TV Club: An Unearthly Child

Television TV Club
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Realised I didn’t mention it in this thread, only over the currently watching one, so copying from over there

An Unearthly Child - 9/10

This story absolutely deserves all the praise it gets and then some.

An Unearthly Child
If I could rank this separately it would be an easy 10/10. Ian and Barbara are instantly compelling and likeable, and the mystery of what’s going on with Susan does a brilliant job of grabbing the viewer.

The story is also remarkably paced considering other stories of the era, I was especially surprised at the flashes to Susan in class when Ian and Barbara, knowing how stories at the time were filmed I just didn’t expect those quicker cutaways but they’re there and work brilliantly at adding to the mystery.

The atmosphere from when Ian and Barbara are waiting at the junkyard is spectacular, the black and white colouring and darker lighting adding to the sense of mystery, and generally everything in that scene building and building to that moment when they enter the Tardis is incredibly done. The contrast between the dark and dingy junkyard and the prim and pristine Tardis interior is marvelous.

Then that final shot, the Tardis in a mysterious new place with a humanoid shadow looming into view, it’s great.

100,000 BC
While definitely the weaker of the two parts of the story, 100,000 BC is still really good, and holds up impressively well all this time later.

I’ve seen a lot of people complain about the caveman politics, but honestly I think it’s really compelling. Our characters are thrown into the middle of a conflict, taken away from the Tardis, and need to figure out what side to assist in order to get back (setting the groundwork for plenty of stories to come, though it surprised me with its visceral brutality.).

What works especially well for me here is the unique position our core cast find themselves in here, being from the future and having the ability to create fire they have an advantage, but being disconnected from the goings on, distrusted by the tribe, they also have their own unique problems.

I live how Ian takes the lead, One trying to do so but not quite being trusted by Ian and Barbara yet. I like how when asked who their leader is though towards the end, Ian then points to One. I also really like the bit about how in their ‘tribe’ everyone can make fire.

Overall, An Unearthly Child is a brilliant story that perfectly brings people into the world of Doctor Who, shows what the rest of the show will be like and about, and perfectly utilises the show’s time travel aspect, showing just how far we have (and haven’t) come as people today.

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Just watched this, honestly it’s quite a good introduction to the Doctor. Susan is also a very interesting character, getting to travel to different time periods and confusing people with how much she knows about history and things that haven’t happened yet. As for the actual cavemen episode, uhhh I don’t know, did not have my full interest although I liked how bizarre it is.

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Just rewatched An Unearthly Child, wrote down some thoughts.

An Unearthly Child - ★★★½☆

“Have you ever thought what it’s like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension?”

The first episode is a character masterpiece. Susan’s introduction is eerie and haunting, there is something in her eyes and demeanor that let you know, far beyond her words, that’s she is otherworldly. Ian and Barbara are charismatic from the get go, and I think it was a smart decision to tell this story from their perspective. It sets a tone about the role of a companion throughout the series that is true to this day. And of course there is the Doctor, which is truly the antagonist at the beginning. It sets up character development that we will see flourish in The Daleks and The Edge of Destructions; but also brings up some beats that go on long game.

There is a longing in his words as he tells Ian and Barbara that he and Susan are exiles from their home that is not usually associated with the character. He is not yet the adventurer he’s bound to become, and it’s impossible to negate Ian and Barbara’s role in it. And of course, we’d see more direct consequences of running way later in the series. Susan doesn’t want to leave London 1963, says that the last six months have been the best of her life. It’s a glimpse about the kind of life she longs for herself and the stability she can’t have with her grandfather. Susan is almost never, in TV, as opinated as when she tries to tell the Doctor that if he leaves he’ll do so without her. Of course, it doesn’t work in her favor. Ian at one point claims the TARDIS is alive, which will be relevant soon enough.

This is not an amicable version of our longterm protagonist. Not yet. He is arrogant, dismissive, selfish. He makes choices for his own amusement that put the others in the danger, including the granddaughter he swears he is trying to take care of. He is cold and he can’t admit when he is wrong. And that’s the side of him that shows itself the most in An Unearthly Child. He is also the first character in-universe (by release date) to say “Doctor Who?”. It’s not what’s implied, but I think I prefer to have Ian and Barbara unintentionally giving him his name than some of the alternatives.

We do see a glimpse of another side of him, though, in parts two and three. He is sincerely sorry for getting them captured by the tribe and putting everyone in danger; and while he is still arrogant and unhelpful at times he does recognize Ian’s value and tries to help Barbara calm down. It’s not enough to change his demeanor towards them, not yet, and him trying to kill Kal only to be stopped by Ian is a step back. But there are other nice moments for the TARDIS team, as when the Doctor proves that Za killed the old woman or when Ian recognizes the Doctor as the leader of their tribe.

