I want to start by mentioning Ian's "dislike of the unlike" speech. When I wrote the section on disability last time, I hadn't seen The Ambush for a couple of years so it's pure chance that this comes up now. Ian accuses the Daleks of just the sort of attitude I was talking about, but with the direction reversed. It's a good message, but it must be said that it isn't backed up by the rest of the program.
Still, I don't watch Doctor Who for moral instruction (an idea that is explored in more detail in one of my favourite Eighth Doctor audios, and who knows if I'll ever get that far in this marathon). The important thing is that this episode was - for the most part - highly entertaining. The opening section with the regulars escaping the city was particularly good: well-acted, well-paced, and with Susan using her brains to save everyone. I also enjoyed the Daleks' repeated use of the word "exterminated", so close to their future catchphrase, and the effective and imaginative cutting torch. Not all the effects are so special, with a Dalek having trouble operating controls and an obviously polystyrene statue, but these are not enough to spoil the sequence.
Unfortunately the same can't be said of the following scene between Temmosus and Alydon. They are given some heavy exposition to remind viewers of the situation on Skaro (now that the immediate crisis is resolved), and it kills the tension. The titular ambush that follows isn't bad, but it is too slow to regain the momentum.
So, this second four-part story winds down towards its conclusion - and it's a fairly downbeat end. The Thals' future looks anything but rosy and the TARDIS crew are still divided, arguing about leaving them to their fate. It's notable that the Doctor's appeal to self-preservation wins everyone over, and the travellers head off on another adventure...
Only they don't, of course, because this is a seven-part story, and Terry Nation is just playing a little trick on us. Again I wonder if people knew at the time that the story was due to continue, because it certainly makes a difference to how I watch it. This really does feel like the last part - though not, admittedly, a particularly satifying conclusion. The last few seconds as Ian realises the Daleks still have the fluid link lead us into possibly the best cliffhanger since the plunger.
People have called Nation a hack writer. We know that he didn't pour his heart and soul into this story, which was simply a way to keep his family fed when he was fired by Tony Hancock, but what is evident to me is the craftsmanship. Remember, too, that this was written in something of a hurry. The second story kept changing, and for a long time was going to be The Masters of Luxor by Anthony Coburn, but it wasn't working out. Nation effectively stepped into the breach with the only script that was usable in time (a narrow squeak for the Daleks, who Sydney Newman disliked but was forced to accept). The fact that it works so well in the circumstances is impressive; if this is hackwork, I'd love to see what happens when Nation actually tries his best!
And this is where I need to thank El Sandifer for making me do this episode by episode. You can't see the quality of Nation's script so clearly when watching the story en masse, because you're trying to view it as a film and it is written as a serial - the only way the creators thought it would ever be seen. I don't agree with the erudite Dr. Sandifer on everything, though. Take William Russell, for instance. Russell gets to play a man who suppresses his emotions much of the time and to my mind puts in a fairly subtle performance, second only to Jacqueline Hill in the "reliable acting" stakes among the regulars. The closing moments of this episode are a case in point. Ian gets to stand around stiffly, emoting very little, but in the process Russell shows us quite a lot, particularly with his eyes - and when Ian does get the bigger moments (such as the final few seconds of the episode) he has real presence.
There was good news for all the regulars shortly before The Ambush was broadcast, as the BBC committed to a further 16 episodes on William Hartnell's birthday; and next week, Nation will be called upon to write another SF script at short notice. The show is going places, but the travel arrangements are still rocky...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 11th January 1964
Viewers: 9.9 million
Chart Position: 29
Appreciation Index: 63
Rating:
8/10.
Next Time:
The Expedition.
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Monday, 27 June 2011
Episode 7: The Escape
Let's start by taking a glance at the broadcast figures below: 8.9 million viewers. That's two million higher than the previous record, two and a half more than the previous episode. Next week will add another million, with a further half million a couple of weeks after that. The chart position is also the highest it's been, and the trend over the next few weeks is again positive; while audience appreciation is consistently high, which is impressive when combined with such steeply rising viewing figures.
Many things can affect these ratings other than the quality of the programming - a warm, sunny evening, for example, can make people decide to go outside instead of watching TV - but it's only really the quality of the alternatives on other channels that affects all of them. When Sydney Newman joined the BBC his remit was to revamp the drama department. ITV, the network of commercial stations that started in the mid-50s, was eating into the BBC's share of the audience, and it was Newman's job to reverse the trend. Ironically he was partly responsible for it, having done much the same for independent broadcaster ABC! Part of his strategy at the BBC was to develop a program to bridge the Saturday evening gap between Grandstand and Jukebox Jury; Doctor Who was it.
When the show started, a rival children's SF series called Emerald Soup had been running for a couple of weeks and built up some viewer loyalty. Its final episode was broadcast on 21st December, opposite The Dead Planet, after which it was replaced by reruns of older shows. I can imagine people tuning in for another week to see what the repeats were like, then deciding to see what's on the other side. Some may have been swayed by the buzz that was building up, but I strongly doubt 2.5 million were. Still, whatever their original reasons for tuning in, the new viewers stayed for the Daleks.
On to this episode, then, which is the first directed by Richard Martin. Martin had done a little TV directing before, but was still fairly inexperienced. Later he was to return for two more Dalek serials and the surreal The Web Planet, and is not generally well regarded in fandom. Based on this episode I really can't see why - it's mostly effective and there are some particularly good moments, such as Susan stepping out into the light with Alydon and Temmosus standing up to reveal the TARDIS behind him just as he mentions "magical architecture."
What most stands out for me this week, though, is the script. Nobody behaves stupidly for the sake of the plot, a rarity not just in Doctor Who but in TV drama generally. Equally, nobody jumps straight to the correct solution; for example, we get to see the prisoners working out their plan of escape step by step, and this is done in such a way that it is kept interesting rather than killing time. The way the Thal cape is used is also impressive, with each step completely natural and ending up just where it needs to be.
The acting is also up to scratch (except for a couple of moments with the Thals), and I particularly enjoyed Ian's reaction upon first seeing the Dalek creature. Which brings me nicely on to my next subject:
Playing on our Fears, Part 1: Disability
The Thals are physically-perfect aryan humanoids. The Daleks are so hideously mutated that they need huge amounts of mechanical help just to move about their city. Guess which ones are the bad guys?
I have recently been thinking more about fear of disability and the prejudice it engenders because of my own experiences. A couple of years ago I suffered a severely prolapsed disc. It wasn't just my mobility that was impaired: the constant pain (possibly along with the drugs I was taking to manage it) meant that my thinking was also unclear. I felt as if I couldn't do anything. Being unable to wash or dress myself, let alone work, brought me up short against this most common of fears. A determination to get well helped me to avoid an operation (against the advice of my surgeon, though he acquiesced so long as I agreed to get myself up A&E at the first sign of nerve damage), and I am recovering well; but I will never manage the long commute and long hours of work I was doing before. I am currently figuring out what I can do instead but it's not easy, particularly in the current economic climate.
Anyway, it seems to me that our society really pushes independence and self-reliance to a ridiculous, unrealistic extent. We are all dependent upon others, but those links are hidden and can generally be ignored by most of the population. Visibly disabled people demonstrate to the rest of us how fragile that illusion is, and bring our fears of losing "independence" close to the surface. Unfortunately what sometimes happens is that we decide to "kill the messenger," and turn our fear into anger or even hatred against the person or thing that reminds us of our fragility. We also project our fears, imagining how bitter and twisted a disabled person must be.
It's not a pretty picture but it is full of potential as a source of emotional "hooks" to grab viewers, and all credit to Nation and the team for making such good use of these. The Daleks are the ultimate symbol of disability warping the victim into something terrible. Or at least they are for the next twelve years, until they are supplanted by their own creator.
This episode ends, appropriately enough, not on a cliffhanger but with a moment of disgust for the viewers as we see the Dalek creature's claw reaching out from beneath the cape. 'Nuff said.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 4th January 1964
Viewers: 8.9 million
Chart Position: 45
Appreciation Index: 62
Rating:
7.5/10.
Next Time:
The Ambush.
Many things can affect these ratings other than the quality of the programming - a warm, sunny evening, for example, can make people decide to go outside instead of watching TV - but it's only really the quality of the alternatives on other channels that affects all of them. When Sydney Newman joined the BBC his remit was to revamp the drama department. ITV, the network of commercial stations that started in the mid-50s, was eating into the BBC's share of the audience, and it was Newman's job to reverse the trend. Ironically he was partly responsible for it, having done much the same for independent broadcaster ABC! Part of his strategy at the BBC was to develop a program to bridge the Saturday evening gap between Grandstand and Jukebox Jury; Doctor Who was it.
When the show started, a rival children's SF series called Emerald Soup had been running for a couple of weeks and built up some viewer loyalty. Its final episode was broadcast on 21st December, opposite The Dead Planet, after which it was replaced by reruns of older shows. I can imagine people tuning in for another week to see what the repeats were like, then deciding to see what's on the other side. Some may have been swayed by the buzz that was building up, but I strongly doubt 2.5 million were. Still, whatever their original reasons for tuning in, the new viewers stayed for the Daleks.
On to this episode, then, which is the first directed by Richard Martin. Martin had done a little TV directing before, but was still fairly inexperienced. Later he was to return for two more Dalek serials and the surreal The Web Planet, and is not generally well regarded in fandom. Based on this episode I really can't see why - it's mostly effective and there are some particularly good moments, such as Susan stepping out into the light with Alydon and Temmosus standing up to reveal the TARDIS behind him just as he mentions "magical architecture."
What most stands out for me this week, though, is the script. Nobody behaves stupidly for the sake of the plot, a rarity not just in Doctor Who but in TV drama generally. Equally, nobody jumps straight to the correct solution; for example, we get to see the prisoners working out their plan of escape step by step, and this is done in such a way that it is kept interesting rather than killing time. The way the Thal cape is used is also impressive, with each step completely natural and ending up just where it needs to be.
The acting is also up to scratch (except for a couple of moments with the Thals), and I particularly enjoyed Ian's reaction upon first seeing the Dalek creature. Which brings me nicely on to my next subject:
Playing on our Fears, Part 1: Disability
The Thals are physically-perfect aryan humanoids. The Daleks are so hideously mutated that they need huge amounts of mechanical help just to move about their city. Guess which ones are the bad guys?
