A Long Night (short story)

A Long Night was the seventeenth and final short story in the Short Trips anthology Short Trips: Companions. It was written by Alison Lawson. It featured the First Doctor and Barbara Wright.

Summary
It is 23 November 1964. Joan Wright's daughter, Barbara, has been missing for a year. Joan has had to endure not just worry for her daughter, but also the indignity of her daughter's room being searched by police and the unkind gossip of others.

The police eventually scaled down their investigation, believing that Barbara is either dead or doesn't want to be found. Barbara and another missing teacher, Ian Chesterton, have been replaced at Coal Hill School.

In the TARDIS, Barbara has had a dream. She tells the Doctor that she dreamed she was having tea with her mother and that she told her mother she would be home soon. The dream felt very powerful to her. The Doctor tells her the TARDIS is telepathic and that he wouldn't be surprised if her mother had the same dream.

Back on Earth, Joan wakes from a dream in which Barbara tells her she is all right, she is travelling, and she will be home soon.

Characters

 * First Doctor
 * Barbara Wright
 * Joan Wright

Worldbuilding

 * On the day that she disappeared, Barbara left in the morning with students' work, textbooks, the previous day's Evening Standard and The French Revolution for Susan.
 * Barbara has a copy of the book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan.

Continuity

 * Schoolteachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, and student Susan Foreman, all went missing on the same day. (TV: An Unearthly Child)
 * The day Barbara went missing, she had returned back home briefly to pick up a book on the French Revolution. (TV: An Unearthly Child)