An Unearthly Child

001 – An Unearthly Child
Doctor Who serial
Ian and Barbara discover the secret of Susan, the unearthly child.
Cast
Doctor William Hartnell (First Doctor)
Companions Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman) Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright) William Russell (Ian Chesterton)
Guest stars
Derek Newark — Za Alethea Charlton — Hur Eileen Way — Old Mother Jeremy Young — Kal Howard Lang — Horg
Production
Writer	Anthony Coburn C. E. Webber (episode 1, uncredited)
Director	Waris Hussein Douglas Camfield (film inserts, uncredited)
Script editor	David Whitaker
Producer	Verity Lambert Mervyn Pinfield (associate producer)
Executive producer(s)	None
Production code	A
Series	Season 1
Length	4 episodes, 25 minutes each
Originally broadcast	23 November—14 December 1963
Chronology
← Preceded by Followed by → — The Daleks
IMDb profile

An Unearthly Child (also referred to as 100,000 BC) is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 23 November to 14 December 1963. Written by the Australian writer Anthony Coburn, it is the first serial of the series and introduces William Hartnell as the First Doctor, Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright and William Russell as Ian Chesterton.

The first episode deals with Ian and Barbara's discovery of the Doctor and his time-space ship TARDIS in a junkyard in contemporary London. The remaining episodes are set amidst a power struggle between warring Stone Age factions.

Plot

Synopsis

In the first episode, "An Unearthly Child", the four main characters are introduced, the Doctor is given vague background information, and the first recorded instance of the TARDIS traveling through time airs. In "The Cave of Skulls", the group encounters a Paleolithic tribe and are subsequently imprisoned by them in a large cave. In "The Forest of Fear", they are shown to escape from the settlement but are subsequently intercepted before reaching the TARDIS. The final episode, "The Firemaker", has the group mediating separate factions of the tribe before fleeing successfully to the TARDIS, leaving Earth and landing on the planet Skaro, leading in to the next serial.

The first episode starts in a junk yard in contemporary London and introduces the four characters who were to form the core of the first year's production. Schoolteachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are concerned about one of their pupils, Susan Foreman, who seems to have a very alien outlook on England. She is precocious but seems to have strange gaps in her understanding of the world. They have come to her listed address to investigate.

The programme's main prop, the TARDIS, is disguised as a police box, is also introduced, when the teachers hear Susan's voice apparently coming from inside the box. At the time such boxes were a fairly common sight on the streets of London, but only police officers held a key to open them. The TARDIS proves to be no ordinary police box; when Ian and Barbara enter they discover it to be much bigger on the inside than the outside, and furnished with futuristic-looking controls. The time machine retains its outward appearance when it travels through time, which Susan explains as a malfunction in the circuitry that is supposed to adapt its appearance to its surroundings. Susan lives with her grandfather, the mysterious Doctor, who does not otherwise identify himself. He is a cranky, hostile, suspicious old man who appears to be a fugitive.

Fearing that Barbara and Ian will give away the secret of the TARDIS and make life impossible for him in London, he takes the machine to the Stone Age, where the four become involved in a brutal power struggle within a Stone Age tribe. They barely escape with their lives by exploitation of Ian's knowledge of how to produce fire, which induces fear and respect in the primitive Stone Age society. They escape back to their time machine and the Doctor again activates the controls. They travel seemingly at random to a new destination, even the Doctor does not know where. The TARDIS's view screen shows a mysterious scene, a petrified forest, which acts as a teaser for the next story. As the time travellers leave their machine, a radiation meter is shown on the console of the machine, unheeded by them, registering "Danger".

The programme uses the convention that everybody speaks the same language so that the Londoners are easily able to communicate with Stone Age people. In later stories, this convention is explained within the story as a translation function performed by the TARDIS.