I have recently been thinking more about fear of disability and the prejudice it engenders because of my own experiences. A couple of years ago I suffered a severely prolapsed disc. It wasn't just my mobility that was impaired: the constant pain (possibly along with the drugs I was taking to manage it) meant that my thinking was also unclear. I felt as if I couldn't do anything. Being unable to wash or dress myself, let alone work, brought me up short against this most common of fears. A determination to get well helped me to avoid an operation (against the advice of my surgeon, though he acquiesced so long as I agreed to get myself up A&E at the first sign of nerve damage), and I am recovering well; but I will never manage the long commute and long hours of work I was doing before. I am currently figuring out what I can do instead but it's not easy, particularly in the current economic climate.
Anyway, it seems to me that our society really pushes independence and self-reliance to a ridiculous, unrealistic extent. We are all dependent upon others, but those links are hidden and can generally be ignored by most of the population. Visibly disabled people demonstrate to the rest of us how fragile that illusion is, and bring our fears of losing "independence" close to the surface. Unfortunately what sometimes happens is that we decide to "kill the messenger," and turn our fear into anger or even hatred against the person or thing that reminds us of our fragility. We also project our fears, imagining how bitter and twisted a disabled person must be.
It's not a pretty picture but it is full of potential as a source of emotional "hooks" to grab viewers, and all credit to Nation and the team for making such good use of these. The Daleks are the ultimate symbol of disability warping the victim into something terrible. Or at least they are for the next twelve years, until they are supplanted by their own creator.
This episode ends, appropriately enough, not on a cliffhanger but with a moment of disgust for the viewers as we see the Dalek creature's claw reaching out from beneath the cape. 'Nuff said.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 4th January 1964
Viewers: 8.9 million
Chart Position: 45
Appreciation Index: 62
Rating:
7.5/10.
Next Time:
The Ambush.
Saturday, 25 June 2011
Episode 6: The Survivors
Before I start talking about the episode proper, it's worth noting that this was the last episode recorded before An Unearthly Child was broadcast. At this point the cast and crew still had no idea how the show would pan out, and had been busy with publicity as well as rehearsals (including a press launch the previous evening). It was only on the day of shooting - 22nd November - that BBC TV Controller Donald Baverstock finally agreed to a second batch of 13 episodes. Of course this was also a day with a different kind of shooting, and Kennedy's assassination was announced between rehearsals and recording; so it must have been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster for everyone.
I'd also like to mention the title. It was at one point a draft name for the story as a whole, and Terry Nation must have liked it because he used it for a TV series in the 1970s about the survivors of a devastating plague. I remember it, a little, from my childhood; I was ten when it started and I thought it was pretty grim. I lapped it up.
Anyway, what of this show? Again there's a lot to like. The radiation plot continues to build tension, and even though we do get another Billy-fluff ("anti-radiation gloves"), Hartnell manages to turn it around and it feels a bit like an effect of the Doctor's deteriorating health. He benefits from fine characterisation this week, nervously contrite when confessing his mercury link trick but turning angry to cover any feelings of guilt, then managing to keep thinking even when sick. His finest moment is when he's on his knees but still fighting in the only way he knows - with his cunning.
The others don't get so much to do this time, and their performances are slightly disappointing at times. Russell doesn't quite manage to convince with his physical "paralysed leg" acting, although Ian's desperation to recover comes through strongly; and Ford is stuck with more panic and close-up running action, along with an unconvincing technobabble speech about the TARDIS door lock. Finishing the episode with Susan frightened to step outside the ship because of a storm, even though everyone else's lives are depending on her, means that Ford didn't really stand a chance.
But why am I talking about all this? There's an elephant in the room, even if it's not a problem...
Monsters!, Part 2: Introduction of the Daleks
Here we are then, with the first true monsters of the show. Sydney Newman famously said that he wanted "no bug-eyed monsters," and made it clear what he meant - the Daleks were definitely part of that category. Verity Lambert managed to slip them in, though, helped by horrendous production problems and a lack of usable scripts. (To give Newman credit, he later admitted that he was wrong on this - and he did a lot of other, good things for both the show and British TV in general.)
I've got quite a few episodes to talk about the Daleks, so for now I'm just going to concentrate on their introduction. It began in last week's cliffhanger with Barbara menaced by a sink plunger, which instantly grabbed people's attention. Terry Nation hadn't thinking much about the show after submitting his script as he was concentrating on his comedy work, but with friends calling him up straight away he couldn't ignore it. Two days later, a pair of Daleks went out in London to drum up some publicity during the Christmas holidays.
The in-story introduction continues this week as the others are looking for Barbara. What surprises me now is how chilling the pepperpots are in these scenes - they are mostly just standing about wiggling their plungers and shouting, but the actors really sell their terror to the audience. Ian isn't yet the über-hero he becomes in later stories, and the scene where he makes a hesitant escape bid only to be shot in the legs (with a much more successful use of negative images than last episode's forest opening) is startling.
Another thing that I really enjoyed was the first scene of the Dalek control room, for one main reason: the background "thrum". That constant "BEEP-beep, BEEP-beep, BEEP-beep" is hotwired into my brain now; I feel an immediate frisson whenever it first plays in a story. I noticed it immediately in Bad Wolf, having not heard it for many years.
This reaction brings home to me just how strange it is to watch these stories out of order: I'm effectively feeling nostalgia for later Dalek stories while watching the original.
Which, given the parachronological nature of the show, is entirely appropriate.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 28th December 1963
Viewers: 6.4 million
Chart Position: 78
Appreciation Index: 58
Rating:
7/10. A great start, but it tails off towards a limp cliffhanger.
Next Time:
The Escape.
I'd also like to mention the title. It was at one point a draft name for the story as a whole, and Terry Nation must have liked it because he used it for a TV series in the 1970s about the survivors of a devastating plague. I remember it, a little, from my childhood; I was ten when it started and I thought it was pretty grim. I lapped it up.
Anyway, what of this show? Again there's a lot to like. The radiation plot continues to build tension, and even though we do get another Billy-fluff ("anti-radiation gloves"), Hartnell manages to turn it around and it feels a bit like an effect of the Doctor's deteriorating health. He benefits from fine characterisation this week, nervously contrite when confessing his mercury link trick but turning angry to cover any feelings of guilt, then managing to keep thinking even when sick. His finest moment is when he's on his knees but still fighting in the only way he knows - with his cunning.
The others don't get so much to do this time, and their performances are slightly disappointing at times. Russell doesn't quite manage to convince with his physical "paralysed leg" acting, although Ian's desperation to recover comes through strongly; and Ford is stuck with more panic and close-up running action, along with an unconvincing technobabble speech about the TARDIS door lock. Finishing the episode with Susan frightened to step outside the ship because of a storm, even though everyone else's lives are depending on her, means that Ford didn't really stand a chance.
But why am I talking about all this? There's an elephant in the room, even if it's not a problem...
Monsters!, Part 2: Introduction of the Daleks
Here we are then, with the first true monsters of the show. Sydney Newman famously said that he wanted "no bug-eyed monsters," and made it clear what he meant - the Daleks were definitely part of that category. Verity Lambert managed to slip them in, though, helped by horrendous production problems and a lack of usable scripts. (To give Newman credit, he later admitted that he was wrong on this - and he did a lot of other, good things for both the show and British TV in general.)
I've got quite a few episodes to talk about the Daleks, so for now I'm just going to concentrate on their introduction. It began in last week's cliffhanger with Barbara menaced by a sink plunger, which instantly grabbed people's attention. Terry Nation hadn't thinking much about the show after submitting his script as he was concentrating on his comedy work, but with friends calling him up straight away he couldn't ignore it. Two days later, a pair of Daleks went out in London to drum up some publicity during the Christmas holidays.
The in-story introduction continues this week as the others are looking for Barbara. What surprises me now is how chilling the pepperpots are in these scenes - they are mostly just standing about wiggling their plungers and shouting, but the actors really sell their terror to the audience. Ian isn't yet the über-hero he becomes in later stories, and the scene where he makes a hesitant escape bid only to be shot in the legs (with a much more successful use of negative images than last episode's forest opening) is startling.
Another thing that I really enjoyed was the first scene of the Dalek control room, for one main reason: the background "thrum". That constant "BEEP-beep, BEEP-beep, BEEP-beep" is hotwired into my brain now; I feel an immediate frisson whenever it first plays in a story. I noticed it immediately in Bad Wolf, having not heard it for many years.
This reaction brings home to me just how strange it is to watch these stories out of order: I'm effectively feeling nostalgia for later Dalek stories while watching the original.
Which, given the parachronological nature of the show, is entirely appropriate.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 28th December 1963
Viewers: 6.4 million
Chart Position: 78
Appreciation Index: 58
Rating:
7/10. A great start, but it tails off towards a limp cliffhanger.
Next Time:
The Escape.
Wednesday, 22 June 2011
Episode 5: The Dead Planet
On to serial B, then - but not to the next episode shot. There was a technical problem with the recording first time around, and the whole episode had to be remounted three weeks later. You can certainly see the effect on William Hartnell - he's suddenly looking tired and we get the first errors in his delivery, the so-called "Billy fluffs" for which the First Doctor became well known. In fact he starts with a classic, getting Ian's name wrong ("Chesterfield"). My guess is that this will happen less in episode 6, but I can't remember from previous viewings so I'll have to wait and see.
The Dead Planet is my favourite episode since An Unearthly Child, and I've realised that this isn't just because Doctor Who writers are better at beginning stories than ending them (although I suspect that it plays a part, too). This is another one centred on a mystery, as openings naturally tend to be, and I think these resonate with me more than the action-based ones. There's also a lot that's new - we're visiting an alien world for the first time and we get to see other rooms in the ship - so our interest is held throughout.
