An Unearthly Child

Orb orb orb

Fun quotes:

BARBARA: Well, I told you how good she is at history. I had a talk with her and told her she ought to specialise. Well, she seemed quite interested until I said I'd be willing to work with her at her home. Then she said that would be absolutely impossible as her grandfather didn't like strangers.

IAN: He's a doctor, isn't he? That's a bit of a lame excuse.

IAN: Just open the doors, Doctor Foreman.

DOCTOR: Eh? Doctor who? What's he talking about?

BARBARA: Oh, look, I don't understand it any more than you do. The inside of the ship, suddenly finding ourselves here. Even some of the things Doctor Foreman says

IAN: That's not his name. Who is he? Doctor who?

ZA: Orb orb orb orb orb orb bloody orb orb orb orb orb.

The bad & iffy:

• The "cavemen" segment of this story has rather a bad reputation, but I think much of that is down to the second half of the Cave of Skulls. It's essentially one long, long scene of Za and Kal arguing. "I brought this man who can make fire with his fingers". "You're lying!". "No, you're lying!". It's tedious beyond all belief. I can imagine people who had enjoyed the ride up to that point starting to lose the will to live and as a result heading into the second half of the story with a negative attitude. I think that's a shame, because there is an awful lot to like about the Forest of Fear and the Firemaker. They're not Doctor Who at its very best, far from it, but there are a lot of good moments.
• Carole Ann Ford is (relatively) game, but there really isn't much you can do with Susan. In the first episode she has a few intriguing moments, but right from the Cave of Skulls she becomes the crying, screaming, whiny Susan we become stuck with. Something of a shame, that. To be fair, though, she does have a great moment when she attacks Kal to save the Doctor. She also gets to do the first ever "screaming early" thing... screaming just before the Old Mother appears.
• Eileen Way is bloody annoying as "Old Mother". She does at least have the distinction of playing the first character to ever die in Doctor Who! That's a great thing to have had on her CV.
• Barbara gives Susan a very odd book on the French Revolution. It has a completely plain cover with, "the French Revolution" written on the front. It didn't even have a writer!

The good:

• William Hartnell, William Russell and Jacqueline Hill. They will come up quite a lot, but the three of them are superb actors who guide the show through the first story terrifically. All three deserve the highest credit possible. Doctor Who was very very lucky to have the three of them at the beginning. It's a shame there is such a focus on Billyfluffs these days (much as I enjoy them), as it does often seem to distract from the fact that Hartnell was a top class actor. 
• I love the idea of the year-o-meter. It's only really relevant if you actually know what dating system the planet in question uses. Unless for some unknown reason it's just stuck on the Western dating system we use on Earth, but that would also be completely useless for other planets. It's a daft gadget that is (sadly) never seen again. Unlike the radiation detector, which is also a good idea which gets phased out.
• Waris Hussein. I think being able to see missing episodes can only make them better, not worse. But really, watching An Unearthly Child makes me absolutely certain Marco Polo looks wonderful. He's a superstar and it's such a shame he only directed two stories and that one is missing. 
    
  
  Verdict:
  
  
  Not a standout story by any means (not even the first episode, really), but a solid, promising way to open. It does a successful job of introducing our main characters and the concept of the show and gives us a decent enough first story. It's difficult to care too much about anyone other than the main characters. Derek Newark and Alethea Charlton do their best, but their characters aren't especially exciting. The potential for a wonderful show is clearly there, it only needs to be harnessed. I think this series could well have legs. We'll see...