The Sarah Jane Adventures / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation:
- When Sarah Jane goes over to greet the Chandra family in "Day of the Clown," is it out of genuine neighborly feeling? Is it just to make sure that Maria didn't leave any alien objects behind, with the greeting being a pretense? Or was it a mix of both?
- As mentioned below, does Maria actually have feelings for Sarah Jane? Or is it simply bonding with a mother figure, given that Chrissie is pretty much the opposite of a responsible parent?
- Truman claims that he has no regrets about serving the Ancient Lights. Is this true, or is it the mind control talking? What little we saw of the real him, refusing to take a client's money after he found out that things were tight, implies that he was at least something of a good person.
- Are the Claw Shansheeth of the Fifteenth Funeral Fleet truly well-intentioned extremists who just want others' grief and loss across the universe to stop, or are they ultimately self-serving in that they've just gotten sick of themselves having to put up with it? The lead Shansheeth's Motive Rant leaves room for it to be interpreted either way, although it should be noted that the Shansheeth sound really snide and dispassionate when observing that their memory weave will ultimately kill Jo and Sarah Jane.
Angst? What Angst?:
- Sarah Jane is a Technical Pacifist who always tries to deal with hostile aliens in a peaceful and nonviolent way. However, when her enemies do die, she rarely shows much emotion. The deaths of enemies are often followed immediately by humorous scenes. The most egregious examples are probably the the deaths of the Slitheen-Blathereen and the implied death of Miss Myers.
- This is especially strange in the case of "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane". Even though Andrea Yates effectively let young Sarah Jane die, caused Maria to be erased from existence, and nearly let the earth get destroyed, she was also Sarah Jane's childhood best friend who got used by the Trickster and chose to let herself die (again) to save everyone. But the gang gets too caught up in the reunion, the meteor, and Alan's discovery of their alien investigating to reflect on Andrea afterwards.
Awesome Music: See this page
Complete Monster: See here.
Continuity Lockout: The occasional throwaway reference aside, the series manages to avoid this with its younger viewers, even in the continuity-heavy "Death of the Doctor". That said, some level of lockout is unavoidable for viewers who have never seen Doctor Who.
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Clyde for the main cast, before he became a bit of a Breakout Character with increasingly larger story roles.
- The Trickster is this for the villains, given that he's not just the main recurring foe (Slitheen aside), but his stories are considered among the strongest because of the emotional havoc he wreaks upon the cast - for many fans, the most disappointing thing about the series' cancellation (besides Elisabeth Sladen's death) is that the planned resolution to his storyline (which was meant to be the Season 5 finale) was never produced to give his character proper closure.
- Odd Bob only appeared once, but he's quite well-regarded for being a genuinely terrifying threat.
Genius Bonus: St. Luke is the patron saint of doctors.
Harsher in Hindsight: In "Prisoner of the Judoon", the characters have fun pretending to be sceptics when Rani's parents tell them that they just saw aliens. In "The Vault of Secrets", Androvax takes over Gita's body, and Rani even says that playing ignorant isn't very funny anymore.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- "The Mark of the Beserker" saw Rani dare her father to imitate Bianca from Eastenders. Ace Bhatti, the actor who played Rani's father, went on Eastenders a few years later.
- In "The Wedding of Sarah Jane Smith", the Trickster tells the Doctor that he embodies multitudes. This gets pretty funny after "The Timeless Children" in the parent show.
- Seeing companion Rani go up against the alien Spellman/Odd Bob in "The Day of the Clown" gets pretty funny 12 years later when, in "Nikola Tesla's Night of Terror", companion Graham (played by the same actor as Spellman) faces down the alien Skithra Queen (played by the same actress as Rani). Even better, Anjli Mohindra was in such heavy prosthetics when playing the Skithra Queen that Bradley Walsh didn't even recognize her.
- Rani's actress Anjli Mohindra would go on to play a lead in another time travel-related show, The Lazarus Project.
- In the tie-in flash game "Think Before You Sonic", the Big Bad known as the Krulius says "Cringe beneath me, earth child!" in Training Level 15. This was meant as a Puny Earthlings line about Rani cringing in fear, but from the mid to late 2010s, the word cringe (in slang) usually means "inducing awkwardness or secondhand embarrassment" making it seem more like Rani should feel embarassed rather than afraid of the Krulius' attack.
- In "The Death of the Doctor", the Eleventh Doctor, hearing about all the adventures Sarah Jane has been on in her show, is particularly confused by the mention of the Mona Lisa from "Mona Lisa's Revenge". The actress who played Mona Lisa in that episode would appear alongside the Eleventh Doctor seven months later in "The Doctor's Wife".