Parts two to four are a letdown from part one though. I have watched An Unearthly Child many times by now; the tribe’s politics was not an aspect that grabbed me the first few rounds but that have grown on me as a pretty decent plot. So what’s the problem, then? For me it’s the acting. It’s not bad by any means, but most of the characters that are not our regulars, if not all of them, are highly unlikable and a very cartoonish take on “caveman”. All the maneirisms in the dialogue are honestly tiring at times.

There is also some signs of the screamonger Susan will become. It’s somewhat justified, but it’ll become irritating fast. In contrast, Barbara also have two dispairing moments in this story, but it feels truer to her character because of three reasons; one, it’s her first trip in the TARDIS; two, it doesn’t become a staple of her character and three, it’s followed by her deciding they must help Kal, acting for the first time as a moral compass for the characters.

I don’t love the caveman part of An Unearthly Child, but it’s a really good pilot for a series I love that already shows many reasons why I love it; one of its strongest traits being a fantastic cast of recurring characters. It’s ★★★½☆ for me.

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Also just rewatched this and I agree with almost everything you wrote.

My biggest problem with the caveman plot is that it removes attention from the far more interesting plot, the mystery of Susan and the Doctor. It would have been more interesting if it continued to build on part 1.

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I probably bang on way too much about this but I thoroughly disagree. I’ve grown fonder of the caveman episodes over time and this is mainly due to Derek Newark, Jeremy Young and Alethea Charlton who, I think, are superb - and the characters could have been, in the hands of lesser actors, terrible. If the script hadn’t been rewritten we were, apparently, going to have far more cartoony ‘ug ug’ cavemen but fortunately we have scene after scene with some really well-written almost poetic dialogue. The ‘this is a bad knife’ scene is wonderful, for example.

I don’t think it pulls away from the ‘more interesting’ plot of the Doctor and Susan mystery either. That plot is more or less wrapped up in episode one. We don’t need any more information at this time because the show needs to set out its other main thread of thrilling adventures in time and space.

Episodes 2-4 are not a come down from Episode 1 and I’ll brook no disagreement. :wink:

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The actors are great, they are doing exactly what they were supposed to do given what parts 2 to 4 are trying to do. They are like that on purpose, even the dialogue makes that clear - when the Doctor points out to Barbara that they can’t be trusted because they change opinions on a whim. I am just not in love with it and the reason why is because I am tired of this caveman take. At all, even outside of the bounds of Doctor Who.

I do agree that the bad knife scene is great and that parts 2 to 4 should be a time trip because there isn’t room to do more of what part one was doing. Not yet. The Edge of Destruction is on the corner.

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But is that the fault of the story? Was it a tired take in 1963? And to be honest it’s better than any other caveman story I’ve seen elsewhere (except maybe Captain Caveman).

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The story doesn’t exist in a vaccum and I can’t talk about it as such. It may not have been as a tired a trope in 1963, but I am watching it in 2024 have seen many similar takes and all of them tire me because I just don’t like when you limit the character speech like that, I have the same problem with some who species like the Ice Warriors.

Meaning I am not saying it as “it’s an objective problem of the story, nobody should like it” but as in “this is why this doesn’t work for me”. Like I said I have somewhat come around on parts 2-4, I like them much more than I did when I first watched it - I used to give An Unearthly Child 4/10 - but it’s still something that bothers me.

And just be sure because of the way I phrased this response: I am not trying to be confrontational, it’s just sometimes my tone (I like debating, it’s fun) isn’t clear in the way I write and English not being my first language is half the reason why. The other half is that I just write like that haha.

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You’re absolutely not coming across as confrontational and I hope I wasn’t either.

I just have a personal bugbear with the ‘tired trope’ thing sometimes thrown at stories because if that story is from a while ago, I don’t think it’s fair to criticise it for doing something that is only tired from the perspective of the person watching it.

And I’m also a huge defender of those episodes because I think the script actually works very hard to make the limited speech an important aspect of how the characters communicate with each other and, more importantly, with the regulars.

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DOCTOR: Don’t you think 100,000 BC looks tired?

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Absolutely with you on this!
The two very first serials of Doctor Who does some stellar character work in caves :+1:
There’s some incredibly poignant storytelling going on with that vocabulary available to prehistoric man :slightly_smiling_face:
I genuinely love those three 100.000 BC episodes :blush:

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