Doctor Who: 1963: Fanfare for the Common Men

This is the first of three releases for the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who, each set in the year of that first broadcast, and featuring historical or pop cultural events of the time. In this case, that's the Beatles - following their first two albums earlier in the year, the term “Beatlemania” had been coined by the press just weeks before that first episode aired.

The Doctor and Nyssa arrive at Heathrow airport in October 1963 to witness the very event that led to the coining of the phrase, as the Fab Four returned from a tour to face a screaming crowd. Except that, when they arrive, nobody in the crowd has ever heard of the band. It turns out that the Beatles broke up after they left Hamburg, and their place in history has been taken by the Common Men (a fictional band that fans of DW will know were mentioned in a throw-away reference back in that very first TV episode).

There follows a complex story of time travel and alien interlopers, all bound up with the actual events of the Beatles' time together, which the Common Men seem to be imitating with uncanny accuracy. The story hops back and forth between 1960 and 1970 and various points in between, with the Doctor and Nyssa separated in different time periods and piecing together pieces of the mystery as they go.

There are moments of humour and peril - the scene with this reality's version of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, for instance, provides both in good measure. It's also a reasonably competent mystery, with more than one possible culprit for who is behind it all, at least for a fair way into the story. But mainly it's just good fun, a story that's very recognisably all about the Beatles and the impact they had on the world, but without ever actually featuring them directly. Fans of the band and their history will probably catch even more references than I did.

Even the Merseybeat music of the Common Men is well done, not only sounding like something that might have been produced at the time but actually quite good (obviously, it doesn't have the same power that the real tunes have to us today, but that is one of the plot points). We only hear snatches of the songs during the play itself, but the CD includes fuller versions as extras.