TV Club: An Unearthly Child

Television TV Club
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What can I say about that first glorious episode from the 23rd of November 1963 that hasn’t been said a million times before? It is so atmospheric, so filled with mystery and William Hartnell utters that eternal question for the first time, “Doctor Who❓”. Everything comes together on the production side, the music, the multi-camera direction, the casting along with a solid vision from Verity Lambert. The TARDIS being bigger on the inside and being able to take one anywhere, anywhen to any type of adventure is the perfect merger of hard science fiction and fantasy storytelling.

And the first adventure we experienced was one of caveman intrigue and politics, switch “fire” with nuclear weapons and you have a perfect allegory for international power struggles post World War 2. The setting just means that the dialogue is rather limited to a stage just above grunting, we are at the start of language as a concept - and honestly having a linguistic background I just find this evolution of communication so immensely fascinating. The pace of the story is radically different from the first episode but I find it to be perfect for the story being told.
I remember being at university working on an assignment having pulled several all-nighters during the past week and deciding to start watching Classic Who from the beginning as a small reward. I became totally engrossed by these four episodes and what should have been a half hour break became full-on procrastination - though it led me to starting each chapter of that assignment with a quote from the three cavemen episodes :grin:
I have so much love and appreciation for the beginning of this spectacular show and watching these four episodes this time around has not lessened that feeling one bit. :tardis:

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I rewatched the first part yesterday.

The Doctor is more “creepy and potentially a murderer” than mysterious. I really think they made him a bit too spiky and mean (and I’ve seen the unaired pilot too!).

He basically kidnaps Ian and Barbara, knowing that they won’t be able to get back to their time easily, and also removes Susan from the time and place that she loved as she begged him not to. All because he thought they would run and tell the police!

Having said that, Ian and Barbara did poke around into things that weren’t their business - I don’t know if Social Services existed back then but they should have contacted someone else rather than try and deal with it all themselves.

So then we get the famous shot of the TARDIS in the distant past and a cave-man shadow. That is so brilliant, and I can imagine it really got people excited!

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One of my favourite Doctor Who images ever. So evocative.

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My mum, bless her socks, likes to remind me whenever she can that she watched the original broadcast live on the BBC. What always fascinates me though is she says her parents thought it was “weird and confusing” while her grandfather (who would have been born in the Victorian era) was fascinated by the whole thing

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It’s difficult to be objective about An Unearthly Child, we are all so familiar with the tropes & iconic images of the show. How great it must have been to see this at the time with no knowledge of what we now take for granted. The first episode is really mysterious & is in its own way initially centred on a young girl a bit like Rose. However this is from the pov of the teachers & both Ian & Barbara are great.

The first scene of them discussing Susan is very well directed, simple but effective getting across a lot of info. & then we have Susan herself, brilliantly portrayed here mixing a strange otherworldliness coupled with a normal 1960s teenager. Sadly this didn’t last & Susan became more generic as the show progressed.

What’s surprising is how quick moving this all is & the use of flashbacks to illustrate the conversation Ian & Barbara have in the car. It could easily have been told without those flashbacks but they add some nice quick scenes of Susan.

& then we have Hartnell, what a great performance mysterious & unknowable its as if we are seeing him through Ian & Barbara’s eyes. Who is this strange old man? He’s a real creepy character, good or evil? & that moment, from the dark junkyard to the white sci-fi TARDIS interior. Ends with a nice cliffhanger. Where are we?

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The remaining episodes don’t really compare well to the first but for the time it was probably more exciting to audiences. Plus it’s an example of the remit of the show, to be educational for kids, something that the Chibnall era seemed to hark back to with episodes like Rosa & Demons of the Punjab. This first adventure is very talky but I do like how Barbara initially takes things in her stride. Also a very different Doctor here can we picture Ncuti attempting to bash in the head of a caveman? Interesting that Hur’s descendant Edith would also meet Doctor Who in The Time Meddler :wink:

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What’s more interesting is that Za’s descendant worked as a liason at Project Inferno and Kal’s descendant was on a mission to Kembel and got turned into a Varga.

