Bye bye Barbara and Ian!

Ian and Barbara are gone!  They selfishly shot off at the end of The Chase leaving the Doctor covering his hurt with bad temper and new girl Vicki spouting platitudes about it being all right in the end.  Shut up!  What do you know, you Joaney-come-lately?  Ian and Barbara have been there since the beginning, arguing, bickering and fighting, laughing and loving and shagging, getting on with things in a very British manner and emerging triumphant alongside the Doctor, Susan and the viewer.  I love them both.

They were shagging, incidentally, for those who care to debate.  I reckon they were at it even before they joined the TARDIS.  She's all together too comfy in his classroom when she pops into discuss Susan, and he too willing to bundle her in his car and drive alone with her in the fog.  Hoping to find nothing to investigate no doubt, then back to his bedsit for spam fritters on a plate balanced on their knees and a swift bit of nookie on the fold down bed in the other room.  Then drive Babs home as she fixes herself up in the car mirror, and hope her mum doesn't notice that her hair's askew and her face a bit flushed, still.

Still don't believe me?  How about that bit in The Romans when the Doctor and Vicki are still on their way from Rome.  If that's not a post-coital Ian sending Babs to make him a drink, then crashing waves on rocks in black and white movies aren't symbols of coitus either.  Only a couple could bicker like they do in the corridors of  The Space Museum, only a boyfriend would be allowed to slip his hand inside a lady's waistband as Ian does with Barbara on the ledge of the Mechanoid City, and only prospective life partners would run through Regents Park hand in hand  as they do at the very end.

I supect they'll end up a slightly odd elderly couple.  No kids, but an absolute fascination with each other. A love of one another's company to the exclusion of everybody else's, and a reserve which is difficult to pentetrate even a little and impossible to penetrate fully.  And all the while the two of them looking at the stars, wondering if they'll ever get another visit.

Not for the moment, they won't - after battling deadly Daleks, evil Administrators, vicious plant life and giant bastards they've flitted back to the sixties in the Daleks' ludicrously named DARDIS.  I console myself that at least it's 1965, not 1963 - that'll teach that selfish pair to leave the Doctor and me!