Speaking of the other rooms, we get introduced to the food machine - and is there anyone who first saw this after hearing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that didn't immediately think of Douglas Adams' nutrimat? Which is, quite possibly, the reverse of cause and effect, since Adams was certainly influenced by Doctor Who in other areas. Personally I can't imagine enjoying eating those bars instead of a proper meal, no matter how tasty they were. Anyway, five weeks from the start of the show we have already seen more of the TARDIS than we saw in five years following the revival. It may all be bland roundels, but it still helps to create a sense of scale.
Also inside the ship, we get a lovely little discussion between Iananbarbara wherein they effectively outline the premise of the series. It's a good, unobtrusive way to bring new viewers up to speed (and there probably are new viewers - this episode has the joint highest viewing figures so far, matched only by The Forest of Fear, though that situation will change very soon). I'd rewatched the movie Serenity the day before, and Ian's speech about believing reminded me so much of Shepherd Book's that it brought a lump to my throat. As a viewer, while I'm willing Iananbarbara to get home, I'm also hoping they don't for a good long time.
Moving outside, we have the forest - and what was with that weird negative effect at the start? I think Christopher Barry (who generally does a good job here) misjudged that. It was probably meant to make things look alien, but all it did for me was draw attention to the fact that I'm watching a TV program. I found the forest sets to be the most stagelike so far, and this wasn't helped by being taken out of the story just before we saw them properly for the first time. Still, almost everything else about this sequence keeps it alive for me, the exception being the joke about crushing petrified flowers. And then we get the alien city which looks fantastic, but the illusion is spoilt slightly by the long shot with the characters standing in the foreground against a rock wall. Overall the outside scenes are a mixture of the effective and the not so convincing, with the balance fortunately towards the former.
Inside the city the sets are impressive, and well shot. The fact that Barbara has to duck increases the alienness and shows that the city wasn't built for regular humans, an impression supported by the strange-shaped doorways. As the final few minutes of the episode pass we get some very interesting shots - with Barbara's hand against the camera, through walls and doors - leading up to the best cliffhanger so far: that plunger. About which, more next time.
It occurs to me that I've not actually said much about the story. The radiation subplot is nicely handled, in a surprisingly understated way - you can tell the travellers are in for a shock soon. The implied duplicity of the Doctor is alarming, though it certainly fits with his character as we have seen it so far. And there are a lot of nice little touches in this episode, such as the Doctor suddenly producing a pair of binoculars with spectacle-like arms (which made me think of the fourth Doctor's pockets), or the classic horror serial way the regulars separate to explore the city. But really, the story's just there to let us explore the world and the cast's reactions to it. Which it does well.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 21st December 1963
Viewers: 6.9 million
Chart Position: 67
Appreciation Index: 59
Rating:
8/10.
Next Time:
The Survivors.
The Dead Planet is my favourite episode since An Unearthly Child, and I've realised that this isn't just because Doctor Who writers are better at beginning stories than ending them (although I suspect that it plays a part, too). This is another one centred on a mystery, as openings naturally tend to be, and I think these resonate with me more than the action-based ones. There's also a lot that's new - we're visiting an alien world for the first time and we get to see other rooms in the ship - so our interest is held throughout.
Speaking of the other rooms, we get introduced to the food machine - and is there anyone who first saw this after hearing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy that didn't immediately think of Douglas Adams' nutrimat? Which is, quite possibly, the reverse of cause and effect, since Adams was certainly influenced by Doctor Who in other areas. Personally I can't imagine enjoying eating those bars instead of a proper meal, no matter how tasty they were. Anyway, five weeks from the start of the show we have already seen more of the TARDIS than we saw in five years following the revival. It may all be bland roundels, but it still helps to create a sense of scale.
Also inside the ship, we get a lovely little discussion between Iananbarbara wherein they effectively outline the premise of the series. It's a good, unobtrusive way to bring new viewers up to speed (and there probably are new viewers - this episode has the joint highest viewing figures so far, matched only by The Forest of Fear, though that situation will change very soon). I'd rewatched the movie Serenity the day before, and Ian's speech about believing reminded me so much of Shepherd Book's that it brought a lump to my throat. As a viewer, while I'm willing Iananbarbara to get home, I'm also hoping they don't for a good long time.
Moving outside, we have the forest - and what was with that weird negative effect at the start? I think Christopher Barry (who generally does a good job here) misjudged that. It was probably meant to make things look alien, but all it did for me was draw attention to the fact that I'm watching a TV program. I found the forest sets to be the most stagelike so far, and this wasn't helped by being taken out of the story just before we saw them properly for the first time. Still, almost everything else about this sequence keeps it alive for me, the exception being the joke about crushing petrified flowers. And then we get the alien city which looks fantastic, but the illusion is spoilt slightly by the long shot with the characters standing in the foreground against a rock wall. Overall the outside scenes are a mixture of the effective and the not so convincing, with the balance fortunately towards the former.
Inside the city the sets are impressive, and well shot. The fact that Barbara has to duck increases the alienness and shows that the city wasn't built for regular humans, an impression supported by the strange-shaped doorways. As the final few minutes of the episode pass we get some very interesting shots - with Barbara's hand against the camera, through walls and doors - leading up to the best cliffhanger so far: that plunger. About which, more next time.
It occurs to me that I've not actually said much about the story. The radiation subplot is nicely handled, in a surprisingly understated way - you can tell the travellers are in for a shock soon. The implied duplicity of the Doctor is alarming, though it certainly fits with his character as we have seen it so far. And there are a lot of nice little touches in this episode, such as the Doctor suddenly producing a pair of binoculars with spectacle-like arms (which made me think of the fourth Doctor's pockets), or the classic horror serial way the regulars separate to explore the city. But really, the story's just there to let us explore the world and the cast's reactions to it. Which it does well.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 21st December 1963
Viewers: 6.9 million
Chart Position: 67
Appreciation Index: 59
Rating:
8/10.
Next Time:
The Survivors.
Monday, 20 June 2011
Serial A: The Tribe of Gum? 100,000 BC? How Many Episodes?
So that was the first story. Or was it? Perhaps the first episode was a story on it's own, followed by a three-parter? There's nothing on screen to tell us, so who decides?
There's been a lot of debate over the years about names for the stories up to The Gunfighters, and not much about story boundaries. I think that's mostly due to production codes; it seems pretty straightforward, after all. Every serial was given a code by the production team - in this case, simply "A". So surely that must indicate the creators' intended story boundaries? Mostly that's true, and they certainly provide a good estimate, but to see why they are not completely reliable we must fast-forward to Colin Baker's time, and 1986's The Trial of a Time Lord. There's plenty of documented evidence that this was intended to be a single season-long story and the episodes are even numbered 1 to 14, but for many people it doesn't feel like that. Instead they break it down into four stories: The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, Terror of the Vervoids, and The Ultimate Foe. Debates still occasionally spring up between these two positions - one story or four? - but production codes provide another answer: three. Terror of the Vervoids and The Ultimate Foe share the same code. Now, I've never seen anyone seriously claim that the season should be divided like this, so I treat a production code like the pirate code: as more of a guideline.
Therefore we need to look at other things as well. The first four episodes share the same director, but then so do Delta and the Bannermen and Dragonfire. They have the same author, too - Anthony Coburn. Or do they? On-screen, yes; but C.E. "Bunny" Webber is credited as co-author for the first episode on BBC documents. This is because he was originally going to provide the opening story, with The Tribe of Gum coming second, and when things changed several aspects of the original opening episode were carried over.
So, the prehistory part was originally conceived separately from the introductory episode, and indeed there's less time spent in episode one after time-travelling than there is spent on Skaro in episode four. That's not conclusive, but it does help explain the different tone. To me, it just feels like two stories and that's all that matters. The conventional answer is perfectly valid too; make up your own mind.
I mentioned the naming controversies above, but I'm going to leave that subject until the end of the next serial. Suffice to say that this story has been most commonly referred to as An Unearthly Child (at least since 1973) with 100,000 BC the only rival candidate, used mostly by Doctor Who Magazine. Other names included The Tribe of Gum, Coburn's original title; The Paleolithic Age; and The Stone Age. Phew!
What about the story/stories as a whole, then? I find I've nothing much to say that I haven't already covered. It was written, directed and performed well for the most part, with good-enough sets, costumes and effects. While episode 1 is the standout the rest provide better entertainment than they are sometimes given credit for - including by me. All in all, the show is off to a good start.
Rating:
Mine: 8/10 for all four episodes, 5.5/10 for just the final three.
DWM Mighty 200: 74.64%, 61st.
2010 Gallifrey Base Non-Dynamic Rankings: 7.44, 74th out of 211.
Since this is a short entry, I'll take a bit of time to explain my ratings. First of all, they are based purely on how much I enjoyed each episode or story. I can admire something and still not enjoy it much, in which case I would give it a poor rating; and conversely, something fairly naff can entertain me and win higher marks than it "deserves". I don't try to filter out the effects of nostalgia, chilhood memories, or other bias. In short, I accept that my ratings will be subjective and that there's not much I can do about it.
For stories I have a fairly solid marking scheme. Prompted by the DWM Mighty 200, I have ranked all the stories I've seen and rated them after doing so. This means new ones can be slotted in fairly efficiently. My median score is currently 6.5, but I have seen and rated far more of the most popular stories than the least (48 of the top 50, but only 27 of the bottom 50 - and only 5 of the bottom 20). If my tastes are similar to DWM readers', adding the rest should bring the median down to a low 6 - which by my calculation actually matches the magazine poll.
I've never rated individual episodes before, so I am going much more by gut feeling here. They should be treated with more caution.
Next Time:
The Dead Planet.
There's been a lot of debate over the years about names for the stories up to The Gunfighters, and not much about story boundaries. I think that's mostly due to production codes; it seems pretty straightforward, after all. Every serial was given a code by the production team - in this case, simply "A". So surely that must indicate the creators' intended story boundaries? Mostly that's true, and they certainly provide a good estimate, but to see why they are not completely reliable we must fast-forward to Colin Baker's time, and 1986's The Trial of a Time Lord. There's plenty of documented evidence that this was intended to be a single season-long story and the episodes are even numbered 1 to 14, but for many people it doesn't feel like that. Instead they break it down into four stories: The Mysterious Planet, Mindwarp, Terror of the Vervoids, and The Ultimate Foe. Debates still occasionally spring up between these two positions - one story or four? - but production codes provide another answer: three. Terror of the Vervoids and The Ultimate Foe share the same code. Now, I've never seen anyone seriously claim that the season should be divided like this, so I treat a production code like the pirate code: as more of a guideline.