And Old Mother’s descendant somehow ended up on the planet Chloris!

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The Tenth Doctor calls that “Spatial genetic multiplicity” (Journey’s End) :wink:

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The legendary first serial of Doctor Who, without which we wouldn’t spend timw on this forum today!

Here are some of my thoughts:

The iconic nature of the first episode means it’s one of the most important pieces of sci-fi ever produced.

The sense of mystery is strong; the first episode in particular quickly builds a strong sense of strangeness and awe, which the script manages to keep up throughout the early half of the serial.

The latter part of episode two and pretty much the entire rest of the serial feel dragged out and repetitive (arguments about firemaking and leadership), with the central characters moving back and forth between being prisoners and escaping.

The time period and the characters aren’t interesting enough to make for an engaging four-parter, and the full potential of Doctor Who’s pure historicals won’t be seen until a few episodes later, in the now missing Marco Polo (1964).

There’s a fight to the death at the end of episode four, and it serves as the first-ever action scene in Doctor Who. It’s very clunky and weirdly shot, but the lighting and music make it fairly tense and atmospheric nonetheless.

Ian and Barbara come across as likeable, inquisitive school teachers right away, while Susan appears to be eerily alien but innocent. Then there is the late, great William Hartnell’s portrayal of the old, grumpy, and slightly cantankerous Doctor. Ian quickly becomes the hero of the story, while the Doctor is more of a cautious mystery.

Speaking of the Doctor, he’s a work in progress here; we see him smoke a pipe for the first and last time, and he’s trying to avoid taking an active part in the adventure, except for when he nearly kills a caveman with a stone. He then steps up in the last episode to outwit the cavemen.

William Hartnell and William Russell deliver some instant classic lines, and there’s a lot of surprisingly enjoyable talk about making fire as well.

There’s some overacting in the guest cast, so much so that it’s difficult to take their cavemen characters seriously most of the time.

The strong characterization of the two central female characters, Susan and Barbara, is gone with the wind by the time episode three rolls around, and all we have left are screaming women who get on your nerves.

Yes, this serial, like most in the classic series, is a bit rough around the edges when compared to other sci-fi projects of the era (Star Trek, anyone?), but that’s part of the charm.

An Unearthly Child grabs your attention with its music from the get-go: the haunting theme tune by Ron Grainer and Delia Derbyshire and the atmospheric incidental music by Bernard Kay.

Aliens, time travel, and the TARDIS—some of the key elements of the franchise and some classic sci-fi aspects—are introduced and brought to life in this story, and they feel instantly iconic and believable due to the sheer inventiveness of the people involved.

Score: 73/100

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Ah, the one that started it all. Despite the consensus, I actually like every single part of this serial. It’s fun, and the perfect scenario for the first story of a time travel show.

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Very much agreed about the Chibnall era episodes you mentioned. I really felt he was trying to embrace that spirit at the time

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It’s surely a story ahead of time, but a perfect debut to this series

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I’m totally in with this TV club here

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Welcome. We also have a book club and an audio club.

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Welcome to the club

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Welcome to the forum - lots to get involved with. It’s good to have you here. Feel free to make a post in Introductions.

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I rated this 3.5/5 (7/10). While it does meander with some of the caveman stuff it is rather good and starts to set the tone for the show.

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In my opinion, the first episode is an excellent introduction to The Whoniverse, The Doctor, and The TARDIS.
Unfortunately, the remaining parts are dragged down by being caveman politics.
If it were possible to edit the first part onto The Daleks, then we might just have a perfect start to Who

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Isn’t that basically what they did in the novelisation “Doctor Who in an Exciting Adventure with the Daleks”? I have it, just haven’t gotten around to reading it yet.

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Yes, David Whitaker writes a completely different origin for how the Doctor, Susan, Ian, and Barbara meet and begin their travels together, which leads straight into The Daleks. It’s a pretty interesting version of the origin story, actually.

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