Some fifty-odd years ago, in the Autumn of 1963, a brand new television program for children went on air for the first time. Twenty-three minutes later, and it was all over. The Doctor had arrived. Since its return in 2005, Doctor Who has made frequent references back to its original run. Whether it’s the appearance of classic villains such as the Daleks or the Autons, the pictures of previous companions and the Fourth Doctor’s scarf in The Day of the Doctor, or throw-away references that only long-time fans will notice. But the most recent series has been going in hammer and tongs. Here, we look back on the first ever Doctor Who episode, An Unearthly Child, and highlight the impact that the first episode of the show still has today.
On the surface, everything is present and correct. We have the Doctor, his human companions, his TARDIS. We have strange goings-on and creepy music. The time vortex is present, after a fashion. And the TARDIS makes it’s trademark whoosh-ing sound when it takes off. The Doctor has his companions, although there are more of them than he’s been seen to travel with recently. And the Doctor even makes one of his famous time-travel speeches; “Have you ever thought what it’s like to be wanderers in the Fourth Dimension?” he asks Barbra and Ian. How many times has the Doctor given this speech? That tempting, thrilling speech which sends shivers down the spine of anyone watching, which appears time and again as the Doctor invites new companions aboard the TARDIS.
“Have you ever thought what it’s like to be wanderers in the Fourth Dimension?” The Doctor, An Unearthly Child
But somewhat surprisingly for modern viewers, the Doctor doesn’t actually appear at all until halfway through the pilot episode. The focus is much more on the other characters; his granddaughter Susan, the titular unearthly child, and her two teachers, Barbara and Ian, who are about to become his first ever companions. However, even in these characters elements of the later series come through. “So we have a fifteen year-old girl who is absolutely brilliant at some things and excruciatingly bad at others,” Ian says of Susan’s inexplicably patchy knowledge of science and history. And who does this describe, if not the Doctor in his role as Caretaker of Coal Hill school? Capaldi’s Doctor displays this same advanced, yet patchy knowledge, as have many of the other actors who have played the Doctor.
When the Doctor does appear, it’s not as the valiant hero that most viewers have come to associate with figures such as Matt Smith and David Tennant. William Hartnell’s character is far more shady than we are now used to, although he already has the edge of mystery and suspicion that is a key element of the role. The First Doctor’s attempted misdirection, something which stays with the character, to a certain degree, through every subsequent incarnation. “The Doctor Lies,” as River Song and Amy Pond point out in The Wedding of River Song. The Doctor has always been a liar and a trickster, in every incarnation, but nowhere more so than here, in his first appearance.
But this is not the Doctor that we know. Here we see the Doctor before he’s started accepting travelling companions, and he appears as a threatening, dark character. “You pushed your way in here, uninvited and unwelcome,” he says to Ian and Barbara. Later, he claims that “I tolerate this century but I don’t enjoy it.” The First Doctor has yet to fall in love with the human race, let alone developed the fondness for the twentieth and twenty-first centuries exhibited by the likes of the Tenth Doctor.
The First Doctor is arguably the incarnation that most resembles out current, Twelfth Doctor. Not just in terms of the age of the actor playing them, but also the fact that both William Hartnell and Peter Capaldi portray the first incarnations of their Regeneration Cycles. As The Eleventh Doctor says in his final moments, the Twelfth Doctor represents “A whole new regeneration cycle.” So it comes as no surprise that these two incarnations have a number of similarities between them. The First Doctor’s attitude of talking down to others, first seen in An Unearthly Child, is alive and well in the Twelfth Doctor. “Don’t you think you’re being rather high-handed young man?” the First Doctor asks Ian Chesterton dismissively. “I can see by your face that you don’t understand.” And when the Twelfth Doctor meets Danny Pink, he can only view the former soldier as a PE teacher, incapable of making the leap from army to mathematics that the character has made.
Susan is afraid of the Doctor. “Susan, will you help us?” Ian asks. “I mustn’t” is her only reply. It’s been some time since we’ve seen a companion express genuine fear towards the Doctor, although there have been moments in the Ongoing Series. The closest may have been Donna Noble in her first meeting with the Tenth Doctor. “You can stop now!” she yells as the Doctor watches the Racnos drown. Later, in A Good Man Goes To War, Amy flinches away from her best friend, unwilling to touch the man responsible for the loss of her baby. And now we have Clara Oswald, rejecting the Doctor because she doesn’t “know who he is anymore.” Is the Doctor a good man? This is a question from the very start of the show, introduced in these first few minutes, which has been brought back into focus with Capaldi’s recent portrayal. It seems that not even the Doctor knows the answer to this question.
