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Beyond the Doctor #4
Doctor Who: London, 1965
A brand new story featuring the Doctor's former companions, Ian & Barbara.
- GenresDoctor WhoAudiobook
1 pages, Audio CD
First published January 6, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
March 12, 2022
The third short story in the Beyond The Doctor range, there’s something irresistible about this imagining of how life continued for the Doctor’s first Earthly companions (as far as we know!), Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, when they were finally dropped home to (more or less) their own time and place – London, in 1965.
Paul Magrs makes great play with that ‘more or less’ element. In the whole vastness of time and space, two years might seem like the blink of an eye, sure, but in Sixties London, if you’ve been missing for two years, it’s a pretty big deal.
Ian and Barbara’s jobs have gone, which tends to happen when you don’t turn up for a couple of years. Ian’s landlady has held his room open for him, but expects to be paid the back rent in full, not to mention the rent going forward, adjusted for inflation, thank you very much. It’s not long before he’s plugged into the supply teaching network, running around all over London to teach the odd lesson here and there. But he’s also dealing with the culture shock of being dropped back on Earth by writing science fiction stories – some of them based on the adventures he and Barbara had with the Doctor.
Barbara, meanwhile, is initially much more displaced than her friend. Wandering through the British Museum, she feels deep psychic connections to some of the exhibits – Roman artefacts, Aztec items, and so on. She’s rescued by Angela Leamann, who offers her room and board in exchange for her participation in some psychical experiments – all the rage in the mid-Sixties.
Ian finds interest in his stories from a publisher who introduces him to a TV bigshot one might just conceivably imagine being an in-universe Sydney Newman, and a pilot show is planned. Sets built. Including the set of a console room for a fabulous machine that whisks two ordinary humans off to have fabulous adventures in space and time.
While each of them is finding their own way to cope with their sense of displacement on coming at least nominally ‘home,’ they lose a lot of the close connection that they developed while on the Tardis as a way of getting through their adventures. For all those people who imagined Ian and Barbara would just get back home, acknowledge their feelings for one another and live happily ever after, this is quite the speed-bump.
But as you might expect, there’s more going on than meets the eye. Is Angela Leamann’s interest in Barbara’s hypnotic dreaming purely scientific? Is Ian’s writing really good enough to get him a TV deal within a year of writing his first stories? Or is there something more alien and gittish going on?
Put like that, it doesn’t sound like MUCH of a spoiler, but we’re not about to kill the surprise for you – particularly because Paul Magrs gives things more than one intriguing twist along the way. If you know his writing, that won’t surprise you – it’s Paul Magrs, after all, intriguing twists are one of many things he does six times between breakfast and bedtime.
But here, there’s something that opens up a wider world of potential interest in almost Avengers-style Earth-bound intrigue (that’s Steed and Peel Avengers, not Stark and Steve Avengers, marvel-fans), that was first mentioned in the second Beyond the Doctor story, Bessie Come Home (also written by Magrs), and seems set to feature in some other instalments by the same author.
Every Classic Who fan has invented their own headcanon of how Ian and Barbara got on once they returned home. London, 1965 gives you a version with a BBC Audio stamp of approval on it, which may well be as close to official as we’re ever going to get.
That being the case, it’s a realistic, utterly human adventure that makes use of some TV elements in its conclusion and sets up much more of an earthbound threat than we got to hear in Bessie Come Home (though if you haven’t heard that yet, do it NOW, you’ll cry for all the right reasons). There’s more to come, and after London, 1965, it can’t come soon enough.
Paul Magrs makes great play with that ‘more or less’ element. In the whole vastness of time and space, two years might seem like the blink of an eye, sure, but in Sixties London, if you’ve been missing for two years, it’s a pretty big deal.
Ian and Barbara’s jobs have gone, which tends to happen when you don’t turn up for a couple of years. Ian’s landlady has held his room open for him, but expects to be paid the back rent in full, not to mention the rent going forward, adjusted for inflation, thank you very much. It’s not long before he’s plugged into the supply teaching network, running around all over London to teach the odd lesson here and there. But he’s also dealing with the culture shock of being dropped back on Earth by writing science fiction stories – some of them based on the adventures he and Barbara had with the Doctor.
Barbara, meanwhile, is initially much more displaced than her friend. Wandering through the British Museum, she feels deep psychic connections to some of the exhibits – Roman artefacts, Aztec items, and so on. She’s rescued by Angela Leamann, who offers her room and board in exchange for her participation in some psychical experiments – all the rage in the mid-Sixties.
Ian finds interest in his stories from a publisher who introduces him to a TV bigshot one might just conceivably imagine being an in-universe Sydney Newman, and a pilot show is planned. Sets built. Including the set of a console room for a fabulous machine that whisks two ordinary humans off to have fabulous adventures in space and time.
