An Unearthly Child

I remember the first time I ever saw an episode of Doctor Who. It was the end of the third episode of Terror of the Zygons; I was very small and very afraid and very eager to see what happened the next episode. I did not get to see An Unearthly Child until many years later when WNED 17 in Buffalo got the complete Doctor Who series and started showing them as Saturday afternoon omnibus movies, mushing all the individual episodes of a story together into one long spree. But despite the fact that I was seeing it from a more historical perspective and I was now older than the original target audience, I was still thrilled to hear the very first version of the familiar theme song and see the original opening sequence and logo.

The episode was first broadcast on Saturday 23 November 1963 and as it had such a distinct 60s feel about it there is not a lot of speculation that the series starts in a contemporary setting. Coal Hill School history teacher Barbara Wright confides with her colleague, science master Ian Chesterton, that one of her student, a girl named Susan Foreman, is a mystery to her; brilliant at times and at others painfully awkward. Ian has the same experience and together they decide to follow her home and speak to her grandfather about her progress at school. Susan's home address, however, leads the teachers to a scrap yard cluttered with discarded furniture and junk, and a modern London police box. The old man who arrives on scene after turns out to be Susan's grandfather, a man who only goes by the name "Doctor", and he is not pleased at the intrusion. The turn of events sees Ian and Barbara forcing their way past him into the police box, or the TARDIS - an impossible ship bigger on the inside than the outside - and together with the Doctor and Susan they are flung into the distant past of Earth to become pawns in a power struggle between two primitive men vying for control of the wretched Tribe of Gum.

I have heard and read so many first hand accounts of people who were there that first night and saw all this with young eyes and felt their imaginations come to life at the sight of the TARDIS. The Doctor does not come across as the hero immediately - rather than the friend to all humans he becomes in later years he is arrogant and sees the humans in his presence as nothing more than children at best, pests at worst. Susan, having spent more time among humans than the Doctor due to her enrollment at Coal Hill School is far less wary of them, but she is still very naive about the ways of the world, maybe even the universe; when she becomes separated from the Doctor she loses her composure and panics. Rightly so, really; this man is her only link to a planet they have fled with no real means to return. The TARDIS is not fully functional; despite all its gleam and polish inside it has lost the ability to camouflage itself with its surroundings and is stuck in the form of a police box, and the Doctor does not actually know how to control it, leaving all aboard mercy to chance landings.

The DVD of An Unearthly Child comes with the additional bonus of the unaired pilot version of the first episode (each episode has its own title like today, and four in total here are collectively called An Unearthly Child) which is really something to see. There are a few obvious technical issues in the studio with shadows of stagehands seen behind the TARDIS walls, doors which will not stay shut when closed, and flubs of lines and actors not on their marks. It's the overall tone of the pilot which I enjoyed seeing as a contrast; the shadows are deeper and darker and while William Hartnell's performance as the Doctor is still cold and aloof, Carole Ann Ford as Susan is markedly different  and comes across as a more menacing and disturbed girl in her Coal Hill School scenes. I can't help but wonder what the series would have been like if they maintained that darker edge. Barbara and Ian do not change between pilot and broadcast episodes, not much anyways. Neither of them are enamored with the Doctor's cold edge but while Ian argues with the old man, Barbara comes to learn to accept what she sees around her as the truth; their lives have been changed now, possibly for god, because there's no guarantee that the Doctor can take them back where they came from.

NEXT EPISODE : THE DALEKS