An Unearthly Child by: Anthony Coburn directed by: Waris Hussein: A Thing That Looks Like A Police Box Can Move Anywhere in Time and Space

An Unearthly Child stars William Hartnell as the Doctor, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright, William Russell as Ian Chesterton and Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman with Derek Newark as Za and Jeremy Young as Kal.  It was written by Anthony Coburn, directed by Waris Hussein with David Whitaker as Script Editor, Mervyn Pinfield as Associate Producer and Verity Lambert as Producer.  It was originally broadcast on Saturdays from 23 November to 14 December 1963 on BBCTV.

 

It was that cold November’s evening that begun the trip of a lifetime as what would become the BBC’s flagship show began airing to millions.  It was the first non-news related program to be airing since the previous day when American President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.  It served to get the public’s mind off the show even if the viewing figures were less than the production team would have liked to see and it wouldn’t be until the second serial, The Daleks, that Doctor Who would cement itself with staying power by winning over the audiences.  That doesn’t mean that the first serial, An Unearthly Child, is without merit, as it has quite a few things that there are to admire about the story.  It starts from the opening title sequence which was done reflecting a light down a camera lens to produce a chilling effect.  It is enhanced by the plain weird sounding theme music written originally by Ron Grainer, but truly brought to the screen by Delia Derbyshire.  After the theme the first shot is a beautifully filmed tracking shot into the I.M. Foreman junkyard where the camera stops on a perfectly ordinary police box where we get the episode title.

 

The actual story introduces the viewer to the principle characters of the show and the basic concept of being lost in time and exploring different historical and scientific topics which is all done in the first episode.  It pulls it off really well as we are introduced to Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright played by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill respectively, who are two schoolteachers (Ian teaches science and Barbara teaches history).  They are curious about one of their students, Susan Foreman played by Carole Ann Ford who has been performing badly in school.  They are fed up with her not knowing everything and decide the smart thing to do is follow her home to speak with her grandfather and tell him to take an interest.  They discover her home is a junkyard where they find that Susan lives in a police box that is bigger on the inside and can travel in space and time.  She and her grandfather, the Doctor played by William Hartnell are aliens and so they don’t become the laughing stock or exhibits in a freak show the Doctor takes off with the schoolteachers inside where they have to escape a tribe of cavemen for three episodes.  The first episode of the story is really where it shines the brightest as it does a great job with the atmosphere that something is about to happen which only makes it just as crazy when the TARDIS is revealed.

 

Anthony Coburn’s script makes the cavemen storyline suffer as it is just an hour and a half of politics with characters who really aren’t that interesting.  This part of the story is almost unbearable to sit through as it continues at a really slow pace and a boring story that needs a bit more action to make it better.  The regulars on the other hand are characterized brilliantly by Coburn as we are introduced to the main players in this show.  Ian and Barbara are introduced in a scene that shows just how much chemistry they have as actors and characters.  They feel very much like coworkers and both have a reason to be fed up with their student.  This carries across the story with Ian being the skeptic while Barbara is the optimist.  Ian doesn’t want to believe that a police box could possibly be a time machine.  Barbara believes it just because of the impossible things she had seen with something being bigger on the inside which is of course impossible and while Barbara eventually goes into hysterics at one point it makes sense as she would be terrified of going to a different time without any sort of warning.  Susan on the other hand isn’t handled nearly as well as in the first episode she is just as mysterious and is able to create the escape for the travelers in a great yet morbid way, but in the middle of the story she has more hysteria than Barbara even though she has already traveled in time before.

 

William Hartnell as the Doctor in this story deserves a review of his own.  He is not the Doctor that we all know and love, but a young impulsive man who will do anything to protect his granddaughter from harm even if it means hurting people.  When he is introduced he tries his hardest to get Ian and Barbara to leave him and Susan and when they break into his ship he gives Ian an electric shock and proceeds to kidnap them all to protect his granddaughter.  He even tries killing an injured caveman just so they can try and get back to his ship.  He isn’t completely unlikable here however as there are moments where it shows that he may be able to change.  His words about fear to Barbara are extremely comforting and you see the glimpse that he might just change for the better.

 

To summarize, An Unearthly Child without its brilliant first episode, could have killed the show immediately as the plot is extremely slow and the cavemen politics really aren’t trying to comment on anything.  The main characters however save this story from this awful fate as they are done extremely well that paints a real picture of where the show is going to go in the future and the eventual development that is going to happen.  This balances the score of the episode out to the slightly above average 52/100.