![]() And so do-gooding teacher couple Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright follow her home … Despite being quite the child-genius, the young time lady is not terribly good at covering her tracks or blending in. But having heard that 1960s Earth is the best time to be a teenager like, ever, Susan decides to enrol herself at Coal Hill School in Shoreditch (her hipster urges are 30 years out). Initially, Hartnell's Doctor is wary of human contact he has yet to grown fond of humanity. But having stolen a Tardis and run away to see the universe – a move mirrored by the Tardis, Neil Gaiman reveals 48 years later in The Doctor's Wife – Susan's nesting instinct is getting the better of them both. In fact, the very existence of Susan is one in the eye to those who have latterly insisted on a chaste Doctor without family ties. But he's undone by a sentimental tendency when it comes to his granddaughter. The William Hartnell Doctor we initially meet is at best a grouch and at worst a sociopath – not unlike the grief-stricken Matt Smith at the start of The Snowmen, in fact. Just imagine seeing this in 1963 without prior warning: that first trip through time, dripping in the psychedelia of the day, is mesmerising even now. Nevertheless, by splitting up the team and exposing them to different dangers, the beat of the show is established, with the Tardis crew's benevolence in the face of aggression immediately establishing Doctor Who's heart. The instant and incredible success of the Daleks in the very next adventure, however, would move things around a bit). (The plan, legend has it, was to teach kids about history. Early Doctor Who is a very mixed bag, but this first episode, with so much to introduce and no guarantee of the audience getting their heads round any of it, does so in a brilliantly enticing manner.īut while An Unearthly Child is acknowledged as a classic episode for good reason, the four-episode story it kicked off about a Palaeolithic tribe and their quest for fire, is definitely not the most memorable tale in the canon. It's startling quite how many of the key elements of Doctor Who were there from the very start: the Tardis, both its sound and design concept the music the havoc wreaked upon the lives of everyday earthlings and of course, escaping the baddies. But now, on with this week's choice … An Unearthly Child (23 November 1963) We know that our choices won't necessarily be the ones you would have picked – so towards the end of the run, we will be taking requests. We'll be using the same format as our episode-by-episode Doctor Who blog for current broadcasts, and leaving comments open until the 50th anniversary celebrations in November. ![]() Over the coming months we'll be revisiting 20 key episodes from the Doctor Who canon classic stories that demand in-depth discussion.Įvery episode we'll let you know which we'll be looking at next, and when to expect the blog – roughly once a fortnight – so you can refresh your memory or discover the episode for the first time in advance. And for our adventure through the history of Doctor Who, the beginning is a very good place to start. The audience of the day must have been truly bowled over by the concept of a ship that’s bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and the sparse, austere console room set adds to the illusion that what we’re seeing here is genuinely alien.In November 1963, one of the greatest stories British TV ever told began. One of the key moments – and one that hasn’t been surpassed even after all these years – is the first sight of the interior of the TARDIS. ![]() In between, the economical script and taut direction brilliantly sketches in just enough mystery to keep viewers hooked – who is the mysterious schoolgirl Susan? Why does she seem to live in a junk yard? And just who is her cranky, irascible grandfather, a haughty man who refers to himself only as The Doctor and who appears to be an ancient alien on the run from his own people? It ends with that same police box – in actuality a time and space ship known as a TARDIS – leaving 60s London en route for pre-historic times. It opens with a still impressive opening tracking shot (done at a time when the average television studio camera was the size of a small car) that alights on the ominously humming police box incongruously sitting in the middle of a junk yard. The opening episode remains an outstanding achievement, 25 minutes in which not very much actually happens but which remains utterly compelling throughout. ![]()
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