Russell T Davies talks to SFX about Jo Grant’s return
Russell T Davies has spoken to SFX about Katy Manning’s return as Jo Grant in The Sarah Jane Adventures.
The creator of the CBBC spin off told the magazine that he re-watched Jo’s final appearance in the Third Doctor’s 1973 adventure The Green Death before he wrote her comeback in the forthcoming two-parter, Death of the Doctor. He said: “It’s really important to preserve the absolute beauty of what [producer] Barry Letts and [script editor] Terrance Dicks did there.”
He explained: “We left her with the promise of happiness, of adventure, of love and joy, and you can’t undercut that by saying, ‘Oh, she’s a drug addict now! Her husband left her, she’s lonely, her life is bitter’. That’s just interfering with classic Doctor Who and what we were promised. So I was absolutely strict about that.”
When the Doctor is declared dead, Jo joins forces with Sarah Jane to discover the truth.
The 12-part fourth series of The Sarah Jane Adventures begins on CBBC next month.
fair enough. The companions should be happy after traveling with the doctor
Glad to hear it! I don’t normally watch SJA but I will be watching these episodes. Can’t wait!
Keeping in thought visiting old companions and finding them relatively “unchanged” from how they were last presented on the show, I would love it if the 11th Doctor would visit prehistoric Earth to confirm that Adric is still very much dead on that crashed space freighter.
I love the bit with the shuffling in the vents – fantastic! And, glad to see you-know-who (whatever his name is (hopefully the BBC confirm it in the PR)) probably first appears in The Vault of Secrets, so this looks like a pretty good series all around.