Back to the beginning: An Unearthly Child

Hi All!

As mentioned in Monday's post, the very first Doctor Who serial, originally transmitted November 23- December 14 1963 is "An Unearthly Child". In fact, while the title "An Unearthly Child" is often used to refer to all four episodes of this serial (the serial is also known as 100,000BC), this is actually only the title of the very first episode, transmitted on November 23. Until the four part-serial "The Savages" (transmitted in 1966) episodes were individually titled.

"An Unearthly Child" (or 100,000BC) Transmitted November 23-December 14, 1963

Episode 1: An Unearthly Child
Episode 2: The Cave of Skulls
Episode 3: The Forest of Fear
Episode 4: The Firemaker

Written by Anthony Coburn
Directed by Waris Hussein
Producer: Verity Lambert

Episode 1, An Unearthly Child, first introduces us to the original TARDIS crew:

The Original Tardis Crew (from left): Ian Chesterton (William Russell), Susan (Carole Ann Ford), Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and the Doctor (William Hartnell) 

 

Teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, have become intrigued by the unusual nature of one of their students, Susan Foreman, and their curiosity leads them to follow her home one night. They follow her "home" to a deserted junkyard on Totters Lane, where they first meet Susan's "grandfather", the mysterious Doctor and discover the TARDIS - a police telephone box that is impossibly bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and that Susan and the Doctor claim can travel anywhere in time and space. As an aside, I wonder whether the fact that 50 years on we are so removed from the cultural context in which this episode was first broadcast that some of the impact of the TARDIS may have been lost. Blue police telephone boxes were presumably a common sight on British streets in the 1960s. So here we had the merging of the very familiar with the very unfamiliar, the absolutely mundane and everyday with the absolutely fantastical, perhaps heightening the impact? Rather than let Ian and Barbara leave and risk them talking about what they have seen, the Doctor starts the TARDIS and sends the group back 100,000 years into the past. Here the TARDIS crew become caught up in a leadership dispute amongst a tribe of cavemen, and just barely manage to escape with their lives. 

One thing that struck me watching this serial again was just how well it has held up after 50 years. There are a number of later serials, some from the 1980s, that have not held up as well as this first serial! For sure, some who are used to the fast pace of post-2005 Doctor Who may not quite find this serial (or any of Classic Who for that matter) to be their cup of tea, so to speak. The strength of this serial, in my opinion comes from the characterizations, in particular Ian and the Doctor, and the initial conflict between them.  What is intriguing about the Doctor at this point is that, despite being in the title role, he comes across more as an anti-hero, lacking the sense of morality that we associate with the character later in time, with streaks of selfishness, and even thoughts of killing to get his own way! Ian is really the 'hero' at this point. (At one point, despite the Doctor's protests, the others turn back to help one of their pursuers, who has been badly mauled by an animal, consequently losing an opportunity to escape back to the TARDIS. As the others are tending to the injured caveman, the Doctor picks up a knife and looks as tho he is contemplating finishing the caveman off before he is confronted by Ian). For me there is a complexity of character in Hartnell's early performances as the Doctor that I don't think is quite matched by any subsequent actor in the role until at least 2005 (when we see a Doctor that is scarred somewhat by the events of the Time War and the loss of his people). I however invite readers to challenge me on this if you disagree! For me, Hartnell is at his best in these early days, a fact that can be attributed to his subsequent declining health that eventually led to him being replaced in 1966.

Maybe one of the reasons that the performances in the first episode are so strong is because this episode was filmed twice. There was an un-aired "Pilot episode" recorded prior to the version of An Unearthly Child that was actually transmitted in 1963. This Pilot episode is available as one of the "extras" on the DVD release (An Unearthly Child has been released on DVD as part of a boxed set entitled "The Beginning" which also includes the following two serials - "The Daleks", a seven part serial which introduced the Doctor's most iconic enemies, and "The Edge of Destruction", a two part serial set entirely on board the TARDIS).

According  to the Pilot Episode entry on Tardis Data Core, a Doctor Who wiki, the pilot episode was not broadcast because it was "thought it had too many technical flaws and misjudged characterisations". As noted in the same entry the actual plots of the two versions are not significantly different - only a handful of lines of dialogue differ between the two versions. Probably the most noticeable difference is one scene at Coal Hill School. Instead of reading a book on the French Revolution that Barbara has lent her and exclaiming that something in the book "isn't right" (as occurs in the transmitted version), Susan plays with dropping ink on a sheet of paper, creating a Rorschach pattern, then doodles on the resulting inkblot. The resulting image alarms Susan:

Scene from the untransmitted "Pilot episode", not included in the transmitted "An Unearthly Child"

Thanks for reading,
Nick.