She will be missed.

I really don't have lots to say beyond that -- I only knew Elisabeth Sladen as the daring and comely (and admittedly sometimes criminally incompetent and loud with the screaming) Sarah Jane Smith, and relatively briefly -- but here's a rather nice tribute on the BBC Doctor Who website and a neat photo gallery of Lis over the years on CBBC. And my friend Mickey has posted a great commemorative screencap gallery.

I don't know how soon they start thinking about these things, but I do hope that the folks in charge will air or somehow release the Series 5 episodes of "The Sarah Jane Adventures" that were filmed, assuming that filming was completed for any of them. As it stands, "Goodbye, Sarah Jane Smith" is the last 2-part episode that aired -- and while the name is rather fitting, it's a fairly depressing episode. Sarah Jane becomes terminally ill, begins acting erratically and losing her memory, and then makes the decision to leave her friends and son in order to basically shove off alone on her ice floe. She ultimately thinks better of it, but then she's captured by the alien responsible for her illness -- after which she spends the remainder of the episode suffering in a cell until her young companions come to her rescue. Lis's notable absence during many recent episodes makes sense given her apparent illness (Mickey and I joked that the show was becoming "The Clyde Langer Adventures," owing to the amount of time one of the supporting characters spent in the spotlight), but I hope they filmed a Series 5 episode in which the character was up front and in charge -- that's how I'd like to see Sarah Jane's television journey end. (I imagine she'll continue on in other Doctor Who-related media, just as the Doctors of Jon Pertwee and Patrick Troughton and William Hartnell continue to have adventures in print.)

Rest well, Lis.