An Unearthly Child
So this is where it all really started.
Susan Foreman is an interesting pupil at Coal Hill School, and as with any other school the faculty begin to notice and talk. History teacher Barbara Wright and science teacher Ian Chesterton decide to follow Susan home after school, and arrive at an old junkyard at 76 Totters Lane. Instead of finding Susan up to no good they encounter an old man and a police telephone box, and when they believe Susan is being held captive inside the box they force their way past him and into the box, which is actually the TARDIS. Bigger on the inside than the outside, this is obviously something not of this Earth.
This is the first time we see the Doctor, and he is not the stuff of which heros are made. Grumpy, irritible and selfish, he does not want anything to do with Ian and Barbara but realizes that the cover he and Susan have both been living under is now effectively blown. The only option if he is to let the teachers out of the ship is to leave Earth, a prospect Susan does not wish to face as she has grown attached to the planet during their time there. Rather than release them, the Doctor activates the ship and sends them all hurtling back into the era of the cave men, where a desperate tribe is without fire and will do anything to get it. Captured by the tribe and treated as pawns in a political game between oppsing would-be leaders, the TARDIS crew must not only make fire for them, but try and survive.
For the Doctor and Susan this is not exactly a new turn of events as they have been travelling for quite some time. Barbara and Ian, however, are contemporary people not used to having spears waved at them and dirty unkempt (and probbaly smelly) cavepeople threating them with death. Barbara cracks relatively early in a fit of hysteria when lost in the jungle; Ian dutifully gets her to pull herself together and challenges the Doctor on all his calls about escape. The Doctor just wants out; he has seen enough and wants to get away. Ian and Barbara however are more compassionate and react to the distress of a wounded caveman, and Susan with them. Also assuming the role of the alpha male in a time of crisis, Ian tells one of the cavemen in a surprising show of character that the Doctor is their leader, perhaps recognizing that the Doctor has the knowledge that will get him and Barbara back to 1963. When the time travellers do escape, though, the TARDIS does not take them to London of 1963 but to a strange mist shrouded forest somewhere else. The Doctor cannot control the ship it seems, and without precise navigational information fed into the computers at the time of departure, there is no way to direct its course. But the navigation is not the only thing on the blink; the radiation meter reads normal, but as soon as no-one is looking at it, the dial clicks back into place and the needle points to the danger reading. The world outside is poison.
The format of the series at this time was one episode per week, approximately 23 minutes in length. Adventures were spead over a few weeks, and An Unearthly Child was made of four parts in total. Each episode was also individually titled, but collectively given a working name; in this case the serial was known also as 100,000 BC and The Tribe of Gum. The individual episode titles were: An Unearthly Child, The Cave of Skulls, The Forest of Fear, and The Firemaker.
How does it stand up as a debut? To look back at it now, obviously it is not as sharp visually as other shows. The black and white picture quality immediately screams of an era so far gone that younger viewers will think there is something wrong with their television set. My own copy is a prerecorded VHS tape from CBS Fox video, and it's not the cleanest out there. Digital resoration is progressing in leaps and bounds, though, and eventually when this adventure is put onto DVD it will be improved immeasureably. Visuals aside, though, An Unearthly Child starts the series off with a bang, introducing us to the key players who will be our guides to strange new worlds in the weeks and, eventually, years to come. Episode four provides not only closure to the adventure but sets us up for the next week's serial, where the Doctor and companions will meet the creatures that will propel the show into the public eye and guarantee its success.
NEXT EPISODE : THE DALEKS
Susan Foreman is an interesting pupil at Coal Hill School, and as with any other school the faculty begin to notice and talk. History teacher Barbara Wright and science teacher Ian Chesterton decide to follow Susan home after school, and arrive at an old junkyard at 76 Totters Lane. Instead of finding Susan up to no good they encounter an old man and a police telephone box, and when they believe Susan is being held captive inside the box they force their way past him and into the box, which is actually the TARDIS. Bigger on the inside than the outside, this is obviously something not of this Earth.
This is the first time we see the Doctor, and he is not the stuff of which heros are made. Grumpy, irritible and selfish, he does not want anything to do with Ian and Barbara but realizes that the cover he and Susan have both been living under is now effectively blown. The only option if he is to let the teachers out of the ship is to leave Earth, a prospect Susan does not wish to face as she has grown attached to the planet during their time there. Rather than release them, the Doctor activates the ship and sends them all hurtling back into the era of the cave men, where a desperate tribe is without fire and will do anything to get it. Captured by the tribe and treated as pawns in a political game between oppsing would-be leaders, the TARDIS crew must not only make fire for them, but try and survive.
For the Doctor and Susan this is not exactly a new turn of events as they have been travelling for quite some time. Barbara and Ian, however, are contemporary people not used to having spears waved at them and dirty unkempt (and probbaly smelly) cavepeople threating them with death. Barbara cracks relatively early in a fit of hysteria when lost in the jungle; Ian dutifully gets her to pull herself together and challenges the Doctor on all his calls about escape. The Doctor just wants out; he has seen enough and wants to get away. Ian and Barbara however are more compassionate and react to the distress of a wounded caveman, and Susan with them. Also assuming the role of the alpha male in a time of crisis, Ian tells one of the cavemen in a surprising show of character that the Doctor is their leader, perhaps recognizing that the Doctor has the knowledge that will get him and Barbara back to 1963. When the time travellers do escape, though, the TARDIS does not take them to London of 1963 but to a strange mist shrouded forest somewhere else. The Doctor cannot control the ship it seems, and without precise navigational information fed into the computers at the time of departure, there is no way to direct its course. But the navigation is not the only thing on the blink; the radiation meter reads normal, but as soon as no-one is looking at it, the dial clicks back into place and the needle points to the danger reading. The world outside is poison.
The format of the series at this time was one episode per week, approximately 23 minutes in length. Adventures were spead over a few weeks, and An Unearthly Child was made of four parts in total. Each episode was also individually titled, but collectively given a working name; in this case the serial was known also as 100,000 BC and The Tribe of Gum. The individual episode titles were: An Unearthly Child, The Cave of Skulls, The Forest of Fear, and The Firemaker.
How does it stand up as a debut? To look back at it now, obviously it is not as sharp visually as other shows. The black and white picture quality immediately screams of an era so far gone that younger viewers will think there is something wrong with their television set. My own copy is a prerecorded VHS tape from CBS Fox video, and it's not the cleanest out there. Digital resoration is progressing in leaps and bounds, though, and eventually when this adventure is put onto DVD it will be improved immeasureably. Visuals aside, though, An Unearthly Child starts the series off with a bang, introducing us to the key players who will be our guides to strange new worlds in the weeks and, eventually, years to come. Episode four provides not only closure to the adventure but sets us up for the next week's serial, where the Doctor and companions will meet the creatures that will propel the show into the public eye and guarantee its success.
NEXT EPISODE : THE DALEKS
Labels: Barbara Wright, Ian Chesterton, Susan Foreman, The 1st Doctor
posted by Sean Hoover @ 9:53 PM
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