1963: Fanfare for the Common Men (Eddie Robson)

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the television show Big Finish Productions are releasing three stories as a countdown to the anniversary itself. These three stories are based in 1963 – the year Doctor Who was first broadcast.

Big Finish Productions announced that they had big plans for Doctor Who's fiftieth anniversary, and this set of three stories is where it all begins. The 1963 trilogy, which boasts a story each for the Fifth Doctor, Sixth Doctor and the Seventh Doctor, takes us back to the year of Doctor Who's creation.

The first release is called "1963: Fanfare for the Common Men" and stars Peter Davison, as the Fifth Doctor, and Sarah Sutton, as Nyssa.

Fifth Doctor

Written by Eddie Robson and directed by Barnaby Edwards this story was recorded on the 18th and 19th March 2013.

This story guest stars Mitch Benn (musical comedy maestro from Radio 4's The Now Show) and Ryan Sampson (Luke Rattigan in "The Sontaran Stratagem/The Poison Sky", but more recently Thomas in the BBC Four comedy Up the Women). Also starring are: Andrew Knott, David Dobson, Alison Thea-Skot, Jonty Stephens and Barnaby Edwards.

Nyssa

'I'd already said to Alan Barnes that I was interested in doing a story about the Beatles', writer Eddie Robson has revealed, 'possibly set in Hamburg in 1960, and Alan was umming and ahhing about it for a little bit because he wasn't sure about doing something involving real living people... He came up with "What if someone knocked the Beatles out of their place in history, and took their place?", so you're kind of spoofing it; you can be as similar as you want, because they're trying to copy them, without it being the same people'.

'It's quite a weird kind of story, unusually-structured, which doesn't feel like a typical Fifth Doctor story', Eddie Robson has revealed, 'The Doctor has to go to different points: it starts off in 1963, and then he and Nyssa get split up - she gets stranded in Hamburg in 1960, and he doesn't know where she is so he goes looking for her and ends up in 1967, and then they have to go to 1970... so there's a lot of hopping about!'

'I was trying to think of a name for the band, and I couldn't think of something that felt iconic enough to supplant "Beatles" as the name. I suddenly had the thought, Why couldn't they be "The Common Men", as mentioned in "An Unearthly Child"? So that's a link back to the show's past...'

On the Back Cover:

If you remember the Sixties, they say, then you can’t have been there.

The Doctor remembers the Sixties. That’s why he’s taking Nyssa on a trip back to November 1963. Back to where it all began. Back to the birth of the biggest band in the history of British music. Back to see those cheeky lads from Liverpool...

Mark, James and Korky. The Common Men. The boys who made the Sixties swing with songs like Oh, Won’t You Please Love Me?, Just Count To Three and Who Is That Man.

The Doctor remembers the Sixties. And there’s something very wrong with the Sixties, if the Beatles no longer exist…