Since darkestboy started a thread on the last arc of Doctor Who, I'd figure this would be the proper time to kick off a thread on the first story: "An Unearthly Child."

It's a simple story: teachers Barbara and Ian are concerned about one of their students, the enigmatic Susan Foreman. How concerned? Enough to stake out a junkyard where Susan is supposed to be living. Next thing they know, they're dealing with her bizarre grandfather, brought into a police box that's actually a spaceship (called a TARDIS...Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, don't you know), and get sent into the Stone Age, where they have to deal with cavemen with British accents. All in all, not a bad way to start a legendary series.

I've gone through the four parts on the DVD from the library, as well as the pilot. Haven't hit the studio recording yet, but there's time for me. I can safely say that between the DVDs I've viewed and "The Three Doctors," the First Doctor is a little too upright for my tastes. I will say that William Hartnell does "cranky codger" quite well. In terms of canon, "bigger on the inside" is cover, as is the lack of TARDIS changing, though it isn't eloaborated beyond "huh...how come it's still a police box?" Also, there's no explanation on how the cave folk can speak English, so the whole "telepathic link" must have come later.

ETA: I have to ask...was it standard practice in 1963 for teachers to follow their students home? It just seemed a bit excessive. "Hmm...we can either crack the enigma that is Sarah Foreman, or we could go back to my place and test the springs in the bed."

The subject was first addressed in The Masque of Mandragora (1976), where the Doctor describes the translation facility as "a Time Lord gift" that he shares with Sarah (it is not explicitly associated with the TARDIS at this point).

As for An Unearthly Child, the conventional wisdom has always been that episode one is fantastic while the other three are tedious, and I suspect that this will be even more true for new viewers who are accustomed to the rapid pace of the current series. Still, the caveman fight scene in episode four--basically the first Doctor Who scene to be shot on film--is suitably nasty, and there's a lovely end-of-story cliffhanger leading into The Daleks, which also offers excitement (episodes 1-4) and tedium (eps. 5-7).

Oh, and Susan is just yummy. I've always had a thing for kooky, spacey chicks. It's too bad this aspect of her character was toned down subsequently--it only really turns up again in The Sensorites (which I quite like, though even by Hartnell standards, it is slooooww...)

I've only seen bits of this episode and it's quite delicious. I like the credits here more than the ones in the 1980's.

Plus it's cool that I inspired someone to set a thread for the first ever episode after I set the last ever episode one.

People in Britain didn't have sex in 1963 and certainly not on the BBC! Admittedly, I wasn't born at the time (possibly as a consequence of that).

As for a couple of teachers worrying about the home life of a student - I'd say that's remarkably unlikely. It was an era when an Englishman's home was his castle (as with the dad in The Idiot's Lantern - most people felt that what went on in your own home was nobody else's business - admitedly, that was 10 years earlier). It certainly wouldn't be considered (unlike today) a teacher's responsibility to look out for their pupils' wellbeing (which didn't mean it didn't happen).

They started between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP.

The great thing about the first episode is how it would have wrong-footed people at the time. It seems like a "kitchen sink" Very Special drama about child neglect right up to the point where there's suddenly a big honking console room inside the Police Box.

I also really like the theme of multi-generational humanity. At this point the best guess would have been that the Doctor was a human from the future and his contempt and disdain for the 'primitive' Ian and Barbara is thrown into sharp relief against their kindness and mercy for the barbaric cavemen. It's seeing how they can still respect people so far behind them that makes him realize how poorly he has treated them and sets him on the road to liking and even admiring them despite their limited knowledge and experience.

And, just for laughs, here's a comment the BBC received on it way back then in those primitive pre-interweb tube system days:

Being a New Who noob, I was fascinated by the political overtones of the story- at some point I'm pretty sure one of the TARDIS crew introduced the cavemen to democratic socialism. I'd heard about the "benevolent post-colonialist" psyche of the show, but it was pretty mind-bogglingly explicit. (And I say this as someone who watched "The Long Game". Oh dear.)

I had to share this with you all.

A friend of mine (and one of the founders of our local Who fan group) has embarked on a project to watch every single episode of Doctor Who, in order, and critique them on his new blog. And since he just started, he's only through the first episode, so it's easy to follow along.

Pretty cool. So what's his plan for all the episodes junked by BBC?

I don't know, but I'll ask the next time I see him. I'll wager it's the Restorations though.

So I saw him yesterday and asked. He's planning on using the audios for the lost episodes.

Sweet. The official DW mag in the Uk has been doing the same thing since 1999 and now they are onto the start of Colin Baker's reign.

I just watched this, and once I got used to One's attitude differing from Nine and Ten (my only previous experiences with the Doctor) I really enjoyed it. Barbara and Ian were/are fantastic (Susan's shouting grates a bit). My favorite part was when they were being chased in the jungle and Barbara falls and the Doctor just hops over her and keeps going, while Ian helps her up. Nine and Ten would have helped her up, taken her hand and continued running holding hands (which is sort of what Ian does). I noticed a lot of similarities in Ian and the later Doctors. By the end of the episode, I was starting to get fond of this grouchy old Doctor. It will be fun to see how he becomes the man(alien) I'm used to seeing.

On the dvd there are two versions of the pilot. The first version has some nifty character moments for Susan that were cut for the broadcast. There's one scene where she makes an inkblot print and then draws an octagon around it. After doing so she sits up and gasps as if she's received some sort of insight. Does she do any of this divining stuff later? Have the writers or actors ever commented on what this meant?

There is a photo gallery in the extras which features some stunning shots of Carol Ann Ford, She had a wonderful unusual look. I'm sad to see from the photo's of the commentary session that somewhere in the intervening years she saw fit to have a nose job. Big mistake in my mind.

Like others I really enjoyed the pilot (both versions). And found the cavemen arc a bit of a drag. But I loved the actress who played "old woman". I remember her as Aunt Agatha in Poldark and some bbc Shakespeare of the 70's, a great character actress. I'm frustrated that I cannot find her name via google. (It's Eileen Way. I was just loaned the Doctor Who movies starring Peter Cushing and she made an appearance in the second one- along with the adorable Bernard Cribbins.)

I like to explain the grating behavior of the Doctor and Susan as the effect of some sort of PTSD. They never explain what event caused their separation by "eons and distances unimaginable" from their "people". It makes Susan's hysterical moments bearable. Yeah, I know it's the sixties and she's supposed to be this high-strung girl child but I like my theory better. It also makes the Doctor's apparent coldbloodedness and mistrust understandable if that event was something traumatic, if they're still on the run from something or under threat. I'm looking forward to any revelations the 1st and 2nd Doc.s series might give us.

On to story #2 the Daleks!