While each of them is finding their own way to cope with their sense of displacement on coming at least nominally ‘home,’ they lose a lot of the close connection that they developed while on the Tardis as a way of getting through their adventures. For all those people who imagined Ian and Barbara would just get back home, acknowledge their feelings for one another and live happily ever after, this is quite the speed-bump.
But as you might expect, there’s more going on than meets the eye. Is Angela Leamann’s interest in Barbara’s hypnotic dreaming purely scientific? Is Ian’s writing really good enough to get him a TV deal within a year of writing his first stories? Or is there something more alien and gittish going on?
Put like that, it doesn’t sound like MUCH of a spoiler, but we’re not about to kill the surprise for you – particularly because Paul Magrs gives things more than one intriguing twist along the way. If you know his writing, that won’t surprise you – it’s Paul Magrs, after all, intriguing twists are one of many things he does six times between breakfast and bedtime.
But here, there’s something that opens up a wider world of potential interest in almost Avengers-style Earth-bound intrigue (that’s Steed and Peel Avengers, not Stark and Steve Avengers, marvel-fans), that was first mentioned in the second Beyond the Doctor story, Bessie Come Home (also written by Magrs), and seems set to feature in some other instalments by the same author.
Every Classic Who fan has invented their own headcanon of how Ian and Barbara got on once they returned home. London, 1965 gives you a version with a BBC Audio stamp of approval on it, which may well be as close to official as we’re ever going to get.
That being the case, it’s a realistic, utterly human adventure that makes use of some TV elements in its conclusion and sets up much more of an earthbound threat than we got to hear in Bessie Come Home (though if you haven’t heard that yet, do it NOW, you’ll cry for all the right reasons). There’s more to come, and after London, 1965, it can’t come soon enough.
February 7, 2022
This is a BBC Audio rather than a Big Finish production, and i guess Beyond the Doctor is their equivalent of Companion Chronicles. I'm listening to this via Audible, but CDs may be available.
London 1965 takes up the story of Ian and Barbara having returned home, albeit two years later. They find things have moved on, both in the country but also their personal lives. Obviously they've lost their jobs, and Barbara her flat, though Ian's landlady kept his and now wants back rent.
It's very melancholic, Ian getting used to the new normal better than Barbara, with new jobs and new look. Author Paul Magrs set ups what I'd expect to be an exaggerated post-travel blues with style, which I found totally believable. And providing an equally outlandish answer to past life regression.
Jamie Glover is an excellent narrator, drawing me into this world, his narration gets a full 10/10. The story 9/10 as the ending feels rushed and tacked-on.
Scoring: 0 incredibly bad; 1-3 poor; 4-6 average; 7-9 good; 10 excellent.
London 1965 takes up the story of Ian and Barbara having returned home, albeit two years later. They find things have moved on, both in the country but also their personal lives. Obviously they've lost their jobs, and Barbara her flat, though Ian's landlady kept his and now wants back rent.
It's very melancholic, Ian getting used to the new normal better than Barbara, with new jobs and new look. Author Paul Magrs set ups what I'd expect to be an exaggerated post-travel blues with style, which I found totally believable. And providing an equally outlandish answer to past life regression.
Jamie Glover is an excellent narrator, drawing me into this world, his narration gets a full 10/10. The story 9/10 as the ending feels rushed and tacked-on.
Scoring: 0 incredibly bad; 1-3 poor; 4-6 average; 7-9 good; 10 excellent.
May 10, 2025
This was a really enjoyable story that captured the characters pretty well and engaged with what happened after they returned to Earth. HOWEVER, the reason I picked this up was to get a real ending for Ian and Barbara and find out what happened to them after going home. And while the story engages with the idea a good amount… it then trails off into a one-off sci fi story, which it solves with a silly deus ex-machina and then trails off without tying up the loose ends it exists to solve. I’m left not knowing how Ian and Barbara get work or start a life after that, whether they end up romantically entangled as is hinted at by one side in the story, and even if Ian was able to pay off his debts that were made up in this very story. So while I really enjoyed most of this, I’m greatly let down by how unfinished it feels and its failure to do what I thought it’s point was: to give Ian and Barbara a proper ending to their story and tie up loose ends.
January 12, 2022
A terrific audio adventure featuring Ian and Barbara and what might have happened to them once they returned to Earth after their travels with the Doctor.
Excellently read by Jamie Glover, the story does a terrific job of mixing the mundane in with the sci-fi of the Doctor's world.
One I really enjoyed.
Excellently read by Jamie Glover, the story does a terrific job of mixing the mundane in with the sci-fi of the Doctor's world.
One I really enjoyed.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews