Brief Encounter

Brief Encounter

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Each story in the series was labelled with a masthead that clearly marked it as a "Brief Encounter"

Brief Encounter was the umbrella title for an occasional series of vignettes that appeared in the Doctor Who Magazine family of publications from 1990 to 1994. The series tried to investigate characterisation and mood more than plot. Towards this end, it combined characters who had not been paired on television. While many of the stories featured the Doctor, a number did not, preferring to examine the lives of companions or villains at a time other than known adventures with the Doctor.

Overview

Brief Encounter's mandate was to ask "what if?" questions.

• What if this companion met that companion?
• What if this incarnation of the Doctor met another incarnation's assistant?
• What if this villain met that monster?
• What if we explored a tiny emotional beat in the life of a known character?

Examples of stories resulting from asking these sorts of questions included: a pedestrian collision between Sarah Jane Smith and Dodo Chaplet, a chess match between the Celestial Toymaker and Fenric and a wedding anniversary between the Brigadier and Doris Lethbridge-Stewart.

A largely forgotten corner of the DWU

Brief Encounter's "what if?" format was meant to challenge reader's perceptions of the then-fledgling "Doctor Who universe". At the time, original, professional Doctor Who prose fiction had only just begun to be published on a frequent basis. There wasn't much in the Doctor Who canon for these Brief Encounter stories to offend. However, its publication in the pages of a physical magazine posed obvious problems of access. As time went on, it was increasingly difficult for later writers to even read these vignettes — much less incorporate their content into later works. Some of the concepts were thus later contradicted. For instance, according to the Brief Encounter, Down to Earth, Liz Shaw's first trip in the TARDIS was with the Fourth Doctor, who had deliberately found Liz in order to apologise for not saying goodbye to her. The later novel, The Wages of Sin, clearly states that the Third Doctor did indeed give Liz a trip in the TARDIS, with Jo Grant, and that there would have been no need for the apology the Fourth Doctor offered in Down to Earth.

Further frustrating the series' long-term impact on DWU fiction was the fact that many of them were simply whimsical. Amongst the more imaginative ideas covered in the series were:

• the implication that the Third Doctor watched Peter Cushing in Dr. Who and the Daleks
• the clear inference that writer John Lucarotti is himself a character in the DWU

Beyond anomalies of content are questions of style. It's not unusual to find Brief Encounter stories which were written in the first person. Though not completely unknown in other prose work, it's still generally rare to find stories in the DWU which give such a personal perspective. Even the Doctor occasionally narrated proceedings — as in An Unfulfilled Dream — which is almost never the case in longer-form prose material.

Writers

The stories were quite often written by professional writers, and notably included the final work of television writer John Lucarotti and the first work of Paul Cornell. On at least one occasion in 1991, however, the series was the focus of a DWM competition, in which amateur writers were encouraged to submit their own "brief encounter" for possible publication. Andrew Cartmel, the Seventh Doctor's then-recently-disemployed script editor judged the competition, and pronounced a Seventh Doctor/K9 story the winner of the under-15 category, and a poignant meeting between the Doctor and a 6-year-old Katarina, the winner of the all-age group.

History of the format

The series began in DWM 167 with a very deliberate nod to the anniversary of Doctor Who. Since issue 167 was the November 1990 edition, Brief Encounter launched with a story by John Lucarotti, someone who had written during the First Doctor's era. The one-page, illustrated story became the norm for the series as seen in the pages of Doctor Who Magazine, clearly distinguishing it from other, longer short stories that the magazine occasionally published. Future installments would stick to this format, or perhaps add a second page.

The series would also travel to a few of the DWM specials and the first couple of editions of the Doctor Who Yearbook series. However, the series was over by July 1994 in DWM proper, and it didn't extend past the DWMS Holiday 1992 special issue and the 1993 yearbook.

Nevertheless, short stories by the same calibre of professional author continued in the Yearbook series well after Brief Encounter died. Therefore, some reference works have lumped stories in, say, the 1995 yearbook with the Brief Encounter series. Such grouping is unjustified. These later Yearbook stories never got the Brief Encounter masthead. Moreover, they were far longer than the typical entry in the series — often extending to five or six pages. They also used combinations of characters that would be entirely expected from watching the television series. In other words, they were just another adventure for a particular TARDIS crew. Indeed, short stories after the 1993 Yearbook had much more in common with stories in the annuals of the 21st century than they did with the Brief Encounter series.

