Everything about An Unearthly Child totally explained
An Unearthly Child (also known as
100,000 BC, among other titles, see
below) 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 / producer (James) Anthony Coburn, (who had moved to the UK in 1951) it's 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's and Barbara's discovery of the Doctor and his time-space ship
TARDIS in a junkyard in contemporary London. The remaining episodes are set in 100,000 BC, amongst 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 TARDIS is shown to travel through time for the first time. 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're 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 1963 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, a
time machine 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's supposed to adapt its appearance to its surroundings.
Susan lives with her grandfather, the mysterious
Doctor, who doesn't 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 doesn't 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
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 isn't Foreman), it's 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 is divided into four episodes. They are entitled "An Unearthly Child", "The Cave of Skulls", "The Forest of Fear" and "The Firemaker".
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. 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. However, due to the fact that 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, just before the broadcast of episode two. This repeat wasn't broadcast in
Northern Ireland.
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 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).
Further Information
Get more info on 'An Unearthly Child'.
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