10 Doctor Who Real Life Alternate Timelines

2. What If K-9 And Company Had Gone To Series?

With the passing of Elisabeth Sladen a few years ago, we lost one of the most beloved companions ever. We also lost The Sarah Jane Adventures, which some people are less upset about. We did get some terrific cameos by two Doctors and another former companion, but for the most part, the show was what it was meant to be: a kids' programme, in a way that Doctor Who itself never really was. Things might have been very different if the first attempt to give Sarah Jane her own show, K-9 and Company back in 1981, had gone to series. While the special got decent ratings, the new BBC controller Alan Hart wasn't keen on it, and so it never went into regular production. What if it had? Hopefully the writing would have gotten better. Nearly everyone disliked Terrence Dudley's script, including Lis Sladen, and the finished product feels more like a murder mystery than science fiction. Sarah Jane would eventually investigate alien threats on Earth, much as she would do in SJA, though her only young sidekick would have been her aunt's ward Brendan, who is a good deal easier to take than Luke and the rest of SJA's Scooby Gang. And much like the latter series, a K-9 and Company series would have allowed the appearance of many of Doctor Who's regular villains - possibly even more of them, in fact - and the setting might have resulted in stories closer to the Jon Pertwee era of the show, with Sarah taking more of the lead. Also, though Sladen was active during the production of SJA, she was still much more in her prime in the '80s (the occasional tumble down a gentle incline notwithstanding). On the other hand, the jogging and the karate kick we could do without. It's sheer speculation to try to guess how long such a series might have lasted, though it's doubtful it could have run for long. Sarah and K-9's appearances in The Five Doctors might have given the show a ratings bump, though, and we might have seen Davison or even Colin Baker make a cameo appearance before the series ended. And would it not have been wonderful to see the Tom Baker Doctor working alongside Sarah Jane one more time? We'd likely still get the K-9-free audio dramas regardless. As for the Sarah Jane Adventures... While there's no reason School Reunion could not still have happened, a second spin-off would have been unlikely. It's up to you to decide whether that would have been a win or not.