CC Special - The Revenants

Did she become his wife later? Is that in the Missing Adventures? I never saw their relationship on the show as a romantic one at all.

(I'm aware of The Rocket Men; I never really bought the premise that Ian was in love with Barbara, though.)

For what it's worth (not much, because authorial intent isn't be all and end all) I felt there were a few things Ian wasn't saying about Barbara in The Revenants, and, as with a lot of things in there, I wasn't trying to overwrite or over-ride other people's versions of things. It's even possible the supernatural elements in the story are genuinely that. The Doctor makes some assumptions but the Marsh-Wains never actually confirm them.
Characters are sometimes wrong and often don't tell everything they know and feel. Lots of possibilities are up for grabs, but the chief inspiration for this Ian was how David Whitaker wrote him in the Daleks novelisation, he loves Barbara whether he tells us that or not.

I appreciate the explanation, Ian. I basically am going by what I saw on the television episodes. And a lot can be open to interpretation, I think.

Yeah, I can understand that would be disappointing. The Doctor has no inherent reason to believe in the power of an Earth Bible, since he is not of Earth. But I never interpreted that as pushing an atheist agenda, when I listened to the story. I've listened to The Revenants several times.

And I may be wrong, but I don't think that all believers in the Bible believe the Bible in of itself has special powers.

I'm Jewish, not Christian, though, and our views and connection to the scripture is different from that of many of the Christian religions.

^^ That works for me.

I'd hoped for a broader discussion of the story, but it's interesting to me that this became the discussion for the whole thread. I'm surprised that this is even still considered controversial. Although, I'm not a fan of the new series or any of its offshoots, I recognize that whatever has come on TV since 2005 is considered Doctor Who canon. It's explicitly stated in The Sarah Jane Adventures that they're married. For less canonical sources there's the BBC PDA, Face of the Enemy that presents them as married. They had a son named John Chesterton who later became the singer Johnny Chess and is mentioned in the NA Timewyrm: Revelation as well as the PDA The King of Terror. Then there's all the indications in The Library of Alexandria, The Rocket Men, The Doctor's Tale, and the PDA The Time Travelers by Simon Geurrier. Susan seems to think they're close to being an item in Here there be Monsters. 

Of course then there's The Reign of Terror, The Romans, The Crusades, and the ending of the Chase. I mean, even without the novelizations it's clear that Ian is smitten with her. That argument in The Reign of Terror is fairly passionate, and it isn't because Ian has any great care about the history of the French revolution. He's upset that Barbara was smitten with Leon, the man who tried to kill him. The fact that both Whitaker's novelizations of The Daleks and The Crusades seems to indicate that he felt that they were a couple also shows that at least from the point of view of one of the chief creators of those early days of the series that they considered them to have romantic feelings for each other. I think it comes out in the performances myself, and I sometimes wonder if Russell has let his feelings for Jacqueline Hill as a friend override his memories of the show. It was 50-something years ago after all. Even Terry Nation had forgotten his own Dalek origin story in a lesser span of time, so an actor I think could be forgiven for forgetting the particulars of a character he played a long time ago. 



Nooooooooooooooo. Don't ruin this story for me. It's such a great classic 60's Who story, and that means that it needs to have a rational, scientific explanation. :-) Btw, you may be the most accessible Who author on the internet. Thank you for getting involved in this discussion, Mr Potter.



I guess if I'm honest that implication bothered me as well, but it's just that - an implication. I mean, we know that the first Doctor isn't any older than 450 years, and that already would put him older than that, but I choose to believe that the Doctor only arrived a few years prior to when Ian and Barbara showed up. I mean, he's still got the same clothes except for his tie, and Ian says that there's only slight wear. The first Doctor never showed any issue with changing his clothes when the need arose, so I would expect that if he'd lived there hundreds or possibly thousands of years he'd be dressed differently. Now, how he got the TARDIS into a barrow, I don't know. He said that he had help, but there are other, more mundane explanations that would account for that without saying that the barrow was built around the TARDIS.