I remain slightly tentative, though. Rob is a nice person; he’s a cheery optimist. And I know from long conversations with him in the pub that he can find intellectual justification in any old piece of tat. (In other words, he can be very irritating.) Whereas my artistic endeavours tend to revolve around bitterness, disappointment and thwarted ambition. But all right. Yes, then. I’m game. We love this show, now let’s find out what and why we love...
R: Good. Well, let’s get started.
T: What, now?
R: Better had. We’ve got a long way to go.
An Unearthly Child (episode one)
R: There is so much to goggle at here – aside from the obvious weight on its shoulders by dint of being the Very First Episode, it’s also an extraordinary piece of television. It’s inventive and clever and full of imagination and, because the series hasn’t yet even got the semblance of a house style, Anthony Coburn’s script and Waris Hussein’s direction do things that will, quite simply, never be used on Doctor Who again. But let’s start with the Doctor himself, because he deserves the attention.
At the time of writing, the most recent new episode transmitted was the 2008 Christmas adventure, The Next Doctor. I watched it on the sofa next to Janie, and she tells me she actually felt me quiver with excitement the moment we got a clip sequence of all the previous Doctors. (She rolled her eyes at my reaction, I must admit. But I’m a fanboy. Typically, in the midst of an exciting story set in Victorian London with huge King Kong-size Cybermen, what really sets my heart racing is a three-second excerpt from The Time Meddler.) And there he was, with all the others: William Hartnell! The oldest Doctor, and the one most taken for granted.
Aside from thinking how bemused Hartnell himself would have been, 45 years on, to be part of an adventure told at a pace he wouldn’t have followed, in a style he wouldn’t have recognised, I also was reminded just how little credit we give him and what he achieved. Fan lore will paint him as an unlikeable old git, played by an irascible actor who could barely remember his lines. And it’s simply not true. Hartnell is incredibly good in An Unearthly Child. Whilst the other regulars – William Russell (as Ian), Jacqueline Hill (as Barbara) and Carole Ann Ford (as Susan) – are all sensibly making the effort to give some consistency to their characters within the 25 minutes provided, to give some sort of platform from which they can develop later, Hartnell is brilliantly jumping all over the place. He’ll be distant and superior one moment, amused and eccentric the next – the camera will focus upon him listening with intent suspicion to Ian and Barbara, and then he’ll wander off and be distracted by a dirty painting frame. He can give breezy speeches about the fourth dimension, but his most chilling moment is a simple “No,” turning away from camera, as he dispassionately rejects Susan’s pleas to give the teachers freedom. I especially love the bit where his concern for a broken clock almost has him turning to Ian as a confidant, giving us a wonderful glimpse of the amiable Doctor we’ll come to know – before he realises he doesn’t like this intruder yet, and freezes on him.
And then there’s the very real oddness of the way this episode is told, still striking after all this time. A policeman pokes around outside a junkyard, but doesn’t go in. But the gates open magically for us – it’s as if in its very first scene, Doctor Who is breaking the fourth wall, making us complicit. There are flashbacks – we very rarely get those – but when we do, the audience become the schoolteachers who seem to be hectoring Susan, offering her no sympathy from the mocking laughter of the other children. Waris Hussein actually steers the camera straight at Susan, so that it seems to be stalking her, making her squirm. The best example is the real distress she shows being made to do a maths problem in only three dimensions – and the awed, almost fearful wonder as she identifies the fifth dimension as “space”.
An Unearthly Child deliberately sets itself up as a puzzle, right from the very first moments of the title sequence. (What on Earth is it, all that white noise and strobing patterns? We find out before the episode is over, and it’s one of the very few times in the series’ history that the conceit of travel through time and space is given the breathtaking wonder it deserves.) The genius of this episode is that it makes you believe this series can break all rules; it’s only defined by not having any rules at all, next week it could be anything. It’s bonkers, and it’s brilliant, and in less than half an hour it’s taken this rather jaded and complacent fan and made him excited all over again. Not a bad piece of work.
