When Doctor Who returned to TV screens after a long absence — a decade or a decade and a half, depending on how you count the 1996 TV movie — the 2005 relaunch seemed to simplify the canon for a new generation. The titular time-traveling Doctor was now the last of the Time Lords, and a vague, complex event in his past might have rewritten some of the pre-established timeline. And while “Season 1” of the relaunched Who made several references to the classic 1963-1989 series, one question remained: Did the Time Wars of the past rewrite the Doctor’s continuity on Earth? Today, there are still some wibbly-wobbly questions about contemporary canon relative to the machinations of the Toymaker in 2023, but in 2006, with one Season 2 episode, Doctor Who seemed to make one thing very clear: The past happened, and the previous, classic companions of the Doctor were still around.
On April 29, 2006, Doctor Who, Season 2, Episode 3, “School Reunion” found the Doctor (David Tennant) and Rose (Billie Piper) embarking on a good-old-fashioned-aliens-hiding-in-a-school plot. Featuring Anthony Head of Buffy fame as the evil Mr. Finch, “School Reunion,” at least at a glance, has the plot of one of the more forgettable early Tennant adventures; its monster and concept are no more memorable than “The Idiot’s Lantern” and its production values, today, somehow look more dated than the 1970s and 1980s versions of the show. But nobody loves “School Reunion” for the monster-y sci-fi plot. The reason why “School Reunion” is immortal and a great Who episode is that it featured the return of Elisabeth Sladen as Sarah Jane Smith, the previous companion of both the 3rd (Jon Pertwee) and 4th (Tom Baker) Doctors. Like the Doctor and Rose, Sarah Jane is investigating the fishy school for signs of otherworldly activity, which echoes her original role as an investigative journalist in the serial “The Time Warrior.”
