1963 : Fanfare for the Common Men ( audio story ) 1963 : Fanfare for the Common Men was the one hundred and seventy - eighth story in Big Finish ' s monthly range . The first story in the 1963 audio trilogy celebrating the 50th anniversary of " Doctor Who " , the story shone more light on the musical group John Smith and the Common Men , first mentioned in the very first episode of the series , giving them an " origin story " . Publisher ' s summary . If you remember the Sixties , they say , then you can ' t have been there . The Doctor remembers the Sixties . That ' s why he ' s taking Nyssa on a trip back to November 1963 . Back to where it all began . Back to the birth of the biggest band in the history of British music . Back to see those cheeky lads from Liverpool . . . Mark , James and Korky . The Common Men . The boys who made the Sixties swing with songs like " Oh , Won ' t You Please Love Me ? " , " Just Count To Three " and " Who Is That Man " . The Doctor remembers the Sixties . And there ' s something very wrong with the Sixties , if the Beatles no longer exist . . . Plot . Part one . The Fifth Doctor takes Nyssa to 31 October 1963 , just to watch the Beatles exiting a plane . Much to his surprise , though , it ' s not the Beatles that emerge — but the Common Men , just returning from a tour in Sweden . A bigger problem ensues , though . As Nyssa pins down a man with an impulse laser in the crowd , she and the gunman seemingly faded out , courtesy of a matter dematerialisation device . The Doctor deduce s that this has to do with the change in history — the seeming erasure of the Beatles — and so agrees to go out for a drink with his new friend Rita and the Common Men : Mark , James and Korky . Meanwhile , Nyssa appears in Hamburg earlier on , in 1960 , and meets the same group before their success . They think they ' re at the peak of their career , which will last maximum one year — " then they ' ll find a new group , with longer hair or tighter trousers . " Back in 1963 , the Common Men reveal to the Doctor that much of their success came from other groups having to go in for national service . They quickly drop the subject , though , when they find out that Rita ' s brother Greg died in training . But national service ended in 1960 , right ? Someone ' s been meddling in time . He decides to take Rita to 1957 , when mandatory service began to wind down . But the 1950s are time - lock ed ; someone has changed history , and is now preventing the Doctor or anyone else from changing it back . Back in 1960 , Nyssa watches the Common Men play " Who Is That Man " . Also at the performance is a fan named Sadie . Going back to 1963 , the Doctor and Rita research the Beatles in this new timeline . John ' s in his own group called the Famous Five with two Petes and a Chaz . Paul is a clarke at a shipping office . Both Paul and George did their services . George is back already , but apprenticed to his father . Ringo wasn ' t enlisted because of health problems . George , Paul and Ringo all knew the Common Men from the pub s in Hamburg . The Beatles don ' t exist . The question is , can the Common Men keep it up like the Beatles did ? " I suppose we ' ll see on Monday how good they are . " The Common Men play " Just Count To Three " for Nyssa , who claims to have liked it , despite being used to more classical - type music in Traken . In 1963 , they play " Oh , Won ' t You Please Love Me ? " ; the entire audience is entranced into loving them . Rita suddenly becomes even more obsessed ; she feels like she could kill for them . Even the Queen starts dancing the twist ! The Doctor ' s forced to drag Rita out of the theatre , and hypnotise her into focusing . So what is giving the crowd an artificial obsession for the group ? The two find a machine making a similar sound to the gunman ' s , and the Doctor uses it to trace exactly when he took Nyssa . Before they can get to the TARDIS , though , the crowd grows restless . Rita having misquoted the Doctor as calling the Common Men rubbish earlier , a riot ensues around them . " Kill him ! Kill him ! Kill him ! " Part two . " Wait , I ' ve got an idea . " Rita ' s got a backstage pass , access to all areas . She throws it in the air , and the entire crowd fights over the ticket , forgetting them . Back with Nyssa , she admits to the Common Men that she came to Hamburg unprepared , and doesn ' t even have any money . Korky offers his bed ; he ' s prepared to sleep on the floor . The Common Men already have over a million fans in England alone . Soon , they ' ll spread all over the world . Will they all go insane like the ones they just encountered ? The Doctor abandons Rita in 1963 , getting her to research the band as an excuse . He arrives in 1967 Wales , and tells James that he may be in danger . He and his band mates are getting a private seminar with a guru named Paravatar , who reportedly can change your perspective on life . Suspicious , the Doctor joins the seminar , and demands a private talk with the man . He can see that Paravatar is clearly a time sensitive — Time Lord s can sense that with ease — and Paravatar gives in , revealing to the Doctor that he ' s a retire d time travel er who too noticed the problem in time . He did not " cause " it and has not time - travelled in years . They participate in a meditation session ; Paravatar puts the Common Men under hypnosis . None of them have deliberately interfered with Earth ' s history , nor do they know who did . Nyssa , meanwhile , performs a blood test on Korky and finds out he ' s an alien . Paravatar confirms that they all are . Mark Carville , real name : Myamus , is from the Court of Caldee ; his mother was the Queen there while his father was a simple miner . James , real name : Jecomen hails from the Convents of Health ; his parents own the place , and it ' ll get passed onto him eventually . And finally Korky ' s real name is Kappaban , and he ' s from the Wheel of Contact ; " his " father ' s one of the ambassadors there . They all come from the planet Byulna . . . and they don ' t even know it . Korky wonders why she came halfway across the galaxy just to see the Beatles , and Nyssa fills him in on all the details . Suddenly , though , the man with the impulse laser appears . He ' s found them . In 1967 , the crowd gets in , and the Doctor and Paravatar are forced to end their hypnotism session early . Lenny Kruger then approaches them as a friend , and gets the mob to leave , promising them autographs as the Common Men leave the building . As the Doctor outside assures Paravatar he was helpful , the Common Men strike a deal with their new manager Lenny . Back with Nyssa , the American man from the airport catches up to her and Korky , and threatens to kill them . . . Part three . To escape , Korky pretends that Mark and James have arrived , and kicks the man ' s gun out of his grasp . They run to " the docks " . While Korky suggests moving to a busier place , Nyssa refuses — she doesn ' t want innocent people getting hurt . Sometime later in history , Rita is interviewing Mark at his house in New York ; they ' ve been talking already for six days . They ' ve already used up all 20 tapes she ' s brought ! He tells her that he now actively ignores the Doctor , since the incident with Paravatar . As he talks about the Doctor , the information changes ; time is being rewritten . While out to get more tapes , Rita bumps into the Doctor . The Doctor inquires about the Common Men ' s manager , Lenny Kruger , and tells Rita that he ' s clearly trying to use them for his own purposes . Meanwhile , Nyssa and Korky manage to get ahold of the American ' s gun , and the tables turn . They demand to know everything , before Sadie points a gun at Korky and demands that the American be released . A hostage situation is formed . Rita returns to Mark ' s house with milk and egg s . . . and the Doctor . Despite protests at first , the two talk . Mark decides that Rita must make their interview into a book , to let the public know how things " really " were . Maybe then the crowds will leave him alone . A few years earlier in November 1970 , Lenny brings the Common Men to New York City . He plans for them to do three shows in London , New York and Los Angeles . At Mark ' s place , the Doctor is shown images from a gig in Hamburg ; he recognises Nyssa in one of the photos . Apparently , the girl disappeared a few nights after she arrived , never to be mentioned again by Korky . What happened to her ? Back in Hamburg , Sadie ties Nyssa and Korky up . The man is revealed to be from the same planet as Korky and the others — Byulna . After revealing his plans to insert them into Earth ' s history , he and Sadie wipe Korky ' s memory so that he can ' t remember the man or his alien status . While he discusses old photos with the Doctor , Mark Carville is suddenly transformed , into his true form . In a different voice , he orders the Doctor to give him the photographs , and throws him to the other end of the room . He ' s drawing energy from the photos , and suddenly remembers the truth about himself . But where is the energy coming from ? Everyone across the globe is thinking about them , looking at pictures of him , reading about him . The attention , the popularity , gives him unimaginable power . James and Lenny then barge into the house , and discover the transformed Mark . Lenny has planned this all along , but hoped that all three would transform at the same time . As the Doctor notes , though , Lenny didn ' t put " himself " in the spotlight , preferring to remain behind the scenes . He ' s using the Common Men to acquire power , but yet at the same time is afraid of that power . Mark complains about James ' controlling nature , and then kill s him in anger . When his life is threatened too , Lenny flees , leaving Mark alone with the Doctor . Mark wants to burn everything that refuses to be his . . . " And I ' m gonna start with you . " Part four . The Doctor escapes death by lighting a match after purposely leaving the gas on a couple of minutes earlier . The photographs are set on fire ; Mark loses his main source of power , and the Doctor flees . Meanwhile , Sadie and Lenny discuss how they ' re going to kill Nyssa . It has to look like an accident , so that people don ' t suspect Korky of being the murderer . As Lenny ' s about to do the deed — by making her " accidentally " slip , fall down stairs and break her neck — his time machine suddenly appears , piloted by