An Unearthly Child review [Anthony Coburn]

In a junkyard on Totter's Lane stands a police box. Young genius Susan Foreman has the yard recorded as her address at Coal Hill School and when two of her schoolteachers investigate they find that the police box, belonging to her grandfather, is bigger on the inside. And so their journey through space and time begins.

Where and when?: The first episode is set in Shoreditch, England on 23rd November, 1963. The remaining three episodes take place somewhere on Earth in 100,000 B.C. This story takes place one month after Hunters of Earth and leads into The Daleks.

The Doctor's Case:

• A Good Quotation:
• "You say you can't fit an enormous building into one of your smaller sitting rooms?" / "No." / "But you've discovered television, haven't you?" / "Yes." / "Then by showing an enormous building on your television screen you can do what seemed impossible, couldn't you?"
• "Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension? Have you? To be exiles? Susan and I are cut off from our own planet, without friends or protection. But one day we shall get back. Yes, one day. One day."
• "Orb has sent me this creature to make fire come from his fingers. I have seen it. Inside he is full of fire. Smoke comes from his mouth." / "As lies come out of yours."
• "Fear makes companions of all of us."
  
• The first episode of this story is one of Doctor Who's very best, as well as one of its very simplest. Ian and Barbara are an instantly likeable and relatable pair with chemistry from the off, and their discussion about Susan (complete with flashbacks, which became very unusual for the classic series) succeeds in making the audience wonder about this contradiction of a girl. She's a genius but the finer points of 1963 Great Britain are lost on her, and then there's the fact that she lives in a junkyard. Susan is never better than she is in these twenty minutes - mysterious, intelligent and unearthly and not the screamer she so quickly becomes. The Doctor, too, is an interesting character and his spikiness, rather than making him unlikeable as the somewhat more exaggerated trait that the Sixth Doctor was given in The Twin Dilemma, closes him off and makes him all the more mysterious. This episode is absolutely perfect.
• The Doctor's relationship with Susan isn't something that's a large part of the series, but there are some nice moments between the two of them. Rather than open the doors to let Ian and Barbara out and risk Susan leaving with them, he chooses to kidnap them. Whilst the Sixth Doctor's relationship with Peri was antagonistic and frequently unpleasant to watch, the Doctor and Ian are capable of holding their own against one another, but when it comes to it Ian tells Za that the Doctor is their leader. He might find the Doctor disagreeable but he respects him.
  
• The guest characters for this story might not be the most memorable or engaging, but Hur is a decent character.

The Valeyard's Case:

• A Bad Quotation:
• "This is where you live, Susan?" Is that all Barbara has to say after entering a dimensionally transcendental timeship?
• "I like walking in the dark. It's mysterious," Susan says in the first episode. Her breakdown after the Doctor's disappearance in The Cave of Skulls quickly becomes overly melodramatic and shatters the image of her we've developed. We know that Susan has travelled to other worlds before arriving in Foreman's Yard (the Moon, Rua, Quinnis, Akhaten, Nazi Germany) and is just as seasoned a time-traveller as her grandfather, and yet she spends a significant amount of time wailing. Barbara does her fair share in the third and fourth episodes but she has the excuse of being entirely uprooted and out of her depth.
• Yes, they're cavemen, but Kal would have to be an idiot to produce his own knife knowing that it's covered in the old woman's blood. Not quite as inexcusable as the trial scenes in The Keys of Marinus but still a very silly thing to do.
  
• The fight scene between Za and Kal is incredibly awkward. The poor choreography, the long pauses, the weird drum music and Kal's short screech of a dying yell. The, erm... effect of the TARDIS crew running through the jungle (that is, jogging on the spot and swatting at branches) is similarly embarrassing.

Stray Facts:

• The best five months of Susan's life were on Earth, 1963. She apparently didn't enjoy her life too much on Gallifrey.

Was First a Chauvinist?: 

• The Doctor, when seeking to get rid of Ian and Barbara in Foreman's Yard, takes Ian to one side to try to speak sense to him. Sexist? Possibly, but still a far cry from Bradley's Doctor in Twice Upon a Time.
• The Doctor refers to the Native American as having a "savage mind".

His Constant Companion: The old woman is murdered by Kal with a stone for trying to keep the secret of fire from him. Kal is killed by Za in a fight.

I'll Explain Later:

• What's the Doctor been doing in Shoreditch all this time whilst Susan's off at school?
• Susan claims that she herself came up with the name "TARDIS", which is perhaps the first hint that the Doctor built the TARDIS himself and that it's one of a kind, something that he later implies in The Chase. But we know that this isn't the case and that there are multiple TARDISes.
• This is later explained in The Beginning. Susan believed that she had come up with the name herself, although this wasn't actually the case.
• The Doctor says that he and Susan are exiles, cut off from their own people and without protection or friends, but that one day they will return. This origin doesn't really gel with what we learn later in the show. From this story it seems that the Doctor and Susan were cast out (indeed, William Hartnell and Carole Ann Ford apparently devised a backstory where Susan had done something to annoy their people). However, we later learn that the Doctor left of his own accord in a stolen TARDIS because of a number of reasons: he believed himself to be the hybrid that would destroy Gallifrey, he wanted to see the universe, and he found the plight of those left to suffer by the Time Lords too much to bear. So Susan says in The Beginning, she didn't know why it was that they left.
• Why do Ian and Barbara pass out in the TARDIS? It never happens to any future companions.
• Did nobody ever see Za's father make fire?
  

The Inquisitor's Judgement: The first episode of this story is an excellent start to Doctor Who, setting up interesting characters and an interesting premise. The Doctor, Ian and Barbara are all capable and enjoyable (even if the Doctor isn't the most likeable or accessible, there's no denying that he's a good character to watch) and Susan is initially intriguing. The remaining three episodes are good, although Susan is reduced to a wailing girl without any unearthliness about her. Overall, An Unearthly Child is a promising start to series 1 and to the show at large. Being good, this story earns a B.

Doctor Who (Season 1)

An Unearthly Child  |  The Daleks

The First Doctor's Timeline
Hunters of Earth  |  An Unearthly Child  |  The Daleks