Many MANY words have been devoted to the history of Doctor Who, the behind the scenes problems getting the series made, who made it, who created it (some of those words are polite and most involve legal wrangles) and how the first broadcast episode is a masterpiece and the remaining three are either a dull run around on the spot involving grunting cavemen or a superb mirroring of tribal power struggles, with the contrast between the Tribe of Gum and in the newly formed TARDIS line up. There have been expanded universe stories set before the events of the first episode, there’s an expanded universe story set during the final three and you have huge amounts of debate about what planet the story is set on.
So let’s look at the aspects that don’t get talked about too much. This is my marathon and I want to do it in the way that I want. Yes there’ll be occasional review-like comments but, for me, I want to use this marathon to let my mind massively overthink things, highlight the insanity in the show that I adore, hopefully offer some new insights based on ridiculously small details and generally get everything out of my brain and onto “paper”. This means that, to begin with, we have to start with a much over-used twitter/social media cry of “You couldn’t make this today”, only this time the cry is correct (at least, not without major changes to the structure of the first episode). I mean, come on, does no one else think it just ever so slightly creepy that two teachers decide to go spy on one of their pupils (the second time for one of them) without first running it by their headmaster, telling anyone else what they’re up to and generally really doing stuff that these days would get them hauled over hot coals on the safeguarding front. Surely, even in the 60s, this would have been seen as just slightly weird? I’ve also never fully understood why Barbara gets so freaked out by Susan seemingly living in a junkyard, is it so impossible to think there might be a small house/flat attached to the business that she lives in with her grandfather? With the benefit of foreknowledge (I’m not even going to remotely pretend to be doing this as though I don’t know what’s ahead), Ian and Barbara are potentially have a LOT of explaining to do after the credits roll on “The Chase”. I’ll save those thoughts for when I get there though as, really creepy teachers aside, I want to move on to one of my main sources of wonder and frustration about the whole of Doctor Who… the TARDIS.
Other people have already written superb volumes detailing just exactly which button/lever gets pulled at random in which stories to do the same function such as open the doors. One of the things I’ll eventually get around to waffling about is what my brain does and doesn’t allow the show to get away with in terms of continuity, but what I do want to try and let my brain go to town on is the logic/lack of logic behind some of the things we see on screen. I’m not even going to remotely pretend I can explain or justify everything that we see. Some bits will have to remain as utterly baffling, but there are some parts that I’ve seen others complain about that I CAN give some sort of explanation to (and, of course, there are some things that others say are perfectly fine that my brain just wants to scream about!). First out of the hat… oh, a “one off function of the week” aspect. Yes, there’s a handy hidden button on the underside of the console that makes the whole thing live, just so that the Doctor can be a bastard to Ian. Now, there are two things that my brain really needs answers to on this topic. First is just why did the Doctor feel the need to install this function (or, with foreknowledge, why did the Time Lords install it)? You really have to wonder what sort of circumstance would see the need for it, when you’ve got to get past the “destruct-o-matic” lock, force the doors open and get to the console for it to be any use (nosey teachers aside of course). Plus you have to be standing in exactly the right place whilst the invaders are heading for the console in order to operate it. You’d think some sort of key fob with remote control would have at least been a better design. It’s also pretty swiftly forgotten about/removed once the humans move in because by the time we get to season 19 and the soap opera TARDIS crew, if that was still functioning then Tegan wouldn’t have got within flicking distance of the switches to mess the TARDIS up, and Adric would be crispy fried way before Earthshock. And it’s the question of when it’s removed that forms the second, less obvious question (at least, I think it’s less obvious as I don’t remember seeing people ask it before). There’s a control that electrifies the TARDIS console. In “Edge of Destruction”, when people are talking about getting zapped left, right and centre… why doesn’t anyone stop to check if this security device is jammed on somehow. In fact, why does no one seem to even remember that it exists and that the console can easily be electrified? What do you mean “they were making everything up as they went along”?
Quite a few times over the years I’ve seen comments about the TARDIS’ ability to knock people out on take off. This is something that I think can be defended, not just in the context of the story but with reference to a story that wasn’t made AND something from the show further down the line. We know there’s a faulty filament that the Doctor needs to replace (even if we don’t know what it does) and we know from the scanner that the ship literally acts like a rocket in this story and zooms up into the London sky before seemingly deciding it wants to pop into the vortex after all. The second story that never was, The Masters of Luxor, would have started with the TARDIS flying around the outside of a weird building, so it’s pretty clear to me that the “original intention” wasn’t that the TARDIS always did its vanishing act on take off, but that it was literally more like a space ship at times. Combine this with the knowledge in “The Ambassadors of Death” that the Doctor can withstand far more g-force than a human and it looks pretty clear that as Ian and the Doctor fight at the controls, it accidentally launches upwards, the g-force does the humans in and knocks them out and then the time/space travel kicks in.