T: Let’s go, then... I slide the DVD into the machine and press Play All, and my expectant relaxation is scuppered approximately two seconds later, as a sound effect in the title sequence reveals that I’ve accidentally chosen the unbroadcast Doctor Who pilot, not the actual first episode. My fiancée, Katherine, is slightly stunned that something so trivial could tell me which episode I’m watching, and I realise that she doesn’t quite understand the depths of my depravity. A quick skip later, a lowering of the lights and a legend, as they say, begins...
Those titles and that music establish the show’s unearthly nature a good 30 seconds before the actual episode title unassumingly burns itself onto the screen. The most modern synth technology and computer wizardry cannot compete with the impact of these fledgling audio and visual techniques as they are bent, bled and morphed into ethereal alien sounds and shapes. You cannot date this episode from the title sequence, or from the use of a defiantly unfuturistic (and thus, undateable) font to form what initially appears to be the legend “Doctor Oho”.
Then we get to the episode, and it’s very creepy, the camera itself acting as if it’s an extra character. The creak you hear as it pans into the junkyard only adds to the atmosphere, especially as Norman Kay’s evocative, spine-tingling incidentals seem designed to have been played on the very bric-a-brac that litters the junkyard – and, indeed, forms the instrumentation in the Doctor’s ship.
But it’s the people on screen that I most wonder about. There’s Reg Cranfield, playing the aforementioned wandering policeman, and therefore literally the first man to appear in the show. (Quite what Fred Rawlings, originally cast in the role, did wrong in the pilot is anyone’s guess.) I was often tempted to write to Cranfield, to quiz him on his legendary status, but never did. I wonder if he’d bounced his grandchildren on his knee, regaling them with the information that he was the first human being ever seen in Doctor Who... or whether he went to his grave unaware that no matter how small, his contribution to a television legend was a landmark. I imagine him having a bath that morning, washing in carbolic soap and putting on a crisp, starched shirt before heading off to partake in the genesis of something of huge cultural significance. And how great is that gaggle of students in Coal Hill School? Like the one who rhubarbs with such gusto, eliciting an archly raised eyebrow from a stunning girl whose icy facial expression hints at a feisty, sexy self-assurance that I’ve always found inappropriately beguiling. She’s probably someone’s grandmother now. Or dead.
Yes, the regulars are brilliant – but for now, as far as they know, this is just another job. As they loped off to the BBC bar afterwards, they were probably just relieved that (unlike the pilot episode) those infernal doors hadn’t clattered, and that Ford didn’t fluff her “nineteen to two” line again (something I rather miss, as I thought it was a genuine addition to her unearthliness rather than an all too prosaic cock-up). There’s a lovely moment in the broadcast episode where Hartnell’s scarf falls off and he pats himself around the body before realising what’s happened and picking it up – all the while playing the scene with the intensity it calls for. It adds quirkiness to his character, and a moment which nowadays would have been stopped whilst the cast dissolved into self-satisfied giggles is allowed to continue, rooting you in reality just as everything is about to go doolally.
But the thing that strikes me most about this episode? It’s alien. Hartnell’s alien, Ford’s alien, as is the music and the eerie camera sweeping. It has a spookiness I don’t generally associ
ate with Doctor Who. Perhaps it’s because I’m aware of the weight these 25 minutes bear on the subsequent 40-odd years, and to newcomers, the whole episode may look as creaky as that camera I earlier lauded.
When Leslie Bates makes his debut as the silhouette seen outside the TARDIS in the cliffhanger and the theme music oozes in, K turns to me and says, “That was quick... I can’t believe how fast paced that was. [Jacqueline Hill] is brilliant – she gave a really modern and layered performance. I wasn’t expecting that.” And nor was I. Hill gave what I assumed would appear to a layperson’s eyes and ears as a slightly mannered, over-enunciated performance in an old TV show – but there she is, reaching out from November 1963 and impressing someone on 1st January, 2009. I wasn’t expecting that.
But then again, I suspect that “I wasn’t expecting that” is precisely what viewers said on 23rd November, 1963... whatever they’d just seen in this very first Doctor Who episode of all, they can’t have been expecting it!
