Mild Curiosities: An Ian & Barbara Charity Fanzine

With Twitch broadcasting Doctor Who’s original series to a wide audience this month, I was thrilled to discover that Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, two of the Doctor’s first companions, were being discovered and adored for the first time by a new generation of fans; or in some circumstances, rediscovered by an older loving audience. These two unwilling schoolteachers were originally kidnapped by the Doctor and opposed to his lack of understanding became in time a beautiful friendship as they travelled around time and space with him, with hope they would get home back to London 1963.

I wanted to find a way of celebrating these first companions who help shape the Doctor into the hero, the idiot, the hermit, the mad man in a box that most of us know him as today. Ian and Barbara, who were born into a different generation: wartime childhoods, postwar young adulthoods, Cold War professional careers that shaped them into the people they became—and the person the Doctor became.

Mild Curiosities is a collection of short stories from various points in their lives, arranged in chronological order with a mix of art, fiction, and non-fiction articles about these two much-loved teachers.

I would like to invite you all to write and illustrate various points in these character’s lives. These stories should be 2-10 thousand words in length, though I’m welcome to flash fiction and longer stories (just talk to me first!). They can be first or third person.

The proceeds from this collection will be going to Breast Cancer Now, the UK’s largest breast cancer research charity. The donations will be given in loving memory of Jacqueline Hill, who would have been 89 this year.

You can reach me at mildcuriositiesfanzine@gmail.com
See PDF linked below for submission instructions and deadlines.

submission pdf