Doctor Who: Season 1 (1963-64)

1.1 An Unearthly Child

reviewed April 11, 2013

76 Totter’s Lane, a junkyard. An inauspicious start to what is the longest-running and certainly one of the greatest science-fiction series ever produced. But this story is utterly, utterly brilliant.

   From that first moment where a policeman walks around the outside of the junkyard unaware of the secrets contained within this series has you hooked. Then there’s more and more mysteries and we become just as curious about the strange Susan as Ian and Barbara are. She’s so strange and wonderfully alien, but you feel a little sorry for her because she’s so sincere in her lack of knowledge. The book on the French Revolution as she points out what the authors got wrong is an immensely clever way to introduce her.

   But it’s the perspectives of her curious teachers that are the most interesting here. Ian is the logical and reasonable one, refusing to believe what he sees in front of him, while Barbara is empathetic and senstive, putting the best interests of others above her own. These are some of the most fully rounded characters ever to appear in the series. Their curiosity about Susan gets the better of them and they enter the junkyard.

   This first episode is so wonderfully atmospheric, it becomes so, so real, with an evocative score, particularly as they investigate the junkyard. However, it is the Doctor’s appearance here that it is quite different from his later incarnations.

   Because of the way in which the episodes are ordered on the DVD, I found myself watching the pilot episode without realising it. However, this does bring up many interesting ideas, particularly in what was changed. In the original pilot, the Doctor is rude, belligerent and very annoying. He’s gruff and angry for no readily apparent reason. However, the Doctor of the broadcast episode is still just as unhelpful but he is also more charming, gently ignoring them and being immensely evasive which is much, much more interesting. In the pilot, the Doctor was just an angry old man; in the actual episode, he’s an alien, which is fitting, considering what comes next.

   Barbra manages to push her way into the police box and it’s bigger on the inside. Knowing what we do now, the moment does lose a little of its power but it’s still utterly breathtaking. Imagine what that would have been like to see for the first time? It would be spectacular.

   However, it’s clear something’s wrong. The Doctor almost constant giggling is immensely unnerving and he debates with Susan seemingly of the merits to allowing the Coal Hill School educators to survive (by the way, Susan states that she loves 20^th century Earth. Does this mean that she is the reason the Doctor fell in love with the planet in the first place? If so, that is immensely awesome).

   However, as the Doctor sets the TARDIS in motion (first ever use of the VworpVworp!) and we go to the time of the cavemen, the story becomes immediately less interesting. That isn’t to say that it becomes boring because it rarely is. Okay, it’s a little slow but there’s such a lovely attention to detail on display here. The sound of the bird calls and the rushing of the wind create an effectively menacing mood which will rarely be seen again. There’s a sense of complete and utter dread that the story settles into, mainly because of the fact that everyone seem to be always screaming. While later it will become almost a cliché, here it is utterly heartfelt because they really panic and freak-out (notable examples of this include Susan panicking after she thinks the Doctor has been kidnapped and Barbara in the forest).

   The Doctor even seems to take note of the horror of their situation, stating that he’s sorry which will hardly ever happen in future stories and he seems to care about Ian and the others, stating that “fear makes companions of all of us”. He is also immensely clever as when he convinces Cal to reveal that he was the murderer, but is not adverse to violence, possibly going to kill Zar and actively encouraging the cavemen to stone Cal. It is very difficult to care for the plight of the cavemen, but unlike later stories, it doesn’t really seem necessary (although, the exciting fight between Cal and Zar would challenge this, with its wonderful flickering lighting, but the focus is always on the TARDIS travellers). Here, our priorities lie with the Doctor and his companions, allowing for their immensely tense run back to the TARDIS at the conclusion of the story.

   Doctor Who was rarely this personal and character driven again. It is the perfect story to get to know these characters and allow them to form a bond. It’s the beginning. Aptly it’s just like the series, it’s mysterious and terrifying and clever and absolutely, wonderfully hopeful. It’s the beginning of a legend.