Therefore we need to look at other things as well. The first four episodes share the same director, but then so do Delta and the Bannermen and Dragonfire. They have the same author, too - Anthony Coburn. Or do they? On-screen, yes; but C.E. "Bunny" Webber is credited as co-author for the first episode on BBC documents. This is because he was originally going to provide the opening story, with The Tribe of Gum coming second, and when things changed several aspects of the original opening episode were carried over.
So, the prehistory part was originally conceived separately from the introductory episode, and indeed there's less time spent in episode one after time-travelling than there is spent on Skaro in episode four. That's not conclusive, but it does help explain the different tone. To me, it just feels like two stories and that's all that matters. The conventional answer is perfectly valid too; make up your own mind.
I mentioned the naming controversies above, but I'm going to leave that subject until the end of the next serial. Suffice to say that this story has been most commonly referred to as An Unearthly Child (at least since 1973) with 100,000 BC the only rival candidate, used mostly by Doctor Who Magazine. Other names included The Tribe of Gum, Coburn's original title; The Paleolithic Age; and The Stone Age. Phew!
What about the story/stories as a whole, then? I find I've nothing much to say that I haven't already covered. It was written, directed and performed well for the most part, with good-enough sets, costumes and effects. While episode 1 is the standout the rest provide better entertainment than they are sometimes given credit for - including by me. All in all, the show is off to a good start.
Rating:
Mine: 8/10 for all four episodes, 5.5/10 for just the final three.
DWM Mighty 200: 74.64%, 61st.
2010 Gallifrey Base Non-Dynamic Rankings: 7.44, 74th out of 211.
Since this is a short entry, I'll take a bit of time to explain my ratings. First of all, they are based purely on how much I enjoyed each episode or story. I can admire something and still not enjoy it much, in which case I would give it a poor rating; and conversely, something fairly naff can entertain me and win higher marks than it "deserves". I don't try to filter out the effects of nostalgia, chilhood memories, or other bias. In short, I accept that my ratings will be subjective and that there's not much I can do about it.
For stories I have a fairly solid marking scheme. Prompted by the DWM Mighty 200, I have ranked all the stories I've seen and rated them after doing so. This means new ones can be slotted in fairly efficiently. My median score is currently 6.5, but I have seen and rated far more of the most popular stories than the least (48 of the top 50, but only 27 of the bottom 50 - and only 5 of the bottom 20). If my tastes are similar to DWM readers', adding the rest should bring the median down to a low 6 - which by my calculation actually matches the magazine poll.
I've never rated individual episodes before, so I am going much more by gut feeling here. They should be treated with more caution.
Next Time:
The Dead Planet.
Saturday, 18 June 2011
Episode 4: The Firemaker
The fact that this was the final episode of the story was not shown on screen or in the Radio Times, so most viewers in 1963 wouldn't have known it in advance - unless some continuity announcement revealed this. I'd be grateful if someone could clear this up for me, as I find it hard to imagine these days what it would have been like to know so little.
I've not got a lot to say about the story itself. It's generally a satisfying conclusion, though the trick with the flaming skulls requires some suspension of disbelief. The violence level continues to be high, Za crushing Kal's head with a rock and the Doctor instigating a stoning. The final fight between the rival cavemen was less extreme, though, and worked fairly well as the centrepiece of the action. The accompanying music was not the best, and I kept imagining Kirk's fight theme from the original Star Trek in my head as I was watching - when the fight was shown on Junior Points of View they apparently had someone commentating as if it were a wrestling match, so I wasn't the only one thinking along these lines!
The characterisation and interpersonal relations continue to be a strength; this time the Doctor gets to contribute effectively, and the rivalry with Ian settles down into something more manageable. I'm not sure about Susan since you could read her discovery of the flaming skull effect in two ways: as a scatty child suddenly getting unrealistically interested in something irrelevant in the midst of danger, or a bright mind looking for anything that could help. This episode was Barbara's turn to take a back seat, which is fair enough as she's been at the centre for most of the show so far. As for the tribe, Za took the focus this time and I liked his decisions - he surprised me in betraying the travellers, but when it was revealed that he didn't remember much of what happened while he was ill it felt right.
Waris Hussein's direction was quite different in this episode, more experimental; sometimes it worked well and sometimes it took me out of the story. I liked the closeups in the caves and the face-to-camera scenes with the tribe gathered around the fire (which put me in mind of the Bohemian Rhapsody video), but the face shots of the regulars running for the ship didn't look real enough. I'm generally glad when directors don't play it safe, but this went perhaps a little too far.
So, I've finally got to an entry that hasn't grown bloated with the things I've wanted to say, and reading it back it sounds more like a bullet-point list. Still, I'll let it stand. There's only one more thing I want to discuss: the ending.
Let's start with effects. This is the first time we get to see the TARDIS dematerialise, and that dread phrase springs to mind, "good considering when it was done." It would have worked better without the spear-throwing, to be honest, but if I can just discard my memories of later dematerialisations, it's not bad - and it does show that the ship is actually moving.
Then, of course, we get the interplay between the travellers. There's not been a messed-up line in the show so far, and the almost-live nature of the recording has not been apparent at all. There's a bit of conflict thrown in to show that not everything's hunky-dory after the teamwork shown while escaping their prehistoric prison, which feels natural; and we get an explanation of why the Doctor can't take Iananbarbara straight home - which implies that he can do so given some breathing space. Wearing my future hat I know that he's either wrong or lying. At this stage I'm inclined to believe he's deluding himself, thinking he can do more with the ship than he actually can. Or maybe he could do it if it weren't for something else going wrong in the TARDIS.
Finally finally, we get the cliffhanger introduction to the next story. This is just like the 1001 Nights, making sure that people want to come back even though this adventure's over, and is an interesting approach. The new series actually does something a little bit similar with the "Next Time" trailers, but I like the continuing saga feel of the original - and the way the radiation gauge ties in with the smashed geiger counter is neat, too. The stories aren't neatly packaged like they became later. But more on that in the next entry...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 14th December 1963
Viewers: 6.4 million
Chart Position: 70
Appreciation Index: 55
Rating:
6/10.
Next Time:
Confusion abounds as I think about the first story as a whole. Or perhaps the first two stories?
I've not got a lot to say about the story itself. It's generally a satisfying conclusion, though the trick with the flaming skulls requires some suspension of disbelief. The violence level continues to be high, Za crushing Kal's head with a rock and the Doctor instigating a stoning. The final fight between the rival cavemen was less extreme, though, and worked fairly well as the centrepiece of the action. The accompanying music was not the best, and I kept imagining Kirk's fight theme from the original Star Trek in my head as I was watching - when the fight was shown on Junior Points of View they apparently had someone commentating as if it were a wrestling match, so I wasn't the only one thinking along these lines!
The characterisation and interpersonal relations continue to be a strength; this time the Doctor gets to contribute effectively, and the rivalry with Ian settles down into something more manageable. I'm not sure about Susan since you could read her discovery of the flaming skull effect in two ways: as a scatty child suddenly getting unrealistically interested in something irrelevant in the midst of danger, or a bright mind looking for anything that could help. This episode was Barbara's turn to take a back seat, which is fair enough as she's been at the centre for most of the show so far. As for the tribe, Za took the focus this time and I liked his decisions - he surprised me in betraying the travellers, but when it was revealed that he didn't remember much of what happened while he was ill it felt right.
Waris Hussein's direction was quite different in this episode, more experimental; sometimes it worked well and sometimes it took me out of the story. I liked the closeups in the caves and the face-to-camera scenes with the tribe gathered around the fire (which put me in mind of the Bohemian Rhapsody video), but the face shots of the regulars running for the ship didn't look real enough. I'm generally glad when directors don't play it safe, but this went perhaps a little too far.
So, I've finally got to an entry that hasn't grown bloated with the things I've wanted to say, and reading it back it sounds more like a bullet-point list. Still, I'll let it stand. There's only one more thing I want to discuss: the ending.
Let's start with effects. This is the first time we get to see the TARDIS dematerialise, and that dread phrase springs to mind, "good considering when it was done." It would have worked better without the spear-throwing, to be honest, but if I can just discard my memories of later dematerialisations, it's not bad - and it does show that the ship is actually moving.
Then, of course, we get the interplay between the travellers. There's not been a messed-up line in the show so far, and the almost-live nature of the recording has not been apparent at all. There's a bit of conflict thrown in to show that not everything's hunky-dory after the teamwork shown while escaping their prehistoric prison, which feels natural; and we get an explanation of why the Doctor can't take Iananbarbara straight home - which implies that he can do so given some breathing space. Wearing my future hat I know that he's either wrong or lying. At this stage I'm inclined to believe he's deluding himself, thinking he can do more with the ship than he actually can. Or maybe he could do it if it weren't for something else going wrong in the TARDIS.
Finally finally, we get the cliffhanger introduction to the next story. This is just like the 1001 Nights, making sure that people want to come back even though this adventure's over, and is an interesting approach. The new series actually does something a little bit similar with the "Next Time" trailers, but I like the continuing saga feel of the original - and the way the radiation gauge ties in with the smashed geiger counter is neat, too. The stories aren't neatly packaged like they became later. But more on that in the next entry...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 14th December 1963
Viewers: 6.4 million
Chart Position: 70
Appreciation Index: 55
Rating:
6/10.
Next Time:
Confusion abounds as I think about the first story as a whole. Or perhaps the first two stories?
Wednesday, 15 June 2011
Episode 3: The Forest of Fear
OK, so I got a bit silly toward the end of my last entry. This is likely to happen now and again, particularly when reviewing things that don't impress me. I'll even apologise to both cavemen and regulars for doubting their intelligence, since we see here that the former have mastered the art of tying knots that are impossible to untie.
