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Ian Chesterton is a character who appeared in the first two seasons of the long-running television series Doctor Who. Played by actor William Russel, Ian was a science teacher at London's Cole Hill School. Noticing that one of his students, Susan Foreman, was prone to extremely odd behavior, Ian and his fellow teacher, Barbara Wright decided to follow the girl home one evening.

What they found was even stranger. The girl seemed to have simply disappeared into a junkyard containing (among various other odds and ends) a "police box." At the time, such boxes were a common sight in London. These frequently locked police storage cabinets sported an external phone that could be used for emergency calls. However, they were normally in easily accessible roadside locations, not in the center of deserted scrap yards.

To the shock of the curious teachers, the police box turned out to be vastly larger on the inside than it was on the inside and inhabited by the girl and an irrascible old man who claimed to be her grandfather. This "grandfather", however was the alien time traveler known as the Doctor.

Unwilling to allow strangers who had discovered his secret to go free, the Doctor proceeded to kidnap the teachers, who unwillingly accompanied the cranky old alien on many adventures. Finally, the group managed to capture a time machine constructed by the Daleks (in 1965's "The Chase"). Perhaps having a change of heart, the Doctor chose to aid the teachers in using this captured device to return home.