an older Lenny . The TARDIS materialise s , and the Doctor returns to retrieve Nyssa . The two discuss the situation , and swap notes . The Doctor thinks that there must be a risk involved in what Lenny is making the Common Men go through ; otherwise , he ' d do it himself . They find a lovely doughnut shop named the Pfannkuchen , and go in . Old Lenny discusses events with young Lenny and Sadie . As he explains , Mark " ascended " and killed James , so they need to further manipulate with time and change history — make them all ascent together , before they can split up . They insert instructions into Korky ' s head on what to do if the others threaten to split up , hoping he can stop it from happening . Old Lenny then travels to 1970 to see how his plan worked out . At the Pfannkuchen , they meet Mark and James , and try to explain to them that they ' re not human . Suddenly , though , a space - time ship appears overhead . Lenny phone s the restaurant , and informs him that the ship has come from a future where he won , and became the most powerful man in all of Mutter ' s Spiral . He urges them to leave , leading the Doctor to decide that Lenny doesn ' t want them to discover something . " Does anyone know when this club was built ? " Lenny orders a commander to draw the TARDIS team out . The Doctor orders everyone except the Common Men in the club to leave the premises , to save them from whatever comes next . He then discovers something very interesting indeed . . . The Pfannkuchen is only a disguise . In reality , it ' s a spaceship — the spaceship that originally brought the Common Men to Earth . They flee in the ship , and go to Liverpool . Just as the Doctor begins to figure out how to use its time travel capabilities , though , they get caught in a tractor beam and Lenny appears . He threatens to wipe their memories of everything they ' ve learned ; he has the power of controlling them by subliminal suggestion . He leaves , taking Mark and James with him . But with the two Common Men gone , Lenny ' s army has no reason not to destroy them . . . The Doctor and Nyssa manage to escape though , and arrive in June 1966 . They go to a gig of Common Men ' s . They ' ve just gotten back together , but Lenny tells Sadie that they ' ll be taken soon . He ' s shocked to see the Doctor greet him . The Doctor ' s plan then goes into action . The police arrive , and try to arrest Lenny for the murder of James O ' Meara , when he pulls his gun . He orders his men to slaughter everyone on the premises , but the Doctor tells him that they ' re now in a different track of history , where he " didn ' t " gain an army . He achieved this by getting Korky to remove the batteries . Lenny kills the police officer , and escapes . He shoots everyone in his way . Rita has spread a false story about Lenny kill ing James back in May 1966 . A body was supposedly found , and identified as James . As a newsreader announces to the public , Lenny subsequently replaced him with a look - alike . The newsreader interviewed the other Common Men , who admitted that they knew of the swap , but were told that the real James had simply undergone a mental breakdown . All of this , of course , is a lie created by the Doctor to weaken Lenny . The corpse was actually a lifeless dummy produced by him using the genetic modifier onboard the Pfannkuchen . As bad press about him spreads across the US , and soon the world , Lenny dies within a day . The Doctor gives him an offer . If Lenny gives him the key to the time lock on 1957 , the Doctor will go back and undo what he did . None of his hard work will have happened — he won ' t even remember it — but he ' ll live . And the Earth will be restored to its proper timeline . Lenny reluctantly agrees , and gives him the codes . With the Earth restored to its proper timeline , the Doctor and Nyssa go to one of the Common Men ' s gigs . The musicians briefly think they recognise the two time travel lers , but dismiss it . The group isn ' t doing too well without Lenny ' s influence , and are " interested in anything that pays " . The Doctor suggests that they become a backing group for " Chris Waites " , real name Aubrey , from Chris Waites and the Carrollers . And thus is born John Smith and the Common Men . . . Reflecting back , the Doctor recalls that his granddaughter Susan had several of John Smith and the Common Men ' s records , and used to play them in the TARDIS . As he explains to Nyssa , this had always been the flow of time , what should happen ; Lenny always brought the group to Earth , and was always defeated by his own people . The Common Men always grouped with Waites because of the Fifth Doctor , who always did so because he heard of the combined group from his past and their future . Mark , James and Korky weren ' t returned to their home planet Byulna as well , because no one knew they were there . In the Top Charts , John Smith and the Common Men have reached # 34 . In three weeks ' time , they ' ll be in # 2 , only ranked under the Beatles themselves . As he explains all this to Nyssa , Rita appears next to them . In the corrected timeline , she calls the Common Men " a bit naff " , and is now obsessed with the Beatles instead . . . And here they come on stage !