newly regenerated Paul McGann flying his TARDIS off to adventures new, which served as the final image from 1996 to 2005). We'll have to wait and see (just as we did, for quite lengthy periods after 1989 and 1996). If news does come, I might miss it, at least for a while. I went into my viewing of The Reality War knowing the rumours about Ncuti leaving and regenerating into Piper, and it would have been much better not to have known.

As I've mentioned on the blog before, I don't engage with any social media any more, and I get all my news (except Doctor Who news) offline. I'm much happier for doing this, and I would recommend the approach to anyone. The fear of missing out, though, tempts me to regularly google 'Doctor Who' and look at news articles. I'm going to stop that too now. With no stories being made I'm not likely to see any spoilers, but there are other dangers. Stories are ways to help us manage the uncertainty of life, but there's a different and uglier type of storytelling too. Whether just for clicks (negative stories attracting more attention), or as a stick with which certain other media outlets can beat the BBC, or because of a more general anti-woke agenda, whatever that means exactly, a narrative is already being pushed that Ncuti Gatwa's time as the Doctor was a "flop" with "plummeting" ratings. I'd just like to use a few words here to show how that's complete bollocks. The average consolidated 7-day ratings figure for the first six episodes of the second Gatwa season is 3.18 million viewers. This is a slight drop on the average for last year's season of 3.71 million, but it's a very small drop (not a plummet or a "nosedive"). It's likely that when the final two stories' figures are included, the drop will be even smaller, possibly non-existent. The figure of 3.71 is down on the average figure for Jodie Whittaker's last season too, but then almost every year since 2005 has seen Doctor Who's average ratings go down compared to the previous year. The only exceptions were David Tennant's final season and Jodie Whittaker's first, the averages for both of which were buoyed up by a single outlier rating, because an aspect of that episode snagged on to the public's curiosity (what's the first female Doctor going to be like, and is Tennant going to regenerate earlier than we thought?).

This year-on-year decline is no surprise as it's happened across the board to all other programmes too. As such, Doctor Who is holding its own, particularly when one considers that each episode is usually available to stream before it is broadcast on TV, meaning that overnight and even 7-day figures will never give the whole picture. As was seen with the bump in viewing figures for the 2025 Eurovision-themed episode - which formed part of a live viewing experience with the contest itself for those at home making a night of it - people will tune in live when there's a hook (this is also borne out for special episodes, which tend to perform better than episodes that form part of seasons, and always have). If people aren't motivated to watch live, they will still catch up with the story at some point, Doctor Who episodes on the iplayer have a 'long tail'. Isn't the point of the streaming age that people can watch whenever they want? I'm sure there will be many people who held off from watching any of the season until it was complete, so they could binge it as a box set. I will not be sorry to miss tabloid newspapers misreporting such statistics, and then assigning spurious explanations tied to their own agenda. None of this means that Doctor Who will necessarily come back to TV anytime soon, of course. If I'm disciplined and stick to avoiding any online Who news, the next I know about the future of Doctor Who will be in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine. For example, it will be interesting to see whether Billie Piper starts to appear in the magazine's comic strip, or whether they stick with Ncuti, or indeed do something different altogether. There will still be Big Finish audios too, of course, and probably some more original novels as well. What did I foolishly say earlier about losing our coping mechanism? You don't get rid of Doctor Who stories so easily: they'll likely run and run - and be a force of positivity, unlike some other stories out there - forever.

In Summary:

A very enjoyable story that works as a celebration of the Whoniverse.