Loosetooth’s Tardis Chronicles: Reviewing Doctor Who One Episode at a Time

Doctor Who is not only one of the longest running TV shows of all-time, it's also one of the most iconic. The Tardis can sit easily alongside the Starship Enterprise, the Daleks next to C3PO & R2D2. It’s been consistently broadcast around the world, and since it’s revival back in 2005 has become a staple of Saturday night prime time.

With that said let’s have a look back to where it all began…

An Unearthly Child Part One: An Unearthly Child

London’s Coal Hill School has a new and unusual student, a fifteen-year-old girl with impossible knowledge. History teacher Barbara Wright decides to investigate and discovers that young Susan Foreman apparently lives in a scrapyard. Barbara enlists fellow teacher Ian Chesterton to help solve the mystery.

Ian and Barbara follow Susan home, and into the scrapyard, where they stumble across a police box (it’s worth pointing out that these where pretty common in the 1960’s). Suddenly an old man comes walking towards the police box, and Susan’s voice can be heard from within, but when questioned the old man claims to know nothing, insisting they leave.

Suddenly the doors open and Barbara runs inside believing Susan maybe in danger, and is faced with an impossibly sized room, Ian and the old man enter soon after. Susan and the old man, her grandfather, explain the police box is in fact a time machine.

Convinced he must not leave the teachers in the 20th century with the idea such a thing as time travel is possible, the old man sets the controls for a time where such knowledge would be useless.

The title role of the Doctor fell to veteran actor William Hartnell, famed for playing military men and criminals in films like Brighton Rock and Carry On Sergeant. It’s his role as the Doctor however for which he will be forever remembered. A role he loved, and a role he would later pass to another man (more about that, and the other players, another day).

This inaugural episode sets up a show where anything is possible, where the possibilities are endless. An episode which was unusually reshot before transmission, and was also, unusually, repeated before the transmission of the second instalment. The men and women behind the scenes believed they had something special which should be given every chance to succeed.
…and here we are fifty-four years later and Doctor Who is still on our TV screens.

If you enjoyed this piece please share, follow, upvote etc.