Continuity

The storyline is not dated more precisely than Ian's question to the Doctor in the second episode of the series, "When we go out of that door, we won't be in a junkyard in London, in England, in the year 1963?" The Seventh Doctor serial Remembrance of the Daleks, apparently set shortly after the contemporary events of the first episode, is set in November 1963. Real-world events in the near future would imply that the series contemporary events are in roughly that era, as well. Susan's classmates are amused that she does not know how many shillings are in a pound, and she sheepishly remembers that the pound has not yet been decimalised. Decimalisation would be announced in March 1966, twenty-eight months after the show aired, and implemented on 15 February 1971.

The alternative title would suggest the remaining three episodes were intended to be set in 100,000 BC, though this is not shown on screen and their appearance would instead suggest a date of circa 30,000 BC. (See the Chronology for details.)

When Ian calls the Doctor "Doctor Foreman" in the second episode of this story, he gets the reply, "Eh, Doctor who? What's he talking about?" Although at this stage the question is primarily presented to make a plot point (the Doctor's name is not Foreman), it is thus not generally considered to be the first use of the series' title in dialogue. The question is later asked for humorous effect several times in the series.

The Doctor would later return to the Foreman scrapyard on two future occasions: Attack of the Cybermen and Remembrance of the Daleks. In Attack, the TARDIS landed in the scrapyard, while in Remembrance, the Doctor followed the military detail there to deal with an unknown assailant that turned out to be a lone Dalek.

Production

The serial that became An Unearthly Child was originally commissioned from writer Anthony Coburn in June 1963, when it was intended to run as the second Doctor Who serial. At this stage, it was planned that the series would open with a serial entitled The Giants, to be written by BBC staff scriptwriter C. E. Webber.^[4] Webber had been heavily involved in the brainstorming meetings which had led to the creation of Doctor Who, and — with BBC Head of Drama Sydney Newman and Head of Serials Donald Wilson — had co-written the initial format document for the series.

By the middle of June, however, Wilson and Doctor Who's initial "caretaker producer" Rex Tucker decided to reject The Giants. This was partly because it was felt the serial lacked the necessary impact for an opener, and partly because it was felt that the technical requirements of the storyline — which involved the leading characters being drastically reduced in size — would be beyond the capacities of the young series at this point, given the facilities available.^[4] Due to the lack of scripts ready for production, it was decided to move Coburn's serial up to first place in the running order.^[4]

By the end of June, responsibility for getting Doctor Who off the ground was handed over to producer Verity Lambert and script editor David Whitaker, neither of whom were greatly impressed with Coburn's serial as a series 'opener'. The writer was asked to carry out major rewrites.^[4] Some consideration was even given to dropping the scripts altogether, with writer Terence Dudley briefly sounded out about providing a replacement, but a lack of time necessitated Coburn's serial going ahead.^[4]

The moving up in the schedule of Coburn's story necessitated his rewriting the opening episode to include some introductory elements of Webber's script for the first episode of The Giants — as a result Webber received a co-writer's credit for An Unearthly Child on internal BBC documentation.^[4] Coburn did, however, make several significant original contributions of his own, most notably that the Doctor's time machine should externally resemble a police box — which subsequently went on to become one of the main icons of the show. Coburn had the idea for the design when he came across a real police box while on a walk near his office.^[4] Concerned to avoid any possibility of sexual impropriety implicit in having a young girl travelling with an older man, Coburn also insisted that the character of Susan Foreman should be redrawn as the Doctor's granddaughter rather than simply his travelling companion.

The serial as a whole was originally to have been directed by Rex Tucker, but when he moved on from the series young staff director Waris Hussein, who had been attached to Doctor Who from an early stage, was given the assignment.^[4] Some of the pre-filmed inserts for the serial, shot at Ealing Studios in early October, were directed by Hussein's production assistant, Douglas Camfield.^[4] The incidental music score was provided by Norman Kay. The scenic designer assigned to the serial was Peter Brachacki, who originated the distinctive TARDIS interior set, but he eventually handled only the very first episode before being replaced by Barry Newbery, as he was unhappy with working on the programme.^[4]

The first version of the opening episode was shot at Lime Grove Studios on the evening of 27 September 1963, following a week of rehearsals. The second attempt at the opening episode was shot on 18 October, with the following three episodes being shot weekly from that point onwards on 25 October, 1 November and 8 November.^[4] As with much British television of the era, the episodes were predominantly videotaped "as live", with little scope for re-takes or breaks in recording. This left room for many mistakes that are evident on the show- but actually got the shows finished extremely quickly.