1.2 The Daleks

reviewed April 14th 2013

For such a long story made almost 50 years ago, The Daleks is quite possibly one of the most exciting and interesting of Doctor Whostories. It is filled with wonderfully effective and imaginative ideas, such as the petrified jungle (which allows for some great visuals and is a great way to start the story). The characterisation is often wonderful with everyone getting something interesting to do, particularly the Doctor whose selfishness almost gets everyone killed, allowing for some intense dramatic moments. Barbra is also allowed some lovely moments, especially when she uses her teacher skills to coax Susan or falling for Ganatus (and who can blame her. He’s gorgeous!). She also gets probably one of the most justly famous shots in all of Doctor Who, namely that cliffhanger from episode one as she is menaced by the as yet unseen Dalek. It’s her reaction to it that sells the moment; her scream of pure terror is immensely effective. In fact, there’s some scary about the fear of the companions as Susan’s terror upon being forced to go out into the petrified jungle is palpable. Probably why it’s so effective is that the Doctor and his companions are weakened for the first two episodes, making them desperate and afraid and it works wonderfully. For the story that introduces the single most iconic monster of Doctor Who (and the main reason for it’s initial success if nothing else), the Daleks here are absolutely terrifying. While later stories will weaken them, make them almost a joke, here they are frightening. They are as the Doctor puts it doing it because of hate; a “dislike of the unlike”. What makes the Daleks so scary is that you can’t reason with them, because they’ll kill you in an instant. As such, the most exciting moments come as the Doctor and his companions struggle against them (particularly their battle with the lone Dalek in their cell which is so exhilarating). However, even the Thals, who are later one of the most boring races in existence (looking at you Planet Of The Daleks), are wonderfully rounded characters here. There is a real sense that the war has traumatised them so that the moral dilemma they face late in the story over what is more important; “to fight and to live, or to die without fighting?” becomes a real issue for them to face. Also, the aforementioned Ganatus is wonderfully catty and bitchy, especially in his first scene which aligned me to him immediatley. Also, the line where he laments the sacrifices they have had to make (“if only there’d been some other way…”) is almost identical to the character of the Fifth Doctor. Interesting. However, not all the Thals are as... interesting, shall we say, especially Ganatus’ brother who is deeply, deeply annoying, putting the life of Ian at great risk. However, despite this, his death scene is a little moving. To me, what makes this story so successful is in the design. The Daleks are brilliant, as is the model city, but it is the sound design here that is what makes the story such a joy. There’s the almost heartbeat-like sound to the main area of the Daleks and the immensely creepy music over the moment when Ian realises that the Daleks still have the fluid link, meaning that it is still in the city. There’s the howling wind as Susan runs from the Thal and when he reveals himself out of nowhere, there’s another brilliant music cue. There’s the swirling whirlpool of a swamp that seems to scream out in terror. Add to this, some exciting Dalek action, the Doctor moralising about his way of life and a hilarious Billy fluff (“I think they’re anti-radition gloves. Drugs.”) and you have a wonderfully enjoyable, engrossing and interesting adventure serial that took the public imagination by storm. And no wonder. It’s utterly brilliant.