But enough with the snide comments already! On with episode 3, which is a cracking good adventure story. I was gripped, even though I've seen it several times before, and the time flew by. The opening momentarily confused me - I'd forgotten that recaps were often filmed at the beginning of the next episode, rather than reusing the cliffhanger. I imagine this was due to the limited number of edits allowed per episode, in turn because of the expense of video tape - something I'll probably talk about in more detail in a later entry. Anyhow, an interesting thing with this episode is that it appears at first glance to be a classic escape-recapture scenario, with the regulars starting off imprisoned, getting out, running around for a bit, and then being caught again - something to fill time rather than significantly advance the plot. I say "classic", but of course there is no Who formula yet; everything is new. And actually that first glance is misleading. If you look at the intangibles - the politics of the tribe, relationships between characters - there have been huge changes.
And that's what makes this action story entertaining - the characters and their interaction. For the cave people the primary focus is definitely on Hur, who proves herself to be the smartest of her tribe and pretty much tells Za what to do (as she did with her father last episode), while back at home Kal ruthlessly takes advantage of the events instigated by the Old Mother. The Doctor is frightened and out of his depth, to the extent that he considers smashing an injured man's skull to ease their escape. Ian is frightened too - there's a nice moment with him and Barbara where William Russell does an excellent job portraying a man who is scared and won't admit it - but he spots the Doctor's weakness and uses it to come off the back foot at last, trying to take charge. As usual, though, it's Barbara who makes the key decision.
Despite this, the sharp-eyed among you will notice that in all this talk of characterisation I've hardly mentioned Barbara's, and Susan's not at all. This is because I've saved that pleasure for the Thorny Topic of the Week, which this time around is
Sexism, Part 1: A Place for Everyone
I suppose it might seem odd to talk about sexism in an episode where the action is driven largely by the Old Mother, Hur and Barbara, with Kal the only male to significantly move events along. Even Susan remembers the way back to the ship better than the others, so this is obviously not the sort of sexism that says women can't do anything well; but let's take a look at the gender roles.
The tribe of Gum is certainly patriarchal, with the men making all the decisions (including who their daughters marry). Women's roles are not even mentioned - if this is a hunter-gatherer society the gatherers are pretty much invisible. The only way Hur can use her undoubted intelligence is to influence the men around her. The travellers are slightly different, but it is still Ian and the Doctor who clash over who is to lead, and it is they who take on the protective roles (one at the front, one at the back, the "girls" in between). Similarly, it is the men who try to handle the dangers in a calm way, leaving the screaming to Barbara and Susan. Barbara's hysterics are less OTT than Susan's last week - and even justifiable, given the situation she and Ian have been dropped into - but in context, they are reinforcing gender stereotypes; as is her decision to help Za (quickly supported by Susan), which emphasises the female caring role. The only one not fitting this pattern is the Old Mother, who is instead a stereotypical elder and could as easily have been an Old Father.
So, the impression we are given is that men are the rulers, decision-makers and fighters, ideally strong and fearless; women are supportive, nurturing and weak. This comes over so strongly in this episode that it made me wince quite a bit.
Hm, I was going to add some political theorising here as well as some comments about growing up in the 60s and 70s, but it's getting late and this entry is already quite long, so I'll stop there and just let the observation stand. I'm sure there will be other opportunities later. Which leaves me one more thing to discuss...
Monsters!, Part 1
This is the episode where we first encounter a non-human "monster". It's an animal rather than an alien, but the threat it represents is no less real for all that. The need for special effects is avoided by keeping it off-screen, but this is done in an effective way, and we certainly get to see the consequences of the encounter. Za's wounds are gruesome, saved from being truly sickening only by being filmed in black and white; and with some of the other violent moments in the story I wonder about attitudes to child-friendly programming at the time. Eric Saward would fit right in.
One more episode to go in this story, and I'm still writing twice as much as I expected. We'll just have to see if this continues...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 7th December 1963
Viewers: 6.9 million
Chart Position: 61
Appreciation Index: 56
Rating:
7/10. It loses a mark or two for the level of sexism displayed, but not more because the "product of its time" defence does (partially) work for me.
Next Time:
The Firemaker.
But enough with the snide comments already! On with episode 3, which is a cracking good adventure story. I was gripped, even though I've seen it several times before, and the time flew by. The opening momentarily confused me - I'd forgotten that recaps were often filmed at the beginning of the next episode, rather than reusing the cliffhanger. I imagine this was due to the limited number of edits allowed per episode, in turn because of the expense of video tape - something I'll probably talk about in more detail in a later entry. Anyhow, an interesting thing with this episode is that it appears at first glance to be a classic escape-recapture scenario, with the regulars starting off imprisoned, getting out, running around for a bit, and then being caught again - something to fill time rather than significantly advance the plot. I say "classic", but of course there is no Who formula yet; everything is new. And actually that first glance is misleading. If you look at the intangibles - the politics of the tribe, relationships between characters - there have been huge changes.
And that's what makes this action story entertaining - the characters and their interaction. For the cave people the primary focus is definitely on Hur, who proves herself to be the smartest of her tribe and pretty much tells Za what to do (as she did with her father last episode), while back at home Kal ruthlessly takes advantage of the events instigated by the Old Mother. The Doctor is frightened and out of his depth, to the extent that he considers smashing an injured man's skull to ease their escape. Ian is frightened too - there's a nice moment with him and Barbara where William Russell does an excellent job portraying a man who is scared and won't admit it - but he spots the Doctor's weakness and uses it to come off the back foot at last, trying to take charge. As usual, though, it's Barbara who makes the key decision.
Despite this, the sharp-eyed among you will notice that in all this talk of characterisation I've hardly mentioned Barbara's, and Susan's not at all. This is because I've saved that pleasure for the Thorny Topic of the Week, which this time around is
Sexism, Part 1: A Place for Everyone
I suppose it might seem odd to talk about sexism in an episode where the action is driven largely by the Old Mother, Hur and Barbara, with Kal the only male to significantly move events along. Even Susan remembers the way back to the ship better than the others, so this is obviously not the sort of sexism that says women can't do anything well; but let's take a look at the gender roles.
The tribe of Gum is certainly patriarchal, with the men making all the decisions (including who their daughters marry). Women's roles are not even mentioned - if this is a hunter-gatherer society the gatherers are pretty much invisible. The only way Hur can use her undoubted intelligence is to influence the men around her. The travellers are slightly different, but it is still Ian and the Doctor who clash over who is to lead, and it is they who take on the protective roles (one at the front, one at the back, the "girls" in between). Similarly, it is the men who try to handle the dangers in a calm way, leaving the screaming to Barbara and Susan. Barbara's hysterics are less OTT than Susan's last week - and even justifiable, given the situation she and Ian have been dropped into - but in context, they are reinforcing gender stereotypes; as is her decision to help Za (quickly supported by Susan), which emphasises the female caring role. The only one not fitting this pattern is the Old Mother, who is instead a stereotypical elder and could as easily have been an Old Father.
So, the impression we are given is that men are the rulers, decision-makers and fighters, ideally strong and fearless; women are supportive, nurturing and weak. This comes over so strongly in this episode that it made me wince quite a bit.
Hm, I was going to add some political theorising here as well as some comments about growing up in the 60s and 70s, but it's getting late and this entry is already quite long, so I'll stop there and just let the observation stand. I'm sure there will be other opportunities later. Which leaves me one more thing to discuss...
Monsters!, Part 1
This is the episode where we first encounter a non-human "monster". It's an animal rather than an alien, but the threat it represents is no less real for all that. The need for special effects is avoided by keeping it off-screen, but this is done in an effective way, and we certainly get to see the consequences of the encounter. Za's wounds are gruesome, saved from being truly sickening only by being filmed in black and white; and with some of the other violent moments in the story I wonder about attitudes to child-friendly programming at the time. Eric Saward would fit right in.
One more episode to go in this story, and I'm still writing twice as much as I expected. We'll just have to see if this continues...
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 7th December 1963
Viewers: 6.9 million
Chart Position: 61
Appreciation Index: 56
Rating:
7/10. It loses a mark or two for the level of sexism displayed, but not more because the "product of its time" defence does (partially) work for me.
Next Time:
The Firemaker.
Monday, 13 June 2011
Episode 2: The Cave of Skulls
Episode 2 opens with a brief recap (basically the final few seconds from episode 1), and we get to see who is watching the TARDIS - accompanied by a slightly cheesy musical sting. A nice fade to another watching face, and we are introduced to the tribe of Gum. This section has two aims, and accomplishes both of them well. For one it establishes the setting, the core conflict, and the guest cast. In just a few minutes we know enough of what's going on and who's who that we won't be wasting time catching up when the regular cast arrive - and we can see that this is going to be a story about happenings (rather than mysteries, like last time). If we were watching modern Who, this would form the teaser section before the titles; but it would be a poor teaser because of it's second aim, which is to slow the pace down after the climax of episode 1. In keeping with the times, modern Who is faster, more frenetic than it was at the beginning. As with the use of incidental music this is not in itself good or bad, but does affect how we see it nowadays.
The tribe's introduction is noteworthy for the number of people present. Apart from the regulars An Unearthly Child had one policeman and about half a dozen schoolchildren, none of them speaking parts. Here we've got three speaking (with another two to come later in the episode) and a whole crowd of extra tribesfolk, including real children. This story has a wider focus.
Still, we have to get back to the regulars and resolve the tension of episode 1's climax sometime, so (with a nicely symmetrical repeat shot of Kal's awed face) we return to the TARDIS interior and its familiar hum. Iananbarbara are just waking up, the Doctor and Susan are checking the instruments. We get some more effective exposition, and learn that the ship is not working as it should. The Doctor delights in baiting Ian, who (it must be said) is easily baited, but Barbara is settling in already. It ends with a lovely run: the Doctor's "cries of strange birds" speech, the doors opening on the landscape of the past, Ian politely refusing Susan's help (I dunno - men, what are we like?), and then the doors closing again behind them. It's another Oz moment for Iananbarbara, but not, this time, for the audience - we are now ahead of them.
I don't want to turn these reviews into a shot-by-shot guide, but oddly enough I watch the episodes chronologically and it's often the easiest way to organise things. Especially when I'm talking as much about the direction as I am here. Still, let me skip ahead to the cave scenes with the Doctor as bringer of fire, just for a bit of contrast.
