I
tried to do a Doctor Who marathon last year but circumstances got in
the way and I had to abandon it after The Edge Of The Destruction. So
let's try this again: An
Unearthly Child to the 1996
TV Movie stopping at all stations.
Why
am I doing this? Well, I'd bet my view of the modern series would be
different if I'd watched the episodes in random order over the course
of over half my life. I saw my first Doctor Who story (Planet
of the Daleks, as it happens) in 1992 when I was nine and
now between BBC DVDs and Loose Cannon reconstructions I finally can
do a start-to-finish watchthrough.
As
a project this is, of course, inspired and indebted to those who have
gone before: Robert Shearman and Toby Hadoke's Running
Through Corridors (which someday might even reach its
second volume), Hannah J. Rothman's Twitter
Who (which recently did), Lawrence Miles and Tat Wood's
About Time and Philip
Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum
(recently concluded on his blog Philip Sandifer Writer). I heartily
recommend all of them. Much as I love Sandifer's essays its Rothman's
approach I intend to imitate. This here is one fan's journey through
697 episodes of Doctor Who, seeing how I experience it as a series
rather than as isolated stories.
So
let's start. Set co-ordinates: 5:16pm November 23rd
1963...
AN
UNEARTHLY CHILD
1
episode
written
by Anthony Coburn and C.E. Webber (uncredited)
Originally
transmitted 23rd November 1963
Firstly,
one more piece of housekeeping: I watched the untransmitted pilot
version completely by mistake. I was going to skip it and start with
the transmitted first episode but those jolly people at 2Entertain
had other ideas and included the pilot on the Play All function.
(A
quick note about what we mean by “pilot episode” here because it
is sort of a fudge. This episode wasn't a proof of concept piece
like, say, the hour-long version of Sherlock: A Study In Pink. This
was filmed for transmission and remounted due to technical issues. If
it had gone off without a hitch it would have been the one and only
version of An Unearthly Child. As it is those issues arose and
the opportunity was taken to tweak the script and direction for a
second shoot. For reasons we'll most likely return to throughout the
black-and-white series this was actually easier to do than just
re-filming the scenes affected by technical issues.)
On
the one hand this mistake enhances the project, while on another
compromising it fatally. There are interesting observations to be
made on how the second, transmitted version polished the first (and
we'll get there) but it also means that my first stop on this project
to experience Doctor Who as a linear, evolving text was an episode
that doesn't contribute to that evolution. Still, this is where we
are and I can no more pretend my reading of An Unearthly Child isn't
informed by the pilot than I can pretend it isn't informed by the
other twenty-plus years of my fandom.
One
of the things seeing the pilot reveals is that from day one the idea
of a hostile, untrustworthy Doctor was something the production team
knew couldn't last. This is perhaps the greatest shift between the
two versions of An Unearthly Child: the Doctor's reaction to Ian and
Barbara intruding on his life changes dramatically.
In
the pilot the Doctor is hostile from the off: confrontational with
Ian and Barbara and outwardly cruel to Susan when we finally enter
the TARDIS. He even calls her a “stupid child!”. Given the
previous scenes lead us to suppose Susan is locked in a perfectly
mundane police box it even seems likely he might hit her. In the
final version Hartnell is more whimsical through these scenes. He's
condescending, yes, but with an edge of charm and when he tells Ian
“You don't understand and I knew that you wouldn't.” it hardly
seems malicious, just weary and amused. Oddly, in the pilot, it's
clear the Doctor kidnaps Ian and Barbara to prevent their knowledge
of the TARDIS from contaminating history whilst the second version
has him panic and take off so Susan won't leave him. Wait, hang on...
Pull
back a second, I'm ignoring half the episode and focussing on the
Doctor, which is more than An Unearthly Child ever does so
rewind and start again. Re-set the co-ordinates for 5.16pm on
Saturday 23rd November 1963 and see the moment for what it
really is:
What
we have is 25 minutes of television based on slowly increasing
weirdness in which the Doctor is one of the last elements introduced.
The title, delivered within a bewilderingly psychedelic effects
sequence and to the strains of gloriously weird music, has an implied
question mark attached to it. The Doctor, rather the fact that
Susan's grandfather is a doctor, gets a mention in Ian's first scene
(the episode's third) but even when Hartnell appears his link to the
mentioned grandfather is obscure for several minutes.
