I am a Whovian. I have been a fan of Doctor Who ever since Lionheart, the syndication arm of the BBC at the time, packaged the first four seasons of the Tom Baker era--containing the three gothic-tinged seasons produced by Philip Hinchcliffe, still in my mind the high point of the series’ run (yes, I said it, NuWho fans; come at me) and the first season produced by Graham Williams--for the United States. Here in New York, it was broadcast on WWOR-TV and I was hooked pretty much from the get go. Over in England, fans were witnessing the beginning of John-Nathan Turner’s tenure as producer and I wrote a letter to Lionheart begging for the episodes we were missing.
Recently, I decided to sign up for Britbox, partially because my mother had gotten an accident and was going to be recuperating for a while. Imagine my pleasant surprise to find that Britbox has every single extant episode of the classic series on demand (a number of episodes are lost due to the BBC’s practice of erasing videotape for new shows in the 60‘s). So what I am going to try to do is rewatch (and in some cases, watch) every. single. episode going back to 1961 on up to today.
So....the first episode, entitled ‘An Unearthly Child’ (the early seasons have individual episode titles separate from the serial titles). It’s a pilot--but not the pilot, which you can see on Britbox as well--and, not surprisingly, is kind of the show’s mission statement. Two teachers at Coal Hill School investigate the mystery surrounding one of their students, a young girl who seems to be a genius in some subjects and clueless in others, and whose home address seems to be a scrapyard. Following her to the scrapyard one night, they come across a police box and a peculiar old man. The man turns out to be the girl’s grandfather, the box a machine that can move throughout time and space...and things go crazy once someone pushes the wrong button.
With this rewatch of this first show, it’s kind of clear that the show’s biggest special effects are the actors...only Jacqueline Hill seems to not have found her footing yet. William Russell has a rather easy charm that sets his characters very quickly. And playing the titular ‘unearthly child,’ Susan, Carol Ann Ford is...something. There’s something very off about her looks (and I say this in the most positive of ways; some people would call her features ‘elfin,’ but it’d be a very, very evil elf), and her performance sells you on the idea that she and her grandfather are a) not from this time and b) not human.
And grandfather....
Well, the thing I really like about William Hartnell in these early episodes is how, well, malevolent and unpredictable he is (something that carries over into two of my favorite incarnations, Six and Eleven). You literally do not know where you stands with him--such is the gravitas of Hartnell that when he implies that if he lets the two teachers leave, he’ll have to kick his granddaughter out as well, you don’t think it’s a joke. Hartnell softens as the series progresses, but right now he is as much a wild card as the situations he drops the other characters in....and I really, really like that.
As with most first episodes, there’s a degree of uncertainty, and stuff that’s stated here (like Susan’s contention that she named the Tardis) doesn’t stand--Hell, the angle that the Doctor is from another planet isn’t solidified until several seasons later. But it’s a pretty solid opening salvo.
Not the kind of thing you’d imagine becoming an institution and lasting over a half century, but still....but a journey of a thousand eons begins with a single step, right?