The Cave of Skulls (An Unearthly Child episode two)
R: Fandom would have it that the long discussions between cavemen about the secret of fire, and the particular perks that being a firemaker might give an up-and-coming Stone Age leader, are rather less exciting than the imaginative leaps shown in the very first episode. But what’s smashing is that director Waris Hussein seems to acknowledge this from the very start. The first group scene entails the camera panning around all the caveman as they watch with awe and fervour as Derek Newark (playing Za) attempts to ignite a stick by rubbing it with his hands – until finally, we’re shown a child extra who, displaying some obvious irritation and boredom, turns away from Za as the camera passes by. It could be accidental – but the child seems too foregrounded for that, and it seems to me instead rather a witty comment upon the action of the scene. We’ve moved from a spaceship travelling through the time vortex to the almost-comical contrast of a hairy man grunting with enthusiasm as he caresses a bit of wood.
It’s in the contrast that the episode works, though. Barbara is pleasingly all too eager to accept the insanity of the Doctor Who premise, even before the TARDIS doors are open. It’s rather a lovely character note that the woman who teaches history is more open to the technological impossibility of what’s before her very eyes than the man of science. But as Ian steps out into the Stone Age, actually knocked giddy by the shock of it all, he still finds himself denying what he sees before him and tries his hardest to rationalise it all away. It’s very human, and very real – and not so very different a reaction from the grubby cavemen squatting at the other end of the studio to the bogglingly new invention of fire.
There’s also a lovely bit of comedy in the way that Za keeps insisting upon, as leader’s privilege, his rights to take Hur as his significant other. Hur is presumably the best looker in the Tribe of Gum – she’s certainly the only one of fertile age who has any dialogue. But given – and I mean no disrespect to actress Alethea Charlton – Hur’s blacked-out teeth and grubby face, the constant offer of her as top prize in this leadership struggle looks more and more like something of a poisoned chalice.
Anyway, there we are. First day of the year, and two episodes under my belt. Only another seven hundred plus to go. I wonder how Toby got on?
T: It’s my birthday tomorrow, and although K is packed off to wrap my birthday presents, my hope that I’ll get a Dalek cigarette lighter is dashed as I’m reminded I’m supposed to be giving up smoking. So to take my mind off the fags, I watch Doctor Who: The Difficult Second Album...
I’ve worked on shows where everyone thinks they’re doing a piece of crap, and the finished product is awash with lazy acting and little invention. Well, Derek Newark may have justifiably wondered why the hell he was being made to shout at a stick, but there’s nothing in his performance that suggests this is the case. Nobody involved seems to think they’re above all of this, or that they’re appearing in a disposable piece of ephemera. In fact, I remember that Newark’s Guardian obituary in 1998 received a follow-up article from the great Harold Pinter... that one of our country’s greatest dramatists noted and mourned the passing of this jobbing (albeit excellent) actor made me feel proud that Newark had made a palpable contribution to the genesis of my favourite programme.
And then we get the first “Doctor who?” gag, when the Doctor is a bit befuddled at Ian calling him “Doctor Foreman”. Hartnell wonderfully fits Sydney Newman’s brief by being the tetchy outsider – here he’s all imperious and haughty, looking splendid in that hat and brilliantly patronising Ian. Then there’s his lyrical talk about being able to touch the alien sand, just as evocative as the previous episode’s poetic lament about what it would be like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension. Under scrutiny, this episode isn’t merely a historical – Kal’s world is as alien to us as any mocked-up Mars or Venus, and it’s far more visceral and shocking than any planet inhabited by a silver clad, bewigged alien with a silly name. Doctor Who starts out as a strange (in the proper sense of the word) programme, and this very strangeness keeps us rapt.
Oh, and brilliant, the Doctor bloody smokes... this is taking my mind off kicking the habit how, exactly?
I’ll send my thoughts to Rob, but he’s probably hibernating. Either that, or texting some poor bugger in Australia.