And what a contrast it is! What's happened to the pacing, the dialogue? They take twice as long as they did at the start to say less, repeating the same arguments over and over. They try to ratchet up the tension too quickly, so that it's draining away by the end of the scene. Hartnell almost rescues it - he certainly grabs our attention as soon as he's up and about - but he's not given much of an opening. I was just about coming round again when the rescue party arrived, led by an impressively fierce Susan; but it's over in a matter of seconds, an abortive attempt that fails to rescue either the Doctor or the story. I would happily have watched more of the fight and had less RP grunting about fire and leaders. Finally the regulars are tied up in a cave, but - aha! - the stupid cavemen have tied their wrists in front of them, so they can just untie each other! Unfortunately the travellers are even more stupid than the cavemen, and don't realise this. Instead we get a closeup of a couple of skulls, and it's time for the (much less effective than last episode) cliffhanger.
So, where did it all go wrong? At 10 minutes and 34 seconds into the episode, to be precise.
Carole Ann Ford and the Decline of Susan, Part 2
It's time for the characterisation of Susan to drop several more notches. Her hysteria when she finds her grandfather missing is completely over the top. Unfortunately, Carole Ann Ford can't make OTT hysteria believable - very few actors can, to be honest. Or perhaps it's that she won't; this isn't what she signed up for, after all. Can you imagine Honor Blackman behaving like that in The Avengers? Ford has no problem with realistic worry and fear, as she has already shown us in episode 1, and she can even do desperate anger as we see when she attacks Kal. We will also get a few chances to see her show off other emotions in later episodes before she gets abandoned in Earth's future; but it's mostly screaming abdabs from here on in.
Actually, Ford's performance in this scene is probably to do with her womb. As every ancient Greek philosopher knows, hysteria is caused by the womb wandering around the abdomen in pursuit of fragrant smells. But Ford was a mother and her womb would have had to settle down and be a bit more responsible, I guess, so obviously hysteria was now a no-go.
There. I've fulfilled this blog's educational remit (which is a topic for another entry), and can sign off with a clear conscience.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 30th November 1963
Viewers: 5.9 million
Chart Position: 85
Appreciation Index: 59
Rating:
4.5/10. Much higher for the first ten minutes, lower for the rest; a bonus half-mark for introducing a Chekhov's gun so far ahead of The Dead Planet.
Next Time:
The Forest of Feeeaarrrr!! </vincent price>
The tribe's introduction is noteworthy for the number of people present. Apart from the regulars An Unearthly Child had one policeman and about half a dozen schoolchildren, none of them speaking parts. Here we've got three speaking (with another two to come later in the episode) and a whole crowd of extra tribesfolk, including real children. This story has a wider focus.
Still, we have to get back to the regulars and resolve the tension of episode 1's climax sometime, so (with a nicely symmetrical repeat shot of Kal's awed face) we return to the TARDIS interior and its familiar hum. Iananbarbara are just waking up, the Doctor and Susan are checking the instruments. We get some more effective exposition, and learn that the ship is not working as it should. The Doctor delights in baiting Ian, who (it must be said) is easily baited, but Barbara is settling in already. It ends with a lovely run: the Doctor's "cries of strange birds" speech, the doors opening on the landscape of the past, Ian politely refusing Susan's help (I dunno - men, what are we like?), and then the doors closing again behind them. It's another Oz moment for Iananbarbara, but not, this time, for the audience - we are now ahead of them.
I don't want to turn these reviews into a shot-by-shot guide, but oddly enough I watch the episodes chronologically and it's often the easiest way to organise things. Especially when I'm talking as much about the direction as I am here. Still, let me skip ahead to the cave scenes with the Doctor as bringer of fire, just for a bit of contrast.
And what a contrast it is! What's happened to the pacing, the dialogue? They take twice as long as they did at the start to say less, repeating the same arguments over and over. They try to ratchet up the tension too quickly, so that it's draining away by the end of the scene. Hartnell almost rescues it - he certainly grabs our attention as soon as he's up and about - but he's not given much of an opening. I was just about coming round again when the rescue party arrived, led by an impressively fierce Susan; but it's over in a matter of seconds, an abortive attempt that fails to rescue either the Doctor or the story. I would happily have watched more of the fight and had less RP grunting about fire and leaders. Finally the regulars are tied up in a cave, but - aha! - the stupid cavemen have tied their wrists in front of them, so they can just untie each other! Unfortunately the travellers are even more stupid than the cavemen, and don't realise this. Instead we get a closeup of a couple of skulls, and it's time for the (much less effective than last episode) cliffhanger.
So, where did it all go wrong? At 10 minutes and 34 seconds into the episode, to be precise.
Carole Ann Ford and the Decline of Susan, Part 2
It's time for the characterisation of Susan to drop several more notches. Her hysteria when she finds her grandfather missing is completely over the top. Unfortunately, Carole Ann Ford can't make OTT hysteria believable - very few actors can, to be honest. Or perhaps it's that she won't; this isn't what she signed up for, after all. Can you imagine Honor Blackman behaving like that in The Avengers? Ford has no problem with realistic worry and fear, as she has already shown us in episode 1, and she can even do desperate anger as we see when she attacks Kal. We will also get a few chances to see her show off other emotions in later episodes before she gets abandoned in Earth's future; but it's mostly screaming abdabs from here on in.
Actually, Ford's performance in this scene is probably to do with her womb. As every ancient Greek philosopher knows, hysteria is caused by the womb wandering around the abdomen in pursuit of fragrant smells. But Ford was a mother and her womb would have had to settle down and be a bit more responsible, I guess, so obviously hysteria was now a no-go.
There. I've fulfilled this blog's educational remit (which is a topic for another entry), and can sign off with a clear conscience.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 30th November 1963
Viewers: 5.9 million
Chart Position: 85
Appreciation Index: 59
Rating:
4.5/10. Much higher for the first ten minutes, lower for the rest; a bonus half-mark for introducing a Chekhov's gun so far ahead of The Dead Planet.
Next Time:
The Forest of Feeeaarrrr!! </vincent price>
Friday, 10 June 2011
Episode 1 prime: An Unearthly Child Pilot
And here, only one episode in, I'll take a step sideways/backwards/whatever to the unbroadcast pilot version. It's oddly appropriate, since some viewers would have seen the first episode twice before getting to the second. TV was up in the air on the 23rd November 1963, thanks to Kennedy's assassination the day before and a wide-ranging power cut. These combined to give the original broadcast unfairly poor ratings, and the BBC decided to air the first episode again next week, just before The Cave of Skulls, this time reaching a healthier six million viewers.
People used to ask "where were you when Kennedy was shot?" - but not my contemporaries, who just missed it. I was alive, inside my mother's womb, a bunch of cells busily dividing, growing and organising. I was to be born under the sign of The Sensorites, the day before A Race Against Death, but that was still almost eight months away. Like Doctor Who itself, I was arriving on a cusp between generations. The heyday of Baby Boomer births was past and Generation X - the most aborted generation in history - was still to come. Things looked dodgy for the developing me for a different reason, though: my mother, then 42, had had a series of miscarriages, and my father (born in 1915) was closer in age to William Hartnell than William Russell. They had given up on having children, and the discovery of my presence invoked both hope and fear. They'd been given another chance, but would it work out this time?
I've heard that when Sydney Newman saw the pilot and told them to "do it again," Hartnell was relieved to have another chance. I don't know about Waris Hussein. My guess is that he would have been pleased - how often did a TV director get to use the 20-20 hindsight that comes from completing an episode to improve on that same episode before broadcast? But given the negative initial reaction, he would likely have been nervous as well, though not too severely - after all, BBC TV Controller Donald Baverstock liked the pilot well enough to commit to a minimum run of 13 episodes.
I believe this episode is unique in existing in two, separately-performed versions. Other stories do have multiple versions - consider the Special Editions on The Curse of Fenric and Battlefield DVDs, for example - but they basically come down to editing and post-production changes. Only here do we get to see what is effectively a rough draft of the performances as well.
The pilot episode follows substantially the same plot as the broadcast version, but certainly feels rougher. It's still well-directed, but not outstandingly so, and the camera moves and actors' performances aren't quite as solid. With most things I'm glad they made the changes they did. There's one I'm really sorry to see go, and two I'm less sure of:
The Shot through the TARDIS Doors
This was great! Showing the interior of the TARDIS through the outside doors as Barbara pushes her way in really worked for me. It's probably less than a second long so it doesn't lessen the impact of the change from the mundane to the fantastic, and it really reinforces the illusion that the TARDIS interior is connected to the exterior. I can't imagine why they dropped it.
The Ambiguous Doctor, part 1
The Doctor is even more angry and antagonistic in the pilot. This makes us side with the teachers more forcefully, and it would have been interesting to see his emotional journey from this point, but on balance I think I prefer the more ambivalent version from the episode as broadcast.
Carole Ann Ford and the Decline of Susan, Part 1
Carole Ann Ford was already a mother when she took the job, and at first resisted accepting another child role. To win her over, the part of Susan was sold as unearthly, perhaps telepathic, and with a touch of The Avengers' Cathy Gale; in other words a unique, interesting, independent part. You can see that she took this on board in her performance in the pilot. Susan here is truly weird. I love the bit with the Rorschach blot, which really makes you think "what's up with this girl?" It's notable that in this version she intends to leave with the Doctor if he'll let the teachers go, and it's Earth's history that the Doctor is protecting when he kidnaps them.
The broadcast Susan is more accessible, but is already a long way from the part sold to Ford. As an adult I too would be more interested in the truly "unearthly child" of the pilot, and even if she was humanised and made less capable later, she would have had further to fall. On the other hand, it may have been important to the show's success that there be a child-identification character; and wearing my future knowledge hat, we might also have missed out on the wonderful Vicki.
Incidentally, if anyone wants to find out more about the development of the show prior to broadcast, there's an excellent article in issue 3 of the (free!) Canadian fanzine Whotopia: "An Unearthly Inception", by Laurence Marcus.
Broadcast:
The pilot was eventually broadcast on 26th August 1991, as a "museum piece".
Rating:
8/10. Very good, but it can't equal the real thing.
