She wasn't the first companion. She wasn't the longest serving companion. Yet she's regarded as the ultimate companion.
And it very nearly never happened.
The first Sarah Jane Smith was to have been April Walker - a tall blonde-haired actress who had featured in The Two Ronnies, Dad's Army and Fawlty Towers. Jon Pertwee was already unsettled by the death of Roger Delgado and the departure of Katy Manning when Walker was cast by Barry Letts. He objected to this, mainly because of her stature. Katy was smaller, and it allowed Pertwee to act as the protector - throwing his cloak around her and sheltering her like a mother hen. This was the image he wanted his Doctor to project.
Knowing that Letts and Terrance Dicks were planning to leave at the end of Season 11, Pertwee was considering his own future but hadn't yet announced his resignation. He remained the popular "Dr Who" and the BBC were willing to bow to his requests. Walker was paid off, and the hunt resumed for the next Sarah Jane.
(Walker would be paid by the BBC for the year she would have done on Doctor Who, her money reduced if she got any other paid work during that period. There was nothing personal in Pertwee's request to replace her - they had happily worked together on stage back in 1968).
The role of Sarah eventually went to Lis Sladen, an actress from Liverpool who had very little TV experience - a Some Mother's Do Have 'Em and a Z-Cars or two - but had worked extensively in theatre.
Her first work on Doctor Who came with the location filming for The Time Warrior, final story of the tenth production block which would be held over to open Season 11. Pertwee had therefore only just bid Katy farewell, and was still sad. At one point he called Lis "Katy", then promptly burst into tears.
One of the reasons she had been cast was her knack of conveying more than one emotion at a time. She could act defiantly against an alien, whilst at the same instance showing that she was really quite terrified of it.
It has to be said that there is nothing particularly outstanding about her year with Pertwee. Unlike Manning, she does get a little more to do in a couple of her Season 11 stories - carrying considerable sub-plots in Invasion of the Dinosaurs and Planet of the Spiders. She is supposed to be a modern woman, independent and with a career in journalism. The latter aspect of the character will quickly fall by the wayside, but the independence will remain.
And then she got paired with Tom Baker's Fourth Doctor.
Clearly there was some sort of magical chemistry between them - they both hailed from Liverpool, and shared a similar sense of humour - and the quality of the stories would certainly have helped. Sladen was worried that a new producer - Philip Hinchcliffe - would want to bring in his own companion, and expected to be leaving the series at any moment.
Another factor is that there were now three people in the TARDIS. The role which Ian Marter's Harry Sullivan played in launching this new golden age should never be underestimated.
Marter had been employed when it was thought that a much older actor might be cast as the Fourth Doctor, and Hinchcliffe let him go at the end of his contract as he regarded the character to be redundant alongside Baker. The producer would later state that this had been a mistake.
As it was, Sarah carried on with the Doctor for another season and a half in a run of stories regarded as amongst the very best ever.
Sladen modestly elected to go part way through a season, in a story which was not going to be all about her. Her two conditions were that she shouldn't be married off (the fate of her replacement) or killed off (the fate Douglas Camfield had in store for her).
We were all heart-broken when Sarah left at the end of The Hand of Fear. (I'm sure I wasn't the only person who took a while to warm to Leela - just because she wasn't Sarah).
JNT tried to get Lis back to help bridge the regeneration from Baker to Davison, worried that the former had been in the role so long that his new boy would struggle to be accepted. She declined, but the K9 spin-off did emerge from their discussions. This failed to get beyond the pilot stage - despite very good ratings (even allowing for a transmitter blackout in NW England).
Lis was then back for the 20th Anniversary story, The Five Doctors. This saw her with K9, so canonised the earlier spin-off. (In a lot of ways, it canonised the revived series. Up until School Reunion, people could have argued that this was not a continuation of the series which began in November 1963).
When it came to the 2005 revival, the most obvious choice for a returning companion was Sarah. In the intervening years, poll after poll had judged her favourite companion of all time. RTD wanted a story in which Rose encountered someone who had once been where she is - just to contrast but also to foreshadow Rose's own departure at the end of the series.
RTD was also keen to develop a wider franchise, comprising other spin-off series. The one for adults would be Torchwood, but the one aimed at children would star Lis as Sarah Jane Smith.
After a number of one-off returns, The Sarah Jane Adventures would run for four full series - at times being more like Doctor Who than the new Doctor Who.
Sadly, during the making of a fifth series Lis passed away - leaving only three new stories completed.
We were grief-stricken - as though we had lost a very good personal friend.
During lockdown, they tried to say that Sarah Jane Smith had died but - like most of those twitter things - this was nonsense. She's simply off somewhere, helping to save the universe.
As she does. As she always will do.
When the Doctor proudly exclaims "My Sarah Jane!" in School Reunion, that's not really the Doctor talking. That's David Tennant, and Russell T Davies, and Toby Whithouse. And all of us.
She was our Sarah Jane.
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