- Anjli Mohindra's long-time partner Sacha Dawan would be cast on the parent series in 2020 as the Master, having previously played Doctor Who's first director, Waris Hussein, in An Adventure in Space and Time. So yes — Rani is dating the Master.
Les Yay:
- Between Jo and Sarah Jane in "Death of the Doctor", especially at the end of the second episode.
- Rani and Lady Jane Grey in "Lost in Time".
- Quite a lot of Maria's scenes with Sarah Jane, and especially the way she talks about her in voice-over, suggest that she has confused adolescent feelings for her that may well stray into the erotic.
Periphery Demographic: The show, as we've said just above, has a massive one among classic Doctor Who fans. It's probably deliberate, as Sarah Jane is widely considered the best Classic companion in the show's history, and is almost certainly the most beloved. It honestly veers into Multiple Demographic Appeal after a while. While, at its heart, it is a show intended for kids, there are so many references to Sarah Jane (and Jo Grant's) adventures with previous Doctors that the younger set just won't get. Add to that the rather attractive parents, storytelling that can stand with its parent shows, and Elisabeth Sladen saying at one point they even dabbled in Costume Porn (to apparently bring in the Carrie Bradshaw set), and it truly seems like they went out of their way to cover every base and make something everybody could watch together.
Replacement Scrappy:
- Some of the show's fans really didn't like Sky, and the fact that she was apparently meant to supplant Luke in the long-term just made things worse. However, the majority of fans were generally more forgiving, since the manner of the show's ending meant that Sky never got the character development she was supposed to. And upon looking at what was meant to come out of it, and the twist involving the Trickster, fans feel sad it didn't get to be made.
- Rani caught flak for this too, back when Season 2 aired and she came in as a replacement for Maria - the show not having much time to differentiate their personalities or give her much significance; her acting was also not considered the strongest even by critics. By the end of Season 3 she got enough Character Development and Anjli Mohindra had gotten comfortable in the role, so she was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: The Slitheen in "The Lost Boy"; removing the Toilet Humour and the necessity for their human disguises to be fat people goes a long way to making them more credible as villains.
Retroactive Recognition:
- Gregg Sulkin appears as Adam in "The Mad Woman in the Attic".
- Jade the waitress from Ted Lasso appears as Adrianna the cleaner in "The Man Who Never Was".
- Suranne Jones, who played Mona Lisa in "Mona Lisa's Revenge", would go on to play Idris/The Tardis in "The Doctor's Wife" in the main series, as well as roles like Anne Lister.
- Tommy Knight would later appear as Jenna Coleman's/Queen Victoria's bell boy in Victoria.
The Scrappy: Kelsey Hooper is obnoxious. Thankfully, she's replaced by Clyde Langer from the second episode on, to most fans' relief.
Shipping: Clyde / Rani is the big one, but the fandom also ships Luke / Maria, Clyde / Maria, and occasionally Alan / Sarah Jane. On the homosexual side of fandom, Clyde / Luke and Sarah Jane / Maria are the most popular pairings.
Starboarding: Many f/f fans believe that Maria (or to a lesser extent Rani) has some teenage sexual attraction to Sarah Jane, but don't write the relationship as actually happening due to the large age gap and canonical underage status of Maria.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In "The Lost Boy", Alan gets to play mentor to the kids and turns out to have "unorthodox contacts" as well as some incredible computer skills. It would have been fascinating to see him continue to be part of the team, especially since neither Clyde nor Luke has a father figure, and there were some hints of Ship Tease between him and Sarah Jane. However, when Yasmin Paige (Maria) had to bow out of the show, Alan understandably had to go with her. He does, however, get to play an important role in "The Mark of the Berserker".
Ugly Cute: The youngest Slitheen in "Revenge of the Slitheen" - "Daddy, I want to hunt!"
Villain Decay: The Slitheen. After proving to be quite a threat in Doctor Who, similarly nasty (if a bit more farcical) in "Revenge Of The Slitheen", and downright cruel in "The Lost Boy" they've been reduced to being largely comic relief, particularly in the Red Nose Day short From Raxacoricofallapatorius With Love (though, in fairness, the Red Nose Day short was literally for the charity Comic Relief).
What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: While more clear-cut kid-friendly than the family show Doctor Who, some episodes — *cough* "Day of the Clown" *cough* — are not the kind of thing you'd want to let children watch alone...
Woobie Species: The Skullions from "The Man Who Never Was", who are cruelly enslaved and abused by Harrison.

YMMV / The Sarah Jane Adventures

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