Episode #1 : An Unearthly Child

"Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? Have you?... to be exiles? Susan and I are cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day we shall get back. Yes, one day. One day."

Episode 1:      An Unearthly Child.
Companions: The 1st Doctor, Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright.
Air Date:        Four episodes. 23rd November to 14th December 1963.

Schoolteachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton are intrigued by one of their pupils, Susan Foreman. They visit her home address - a junkyard at 76 Totter's Lane. There they meet her grandfather, the Doctor. The Doctor and Susan are aliens who travel through time and space in their ship, the TARDIS. It looks like an ordinary police box but actually houses a huge, gleaming control room. The TARDIS takes them all to a Palaeolithic landscape where they encounter a tribe who have lost the secret of fire.

I first saw this story way back in about 1982/83 and then again a couple years ago. In both instances I wasn't much impressed. However rewatching it in preperation for doing this write up I found that my opinion had largely changed. Especially in regards to the first part of the story which has a great introduction to the characters and has some fantastic dialogue between them which makes up for some of the shortfalls in the story itself.

Unfortunately despite such a great first part, the story declines as it goes along into a standard set of rotes. The characters encounter cavepeople, get captured, escape, get captured again and so on. It feels like writer had some good ideas to start with but then had to pad out a further three episodes.

The best thing about this story other than the character interaction is the set ups for what would become standard canon in the show. Specifically that the Doctor and Susan are exiled or far from their home planet/time, and that the TARDIS is somehow alive. All things that would get explained or padded out as the show goes along.

The characters of Susan, Ian and Barbara are immediately very likeable. The Doctor on the other hand is far from. He is portrayed as a grumby, almost arrogant, figure far from what he would eventually become. In fact at one point in the story he seems quite willing to commit murder on a wounded caveman in order for everyone to escape back to the TARDIS. Very different again from what he would become but I suppose given the situation (he's no temporal adventurer yet) it makes some small sense.