So
absent the Doctor, lacking even that name when he appears, what do we
have? The episode is named for Susan, Barbara is the first named
character to get a line (the actual first line goes to a random
schoolboy who says “Oooh, yes,” in a very camp manner over a
girl's shoulder) and Ian seems to rank equal to her as a fellow
investigator.
The
first element to be introduced is an unexplained police telephone box
(free for use of public, officers and cars respond to urgent calls)
in the middle of a junkyard, a junkyard whose gates open of their own
accord to let the camera in. It's that last detail that makes the
junkyard into an uncanny space and lends the police box some mystique
once the camera chooses it as a focus. The camera zooms in on the
police box doors, blurs and resolves again into a school noticeboard.
We go from the uncanny space of inexplicably mysterious police boxes
to the mundane world of school sports, house news and camp schoolboys
mocking girls in the corridors.
Susan
Foreman intrudes on this world: a girl who knows too much about
science and too little about the ordinary world. Her very ordinary
teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, are suspicious and
decide to follow her home. The story makes a point of contrasting
Susan with her teachers: whilst Susan dances as if mesmerised by
everyday music we get lines that establish Ian as the cool teacher
who knows about pop singers and Barbara as the maternal sort who
lends books and offers extra tutoring.
So
the two ordinary characters follow the uncanny one home, leaving
their space and entering hers: the junkyard at 76 Totters Lane.
Reasons for Susan's behaviour, or parts of her behaviour, are offered
by both teachers: Ian declares she's a genius, Barbara implies
parental neglect for Susan's social oddities and they briefly wonder
if it all might just be down to that most mundane explanation of
teenage strangeness: a boy. Nevertheless, they follow her into the
junkyard, into her space and gradually the ordinary world recedes.
Strange objects scattered through the junkyard lead to the entrance
of the mysterious grandfather and a confrontation that sees Barbara
barge straight out of “our” world and into the most uncanny space
yet: the TARDIS console room, bigger on the inside than the out.
From
a modern perspective you'd be forgiven for assuming the series will
continue as this episode sets out: with Susan as the focus. Its a
very familiar set-up these days: we have a “special” person and
two perceptive but outwardly ordinary people of either gender who
fall into her orbit and thus into her adventures. It's a familiar
set-up from any number of teen genre shows these days: Buffy The
Vampire Slayer in particular. The not-unnatural assumption is that
Ian and Barbara will discover Susan's “Unearthly” secret and
perform the dual role of sidekicks and emotional support network in
her adventures as Willow and Xander do in Buffy, or Chloe and Pete in
the early seasons of Smallville.
So
who is the mysterious grandfather in this formulation? Taking our two
modern examples above he can either be a knowledgeable, guiding
figure like Buffy's Rupert Giles or an antagonistic one like
Smallville's Lex Luthor. Given the Doctor's behaviour in this episode
either option is available.
It
can't last, of course. We're years away from the makers of such
series making the leap of realising that younger viewers will
empathise more with younger leading protagonists so episode title or
no episode title Susan is not destined to be our hero. Protagonist
rights will settle on Ian as action man before finally resting on the
Doctor's shoulders when he becomes the series' single enduring
character. Susan's agency will be a sticking point in a lot of the
next ten essays but I'm going to make a statement right now:
I
don't believe Susan would have worked out better as a boy. The
problem isn't that she's female given the praise anyone who does one
of these projects reserves for Jacqueline Hill as Barbara. A female
character doesn't need to be treated the way the series will treat
Susan, especially on Verity Lambert's watch. The problem is that she
is young, in particular that she's the Doctor's granddaughter. We'll
revisit this theme I'm sure, as all criticism of Susan necessarily
focusses on it, but the familial link makes her subordinate in an
unavoidable way. With the three other regulars all being older than
her and all possessed of a role that makes them socially responsible
for her she doesn't have much chance of agency at this stage in the
history of storytelling. This would be equally true for Samuel
Foreman as it is for Susan Foreman.
With
which thought we close out the episode on a desolate plain in an
unknown time and place with a sinister shadow creeping across the
ground towards that uncanny police box...
Next
Episode: 100,000 BC
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