It's a quarter-past five on a dark, windy evening in November. We're at the height of the Cold War and yesterday evening, the news that JFK had been assassinated in Dallas by what was described as a shot that rang round the world. It’s Saturday 23rd November 1963.
Adult viewers would have just watched Grandstand, the Saturday sports show featuring motor racing and boxing - but their programme had been disrupted repeatedly by continuing reportage of the president's assassination. These sombre news bulletins, brief and sketchy, did little more than repeat what had been reported the night before. At the same time, regions of the UK suffered a massive power cut which was widely reported and added to the distressed and dismal tone of the day. Tucked in between Grandstand and the News was Doctor Who, a brand new show which had featured in the Radio Times and been advertised on the Home Service radio. After this show and the News, viewers would settle down expecting to see the usual staples of BBC TV Saturday night light entertainment: comedy (The Telegoons), a police drama, westerns (Tales of Wells Fargo tv series starring Dale Robertson and Santa Fe Trail movie starring John Wayne) - though, judging the gloomy mood of the nation, the BBC altered the programming in the evening and replaced the westerns with lighter comedy.
At 5.16 p.m. the opening music of the new show - droning, spooky, almost horrifying - and bizarre otherworldly visuals would have only added to the sense of unease and anxiety. It begins with images of a dark street, mist and a solitary police man searching. It's a very slow opening as the camera - us? - pushes through scrapyard gates and finds an old police box. All very slowly.
The rest of the episode, however, is fast-paced and the drama is presented in three acts: the mystery of Susan Foreman, the (almost) villainous Doctor and then of the TARDIS. It remains one of the best first episodes of a tv show. Ever.
Sixty years later it's difficult to approach An Unearthly Child fresh and free from both existing commentary, the ways in which the subsequent storylines developed and the expectations (not to mention the huge budgets) of contemporary tv. Watching Doctor Who now in 2023 is certainly not the same as watching Doctor Who then in 1963. It really is a different type of tv show aimed at a very different audience. The First Doctor isn't the latest Doctor. In fact, Doctor Who 60 years ago wasn't really about Doctor Who in the way it is these days. This first episode depends on an unfolding, threatening mystery which engenders increasing incomprehension: the enigma of Susan Foreman, the scrapyard, the TARDIS and - of course - the Doctor himself. Though, this almost-villainous Doctor is very different than the helpful, do-gooder of today. It builds towards its climax without the flashy spectacle we expect of modern Who.
An Unearthly Child is a step across an imaginative threshold: from the ordinary, everyday into a place that’s threatening and incomprehensible. Where the opening starts in the dark, cluttered scrapyard close up to the TARDIS it ends in daylight in an empty, barren landscape with the TARDIS some way off - a location that could be anywhere in space and time. The reassuring authority figure of a policeman in a familiar 1960s street checking all is well at the start is replaced by the the threatening shadow across an unknown alien landscape at the end. At no point is there any respite from the tension that builds in the course of the episode. There are no light moments or comedy. It's all quite earnest. This first episode touches on feelings of fear and terror and, on that cold, dark night in November, could have been many children’s first delicate experiences of a form of (gothic) horror storytelling.
The "unearthly child" is the preternatural Susan Foreman and this episode is largely about her - though we never find out who she actually is. She's an alien, she has a human name - quite likely borrowed from the owners of the scrapyard, I. M. Foreman - and is incredibly intelligent. For some reason, she's decided to pose as a British teenager and attend Coal Hill comprehensive school in London. We learn nothing of her parents and only that the Doctor is (or poses as) her grandfather. She - rather than the Doctor at this point - is the one who has the desire to explore and experience other cultures and times. A little like a 19th Century gothic heroine, she exclaims "I like walking through the dark. It's mysterious." She engages joyously in pop culture, listening to the Shadows-like John Smith and the Common Men, and happily reads history books, about the French Revolution of which she seems to have first-hand knowledge. She descries her five months at Coal Hill as the best in her life and, later in the episode, the Doctor describes Susan's attachment to the 20th Century as "Sentimental and childish." She treats the teachers appropriately for a 60s teenager and, at the end of the episode argues with the Doctor in the stubborn manner of a teen. She’s clearly more than an alien posing as a teenage girl. But she is ODD and, for me, gives off more than slight Midwich vibes.
It's Susan’s character that incites the teachers, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, to begin their adventure (at this point maybe the excuse to spend time together) and step over the threshold into to an uncanny realm where they will travel in space and time. Ian admits that Susan "Knows more science than I do" and Barbara exclaims that that she's is a "genius". Both are perplexed though by her ignorance of some basic matters of maths and British currency. They go so far as to follow her home (I assume one of the reasons that they are teachers is that it prevents their actions as being seen as stalkerish) - which suggests at first that this could be a kitchen sink drama about poverty or child neglect - and go further than the policeman at the start of the episode in stepping over into what is effectively the liminal space of the scrapyard where, among the junk, they discover the an old battered police box.
