The Man Who Never Was is a two-part final story of The Sarah Jane Adventures, which was broadcast on CBBC on 17 and 18 October 2011.

Sarah Jane reveals that she has been chosen to see a run through of the speech that Joseph Serf (the creator of the SerfBoard) will present.

She takes Luke and Sky with her to the run through and bumps into Lionel Carson, her old editor, who mentions his dislike of computers.

This leads Sarah Jane to conclude that the real Joseph Serf died in the skiing accident and the one at the run through was a hologram.

As Sarah Jane, Luke, and Sky go to meet Serf, Clyde and Rani have Mr Smith scan the SerfBoard to uncover anything alien about it.

While Sarah Jane conducts the interview, Luke and Sky go into the basement and discover that aliens are controlling the Serf image.

To buy time for Sarah Jane's escape, Sky pulls a lever in the control room, causing the Serf hologram to malfunction.

Sarah Jane, Luke, and Sky are all captured, and Harrison reveals that he bought the enslaved Skullions on the black market after their ship crashed in China.

Though the SerfBoard is nothing special, the Serf hologram has a hypnotic setting that can make people - especially the audience of the upcoming launch, both live and televised - want to buy the product.

He then separates Sarah Jane from the teenagers, placing her in a locked room with the cleaner, Adriana, who expresses empathy for "the little people".

After receiving Luke's message, Clyde and Rani assume the identities of Trevor and Janet Sharp, married journalists actually stranded at an airport due to a computer malfunction engineered by Mr Smith, and head for the launch.

Although not an official episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures, on 19 April 2020 a special 13-minute webcast mini episode entitled "Farewell, Sarah Jane" aired on Doctor Who's social media channels as a tribute to Elisabeth Sladen, and also so that fans of the series would receive some closure, since the series had ended abruptly due to Sladen's sudden death in 2011.