1.3 The Edge Of Destruction

reviewed April 16th 2013

The Edge Of Destruction is a story that usually gets a bad rap from Doctor Who fans, obviously frustrated at the weak conclusion. I don’t subscribe to this theory one little bit. This story is a pleasure, jam-packed with some wonderfully memorable moments. Here, Susan is truly alien, terrifying as she tries to stab Ian with the knife which is one of the scariest moments within the series. But, that’s a common theme in this story. Characters acting out of character. Susan grabs a knife, Ian tries to kill the Doctor and the Doctor starts accusing his travelling companions. However, as with many of the stories of this period, it is Barbara that truly shines. She, not the Doctor, is the one who works out the problem and the clues that the Ship has been giving them all and she provides one of the story’s best moments. The Doctor accuses Ian and Barbra of sabotaging his Ship. She understandably takes offence, stating “how dare you?” and referencing all of their previous adventures, focussing on how Ian and Barbara have been the ones who have to get the Doctor out of the scrapes that he puts them in, often because of his own selfishness. It’s such a wonderful moment because the tension between them has built so steadily over the last 11 episodes that it truly feels like the moment that they’d all been waiting for. At the end of the scene, you sort of want to applaud Barbara for standing up to the Doctor. It’s brilliant. Another of this story’s standout moments is when the Doctor gives his wonderful soliloquy. He’s so excited and so ecstatic. It’s joyous but it’s also the moment which most modern Doctor Who viewers start to recognise that this is the Doctor. In these stories, he’s been mean, mischievous and downright dangerous but here he’s a little bit immature. He is becoming the Doctor and he will get there. Eventually. Then, after the cause of the problem (the admittedly crappy Fast Return Switch), we get the stories real conclusion. Because ultimately this story isn’t about the ‘invasion’ of the TARDIS, it’s about the relationships between the individuals within the Ship. And finally after 12 episodes of feeling like these were people unwittingly thrown together, they start to feel like a family. With some standout moments and with such a change in the relationship between the characters (love the sort of stories that are more character driven), this has always been a joy for me. It’s never boring, always exciting and occasionally quite frightening. This is brilliant Doctor Who let down by one bad moment. Surely that’s not enough to forget this one? Is it?

1.4 Marco Polo

1.5 The Keys Of Marinus

reviewed 27th August 2013

As I write this, I am suffering from a terrible cold. After 120 stories, I’ve finally got sick. This is the perfect time to marathon, to lounge out and relax as you attempt to make yourself better by doing nothing at all. The best sort of shows to watch during this time are exciting and interesting (actually, you could say that about most of the time you watch something). Unfortunately, The Keys Of Marinus is dull and boring. It’s probably the series’ first really bad story because it’s akin to watching paint dry. It’s weird, though, because if you were to read a synopsis of this, it would sound fantastic. The Doctor and his companions have to find the keys to a machine in a series of exciting locations, such as a Screaming Jungle and a place where everyone’s high on drugs and controlled by brains in jars. What makes it onto the screen is incredibly boring and cheap. It’s not just the fault of the production team, who are clearly doing the best they can, trying to deal with Terry Nation’s frankly awful scripts, filled with clichés and forcing Susan to scream every two seconds. It also feels quite a bit like a Doctor-less story, as he disappears for two episodes. This segment of the story thus acts as a showcase for the companions, and they are seen to be able to carry the story, but cannot lift it out of being completely boring. And when it’s not being boring, it’s being completely stupid with more logic flaws than you can point a stick at (why don’t they just steal their things off the Tracker beforehand? Why has Arbitan hidden the segments of the key in such dangerous situations? And anything to do with the Voord makes no sense, although, I must admit, the tripping one in the last part is hilarious) Throughout the story, I began to drift off slightly and lose track of the story. This is when you know a story has problems, when you have trouble keeping up, not because of its complexity, but because it’s so simple, so illogical that every attempt to understand it dies slowly and painfully within your head. So, let us pause for a moment to make a toast to The Keys Of Marinus. The first boring Doctor Who story. And it’s not the last either.

