Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child

Spoilers for the episode.

I wasn’t expecting to like An Unearthly Child because I don’t tend to like old TV but  I was hoping to like it.

Doctor Who is one of my many obsessions and liking the classic series gives me loads more episodes to obsess over. Even though I watch enough TV already.

I really liked this episode and it might just be because it’s Doctor Who and I’m finally watching the first episode where it all started. But this first episode has so many qualities that the later series retained even though so many things about the doctor haven’t been figured out yet by the writers. Including his species and his planet. I think at this point the writers had him as a human from the future with advanced technology.

You’ve got a lot of what I think doctor who does well. Finding the strange in the ordinary world everyone’s familiar with. The image of a policeman and a junkyard with the sound of the otherworldly music.

This is why Russel T Davies chose the Autons when he revived the series. He wanted a monster that children see a lot (shop window dummies) and would be frightened of.

In this case police boxes would have been more common back then. So people would be familiar with them and when little kids walked past them they could pretend the Doctor was in there.

So then you’ve got Susan Foreman who looks like an ordinary 15 year old girl. She was originally going to be dressed in sparkly alien clothes but I think her looking like a normal teenage girl is better. (I love listening to the commentaries.)

Having her dress like a human is more interesting. She looks ordinary but she’s not. It shows appearances can be deceiving and all that.

She looks normal but she says strange things and has knowledge her teachers don’t which makes them curious and gets them into trouble. This is another aspect of Doctor Who. Curiosity getting people into trouble.

The Doctor is a big mystery and that’s what draws people in. I like that the first episode is all about the mystery of this old time traveler but nothing gets answered. It feels very doctor who.

Next Doctor Who: The Cave of Skulls

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