The Unearthly Child

Series 1

Title - The Unearthly Child
Production Code - A
Story # - 001

Episodes:

"The Unearthly Child"

"The Cave Of Skulls"

"The Forest Of Fear"

"The Firemaker"

Doctor - 1st - William Hartnell

Someone posted a link so I followed it. Through a TON of crappy sites wanting to download mal ware or get my email address for spam. Not fun.

Did eventually find dailymotion.com and discovered the 4 episodes of The Unearthly Child were available. 

Now I've already seen a few episodes from other stories and other Doctors (not including all the revived series stuff) but I've been looking into either getting discs from Netflix or finding the episodes that are available online somewhere and doing this all properly - watching from the very beginning, in order, as many episodes as I can find. It makes me incredibly sad to know that the BBC just tossed things back in the day. Hindsight is 20/20 though, right?

So...the story.

We get a fairly good idea, and pretty quickly too I'd say, about three of our four characters who it seems will be on the show. The pair caring teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, worried about their teen student, Susan Foreman, who seems to be very smart in some things but not others, like knowing a lot of history and being able to read a book on the French Revolution in one night but not knowing how to correctly make change for a British pound. 

We get to met The Doctor, whom Susan refers to as "Grandfather", who comes across as a bit of a crafty old gent, though a rather private person, who initially doesn't want to get involved with the teachers. He also has a rather...aristocratic air about him, from thinking that anything of the TARDIS's workings would be above these people or later, initially not wanting to help with an injured man but instead would rather be about collecting his samples of the planet/era where they are. 

But Susan seems to be lacking a bit. Sure she is apparently rather clever and smart about loads of things and she can scream very well but...that's it. I don't know, it might just be me, but for the whole arc that's all she seems to be. Like the only reason she is there is as the excuse to put the teachers with the Doctor and get them into the TARDIS so we can see that its smaller on the outside. (See what I did there? LOL)

Now aside from the whole Time And Relative Dimension In Space - TARDIS (thanks Susan) time travel thing, this is more historical fiction than science fiction. But then from what I'm told a main goal of the show as a whole was about education. So ok I guess. 

Since I'm coming at this as a fan of the current series, my reaction to older episodes will be clouded and not true, never-seen-this-before type reactions. Overall it wasn't bad (if a bit dated though that can't be helped - and how many current shows will that be said about in 40 years?)

We travel back to the time of early humanoids (we don't actually ever know if we've left Earth, but I guess the assumption is that we haven't) still living in caves and the whole hunter/gatherer routine. A time where making fire is power. Our travelers, two of whom were hijacked into coming along,  are captured by the natives who see them as strange and dangerous. Fights ensue about who is or should be in charge and claims of the Doctor making fire "in his hands" - lighting his pipe with a match - and what to do with the strangers. 

And of course all done in monosyllables and grunts and all very caveman. 

After fights and grunts and making of fire and finally getting away, we are all safe and basically sound and back in the TARDIS and off to someplace/time new - this time a world that doesn't seem to still be Earth, so I guess that means we get official aliens next time! But oh the cliffe! 

(This is the neat bit of the whole serials thing - every episode leads to the next with some little cliffhanger and the next episode usually features a 3 or 4 second redo of the end of the last episode)

Suffice it to say I think had this been the pilot that aired in this time, I could see it going well or totally tanking, and that's if it ever got produced. I'm fairly sure they'd want to jazz it up with more science-y tech-y stuff today. I also don't think it would've survived with its serials format - which is why in the new series' they've ditched that idea. It would be an interesting premise for this time period though. Something that hasn't been done in such a long time. But then it might mean it would get cancelled all the faster.

Not bad. Not great. A little meh. 

Can someone give me earplugs to drown out the piercing screams from Susan and Barbara? Cause those are gonna get old. 

The Unearthly Child
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Unearthly_Child

William Hartnell
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Hartnell