List of stories

Issue	Title	Author
DWM 167	The Meeting	John Lucarotti	First Doctor John Lucarotti (as character)
DWM 168	An Incident Concerning the Continual Bombardment of the Phobos Colony	Paul Cornell	Davros
DWM 169	Untitled	David Bishop	Seventh Doctor Ian Chesterton Barbara Wright
DWM 171	Untitled	Michael Bonner	Berenyi
DWM 172	A Victorian Interlude	Andy Lane	Henry Gordon Jago Dr Litefoot Fifth Doctor
DWM 174	Under Reykjavik	Warren Ellis	Magnus Greel Romana II
DWM 176	Mistaken Identity	Gary Russell	Lytton Cast of EastEnders
DWM 178	Affirmative	Daniel Read	Seventh Doctor Leela K9 Mark I
DWM Issue 178	An Unfulfilled Dream	Karen Dunn	Seventh Doctor Katarina
DWM 181	Echoes of Future Past	John Summerfield	First Doctor Seventh Doctor
DWM 184	Untitled	Paul Ferry	Duggan Seventh Doctor Ace
DWM 185	Ships	Jamie Woolley	Dodo Chaplet Sarah Jane Smith
DWM 186	Cathedral Heart	Paul Cornell	Seventh Doctor Ace
DWM 187	A Romantic Evening	Alex Fowles	The Brigadier Doris Lethbridge-Stewart Seventh Doctor
DWM 188	The Useful Pile	Kate Orman	Seventh Doctor
DWM 189	Time, Love and TARDIS	Ron Plath	The TARDIS (as a character) Seventh Doctor
DWM 190	A Visit to the Cinema	Vanessa Bishop	Third Doctor
DWM 191	Reunion	David Carroll	Peri Brown
DWM 192	Games	Warwick Gray	The Celestial Toymaker Fenric
DWM 193	Toy	Colin Varney	Shardovan the Portreeve
DWM 194	Tautology	Glenn Langford	Marius K9 Mark III K9 Mark I
DWM 195	In the Community	Paul Beardsley	Ace Judith Winters ("the Girl" from Remembrance of the Daleks)
DWM 196	The Stranger, The Writer, His Wife and the Mixed Metaphor	Graham Cox	Fourth Doctor William Shakespeare
DWM 197	A Time and a Place	Una McCormack	Seventh Doctor Barbara Campbell
DWM 198	Three Steps to the Left	Glenn Langford	Seventh Doctor
DWM 199	Anti-Matter with Fries	Gareth Roberts	Ace The Ergon Seventh Doctor
DWM 205	Missing in Action	Tim Pieraccini	Mike Yates
DWM 206	One Minute Fourteen Seconds	Kate Orman	Seventh Doctor Ace
DWM 208	Front Line	Paul Smith	Seventh Doctor
DWM 210	Down to Earth	David Jackson	Liz Shaw Fourth Doctor
DWM 212	Useless Things	David Carroll	None
DWM 213	The Gallery	Paul D. Smith	Seventh Doctor
DWM 214	Roses	Robert Mammone	First Doctor Steven Taylor
DWMS Winter 1991	Listening Watch	Dan Abnett	John Benton Mike Yates The Brigadier
DWMS Winter 1991	A Wee Deoch an ...?	Colin Baker	Sixth Doctor, Mel, The Brigadier
DWMS Holiday 1992	Girls' Night In	Mike Tucker and Robert Perry	Jo Grant, Sarah Jane Smith, Liz Shaw, Tegan, Ace
DWMS Holiday 1992	Playtime	Vanessa Bishop	Sarah Jane Smith, Lavinia Smith, Susan
DWMS Holiday 1992	Fond Memories	Nicholas Courtney	The Brigadier
Doctor Who Yearbook (1992)	Future Imperfect	Marc Platt	Second Doctor, Third Doctor
Doctor Who Yearbook (1992)	Time on a Vine	John Lydecker	Fifth Doctor
Doctor Who Yearbook (1992)	The Deal	Colin Baker	Sixth Doctor, Mel
Doctor Who Yearbook 1993	Cambridge Previsited	Karen Dunn	First Doctor
Doctor Who Yearbook 1993	Dream a Little Dream For Me	Nigel Robinson	Second Doctor, Seventh Doctor
Doctor Who Yearbook 1993	Country of the Blind	Paul Cornell	Third Doctor, Liz Shaw
Doctor Who Yearbook 1993	Farewells	Terrance Dicks	Fourth Doctor, Sarah Jane Smith, K9
Doctor Who Yearbook 1993	Encounter on Burnt Snake Flat	Marc Platt	Fifth Doctor, Tegan
Doctor Who Yearbook 1993	A Tourist Invasion	Colin Baker	Sixth Doctor, Mel

External links

• Brief Encounter at the Doctor Who Reference Guide