Next Time:
Really, truly The Cave of Skulls.
People used to ask "where were you when Kennedy was shot?" - but not my contemporaries, who just missed it. I was alive, inside my mother's womb, a bunch of cells busily dividing, growing and organising. I was to be born under the sign of The Sensorites, the day before A Race Against Death, but that was still almost eight months away. Like Doctor Who itself, I was arriving on a cusp between generations. The heyday of Baby Boomer births was past and Generation X - the most aborted generation in history - was still to come. Things looked dodgy for the developing me for a different reason, though: my mother, then 42, had had a series of miscarriages, and my father (born in 1915) was closer in age to William Hartnell than William Russell. They had given up on having children, and the discovery of my presence invoked both hope and fear. They'd been given another chance, but would it work out this time?
I've heard that when Sydney Newman saw the pilot and told them to "do it again," Hartnell was relieved to have another chance. I don't know about Waris Hussein. My guess is that he would have been pleased - how often did a TV director get to use the 20-20 hindsight that comes from completing an episode to improve on that same episode before broadcast? But given the negative initial reaction, he would likely have been nervous as well, though not too severely - after all, BBC TV Controller Donald Baverstock liked the pilot well enough to commit to a minimum run of 13 episodes.
I believe this episode is unique in existing in two, separately-performed versions. Other stories do have multiple versions - consider the Special Editions on The Curse of Fenric and Battlefield DVDs, for example - but they basically come down to editing and post-production changes. Only here do we get to see what is effectively a rough draft of the performances as well.
The pilot episode follows substantially the same plot as the broadcast version, but certainly feels rougher. It's still well-directed, but not outstandingly so, and the camera moves and actors' performances aren't quite as solid. With most things I'm glad they made the changes they did. There's one I'm really sorry to see go, and two I'm less sure of:
The Shot through the TARDIS Doors
This was great! Showing the interior of the TARDIS through the outside doors as Barbara pushes her way in really worked for me. It's probably less than a second long so it doesn't lessen the impact of the change from the mundane to the fantastic, and it really reinforces the illusion that the TARDIS interior is connected to the exterior. I can't imagine why they dropped it.
The Ambiguous Doctor, part 1
The Doctor is even more angry and antagonistic in the pilot. This makes us side with the teachers more forcefully, and it would have been interesting to see his emotional journey from this point, but on balance I think I prefer the more ambivalent version from the episode as broadcast.
Carole Ann Ford and the Decline of Susan, Part 1
Carole Ann Ford was already a mother when she took the job, and at first resisted accepting another child role. To win her over, the part of Susan was sold as unearthly, perhaps telepathic, and with a touch of The Avengers' Cathy Gale; in other words a unique, interesting, independent part. You can see that she took this on board in her performance in the pilot. Susan here is truly weird. I love the bit with the Rorschach blot, which really makes you think "what's up with this girl?" It's notable that in this version she intends to leave with the Doctor if he'll let the teachers go, and it's Earth's history that the Doctor is protecting when he kidnaps them.
The broadcast Susan is more accessible, but is already a long way from the part sold to Ford. As an adult I too would be more interested in the truly "unearthly child" of the pilot, and even if she was humanised and made less capable later, she would have had further to fall. On the other hand, it may have been important to the show's success that there be a child-identification character; and wearing my future knowledge hat, we might also have missed out on the wonderful Vicki.
Incidentally, if anyone wants to find out more about the development of the show prior to broadcast, there's an excellent article in issue 3 of the (free!) Canadian fanzine Whotopia: "An Unearthly Inception", by Laurence Marcus.
Broadcast:
The pilot was eventually broadcast on 26th August 1991, as a "museum piece".
Rating:
8/10. Very good, but it can't equal the real thing.
Next Time:
Really, truly The Cave of Skulls.
Wednesday, 8 June 2011
Episode 1: An Unearthly Child
Let me focus on the opening sequence for a moment. Sometimes people start by talking about the Bobby in the fog, but that misses out a key segment. We actually open with some swirling, grey-white shapes while strange electronic music plays. This is important; it sets the tone for what is to come. This is not your standard drama, and if I had to put a single word to the mood invoked I would go for eerie. Nowadays it's impossible for me to dissociate the music (or indeed the swirls) from what I already know of Who, so I'm not going to try. Instead, I'll look at what happens next - and what doesn't.
Notably, it doesn't just cut to the Bobby in the fog. It fades, so that the grey-white swirls of alienness merge into grey-white swirls of familiar London fog. Then - with the title music still playing - we see the policeman on his rounds, checking the gates of the scrap yard and moving on before one gate swings open, pushed by an unseen hand. We follow the camera through, look around and close in on the misplaced police box, hearing the hum of the TARDIS for the first time. The image blurs, the noise changes to a sound any schoolchild will recognise, and when the picture comes back into focus we are in a regular school. There's an establishing shot of children leaving at the end of the day, and one of the teachers - Barbara Wright - comes out of one room, talking to someone we can't see, and walks down the corridor to another. Only then do we finally get a straightforward cut.
Why am I spending so much time on the first few minutes of the show? It is said that the opening paragraph - or even sentence - of a book is vital, that failing to grab the reader at the outset means you're done for. If the same is true of TV, An Unearthly Child is on safe ground. In one short but continuous sequence the mood has shifted from eerie to ordinary to mysterious to ordinary again, keeping us disorientated, on our toes; and we are left with a number of questions. Who was it going into the scrap yard? What is a police box doing there? Why was it humming? Why are we now in a school? The sudden cut to the interior of Ian Chesterton's classroom acts as a signal that the story has begun and we can settle down to watch what happens; but we already know it's not going to be anything straightforward.
At this point, I'm going to pause for a couple of asides. The first is to note the age of the schoolchildren, who look to be twenty-odd. This instantly puts me in mind of the slightly later show Please Sir!, which was part of my childhood. There are definitely similarities with Fenn Street; and although it wasn't in a city, the school I attended from 1975 (a Secondary Modern turned Comprehensive) had echoes of Coal Hill too. Perhaps this was why it didn't jar me out of the story - unlike Mawdryn Undead, whose aged public schoolboys put me more in mind of Greyfriars and the 1950s Billy Bunter series.
Second is the incidental music. In my present I have been watching Matt Smith's second series, and (as with all the series since the revival) there is music most of the time. Here, there's nothing. I didn't notice it until late in the scene in Ian's classroom, but it does make a difference. It's one less thing telling you what to feel, which puts more responsibility on to the acting and direction. That can be good or bad, depending upon how it's handled (and whether the viewer is paying attention).
OK, back to the plot - but since the plot from here on is basically a series of introductions, I'm going to break it down and talk about the people and ideas introduced:
Barbara and Ian
It feels odd not to write their names the other way round. It's as if Iananbarbara have become one entity over the years; but here the reversal is appropriate, since Barbara is both the first lead character we see and the driving force throughout the episode. We are quickly given an impression of two thoughtful, reliable teachers who care about their charges. They obviously get on well, but as friendly colleagues - there's no hint of romance. Given what's happened so far, they offer us a reassuringly normal anchor to cling to (if you'll forgive a mixed metaphor - be warned, there may be many more wayward words down the line); and by the end of their first scene together we already feel like we know them. The mystery of this episode is viewed through their eyes, and at the heart of it is the unearthly child of the title...
Susan
Our first sight of Susan is an extreme close-up of her listening to pop music on a portable radio (John Smith - now there's an alias to conjure by). This is the first music since the titles, and later in the scene we'll get the first incidental music of the series. Susan looks like she's "away with the fairies", as they say around here, and generally that's the impression we get from the performance - a girl who's a bit of an outsider, inward-focused, but not, I would say, unearthly. The only thing that pushes her further out is the dialogue. There are some nicely dropped hints and set-pieces, the most obvious one now being the bit about decimalisation. I remember the changeover, which started in 1968; I picked up a little of the old money terminology, but it never had a chance to become ingrained. I wonder how much talk there was about it in 1963, and how prophetic Anthony Coburn was being? As a mathematician I was less impressed with the discussion of five dimensions, although that's mostly the naming - I wouldn't call one "space", since that is itself multi-dimensional. But I'm nitpicking, and there's always going to be something that pushes a particular individual's buttons. Anyway, Susan is the next link in the chain that leads us to her grandfather...
The Doctor and His Ship
When we first see the Doctor, we really aren't sure about him. It sort of looks as if he is keeping Susan locked up in the police box, and although it doesn't feel as if the program is that grim we have been kept off-balance enough to pause. If not, why is he so desperate to keep the teachers out? But then, just as things are hotting up, we have The Oz Moment. Barbara pushes her way past the old man and, like Judy Garland in 1939, steps through a door into another world. This is it; we will not be seeing Earth in 1963 again for a very long time. It's a key transition, revealing the show to be fantasy, and our suspension of disbelief could fail catastrophically. It doesn't, though; the show has kept us enough off-kilter to accept the jump. Although in theory it could have been a mundane show about teachers helping some screwed-up people, it was never going to be - not at 5.15 on a Saturday evening.
The next scene is beautifully handled. We are told just enough that we know where we stand, without revealing too much - and the Doctor becomes less like an ogre and more of a desperate man with no investment in our world. We still can't guess what he's capable of, but at least he has recognisable motivations. All of which comes to a head when Susan threatens to leave, and he activates the machine. As the ship leaves, we see the fear and regret on his face - a great moment from Hartnell that tells us a lot.
I've gone on a bit, but I'd like to mention two more things before signing off. The first is the "falling about in the TARDIS" acting. This is something that will happen throughout the show, but I tend to associate it most with the 80s. To be honest, it's a bit lame here - Peter Davison and Janet Fielding would have been ashamed. And why do Iananbarbara fall asleep?
Finally, I can't help but mention the first cliffhanger of the series. The ship has moved - and they're not alone! Good stuff - and the announcement of the next episode title is something to whet our appetites, with a proper pulpy name.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 23rd November 1963
Viewers: 4.4 million
Chart Position: 114
Appreciation Index: 63
Rating:
10/10. It would be churlish to give it any less.
Next Time:
Not, in fact, The Cave of Skulls, since I'll be taking my first diversion. And hopefully it won't be quite so long...
