An Unearthly Child

Bill looking nice and grimy at the end

An Unearthly Child

Not much original can be written about this episode. It is right up there amongst the best 25 minutes ever produced by Doctor Who. I love the way the music just keeps on going at the beginning, and we get a nice close-up of the writing on the side of the TARDIS.

Susan's dancing is right up there with Ian's in the Chase as the worst examples of dancing ever seen in Doctor Who. Not that there are many examples. I love how plain the book on the French Revolution that Barbara lends Susan is. Books a hundred years old weren't that plain, let alone in the 60s. Ian and Barbara really are superb characters here.

The introduction to the Doctor is very well done. I like the way he examines that vase for absolutely ages in the junkyard, with his back to Ian and Barbara, totally ignoring them. He carries that sort of thing on in the TARDIS, too, looking with interest at a clock and telling Susan about fixing some part of the ship whilst they're desperately trying to get answers out of him. He is furiously frustrating, and brilliantly condescending towards them. "This doesn't roll along on wheels, you know?", "Children of my civilisation would be insulted".

 There are some superb lines, and it's also interesting to hear him saying that one day he will go back home.

These 25 minutes are also notable, as they're the only time Susan actually has a spine, fiercely telling the Doctor she'd rather leave him than the 60s. It won't last long. At all. So...here we go, into time and space, and some fabulous(ly funny) "flailing about"acting from William Russell as the TARDIS takes off.

Pretty much the perfection introduction. 9/10

Cave of Skulls

Oh dear, merely seconds into this episode and we have our first ever Doctor Who? joke, which comes in the form of Ian calling the Doctor "Doctor Foreman" and the Doctor looking puzzled and asking, "Doctor who?" You'd think that would be enough for one story, but a mere ten minutes later we get, "who is he? Doctor who?" I do appreciate jokes like this, but twice in ten minutes is a little excessive, don't we think?

Lovely moments of dialogue here. "Time doesn't go round and round in circles, you know?", says Ian, prompting the Doctor to ask him where it does go. "Well, it doesn't go anywhere, it just happens," Ian replies, rather unconvincingly! I do like the fact that Ian doesn't believe. Reactions like this, like Ben's suspicions about Pat, just are so much more believable than ones that came later. "Oh, this is a ship that travels in time and space? Oh, okay," followed by a shrug.

I'm sure the malfunctioning "year-o-meter" was never mentioned again! I like the Doctor's eagerness to run off and get some samples. Erm, what for, exactly? The close-up of Bill as he wonders why the TARDIS is still a police box is quite scary. Sadly, not far into this story, we have Susan's first psycho attack of the three billion she had on the series. And it was all going so well. 

The "cavemen" (shouldn't they be hunter-gatherers? Or is this a different planet?) are actually fairly interesting for a bit. Za is quite funny and Hur is great. It's when Kal arrives that it goes downhill and we have an argument that goes round in circles and takes up the last 10 minutes of this part.

"This man can bring fire and I, Kal, brought him here and we would die without fire, Za would leave you to die, whilst I, Kal, brought this man who can make fire with his fingers. Za has no right to be leader, the orb will show me the way to make fire. Za cannot make fire and without that fire which, by the way, he cannot make, we would die, and go hungry, and be killed by tigers. Did I mention that I, Kal, brought this man who can make fire with his fingers, and the orb will allow me fire and the secret of fire and so I shall be leader, because I can save us from hunger and the tigers. Because I brought this man who can make fire with his fingers". SHUT UP!!!!!

An okay episode. It all starts off so well. The first half is as good as An Unearthly Child was, but it gets so horribly tedious towards the end. The latter half of this part I reckon is when people start switching off, mentally if not actually. 4/10

Forest of Fear

Much better. The Doctor is suddenly very nice here, apologising sincerely for getting them into this mess, and the whole "fear makes companions of all of us" speech. I like the way Old Woman suddenly turns out to be a decent baddie. Setting them free and asking them to leave rather than killing them is a good choice for Coburn to make, even if it is necessary for the plot.

Ian offers to carry the Doctor when he gets tired, and the Doctor bafflingly replies, "don't be so childish, I'm not senile!" Um, okay. It's a shame Barbara has some Susan-style scream attacks in this episode. She's better than that. I was quite surprised by that. I don't associate Barbara with that sort of irritating behaviour. I like the way Ian practically screams, "keep down and not a sound!" 

I wonder if it's deliberate that mere seconds after Barbara chides the Doctor for treating everyone and everything as inferior to himself, she's suddenly really condescending towards Hur, speaking to her (hur?) as if she's a child. "Me help you, understand? Me make Za better."

