An Unearthly Child

Hello folks! I am the Time Lord known as the Professor! You may know me from such youtube adventures as 'Bicycle' and 'The Trials of Deyrius Three' and 'Thye Pirate Feud' to name but a few. I am from the planet Gallifrey and have had thirteen lives, yet strangely even more faces!

I was roaming the interweb the other day and found all this information about another Time Lord I know nothing about, who ridiculously calls himself 'the Doctor'. Yes, he seems to be stealing my gig! Well I found that there was a whole host of adventures he's done, and they all seemed to start in 1963 - 50 years ago. 'Whacko!' I thought, I will watch them all in order and share my thoughts with you people of the interweb.
In fact, I started a few weeks back now, but only just started 'blogging' I think you call it. At the moment I am at the point of 'Planet of Giants'. This Doctor fellow, who seems to be rather absent minded at times, and his friends have been shrunk to the size of an inch! But I will start the blog where I started watching, a story entitled 'An Unearthly Child'.

Susan, Ian and Barbara at school.

Well, it's in black and white? What's with that? Oh my first adventure was in black and white too, I distinctly remember now! Nevertheless, I was intrigued by an excellent first episode. The character of the Doctor is perhaps quite harsh, makes me look much nicer though! :)

Ian and Barbara are school teachers
 

That fellow Ian Chesterton seems a bright and clever man, and Barbara is certainly the caring sort of teacher students need at school. As for Susan, the Doctor's grand daughter, well, she is the most curious of all. Their TARDIS maybe looks a bit better than mine, to be fair. The contraption above the console looked very effective.

Ian meets the Doctor

Then we came to 'The Cave of Skulls', seemingly a continuation of this adventure. There were in fact three more episodes. I was less intrigued by these episodes I admit. There are some savages doing some strange things, very obsessed with fire. A bit of a battle for leadership over the group ensued. The Doctor and his friends were captured, escaped, captured again when they stopped to help one of these savages. Ian was the man who really wanted to help, very thoughtful of him I think he's a very strong character. But this adventure was starting to drag and that Susan - she wailed and screamed a lot. Hopefully she calms down in the next few adventures.

The premise seemed simply to be that the Doctor and Co. needed to escape and little else. Unfortunately I was unable to access the matrix to view this episode, and had to watch something from the BBC. I am unsure if this was live action or a re-enactment. I saw credits and actors names at the end, so I presume it is the later. Much kudos especially then to William Russel and Jaqueline Hill in this particular adventure. William Hartnell's Doctor was hard to get used to, but well portrayed.
Derek Newark was rather good as Mr Savage Number One too I thought.

The decide to help the guy who is hunting them.

But I have to confess the final three episodes made continuing on with further episodes a bit of a worry for me. It was all a bit silly and unconsequential. But on the strength of the first episode, I resolved to soldier on. Hopefully they meet some of my enemies such as the Ingrins or that evil Peter O'Feild at some point. Would like to see how they cope with those!
I have also resolved to give a rating for each adventure. I'll be gentle and go with an overall 5/10 for 'An Unearthly Child', mostly on the strength of the opening episode.
I understand it is available as one of the Earth DVD boxed sets entitled 'The Beginning'. I encourage ye all to buy it if it so interests you.
Until next time

 

 

The Professor.