In many ways, the serial consists of two stories; there is a strong discontinuity between the first episode, introducing the characters and establishing the premise of the series, and the three episodes set in the Paleolithic. The first episode, in particular, is often seen as a classic of television science fiction (though the contemporary critical reaction was somewhat less positive).

Pilot episode

William Hartnell and Carole Ann Ford in the original pilot episode. Note the change in costumes compared to the screen capture of the same scene, above.

The first episode, "An Unearthly Child", was originally recorded a month before full recording on the series began. However, the initial recording was bedevilled with technical problems and errors made during the performance. A particular problem occurred with the doors leading into the TARDIS control room which would not close properly, instead randomly opening and closing through the early part of the scene. Two versions of the scene set in the TARDIS were recorded, along with an aborted first attempt to start the second version.

Sydney Newman, after viewing the episode, met producer Verity Lambert and director Waris Hussein. He indicated the many faults he found with the pilot and ordered that it be mounted again; a consequence of this was the delay of the show's planned 16 November 1963 premiere date. This initial episode is now known as the unaired "pilot episode", although it was never intended as such, since the practice of producing pilot episodes did not exist in Britain in the 1960s.

During the weeks between the two tapings, changes were made to costuming, effects, performances, and the script (which had originally featured a more callous and threatening Doctor, and Susan doing strange things like flicking ink blots onto paper). Changes made before the final version were filmed include a thunderclap sound effect being deleted from the opening theme music; Susan's dress being changed to make her look more like a schoolgirl than the original costume which made her appear more alien and sensual; the Doctor's costume being changed from a contemporary suit and tie to his familiar, Edwardian clothing; a reference to the Doctor and Susan being from the 49th Century being replaced by them being from "another time, another world"; the TARDIS door being repaired so that it closed properly; and a refinement of the TARDIS sound effect.

The original episode was not broadcast until 26 August 1991 when the BBC aired a version that edited together the first half of the taping with one of the two completed second halves. As it happened, the version chosen was the one in which the TARDIS doors would not close; other errors included actress Carole Ann Ford flubbing a line of dialogue, Jacqueline Hill getting caught in a doorway, a camera banging into a piece of scenery during one of the scrapyard sequences, and William Russell accidentally knocking over a mannequin in the scrapyard. This version was later released on the VHS compilation The Hartnell Years. In late 2005, the Doctor Who: The Beginning DVD set (released in North America in March 2006) contained two versions of the episode: an unedited studio recording including all takes of the second part of the show, and a newly created version of the pilot that uses the best footage from the original recording, with additional editing and digital adjustments to remove blown lines, technical problems, and reduce studio noise. Like the other episodes from this serial, both versions of the "pilot" were remastered for DVD release, using VidFIRE technology that simulated the original video look of the 1963 production.

Alternative titles

As was usual at the beginning of the series' history, no overall title appeared on-screen, and each episode has its own title. 100,000 BC is the title that was used by the production team at the time of transmission. However, due to the absence of an overall onscreen title for the four episode storyline, reference works have used various different titles, some originating from the BBC production office and others seemingly invented by fans.

