TV Club: An Unearthly Child

Television TV Club
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You demanded it and so here it is - TV Club launches into the classic series with the story that started this mad adventure and is the reason we’re all here in the first place.

Sadly this one is not available via BBC iplayer but the DVD is still freely available to buy and there are a few online sources if you look hard enough…

Watch and discuss this pioneering serial - the infancy of a television legend.

Just for fun, add your rating here:

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Be careful when looking for it, too, since there’s both the aired version of the first episode and the unaired pilot version out there.

You know, these days, two teachers deciding to follow their student home would be kinda stalky…

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It is fascinating to see the differences between the Pilot episode and the broadcast. The costume differences, the line changes, Barbara getting her clothes caught on the door into the classroom, those pesky TARDIS doors refusing to close. There are in fact two versions of the Pilot (the second half after they enter the TARDIS was remounted) and the different ones have been released and broadcast over the years, I believe.

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I know I posted this in the pre-TV club, pilot version of this thread but here’s a Wakelet board with everything I could possibly find online about this story.

Of particular note are Waris Hussein’s recently shared diaries from the time:

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I also highly recommend Toby Hadoke’s Too Much Information podcasts about the making of these episodes - fascinating and incredibly well-researched.

Toby is also the moderator on a Fantom WhoTalk commentary release for this story. The first episode is available free on Youtube.

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Oh those diary entries are delightful and makes me want to watch “An Adventure in Space and Time” again for the umpteenth time :+1:

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I rewatched the two first episodes on my way to work this morning. And I think this is the hardest story to rate in all of Who. The quality drops between episodes 1 and 2 are really big.

The first episode is fantastic. They really build up the mystery of Susan and her strange grandfather. It is also a good introduction to Ian and Barbera and their different origin points. If I would rate this episode separately it would probably be a 4.5/5

The second episode is okay but they don’t manege to keep the magic from the first one. The cavemen story is kind of boring. I did like it a little more this time than the last time I saw it. Might be because I am more used to the slower tempo of the classic stuff. 2.5/5

Will write again when I have rewatched the last two episodes.

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I continue to maintain that the drop in quality between An Unearthly Child and the Tribe of Gum episodes is less overt than is often claimed.

I really like these three episodes (although The Forest of Fear is a little dull) and the performances of the guest cast are really rather good in roles which could easily have been grunting savages. There’s a poetry about many of their interactions and I’ve said before that Doctor Who never really gets as brutal and grimy as this again.

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Oh wow, I had no idea about those diaries, I’ll have to check them out later

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A little bit of interesting info here from when the show was first broadcast

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I think that drop in quality is not the right phrasing (even if I think that the first episode is much better) but I think that the rest of the story is not what you want after the first episode. I feel like they drop much of the mystery that they build up in the first one and fill that space with caveman politics.

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An Unearthly Child is a phenomenal 10/10 single episode. I think we can all credit this single episode for being so good that it led to what we have 60 years later.

The Tribe of Gum… certainly is a Doctor Who story. A mediocre one at that more or less saved by the performances of the main cast.

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Controversially, I’ve never really seen the first episode as being all that great. Like it’s certainly a fine introduction to the main cast, but I don’t think it’s really anything more than that

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good story layed the groundwork for things to come

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The main cast are excellent but the guest cast are equally as good in what are very hard roles to pull off.

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Oh this is not me saying anything bad about the guest cast. They’re great but the characters they play are… not.

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The first part always feels like a completely different episode to me. An Unearthly child was a good introduction but I think the story as a whole is just average.

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I do think they’re better characters than say Dyoni in The Daleks or Sabetha and Altos in The Keys of Marinus.

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But those characters are in plots that are more interesting

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But the argument was that the characters aren’t interesting, not the plots. I love The Keys of Marinus but the characters of Altos and Sabetha are nowhere near as well-written or performed as Za, Kal and Hur.

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