The official Doctor Who site has announced that BBC Audiobookswill be releasing two original audiobooks based on The Sarah Jane Adventures, read by Elisabeth Sladen.

In The Glittering Storm by Stephen Cole, Sarah Jane investigates the strange behavior of patients at a London clinic and discovers a plot to harvest all the gold from Earth. Says Cole, "My first memories of Doctor Who are of poor Sarah stuck in a ventilator shaft back in 1975, so I jumped at the chance to write a story for Lis Sladen. She is a fantastic actor with a wonderful voice, and Sarah Jane is a marvellous character. With The Glittering Storm I aimed to provide a story with creepy scares - as well as humour and thrills - in the vein of the new TV series. The idea is that we on Earth are not the only people who prize gold highly... Others in space have a fascination for the stuff too, and are rather more menacing in the way that they use it..."

In The Thirteenth Stone by Justin Richards, Sarah Jane finds an secret associated with an ancient stone circle. Richards says, "I had enormous fun writing The Thirteenth Stone. It's always slightly daunting writing a story that is going to be read aloud - you really have to be at your best. But knowing that Elisabeth Sladen - Sarah Jane Smith herself - was going to be reading it was a tremendous boost to the confidence as well as a huge privilege. I can't wait to hear the finished result!"

Both audiobooks will be available for purchase as CDs or downloads from November 5. Teaser clips from both stories are available through the official site.

The first episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures achieved a rating of 1.3 million viewers, an 11% share of the audience.

This is much higher than CBBC programmes usually get in this slot. Last Monday, Escape from Scorpion Island got 0.9 million.

In the children's chart, the programme was the 6th most watched of the day with an audience of 0.5 million which was a 29.8% share.

Over on CBBC the second episode was watched by 0.44 million making the programme the most watched of the day on CBBC and the 7th most watched programme on multi channel television.

The latest issue of the BBC's ever Who-friendly Radio Times listings magazine is released in the UK today, and contains various items of interest to Doctor Who fans.

Billie Piper is the issue's cover star and the subject of an interview inside the magazine, promoting her new ITV2 drama series The Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Interviewer Zoe Williams writes: "She won't be drawn on Doctor Who (will she return before David Tennant departs?) - for personal or contractual reasons, we can only guess."

On page three, Radio Times editor Gill Hudson asks her readers to guess what connects three of the major television events of the week - Billie Piper's new role, the first appearance of Christopher Eccleston in BBC Two's run of the US fantasy series Heroes, and the return of Sarah Jane Smith. "Right first time!" Hudson tells her readers.

The Sarah Jane Adventures is listed as one of the picks of the week on page four, and on page 31 is given a one-page preview feature, in which Gareth McLean interviews Russell T Davies about the show and his return to children's television, where he started out with dramas such as Dark Season in 1991, from which a photo of Kate Winslet and Jacqueline Pearce is shown.

"I loved the sort of dramas that were set in this world, but had an otherworldliness to them," Davies tells McLean. "They had all this possibility that there were fantastic forces at work beneath the ordinariness of the world. How marvellous!" Davies also reflects on how he never felt children were his natural audience, and on the changes to children's television since he worked in it. He concludes that "With the likes of Disney investing so much money in children's TV, I do feel optimistic about its future."

The Sarah Jane Adventures is one 'Today's Choices' for Monday September 24th, with reviewer Mark Braxton commenting: "The show looks perfect for cheering up Mondays; it confirms the promise of the pilot and has its heart in exactly the right place."

The magazine also confirms that the next episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures will follow on the CBBC Channel at 5.30pm on Monday, immediately following the previous episode's BBC One premiere.

Elisabeth Sladen has spoken to The Daily Telegraph newspaper about her role in the forthcoming Doctor Who spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, which begins its run on BBC One on Monday 24th September.

She tells journalist Simon Swift: "I did that episode, School Reunion, and I thought what a lovely end for my character... Then, as Torchwood was coming out, I got a call saying Russell [T Davies - Doctor Who's executive producer] would like to take me out for lunch to talk about something else. I thought, 'I'm going to be in Torchwood.' And he said: 'We want to do a series called The Sarah Jane Adventures.' I absolutely didn't see it coming."

Sladen also tells Swift that she would have been irritated had the spin-off project been given to any other former companion. "I would be p***** off to my socks. I would have said, 'Well, they know what they're doing,' but I would have secretly thought, 'Oh, what a mistake they've made'."

CBBC has updated the official website of The Sarah Jane Adventures, in anticipation of the series' debut on September 24. The website contains a teaser clip from Revenge of the Slitheen, a "data matrix" for interfacing with Sarah Jane's computer "Mr. Smith", a tour of Sarah Jane's attic and more.

At the moment, the site is not restricted to UK IP addresses (as it had been previously). Thanks to the CBBC web designers for allowing fans from outside the UK to use the website.

The BBC have announced that The Sarah Jane Adventures will begin broadcasting on Monday, September 24th at 5:00 pm. On Sunday the 23rd, CBBC will be repeating the New Year's specialInvasion of the Bane. The first story of the series will be Revenge of the Slitheen by Gareth Roberts.

September 6, 2007 • Posted By Paul Hayes