Titles used for the story include, in rough chronological order:^[5]

• The Tribe of Gum - An early working title which was used up until the beginning of recording. It survived in a few documents derived from earlier paperwork, such as the payments for overseas sales, and started appearing again in reference works in the late 1970s and 1980s, including being used when the transcript of the serial was published by Titan Books.
• 100,000 BC - The first known use is a publicity release dating from when the story was being recorded and this title is used on subsequent lists and publicity releases.
• The Paleolithic Age - Used by producer Verity Lambert in a letter to a viewer in late 1964.
• The Stone Age - Used on the biography listing on a publicity release for a later story in late 1965.
• An Unearthly Child (or variants thereof) - The title of the first episode, used by the 1973 Radio Times Tenth Anniversary Special and subsequently by the 1976 edition of The Making of Doctor Who, with much subsequent commercial use including the novelisation, VHS and DVD releases of the story.
• The Cavemen - A quick description of the story material used in a 1974 fan listing due to the seeming lack of any other title.

Many documents lack any title at all (whereas for later stories they are clearer), including the 1974 BBC Enterprises listing A Quick Guide to Doctor Who which was the main source of titles for most early fan reference works.

Which title should be used is a subject that has generated deep controversy amongst fans of the series. Fan researchers such as David J. Howe argue that since 100,000 BC was used by the production team at the time of transmission, it is the most accurate title. However, the BBC tends to market the story as An Unearthly Child. Consequently, this became the most common title used for the story in recent years (see also Doctor Who story title controversy).

The four episodes of the serial are, respectively, "An Unearthly Child", "The Cave of Skulls", "The Forest of Fear" and "The Firemaker". In common with Coburn's original acronym TARDIS, as component parts of his script texts, these titles now remain the copyright protected property of his estate.

Broadcast and reception

The first episode was transmitted the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. There is a myth that the transmission was delayed by ten minutes due to extended news coverage; in fact, it went out just eighty seconds late.^[6] However, because it was felt that the coverage of the events of the assassination as well as a series of power blackouts across the country may have caused too many viewers to miss this introduction to a new series it was broadcast again on 30 November 1963, just before the broadcast of episode two. This repeat was not broadcast in Northern Ireland. The serial was repeated on BBC2 in November 1981, daily (Monday-Thursday)(2 November 1981) to (5 November 1981) at 5.40pm. Pilot transmitted on BBC2 (26 August 1991) at 2.15pm.

Doctor Who book
An Unearthly Child
Series	Target novelisations
Release number	68
Writer	Terrance Dicks
Publisher	Target Books
Cover artist	Andrew Skilleter
ISBN	0-426-20144-2
Release date	15 October 1981
Preceded by	Doctor Who and the Enemy of the World
Followed by	Doctor Who and the State of Decay

Commercial releases

Terrance Dicks wrote the Target Books novelisation of this story, initially published as Doctor Who and an Unearthly Child in October 1981. A French language version of the novelisation with the title Docteur Who entre en scène (literally, Doctor Who takes the stage) was published in 1987. A 1990 German edition published by Goldmann was one of six Doctor Who novels from that publisher, this being the only not involving the Daleks. The German title was Doctor Who und das Kind von den Sternen (Doctor Who and the Child from the Stars). It was the first target novelisation to feature the "neon logo" and early editions featured a red foil logo. The First Doctor's appearance in the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Eight Doctors, also by Dicks, occurs during this story.

The story was originally released on VHS in 1990, and the unaired pilot (edited with the second take of the TARDIS scene) was released as part of The Hartnell Years in 1991. It was rereleased and remastered in 2000. It was subsequently released on DVD in late 2005 with The Daleks and The Edge of Destruction in the DVD box set The Beginning, which includes all footage from the pilot (as well as an edited and enhanced 'special edition' of the pilot episode). The DVD contains commentary by producer Verity Lambert, director Waris Hussein, moderator Gary Russell, and actors Carole Ann Ford and William Russell.

References

External links

• An Unearthly Child at bbc.co.uk
• 100,000 BC at Doctor Who: A Brief History Of Time (Travel)
• 100,000 BC at the Doctor Who Reference Guide
• An Unearthly Child on TARDIS Index File, an external wiki

Reviews

• An Unearthly Child reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• An Unearthly Child original pilot reviews at The Doctor Who Ratings Guide
• The Whoniverse's review on An Unearthly Child

Target novelisation

• On Target — Doctor Who and An Unearthly Child