January 2nd
The Forest of Fear (An Unearthly Child episode three)
R: One of the most interesting early discussions we had at BBC Wales, in those talks on the revived series of Doctor Who, was about death. What could we get away with? Could it be shown on screen? Could it even, frankly, be implied off screen? The standards for what was deemed acceptable for family viewing were very different in 2004 than they were in 1963. This was why Russell T Davies’ pilot script, which all of us freelancers were using as a template, was so shy about the Auton killings – all the stage directions clearly indicated that everyone who got blasted down by a shop mannequin did so comfortably off camera.
The Forest of Fear is the episode which sets the tone for all the death and carnage that follows Doctor Who ever onwards – because, let’s face it, for a show which is at least partly designed to appeal to pre-teens, it’s extraordinarily bloodthirsty. (And it’s an interesting side note that although The Sarah Jane Adventures is clearly billed as a Doctor Who spinoff, it’s far more wary about the whole matter, and sometimes almost seems to bend a storyline just to avoid anything fatal befalling even the monster of the week.) So with all of that in mind, this episode is a big tease – it keeps on inviting the audience to second-guess it, to work out whether the series has the balls to kill anyone off. Old Mother takes a knife into the Cave of Skulls, and we imagine she intends to murder the TARDIS crew... but instead, she just wants to cut their bonds and set them free. Then Barbara falls over a dead body in the forest – but it’s okay, it’s just a wild animal. Then Za gets attacked by some savage beast and ends up covered in blood – but again, it’s okay, the blood isn’t his, and the caveman will pull through with just a bit of water sprinkled on him. The Doctor looks bemused throughout the whole sequence, where all his fellow companions stop racing for freedom and instead start dishing out medical advice – it’s as if he too is asking what sort of adventure serial this really is. Are their lives genuinely ever going to be at stake, or is this the sort of kids’ programme which will offer a hint of jeopardy, but in fact be directing its young audience towards safe moral homilies – such as “Stop and help a wounded caveman chasing you with an axe, and he too will become your friend”?
And then, after 20-odd minutes of Anthony Coburn playing around with the idea of death, he gives us a corpse. Even here it’s a tease – Kal pretends to the Tribe of Gum (and therefore to the audience watching) that Old Mother is sitting upright alive and well. And then she topples backward, eyes staring open, dead as a doornail, and at last we understand that this is a programme where life and death really are at stake. These adventures in the TARDIS can kill.
Someone should tell the Doctor and hi
s friends pronto, because they may not realise they’re genuinely under threat. Much has been made of the sequence where the Doctor picks up a rock, presumably to bash Za’s brains in so the travellers can dispense with helping him and continue their flight through the forest – it’s as if the Doctor, at least, has some inkling of what a very dark and dangerous programme they’re all embarking on. But although it’s Ian who stays the Doctor’s hand, only a few minutes before, he was the one who wanted to take advantage of Za being attacked by something with a loud roar and have everyone make their escape to the TARDIS. What I love about these sequences is that there’s really no simple morality on display here: Barbara does the humane thing in wanting to tend Za’s wounds, but isn’t she just risking the lives of her fellows by doing so? Isn’t that act of charity the exact thing that forces the Doctor to contemplate murder? We’re clearly invited to side with Ian as the Voice of Reason – but because Ian’s stance itself is ambiguous (allow a wounded man to die, maybe, but don’t actually have the honesty to kill him yourself), the episode rather brilliantly stops short of trite moralising.
Happy birthday, by the way, Toby. Did you get a Dalek cigarette lighter? Do they even exist? Bloody hell, they’ll be selling Judoon flickknives next.
T: I didn’t get a Dalek lighter, alas. Actually, I’m not even sure they’re allowed to make them any more. The one I had in mind was a big, chunky table lighter that was displayed in a Manchester shop of ephemera and gadgets years ago. I got a fob watch though, suggesting that K wants me to wipe my memory and become somebody else.
Anyway, she joined me again for The Forest of Fear. I was slightly worried that all the goodwill generated from that venerable opening instalment would soon evaporate at the sight of some mucky character actors arguing with each other about fire, but as it turned out...
Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) Page 2
