Doctor Who: The first four episodes (aka An Unearthly Child)

I've been meaning to do this for years and years; watch Doctor Who, in order, from the start. There's so much of this series I haven't seen.

I have seen these first episodes before, but probably about twenty years ago now. I love the first episode, An Unearthly Child. It sets up the mystery so well. Okay, the production is so early 1960s - a bit stagy, especially delivery of dialogue by the older actors. It's amazing how much the experimental electronic music from the Radiophonic Workshop and experimental camera bleeds still captivates even though we're now in a world of computer generated believable wizardry and safe incidental music. The monochrome footage lends to the eeriness. William Russell, Jacqueline Hill and William Hartnell are all simply marvelous. Hartnell is immediately the Doctor, which is astounding. Carole Ann Ford is hardly the world's best actor, but her weirdness lends a credibility to the character's other-worldliness.

I remember not really liking the next three episodes - The Cave of Skulls, The Forest of Fear and The Firemaker. It was a brave decision doing a cod cave man episode wedged between eerie mystery with a sci-fi premise and straight out sci-fi of the Daleks' first appearance. Now, though, I can see why they did it - it shows how the TARDIS can travel thus making it impossible for Ian and Barbara to keep accusing Susan and the Doctor of lying. The episodes are quite good for character development between the four now travelling in the TARDIS. And it's so obvious there's something going on between Ian and Barbara. The Doctor is so alien, too, and driven by logic and reason. The cave men are more sophisticated than I remembered, but still pretty close to being animals. It's all bogged down in political speeches between two factions of cave men and rather hilarious action scenes that are straight from the stage. The women in it are quite fascinating, and oddly I'm reminded a bit of I, Claudius. I am surprised by how bloody it is, the violence (the Doctor and Ian leading the stoning of the guy they drive away) and quite scary with murders and skeletons and dead animals. Quite heavy going in terms of the politics and a strange socialism Ian teaches them. But then it flips into sheer ridiculousness like the flight scene with everyone running on the spot being hit in the face by plants! And something has struck me now that hadn't struck me before: how brave the BBC was back in 1963 with having a woman (Verity Lambert) as producer and an Asian (Waris Hussein) as director of these first episodes.