“Now you’re being sentimental and childish,” That should ring a bell to anyone who has watched Day of the Doctor (and if you haven’t watched it, what’s wrong with you? Go, go now and watch it.) “Why are you so afraid of acting like adults?” the War Doctor asks his future incarnation. Yes, the Doctor has proven that he can be childish, too. Indeed, many of his actions in An Unearthly Child seem more like the tantrum of a young child than the decisions of a centuries-old advanced life-form. And Capaldi walks that line, too. He’s hardly sentimental, but childish? Childish he can do with gusto.
Of course, while there are elements of the first episode that are alive and well, there are many which have faded away over the years. The cliff-hanger endings, a trademark of the Original Series, have all but vanished since the show’s revival. With individual episodes being self-contained, we’ve lost the nerve-shredding hooks which originally concluded each twenty-five minute run. Likewise, while the First Doctor tended to travel as part of a group of three or four, the practice of having multiple companions has become much rarer since the start of the Ongoing Series. Since 2005, only a small number of stories have featured the Doctor traveling with more than one companion.
Since An Unearthly Child first aired, Doctor Who has undergone many changes. Originally filmed on a shoe-string budget in the smallest studio space available, it is now one of the BBC’s biggest shows. The Doctor has become progressively more active, and heroic, as he has passed through different incarnations. He has learned to love the Earth and the human race, and his companions have become his friends, even lovers, rather than hostages. But underneath it all, the spirit of the First Doctor and the essence of An Unearthly Child will remain at the heart of the show for as long as it runs.
This article is the first in our new “Story by Story” series running all this week celebrating An Unearthly Child. DWW welcomes all submissions and pitches on the theme throughout the week at [email protected]
In future weeks we shall be celebrating The Daleks (Oct 27 - Nov 2), Inside the Spaceship (Nov 3 - 9), Marco Polo (Nov 10 - 16), The Keys of Marinus (Nov 17 - 23), The Aztecs (Nov 24 - 30), The Sensorites (Dec 1 - 7) and The Reign of Terror (Dec 8 - 14).
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The very first 3 Doctor Who stories ever transmitted in a 3-Disc set. Includes An Unearthly Child, The Daleks & The Edge of Destruction. Includes the previously unreleased pilot episode and the very first episode from the long-running sci-fi TV series set in London in 1963. In 'An Unearthly Child', teachers Ian and Barbara follow a mysterious pupil, Susan, home one evening and find that she lives in a junkyard. Suddenly her Grandfather, the Doctor, appears but they suspect Susan is being held in the police box. On entering this box their lives change forever... Also includes 'The Daleks' and the two-part episode of 'The Edge Of Destruction'. DVD Extras: Disc 1 - An Unearthly Child Pilot Episode - 25 mins Episode 1: Commentary with Verity Lambert, Carole Ann Ford, William Russell, Gary Russell Episode 4: Commentary with Waris Hussein, Ann Ford, William Russell, Gary Russell. Pilot Episode Studio Recording (dur. 40') - unedited recording of the entire studio session for the Pilot Episode, including retakes. Commentary with Verity Lambert, Waris Hussein and Gary Russell. Theme Music Video (dur. 2' 30") - allows the viewer to hear the original full-length theme music with original 1963 title sequences elements in three different versions. Picture Gallery Programme Subtitles Subtitle Production Notes Disc 2 - The Daleks Episode 2: Commentary with Christopher Barry, Verity Lambert, Gary Russell Episode 4: Commentary with Christopher Barry, William Russell, Carole Ann Ford, Gary Russell Episode 7: Commentary with Richard Martin, William Russell, Carole Ann Ford, Gary Russell Extras Creation of the Daleks (dur. 18') - new featurette looking at the origins of these icon villains. Picture Gallery Programme Subtitles Subtitle Production Notes Disc 3 - The Edge of Destruction Episodes The Edge of Destruction - 2 x 25 mins. Episode 2 - Arabic Soundtrack Extras Origins (dur. 53') - an in-depth look at the creation of Doctor Who, including rare interviews with the
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