Imaginary Friends (novel)

Imaginary Friends
Main character(s):	Gerry and Claire Billing
Featuring:	Third Doctor, Ian
Main enemy:	Kenneth Meadows, Mark Forester
Main setting:	Essex, 1963-1969
Key crew
Publisher:	Puffin Books
Writer:	Jacqueline Rayner
Read by:	Jacob Dudman
Release details
Genre:	Science fiction
Price:	£12.99
Release date:	26 October 2023
Format:	Hardback and ebook, 128 pages
ISBN:	9781405956949
The Decades Collection
Next →	The Cradle

You may be looking for the in-universe comic series.

Imaginary Friends was the first novel published in The Decades Collection on 26 October 2023 by Puffin Books to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of Doctor Who.

The novel was written by Jacqueline Rayner and covered the 1960s and featured the First Doctor and Ian Chesterton.

Publisher's summary

Original summary

It's Christmas, 1963, when nine-year-old Gerald starts dreaming of strange worlds and monsters

His parents think it's harmless at first. But Gerald is convinced it's real - his dreams of Daleks and cavemen and insects as big as a person.

Desperate for help, what Gerald's family really need, right now, is a Doctor.

Blurb

1963.

It's nearly Christmas when six-year-old Gerry starts dreaming of strange worlds and monsters.

To his parents' confusion, Gerry insists that his dreams are real. He's travelled in time and space and met Daleks and cavemen and insects as big as people!

Desperate for help, what Gerry's family really needs, right now, is a Doctor.

Plot

A young boy called Gerry Billing begins to have dreams of the First Doctor with Daleks, cavemen and massive insects. Since he is just a child, when he tells his parents of these dreams he is dismissed, although the knowledge of science and history he acquires from these dreams surprises his mother, Claire.

After the Christmas period is over, Claire sees a teddy bear in a toyshop and decides to buy it for him, giving it to Gerry as a present after Gerry expresses unhappiness at regularly missing out on birthday traditions because his is so close to Christmas. Gerry names him "Doctor Bear" because of his resemblance to the Doctor and tells him about his dreams, which he also begins to write down in a book which his mother sometimes reads.

Claire tells the wrong person of some of the things in the book, leading to the Billing house being broken into and the book stolen because it had information on an insecticide that could potentially made Gerry's father's company bankrupt. Gerry has a dream of the Doctor in London and convinces his mother to take him to see him, so they go to his father's place of work where Mr Meadows, who stole the book, threatens him.

Remembering what happened in his favourite book, Winnie the Pooh, Gerry ties Doctor Bear to a balloon and sends him off with a note asking for help, which leads his mother to call the police and the two of them being reunited. Doctor Bear is destroyed in the process, however, and Gerry's father has to look for a new job. Gerry receives a note with something the Doctor said in one of his dreams but which he had not told anyone as well as an address which Claire takes him to. There, they meet the Third Doctor.

The Doctor explains that Gerry is having these dreams because he has accidentally become connected to the TARDIS, so he updates Gerry on the rest of his adventures in order to sever it. Before leaving, he gives Gerry a teddy bear identical to Doctor Bear but wearing clothing resembling the Third Doctor rather than the First and promises to check up on the family. Over the years, the Doctor regularly sends Gerry, his children and his grandchildren new costumes for Doctor Bear resembling that of his most recent incarnation.

Characters

• Gerry Billing
• Claire Billing
• Anne Billing
• Francis Billing
• Ray Billing
• Howard Grey
• Lillian Grey
• Kenneth Meadows
• Virginia Meadows
• Miss Bertrand
• Mr Hall
• First Doctor
• Tribe of Gum
• Grandma Campbell
• Grandad Campbell
• Mark Forester
• Arnold Farrow
• Henry Smithers
• Hilda Rowse
• Pamela
• PC Vernon
• Chief Inspector Weston
• Third Doctor
• Ian Chesterton
• Peter
• Paul
• Tony
• Wendy Billing
• Susan Billing
• Vicki Billing
• Daisy
• Steven

Worldbuilding

• Claire buys Gerry a large toy bear dressed up like the Doctor which he calls Doctor Bear.

Notes

• While depicting a silhouette of the First Doctor on the cover, Imaginary Friends is centred around the life of a boy called Gerry Billing, who became psychically linked to the Doctor's TARDIS upon his departure from Totter's Lane in November 1963. The events he describes experiencing in his dreams include those of both the First and Second Doctors.
• The initially released publisher's summary described Gerry as nine at the start of the story, instead of six.
• There are two appearances of Doctors in this book.
  • In Chapter Two, a man in a shop in London exclaims "My word, he's a magnificent specimen" in reference to Doctor Bear. While his identity is only hinted at in prose, Jacob Dudman's performance in the audiobook makes it clear that he is the First Doctor.
  • Additionally, at the story's climax, the Third Doctor meets Gerry in 1968 to help disconnect him from the TARDIS telepathic circuits.

Continuity

• In his dreams, Gerry sees visions of the First Doctor with the Tribe of Gum. (TV: An Unearthly Child ^[+]Loading...["An Unearthly Child (TV story)"])
• The events of TV: Planet of Giants ^[+]Loading...["Planet of Giants (TV story)"] figure heavily into the story. Ray Billing, and many other residents of Barringdean, are employed at Mark Forester's plant, and Ray is sickened by the DN6 being made there. Gerry sees Forester's crimes in his dreams and writes down what he has seen, including the DN6 formula, in his journal. When Forester and Kenneth Meadows find out, they steal the journal and threaten Gerry into silence. Gerry is eventually kidnapped by the two on a visit to the factory, leading to Forester and Meadows being exposed and arrested and the plant shut down.
• Charles "the Commandant" Gordon, the manager of Gatwick Airport from TV: The Faceless Ones ^[+]Loading...["The Faceless Ones (TV story)"] and PROSE: The Faceless Ones ^[+]Loading...["The Faceless Ones (novelisation)"], is the reason the Doctor finds out about Gerry. Gordon receives a phone call from Claire in search of Gerry after he goes missing, and years later recounts the phone call to the Third Doctor at UNIT HQ.

External links

• Official Imaginary Friends page at Penguin Books