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| The TARDIS makes its first landing. |
4 episodes: An Unearthly Child, The Cave of Skulls, The Forest of Fear, The Firemaker. Written by: Anthony Coburn. Directed by: Waris Hussein. Produced by: Verity Lambert.
THE PLOT
A pair of schoolteachers (William Russell, Jacqueline Hill), curious about a strange pupil (Carole Ann Ford), decide to wait for her at the junkyard she has given as her home address. They encounter her grandfather, a mysterious doctor (William Hartnell), who - determining that he cannot let them go - takes them in his time & space machine to a time at the dawn of man. The four find themselves menaced by a tribe of cavemen, and drawn into the power struggle between rivals Za (Derek Newark) and Kal (Jeremy Young) for leadership of the tribe - an issue that depends on being able to create fire. Now the four time travelers will have to find a way to work together in order to survive and return to the ship.
CHARACTERS
The Doctor: William Hartnell is stunningly good in the title role. He's particularly fine in the first episode, projecting the sinister playfulness of a cat with a mouse as he taunts and belittles the two schoolteachers. This is a cold and ruthless Doctor. He is quite willing to cave in a helpless caveman's skull in order to make good his own escape, and constantly stands aloof from the humans that he views as savages just as much as Ian and Barbara view the cavemen.
Hartnell also shows tremendous authority, effortlessly dominating the first episode despite not even appearing for close to half of it, then dominating a scene in Episode Two from a position of weakness when he announces - just as the cavemen are about to murder Ian - "There will be no fire if he dies!" I've long held Hartnell as my favorite Doctor, but it's been a while since I last watched one of his stories. It is good to have my old opinion reinforced, and he was rarely (if ever) better than here.
Ian & Barbara: The pilot episode pays more attention to establishing these two characters than probably any other companion ever received later in the series' history (bracing self for attacks by Rose fans). Their relationship is clearly close enough that Barbara readily approaches Ian with her questions about Susan, but not so close as to be a pre-established "couple." Ian is a pragmatist, insisting that he takes things as they come, while Barbara is more compassionate. Both are intelligent, self-reliant adults, which is one of the joys of early '60's Who (I can't speak for anyone else, but I sometimes weary of teen- and twenty-somethings). Barbara does have a slight breakdown in Episode Three, but given the circumstances that's easily forgiveable... particularly when Jacqueline Hill does such a fantastic job of playing genuine terror. The expressions on her face during the flight through the forest are a textbook study in terror, particularly when you can see her fighting to keep her terror in check, rather than just wantonly losing control.
Susan: Ford's vaguely otherworldly features are used to good effect in our first glimpses of Susan, and her overall performance is fine in this episode. A characterization beyond "the Doctor's granddaughter" isn't particularly established here, but there's certainly room for later serials to pick up that slack.
THOUGHTS
A common response to the debut serial of Doctor Who is "great first episode, shame about the rest of it." That is not a response that I can share. The first episode is extremely good, doing an excellent job of setting up the characters, and even of dividing them into two pairs (Doctor/Susan vs. Ian/Barbara). But the rest of the story deserves more credit than it often receives.
The serial's main achievement is to define a working relationship between the four characters. Ian and Barbara have to go from being outsiders to being part of the crew, and the two alpha males of this bunch - the Doctor and Ian - have to find a way to work together.
We see each filling some role the others cannot. Ian refuses to give up hope of escape, even when the Doctor becomes fatalistic. "Any hope is better than just giving up," Ian says - a line that, in any later Who era, would surely belong to the Doctor himself. Barbara lends compassion, insisting on showing mercy to the injured Za when Ian would have been all too ready to escape and simply leave the man to die. The Doctor lends not only the technology to make the adventure possible, but also experience and hard pragmatism; he is the one who recognizes that though the old woman helps them escape, she cannot be considered reliable (and indeed, we later cut to the old woman revealing their escape to Kal). He also niftily tricks Kal into revealing his true colors to the tribe in the final episode. As for Susan? Well, she bridges the divide between Ian and Barbara and the Doctor - He would all too readily leave the schoolteachers behind, but he certainly will not do the same to his own granddaughter!
The story itself may be thin, consisting largely of a capture/escape/recapture/re-escape scenario, but it provides a situation which allows us to study these four as they become a team. An uneasy team here - even at the end, there is plenty of division. But we see them work together, and we get a sense of each character's attributes. As a "pilot serial," it does its job quite well.
Rating: 7/10. A strong introduction to the series, which actually holds up a bit better than I had remembered being the case.
Notes on the Unaired Pilot Episode: Included on the DVD is the original version of the pilot. The order to reshoot it was sensible, as the production is uneven and some of the performances feel less finished than in the broadcast version. There are, however, a few elements that I missed. The decor of the junkyard in the original pilot creates a much creepier atmosphere than that created by the broadcast version. Hartnell's performance is even more hard-edged, downright sinister, and I rather liked that the Doctor was a character who was potentially frightening. That note is still there in the broadcast version, but not as strongly. Finally, though minor, I thought that Susan doodling a Rorschach image in the original pilot was more striking than Susan reading a book with a paper cover titled, The French Revolution. A strange and striking visual from the first version was replaced by a rather cheap-looking book in the final version - not an improvement.
Overall, however, there is little question that the broadcast version is stronger than the first version, and Sidney Newman's decision to reshoot ended up being a key decision to insure the series' legacy. Still, it's nice to have it available on the disc, if only to see what might have been.
Next Story: The Daleks
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