1.6 The Aztecs

reviewed 30th August 2013

In all honesty, this is really quite a sad story, enough to make me close to tears. This might be because it relies so heavily on Barbra, one of my absolute favourite companions (whom I affectionally refer to as Babs). Here, she is pushed to a point we haven’t really seen her before, desperately raging against the tides of time. At one point, she rages against Tlotoxl and you can just tell that she knows she’s going to fail. And then there’s the wonderfully written moment when Ian tells Barbra that Autloc (and his representation of kindness, sympathy and culture, all the good parts of Aztec civilisation) is not the rule, but the exception. It’s devastating, because we realise it at almost the same time as she does. However, the Doctor knew all of this, as he tells her early on; “you can’t change history, not one line.” Although she manages to prove him wrong a little bit with Autloc (something which he acknowledges in another poignant scene), she has not changed the society, meaning that it will still be destroyed. And perhaps that’s the crux of why this story’s quite a sad experience. We know that if Bab’s fails, then the entirety of the Aztec civilisation will be destroyed (as per Cortez’s arrival), but we also know that she is doomed to fail. She’s got the weight of a society’s survival on her shoulders and yet still she remains strong. God, I love this companion. She’s not the only one displaying remarkable strength. Here, the Doctor loses Cameca, the woman he has grown to care for, but still remains strong for Babs. He too has learnt a valuable lesson about compassion (which was clearly sorely lacking in earlier stories) and this feels like a huge step in his journey to becoming the character we all know and love so many years later. The rest of the cast also shines (particularly the aforementioned Autloc in a sensitive role and Tlotoxl who has good reasons for his action) and many of the fight scenes are extremely dynamic (compare and contrast this with The Keys To Marinus and it’s hard to believe they were made within a short time of one another). However, much of the story’s success can be accredited to the writing. It’s often incredibly beautiful and deep without ever seeming needlessly flowery. Sometimes I get annoyed because people say that the series found emotion with its newest incarnation. Clearly they haven’t watched any of the regeneration or goodbye sequences or this story which proves that even in its very first season, Doctor Who had the ability to be immensely moving.

1.7 The Sensorites

reviewed 11th September 2013

I was immensely nervous about starting this story because its reputation preceded it. I’d heard that it was dull and boring and slow. I thus entered The Sensorites with low expectations. However, throughout the story, I found my expectations constantly reversed. I was expecting a boring story, what I got was one that was unusually endearing. On the surface, it appears to be about the Sensorites prejudices against the humans. However, as the story goes on, it is revealed that the humans are the ones poisoning the water supply, the Sensorites don’t hate the human race, but can recognise that there are bad individuals within each of their races. This nuanced view of society is welcome, especially in a series where whole races are genuinely portrayed as evil (the Daleks, the Cybermen, Axos) or the only members of the race we see are evil (the Slitheen). There are rare examples of when alien races are nuanced (the Silurians, the Ice Warriors, the Sontarans, all of which are as a result of sequels to their first story) but they are few and far between, and so the incredible moral depth to this story is something to be praised. Another aspect that makes The Sensorites such an endearing story is the fact that it highlights the changes between the TARDIS crew. Initially beginning as quite a hostile relationship between the characters, the softening of their friendship has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of this season, and provided some of its most memorable moments. This story has a number of these. There’s the wonderful opening scene where the four reflect on their recent adventures. But the key relationship in this story is between Susan and the Doctor. By this stage, it’s clear that she wants to settle down, preferably on their home planet (which gets a lovely description in this story), and here she rebels against the Doctor for the first time. The Doctor blames this on the Sensorites but it’s clearly not their fault. There’s a distance growing between the two characters, neatly foreshadowing her departure in three stories time. But, the entire story highlights the closeness that has developed between all of the TARDIS crew. They’re almost constantly saving and looking out for one another, a world away from their desperation earlier in the series. This friendship also seems to have had an effect on the Doctor because, for the very first time, he does something not because he has to or is curious, but because it’s the right thing. This huge moment just demonstrates the impact that the two schoolteachers have had on him, cementing this crew as one of the strongest ever to appear in the series. However, this story is far, far from perfect. Some things don’t make sense, one of the most notable being how thick the Doctor looks when he can’t work out what’s causing the Sensorites’ sickness when Ian’s choking to death because he drank the water which no-one else has heard. C’mon, it’s not that hard! But, there are some really good scary moments. The cliffhanger to the first episode is brilliant and there’s a jump out of your skin moment in the final episode when an arm appears out of the darkness and grabs Ian. However, these scares are cosmetic and not what this story should be remembered for. It should be remembered becauseof its moral depth and importance in terms of character development, highlighting why the very first TARDIS crew are so endearing.