Notably, it doesn't just cut to the Bobby in the fog. It fades, so that the grey-white swirls of alienness merge into grey-white swirls of familiar London fog. Then - with the title music still playing - we see the policeman on his rounds, checking the gates of the scrap yard and moving on before one gate swings open, pushed by an unseen hand. We follow the camera through, look around and close in on the misplaced police box, hearing the hum of the TARDIS for the first time. The image blurs, the noise changes to a sound any schoolchild will recognise, and when the picture comes back into focus we are in a regular school. There's an establishing shot of children leaving at the end of the day, and one of the teachers - Barbara Wright - comes out of one room, talking to someone we can't see, and walks down the corridor to another. Only then do we finally get a straightforward cut.
Why am I spending so much time on the first few minutes of the show? It is said that the opening paragraph - or even sentence - of a book is vital, that failing to grab the reader at the outset means you're done for. If the same is true of TV, An Unearthly Child is on safe ground. In one short but continuous sequence the mood has shifted from eerie to ordinary to mysterious to ordinary again, keeping us disorientated, on our toes; and we are left with a number of questions. Who was it going into the scrap yard? What is a police box doing there? Why was it humming? Why are we now in a school? The sudden cut to the interior of Ian Chesterton's classroom acts as a signal that the story has begun and we can settle down to watch what happens; but we already know it's not going to be anything straightforward.
At this point, I'm going to pause for a couple of asides. The first is to note the age of the schoolchildren, who look to be twenty-odd. This instantly puts me in mind of the slightly later show Please Sir!, which was part of my childhood. There are definitely similarities with Fenn Street; and although it wasn't in a city, the school I attended from 1975 (a Secondary Modern turned Comprehensive) had echoes of Coal Hill too. Perhaps this was why it didn't jar me out of the story - unlike Mawdryn Undead, whose aged public schoolboys put me more in mind of Greyfriars and the 1950s Billy Bunter series.
Second is the incidental music. In my present I have been watching Matt Smith's second series, and (as with all the series since the revival) there is music most of the time. Here, there's nothing. I didn't notice it until late in the scene in Ian's classroom, but it does make a difference. It's one less thing telling you what to feel, which puts more responsibility on to the acting and direction. That can be good or bad, depending upon how it's handled (and whether the viewer is paying attention).
OK, back to the plot - but since the plot from here on is basically a series of introductions, I'm going to break it down and talk about the people and ideas introduced:
Barbara and Ian
It feels odd not to write their names the other way round. It's as if Iananbarbara have become one entity over the years; but here the reversal is appropriate, since Barbara is both the first lead character we see and the driving force throughout the episode. We are quickly given an impression of two thoughtful, reliable teachers who care about their charges. They obviously get on well, but as friendly colleagues - there's no hint of romance. Given what's happened so far, they offer us a reassuringly normal anchor to cling to (if you'll forgive a mixed metaphor - be warned, there may be many more wayward words down the line); and by the end of their first scene together we already feel like we know them. The mystery of this episode is viewed through their eyes, and at the heart of it is the unearthly child of the title...
Susan
Our first sight of Susan is an extreme close-up of her listening to pop music on a portable radio (John Smith - now there's an alias to conjure by). This is the first music since the titles, and later in the scene we'll get the first incidental music of the series. Susan looks like she's "away with the fairies", as they say around here, and generally that's the impression we get from the performance - a girl who's a bit of an outsider, inward-focused, but not, I would say, unearthly. The only thing that pushes her further out is the dialogue. There are some nicely dropped hints and set-pieces, the most obvious one now being the bit about decimalisation. I remember the changeover, which started in 1968; I picked up a little of the old money terminology, but it never had a chance to become ingrained. I wonder how much talk there was about it in 1963, and how prophetic Anthony Coburn was being? As a mathematician I was less impressed with the discussion of five dimensions, although that's mostly the naming - I wouldn't call one "space", since that is itself multi-dimensional. But I'm nitpicking, and there's always going to be something that pushes a particular individual's buttons. Anyway, Susan is the next link in the chain that leads us to her grandfather...
The Doctor and His Ship
When we first see the Doctor, we really aren't sure about him. It sort of looks as if he is keeping Susan locked up in the police box, and although it doesn't feel as if the program is that grim we have been kept off-balance enough to pause. If not, why is he so desperate to keep the teachers out? But then, just as things are hotting up, we have The Oz Moment. Barbara pushes her way past the old man and, like Judy Garland in 1939, steps through a door into another world. This is it; we will not be seeing Earth in 1963 again for a very long time. It's a key transition, revealing the show to be fantasy, and our suspension of disbelief could fail catastrophically. It doesn't, though; the show has kept us enough off-kilter to accept the jump. Although in theory it could have been a mundane show about teachers helping some screwed-up people, it was never going to be - not at 5.15 on a Saturday evening.
The next scene is beautifully handled. We are told just enough that we know where we stand, without revealing too much - and the Doctor becomes less like an ogre and more of a desperate man with no investment in our world. We still can't guess what he's capable of, but at least he has recognisable motivations. All of which comes to a head when Susan threatens to leave, and he activates the machine. As the ship leaves, we see the fear and regret on his face - a great moment from Hartnell that tells us a lot.
I've gone on a bit, but I'd like to mention two more things before signing off. The first is the "falling about in the TARDIS" acting. This is something that will happen throughout the show, but I tend to associate it most with the 80s. To be honest, it's a bit lame here - Peter Davison and Janet Fielding would have been ashamed. And why do Iananbarbara fall asleep?
Finally, I can't help but mention the first cliffhanger of the series. The ship has moved - and they're not alone! Good stuff - and the announcement of the next episode title is something to whet our appetites, with a proper pulpy name.
Broadcast:
Date: Saturday, 23rd November 1963
Viewers: 4.4 million
Chart Position: 114
Appreciation Index: 63
Rating:
10/10. It would be churlish to give it any less.
Next Time:
Not, in fact, The Cave of Skulls, since I'll be taking my first diversion. And hopefully it won't be quite so long...
Welcome!
Welcome to Elv Who?, my first blog. As you can probably guess, it's going to be about Doctor Who; and for the foreseeable future it will be home to my thoughts on my first Who marathon.
Introduction
I have never taken part in a marathon before, and there are a number of reasons why I shouldn't do so now. The main one is that I am still missing some of the Hartnell stories, including early ones. Not the usual suspects - I have audios of all the missing episodes (except Tenth Planet 4, and there's plenty of time before I get to that one) - but rather the stories that are still due to come out on DVD. This means there will have to be a hiatus when I get to The Sensorites, unless I skip on to The Dalek Invasion of Earth or watch some dodgy internet versions.
On the other hand, there's one overriding reason why I should go ahead: I want to.
A few things have come together to push me towards doing it. First is simply the fact that I've been in a Hartnell/McCoy mood for a while now, so it's a good time. I've also been reading two relevant blogs: El Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum, which offers interesting thoughts on how the stories might have been viewed in the context of the 1960s; and Neil and Sue's Adventures with the Wife in Space, which is just pure entertainment. Finally, my son has been doing his own marathon - a Davros marathon, starting with I, Davros: Innocence and continuing with all the relevant TV and audio stories up to Journey's End. He's just finished The Juggernauts, and is still enjoying himself.
Rules
If I am going to do it, I need to set myself some rules. First off, prompted by the Eruditorum, I'm going to do this episode by episode rather than story by story, until at least The Gunfighters. I'm also restricting myself to no more than one episode a day, to stop myself rushing through stories. Whenever possible I'll do at least one episode a week, but I won't start a new story until I've typed up all my notes from the current story, and things like family take priority. I may put extra posts in on stories overall or other relevant subjects, but only if I've got something to say that won't fit neatly into the regular episode posts.
Oh, and no spoilers for episodes that are less than a year old.
Why Would Anyone Read This?
I don't know, really - I'm doing it mostly for my own benefit. You won't get the type of critical analysis you get from Philip, or the fresh eyes of Sue. I will be wearing several hats at once: watching it as a modern viewer, recapturing my childhood spent with Troughton and Pertwee, being an armchair critic. Tell you what, just try it and see if you like the style.
On with the show!
Introduction
I have never taken part in a marathon before, and there are a number of reasons why I shouldn't do so now. The main one is that I am still missing some of the Hartnell stories, including early ones. Not the usual suspects - I have audios of all the missing episodes (except Tenth Planet 4, and there's plenty of time before I get to that one) - but rather the stories that are still due to come out on DVD. This means there will have to be a hiatus when I get to The Sensorites, unless I skip on to The Dalek Invasion of Earth or watch some dodgy internet versions.
On the other hand, there's one overriding reason why I should go ahead: I want to.
A few things have come together to push me towards doing it. First is simply the fact that I've been in a Hartnell/McCoy mood for a while now, so it's a good time. I've also been reading two relevant blogs: El Sandifer's TARDIS Eruditorum, which offers interesting thoughts on how the stories might have been viewed in the context of the 1960s; and Neil and Sue's Adventures with the Wife in Space, which is just pure entertainment. Finally, my son has been doing his own marathon - a Davros marathon, starting with I, Davros: Innocence and continuing with all the relevant TV and audio stories up to Journey's End. He's just finished The Juggernauts, and is still enjoying himself.
Rules
If I am going to do it, I need to set myself some rules. First off, prompted by the Eruditorum, I'm going to do this episode by episode rather than story by story, until at least The Gunfighters. I'm also restricting myself to no more than one episode a day, to stop myself rushing through stories. Whenever possible I'll do at least one episode a week, but I won't start a new story until I've typed up all my notes from the current story, and things like family take priority. I may put extra posts in on stories overall or other relevant subjects, but only if I've got something to say that won't fit neatly into the regular episode posts.
Oh, and no spoilers for episodes that are less than a year old.
Why Would Anyone Read This?
I don't know, really - I'm doing it mostly for my own benefit. You won't get the type of critical analysis you get from Philip, or the fresh eyes of Sue. I will be wearing several hats at once: watching it as a modern viewer, recapturing my childhood spent with Troughton and Pertwee, being an armchair critic. Tell you what, just try it and see if you like the style.
On with the show!
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