What else does my brain need to vent about? Well, this being the first story, we get the first in a very confusing and contradictory set of details about how the TARDIS doors work when you compare outside and insides. In the second episode, as is often the case in the early stories, we get to view the outside world once the double doors open with no hint of a pair of police box doors in sight from the inside. Then we cut to the outside of the ship and just the one door is open that’s significantly narrower than the double ones inside. Which definitely raises weird questions about how this works given we see people walk through the double doors side by side! The other VERY important thing to note about the doors though is that the TARDIS closes them automatically when everyone is outside on the prehistoric landscape. This is, seemingly, a function that’s swiftly forgotten about BUT will definitely be returned to when we reach the 1980s, as it’s going to throw confusion into the logic of hte TARDIS (coma, lack of). TARDIS wise I’ll save comments on the scanner till we get to a duller story and instead make what is, to me at least, an important observation about the look of the control room. It’s got loads of stuff in at this stage that we never learn the function of (and certainly the function isn’t obvious from the appearance), it’s got a set of controls that are mostly unlabelled and it has furniture dotted around the edge. It does not scream “I’m a space ship”. So when the Doctor decides of Ian and Barbara “they’ll tell everyone about the ship”… ummmm, if the Doctor hadn’t opened his bloody mouth they wouldn’t have known it was a ship anyway! The Doctor’s desire to be a complete bastard to Ian and Barbara is his own undoing. By blabbing away to belittle them, he actually is responsible for the threat he’s trying to avoid in the first place. Just knock them both out with a high voltage blast from the console Doctor, leave them outside and then just take off quietly and let them think they got drunk or something. It would have saved you a LOT of bother and, admittedly, would have made Doctor Who a very short series indeed. Oh and tell Susan to carry her school bag with her at all times. If you keep a close eye on the Doctor’s notebook, it’s actually Susan who ends up losing it, but only really because she doesn’t have anything to safely carry it in once she’s picked it up. Yes, blame the teachers for forcing their way in, but between the Doctor’s loose lips and Susan’s loose grip, they’re the real reason for the sixty plus years of adventures that follow. And, with this very much the pilot story (not just a pilot episode), it’s interesting to note that Barabara turns the water works on a lot more than we’re used to, Susan is the inventive one who comes up with the skull diversion and the Doctor is determined to analyse everything as soon as he steps from the ship. Yes, that analysis is going to turn out to be a reminder of something that largely seems to have gone mostly unremarked on.
And finally, on the TARDIS scenes front, we get told that before it was a Police Box, it had been an Ionic column and a sedan chair. This opens up a few interesting issues that tie in to earlier comments about the doors. First off (and to be returned to in the 1980s), how do you get in and out of an Ionic column? Other than the rather obvious comment that they don’t, by nature, have doors in them there’s also the really dubious question of size. It was bad enough when we saw two people exit the control room side by side yet emerge from the Police Box single file, but I’m not even sure that (thanks to broad shoulders before anyone makes any rude comments) I’d even fit into it’s fictional doorway walking forwards and would have to permanently enter it sideways on! If you think that’s baffling, then let’s consider the reality of turning the TARDIS into a sedan chair. First off, is this going to be a sedan chair that looks like it’s been abandoned? They’re designed to be carried by two people, so a sedan chair will look exceptionally strange sitting on the ground with no one around to pick it up and give you a ride. I’m guessing that the curtains would always be closed (otherwise that’s going to look exceptionally weird, you getting in on one side but the windows seemingly not showing you sitting down on the seat) and then there’s the whole awkward nature of the fact that it’s significantly shorter than a person normally is and so you’re going to have to stoop down to get inside it. No wonder the Doctor’s crotchety, he probably put his back out trying to get into the ship an adventure or two back. Also, worth noting that sedan chairs were popular in the 17th and 18th centuries so it’s highly likely that Susan is telling us about two separate landings prior to London 1963.
As for the three episodes of fur clad fun, the Doctor we see here really is NOT the Doctor that we will be seeing a few months down the line. Whether or not this “humanising” of the character was an intentional aspect from the start is a coin toss for me but within these four episodes, you really do have to wonder just how the Doctor’s got this far without someone smashing HIS head in with a rock. I know I’d be tempted! We get somewhat generic cavemen and women, which definitely muddies the waters of where and when we are (Ian seems to presume pre-historic earth but there’s zero evidence for it) and when you start to look at the set dressing for “The Cave of Skulls” and you realise just how many skulls there are in there… actually two questions spring to mind. First off, just how long have the tribe been living in this cave given just how many skulls there are in there (just skulls, each one isn’t connected to a full skeleton) or is it some sort of trophy room? Then there’s the rather weird question of why none of them have decomposing bodies attached to them (yes, teatime family viewing aside of course). After all, if this is the cave that people were put into to kill them, you’d expect quite a lot of rotting meat to be laying around. Or has it been so long since the tribe killed anyone that absolutely everything has rotted away already?
“An Unearthly Child” is definitely great television, but coming back to it after seeing how the characters evolve, change and generally get pretty much reinvented, it’s far from great Doctor Who. So as the TARDIS departs from “prehistoric Earth”, we begin a soft reboot spread over the next few stories. And though it’s first destination to an alien world ensures that it’s going to have a gazillion more of them across 7 decades and counting, it’s going to bring with it a whole load of revisions to what we’ve already seen and accidentally throw even more confusion into the mix when it comes to internal logic. But that’s the reason I’m writing this. Because I LOVE the chaos, and want you to embrace it too.
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