1.8 The Reign Of Terror

reviewed 14th September 2013

If this marathon has taught me anything, it’s this; I think I prefer the classic series to the new. This could just be because I’ve seen more of it (because there is more of it) or because at the time of writing, I have just finished Fear Her. As with watching any story after something that horrid, comparisons were inevitable. One of the things I find most difficult about the new series is the fact that the villains are rarely three-dimensional, they rarely have interesting and realistic motives. They’re just a monster to be fought (arguably this changes with the Moffat era, but that’s a controversial opinion for another time). And in every story, a monster must be present to be fought, to be defeated. This doesn’t happen in the classic series. In the best stories, we find characters that have rounded motives and in some cases there aren’t any monsters, because sometimes reality and the tide of history is scarier than any monster. And that’s why I like The Reign Of Terror. There is no monster. It’s a pure historical, where the Doctor and companions find themselves in a nasty historical situation (in this case, the French Revolution close to the fall of Robespierre) and must fight against the tide of time. In doing so, they meet friends and make enemies, all without the need for a monster. I have something of a soft-spot for this sub-genre (Marco Polo and The Aztecs are awesome as is The Romans) because they feel more morally ambiguous as a story. The previous story surprised me with the openness and depth it displayed to the Sensorite race, something which I wasn’t expecting, but this story takes it one step further. And as usual the best bit is given to my dearest Babs. She develops a connection with Leon, (seemingly) a revolutionary, and as the story develops, she grows more concerned for him (she regularly asks the other Revolutionaries). Leon is revealed to be a traitor to their cause, so the person that saved Babs and Susan, Jules, kills him, as witnessed by Ian. Later, they tell her what happened. In a brilliant, perfect scene, Barbra lets them have it. She tells them that he was not a bad person, his values were just not what they stood for. He was standing up for his own beliefs. His entire character is flipped, as are our own prejudices. And, if anything, this scene is even more relevant now. In this age, the ‘enemies’ are demonised. Muslims did one bad thing so all Muslims are bad, and we are good. This scene effectively says that this prejudice is based in fantasy and that our lives and the situations we found ourselves in are more complex than we can understand. In some ways, it shows the development in Barbra’s character, because this is basically what the Doctor says during The Aztecs, except she’s taken it in a more interesting and positive way. I was shocked by the ambitiousness of this scene. If a story were to show that a conflict has more depth than the simple good/evil division, it would be demonised. That’s why Doctor Who matters, for scenes like this, where the way in which society works is critiqued and we are forced to think about the situation, giving it an emotional power long after it has finished. But then this scene wouldn’t have worked quite so well if what had been around it hadn’t been so brilliant. What makes Reign work is that it’s incredibly exciting and interesting as we try to deduce who’s on whose side, with the final revelation being so clever and left of field, but also being incredibly obvious. That’s not to say that this doesn’t have its downfalls. Susan does nothing but complain and you regularly want to slap her and tell her to get over it (especially when she refuses to run away despite the fact that the only other option is to be guillotined). She has really outgrown her usefulness and needs to go soon. There’s a couple of issues with how long it takes to get to certain places (it seems to take ages for the Doctor, but Babs, Ian and Susan get there in less than a day, if the editing is right) which can make it a little confusing occasionally. A stranger problem is the fact that the animated episodes (of which I am extremely thankful for) are edited extremely strangely. There are several cuts in less than a minute and the camera moves far too much which, when watched directly after the studio-bound original recording, is incredibly jarring. However, you do get used to this eventually, so it’s not that big of a problem, although, I would suggest that if this was the chosen method for animating future missing episodes (please God), a discussion about editing and pacing would be necessary. However, none of these aspects detract from what is an incredibly interesting and awesome story, with thought-provoking moral depth. As the end of the first season, it works extremely well as we realise just what place each of the members plays in the TARDIS crew and why they work together so well. I think I prefer the classic series, because its more provoking, less afraid to break the boundaries, to challenge our thinking. And that is why the series matters. And yet, there is much work still to do.  But as the Doctor intimates, we viewers will continue to learn, “Our destiny is in the stars, so let’s go search for it.”