Ian Chesterton
Ian Chesterton is a fictional character in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. He was originally played by William Russell, and was one of the members of the programme's very first regular cast, appearing in the bulk of the first two seasons from 1963 to 1965. In a film adaptation of one of the serials, Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965), he was played by Roy Castle, but with a very different personality and backstory.
The original Ian was a science teacher at the Coal Hill School and worked with Barbara Wright, a history teacher. One of their students was Susan Foreman, the granddaughter of the Doctor, who showed unusually advanced knowledge of science and history. Attempting to solve the mystery of the "unearthly child", Chesterton and Wright followed Susan back home to a junkyard, where they saw her entering what appeared to be a police box. When they investigated further, they discovered that the police box exterior hid the much larger interior of a time machine known as the TARDIS, and were whisked away on an adventure in time and space with the Doctor and Susan. After many travels, they eventually used a Dalek time machine to get home, albeit two years after their disappearance and presumably with much explaining to do to their friends and families.
The character of Ian was intended by the production team to return for a guest appearance in the 1983 Doctor Who story Mawdryn Undead, but this plan fell through when Russell proved to be unavailable. However, in 1999 Russell did return to the part for the BBC Worldwide video release of The Crusade, a Doctor Who story from which two of the four episodes are missing from the archives. Russell provided linking narration between the existing episodes, in character, as an aged Ian Chesterton reminiscing about the events of the story.
Since 1994, the character has also appeared in various novels from Virgin Publishing and latterly BBC Books, set between televised adventures during his particular era of the programme. One novel, The Face of the Enemy by David A. McIntee, published by BBC Books in 1998, picks up the story of Ian and Barbara, now married, in the early 1970s.