There’s a brief moment outside the scrapyard when the teachers are sitting in a car, that Barbara forewarns the audience that they are about to cross over the threshold: "I feel frightened. As if we're about to interfere in something best left alone." Up until this point in the episode - about 15 minutes in - this could be simply another BBC drama. But it’s at the point that Ian pushes the gates open (transgressing unlike the policeman at the start) and with Barbara steps into the weird, liminal space of the scrapyard.
Echoes of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (published in 1950) here and Ian declares "It's alive!" when he first touches the TARDIS and recoils in horror. After the physical struggle with the Doctor, entering the TARDIS is disorienting for both humans and for us viewers. The dreary dirty darkness of I.M. Foreman's scrapyard is replaced by the clinical white brightness of the TARDIS' interior. The familiarity of the clutter of junk objects is replaced by a futuristic, minimalist geometry.
Indeed, the final act of the episode functions to show off the Doctor's "ship" which is quite unlike any spaceship that would have been presented in film or tv up to this point in the Sixties. The interior's not a bridge, there's no pilot's seat, there are other objects - antiques like an ornate coatstand and small table - which give it the impression that this is a vehicle that's lived in. Susan seems to come from rooms further inside the ship. In the centre of the room is the control console covered in buttons, levers and the Time Rotor that gives the impression of motion as the TARDIS travels. This is the vehicle of exiles from a future, alien civilisation - who say they will return to their world some day. The Doctor explains how the inside is bigger than the outside through the analogy of showing a large building on a tv screen and bringing it into a living room. Susan says that she named the ship, an acronym of Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Even in at the beginning, the Doctor tinkers with the TARDIS and we see him replace a "faulty filament".
William Hartnell's Doctor is at first a low-key performance: he skulks into the scrapyard in his karakul hat and scarf, coughing and pretending to be a fumbling old man. When he engages grumpily in conversation with Barbara and Ian he deems them barely worth talking to, finding other things of more interest - such as an old picture frame or broken clock he examines. (I’m not sure if Hartnell plays this as feigned disinterest or not.) When the teachers force themselves inside the TARDIS, the Doctor maintains his somewhat distracted and disinterested manner, frequently talking to himself. (I always assumed with later Doctors this was a Columbo act to wrong-foot others.) Ian and Barbara are an annoyance to him and he tells them that "You don't deserve any explanations." When Ian feels that he is being treated like a child, the Doctor reveals that his civilisation's children would be insulted (is that by Ian's knowledge?). The Doctor says that he "tolerates" the 20th Century but doesn't enjoy it. I wonder whether the Doctor at this point is deliberately played as a Captain Nemo-type (there are similarities between the Doctor and the way in which Professor Aronnax describes Nemo in 20,000 Leagues and, perhaps, the entry of Ian and Barbara into the TARDIS echoes Arronax, Conseil and Ned Land's first experience of the Nautilus).
The final moments of the episode are ones of panic. While Barbara and Ian struggle to comprehend what is happening to them Susan begs grandfather to let them go. She clearly fears for their safety. The Doctor refuses and when Ian and Barbara try to leave but the Doctor locks the door, laughing malevolently. The Doctor allows (or even encourages) Ian touch the console - but it's "live" and shocks Ian. He falls to the floor in pain. Susan struggles with her grandfather over the console and the Doctor sets the TARDIS on a journey. We hear the grating sound of what will become the sound of the TARDIS in flight.
Our first journey in the TARDIS is equally disturbing. The TARDIS shakes - throwing passengers about - and the lights dim. London is replaced by the spooky effects from the opening titles used again and shots of Susan and the Doctor (looking somewhat distressed). We hear the and there’s a considerable physical effect on the characters of traveling in space and time: Ian and Barbara are rendered unconscious.
It’s a strong cliff-hanger. The Doctor abducts Ian and Barbra and it’s not clear whether or not his is to be considered villainous. The TARDIS is no longer in the scrapyard but now leans in a desert landscape. A large, threatening human shadow lumbers into view from the bottom right and splashed across the screen are the words: "Next Episode THE CAVE OF SKULLS"
If I'd watched this 60 years ago, I would have undoubtedly loved it to bits and gone to bed fizzy with excitement and an over-active imagination.
Next Week: (a repeat of this episode next week followed by) The Cave of Skulls.
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