Elisabeth Sladen
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15
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When Elisabeth Sladen debuted as journalist Sarah Jane Smith in 1973 Doctor Who story ‘The Time Warrior’, she had no idea that the character would become one of the most popular in the series’ history. When she quit the TARDIS in 1976, having traversed space and time alongside Jon Pertwee and Tom Baker, the story was front page news. But you don’t just walk away from the Doctor. Elisabeth reprised her role many times, and went on to tour the weird and wonderful world of Doctor Who fandom. So when TV wunderkind Russell T. Davies approached her to come back again, this time to a show backed by multi-million pound budgets and garlanded with critical plaudits, how could she refuse? Completed only months before her death in April 2011, Elisabeth’s memoir is funny, ridiculous, insightful and entertaining, and a fitting tribute to a woman who will be sadly missed by millions.
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This is a theatrical autobiography by an actress mainly known for appearing in Doctor Who, although it also covers the rest of her career. I don't read many theatrical biographies and I'm not a huge fan of Doctor Who, so it's taken me almost six years after publication to acquire a copy of this book, but I have enough interest in both subjects to enjoy it all the way through.
Elisabeth Sladen made her first appearance in Doctor Who at the end of 1973, during my second year at university, and I liked her at the time: she seemed somewhat less helpless than the Doctor's previous companions.
She wasn't confident enough to write an autobiography by herself, and engaged Jeff Hudson as co-writer to help her with it, so I think he should be visibly credited here (as he is in the book itself). The result of their joint effort is more conversational than literary: it's like sitting in her living room while she talks her way through her past. That's one way to do an autobiography, and works well enough in this case.
The book is very readable and rather charming; at least for me, it never becomes boring. I suppose Jeff Hudson's role was to edit, to advise on what to cut or shorten, to arrange the text in coherent order, and so on, while preserving her own way of saying things. It certainly reads like a personal memoir, in which the hand of the co-author remains invisible.
Readers can learn a good deal about the actor's life in general and about working on Doctor Who in particular, and there are plenty of anecdotes about all the people she met. She must have had a good memory for all the details, as it's hard to imagine that she had time to keep a diary while working.
She was devoted to acting: she wasn't a fan of science fiction nor even of Doctor Who, which she didn't normally watch when she wasn't in it. It was just one of her many theatrical jobs. But it happened to be as Sarah Jane Smith that she became widely known and popular, and she recognizes it by devoting most of the book to her involvement with that character—which was still continuing at the time of her rather sudden and early death.
