 YMMV •
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- 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.
- Complete Monster: The Trickster.
- Not to mention the Pied Piper, who kidnaps children to feed off their parent's fear.
- And Harrison, a Corrupt Corporate Executive who enslaves and tortures aliens.
- Continuity Lock Out: Some episodes do need knowledge of classic or contemporary Doctor Who episodes.
- Epileptic Trees: Rani Chandra has the same name as the Time Lord renegade, the Rani. Go mad with the theories on how they're the same person.
- Funny Aneurysm Moment: In one episode, the characters have fun pretending to be skeptics when Rani's parents tell them that they just saw aliens. In a later episode, an alien takes over Rani's mother's body, and Rani even says that playing ignorant isn't very funny anymore.
- Harsher in Hindsight:
- The last episode broadcast before Elisabeth Sladen's death was the Series 4 finale — "Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith". Even harsher, in it she seemingly suffers from a fatal debilitating disease.
- In "Whatever Happened to Sarah Jane Smith?", the Trickster ponders the chaos that would result from the Doctor being erased from the timeline. "The Name of the Doctor" showed what that would result in: The Stars Are Going Out. En masse.
- Hilarious in Hindsight: At the end of "Death of the Doctor", Jo, unaware of the Last Great Time War, assumes that the Time Lords still exist. "The Day of the Doctor" reveals that they indeed survived the Last Great Time War.
- Ho Yay:
- Between Sarah Jane and Jo Grant in "Death of the Doctor", especially at the end of the second episode.
- Rani and Lady Jane Grey in "Lost in Time".
- Idiot Plot: In "The Gift", why did the Blathereen give Sarah Jane the Rakweed? Why not just plant it on the sly on the other side of the world?
- They wanted Sarah Jane to have a hand in the planet's downfall. For irony, or something.
- 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 (on both sides), storytelling that can stand with its parent shows, and Lis 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:
- Rani was originally this to Maria before her Character Development made her unique enough that comparisons to Maria meant nothing.
- Some of the show's fans really didn't like Sky, and the fact that she was apparently meant to supplant Luke for a whole series 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.
- Sky was only supposed to appear in Series 5. Her entire Story Arc was that she was secretly "The Trickster's Daughter", intervening with the Fleshkind's experiment that made her. The season finale would end with The Trickster's final defeat while he possessed Sky. Sky herself would have had an Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence. Luke presumably would have returned in Series 6, after his actor Tommy Knight finished his exams, if it was made.
- 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.
- The Scrappy: No one likes Kelsey Hooper.
- 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".
- Woobie Species: The Skullions.
- Back to The Sarah Jane Adventures