You might recall from my “big” graph of fandoms that one of those fandoms was Doctor Who. Based on the sites I frequent (EW.com, AV Club) this Saturday’s premiere of the 6th season* of DW is pretty well known. If not, this Saturday, 9pm, BBC America. Watch and be amazed (hopefully). But today the DW fandom got some pretty sad news. We’ve had a rash of deaths over the past couple of months of actors who played main characters during the classic series.** It’s been sad, but has left a pretty big hole in her passing, namely Sarah Jane Smith. She was a companion to the 3rd and 4th Doctor*** and came back in the new series for an episode before starting her own series “The Sarah Jane Adventures.” Sadly, the actress who played Sarah Jane, Elisabeth Sladen passed away today. The only happy thing to come out of this, and it’s really perversely happy, is that Sarah Jane and Elisabeth are a worldwide trend on Twitter. And here’s the proof:
(click for the full picture)
Anyway, I know I’ll be thinking about her this Saturday.

*If I were British I would have put series which is the same as season over here, but I didn’t want to confuse people. Also there was a “season” of specials when the last Doctor (David Tennant) was starting to bow out. However that doesn’t count as a real season, so this new season (and I keep wanting to say series) is the 6th one of the new run. More on that later.
**The original run of Doctor Who ran from 1963 until 1989 and is called the “classic” series. The new run of the show (which is referred to as “New Who”) started in 2005 with Christoper Eccelston playing the Doctor.
***The first Doctor was played by William Hartnell who was old. So when he was like “I’m out of here because I’m old” and the series was really popular the good producers over at BBC were like “We’ll just say that because the Doctor is an alien, he can ‘regenerate’ into a totally different person with a different face and a different personality and he can do that 13 times.” And so it was that we’ve had 11 Doctors, some who have stayed for a really long time (David Tennant, Tom Baker) and some who only stick around for one season (Christopher Eccelston.) Trust me when I say, you really don’t have to understand all of this to watch the series. But it can be helpful.****
****In case you were wondering, except for Tom Baker, I remembered all this information off the top of my head. Because I am a boss.