How on earth did Kal and pals overtake our heroes? Waris Hussein has directed this brilliantly, but it's a bit jarring that the Doctor and companions have been running through the forest from the caves, and some time later Kal and co. follow, and yet suddenly Kal and co. are by the TARDIS waiting. It's quite a scary close-up of Kal for that cliffhanger, too.

The pace picked right back up here. I never usually make it as far as this, Cave of Skulls usually makes me give up, but Forest of Fear has really got the story back on track. Can it keep it up for the finish? 7/10 for this part.

The Firemaker

Just a quick interlude to say that I love the individual episode titles used in the first three seasons. Okay, sometimes they had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with what was going on, but they do give each 25 minutes its own identity, far more than if this episode, for example, was just An Unearthly Child Part Four. That's one of the things I do like about the new series. All thirteen episodes have their own title, leading to all sorts of fun debates.

We get more close-ups to start this episode, including Willam Russell's sweaty face. Horg's eye twitches as "written by Anthony Coburn" appears on his face. A deliberate acting choice, or simply an actor desperate for this seemingly never-ending close-up to be over with?

I love the way the Doctor immediately takes control at the beginning here, even if he does repeat himself for no reason: "This knife has no blood on it, I said this knife has no blood on it!", "This knife shows what it has done," the Doctor tells the assembled extras, who get very excited as he convinces them that Kal is a baddie after all. Oh dear, now we're going back to the Cave of Skulls? Let's hope the fire discussions don't return with it.

There is a long discussion between Za and Hur about our heroes. Ordinarily it would be quite a dull scene, but it's really nicely shot by Hussein, and Newark and Charlton play it very well. They both deserve a lot of praise for their multiple Who performances. Never a bad second between them. 

 

The Doctor is horribly condescending again when talking to Za. "We are making fire for you!" he says, speaking to Za as if he's about five. Whoops, fight time as Kal arrives. I will say now that I am not a fan of "action", generally speaking. Good fight scenes tend to bore me to tears. Bad ones, I admit, I tend to enjoy. Sadly, this is actually quite a good fight, especially by Doctor Who standards. The best thing about it is the frequent close-ups of the regulars looking horrified. Waris Hussein really does like his close-ups, doesn't he? I wonder if he continued that for Marco Polo. I hope so, it works brilliantly here, making the fight marginally less dull.
 

The regulars are held captive once more, and Susan finally breaks and goes insane, placing one of the skulls onto her torch for no readily apparent reason except that the plot needs her to do that to give Ian the idea that allows them to escape. Speaking of that escape, the close-ups of them running on the spot in the forest are really unconvincing. It looks awful. And to make matters worse, Barbara falls over. She's treated really shoddily in this story. She's just an older version of Susan here. 

 

And so they arrive back in the TARDIS, and then look so dirty and dishevelled. That never happens again, everybody always gets through their adventures looking pristine in the future, which is even more bizarre in the JNT era when nobody ever changed their clothes. Oh well, here comes the cliffhanger and there goes the first story.

Pretty good final installment, even if it did boil down to the regulars being captured and then escaping again. 7/10.

Conclusion

An Unearthly Child has always been a story where I've watched the first part and then not bothered with the rest. The discussions about fire in the Cave of Skulls really derails what is actually a pretty good story overall. Barbara is treated pretty poorly once they've left the TARDIS, but in general it is a good introduction to these characters. The Doctor is nowhere near as horrible here as fandom likes to portray him. He's a git in An Unearthly Child, but beyond that he's actually pretty reasonable. We don't actually know he planned to kill Za with that rock.

Za and Hur, as I mentioned, make for interesting characters. I think 75 minutes of them is enough, mind, but they are certainly fascinating for that time. Kal, Horg and the Old Woman are a little more one-dimensional, but they serve their purpose well enough.

It's a very tough story to rate here, as it is almost a one parter and a three parter joined together. The "Tribe of Gum" section is far superior to my memory of it, however. I'd rate it as 6/10, overall. Good, and above average, and certainly a good start, but not special.

For this blog I'm going to put an average rating out of ten for each of the parts. I will also put down what I used to rate the story as and then what I shall give it now. In this case, the average just happens to be the score I think it deserves. A pretty good start. One story gone, and Doctor Who is already two points better! I am going to try and be quite harsh with my marking, but I may fail that miserably.

Average of the parts: 6/10

Old rating: 4/10

New rating: 6/10