That’s 800 if you are curious.
What have I done?
Part of the way through, my friend David Davies said I
should write about them, so over the course of the coming months, I’ll give you
thoughts on each of the episodes. I hope to do a season a week. That’s 26 for
the original run, seven for the current show (or maybe eight; it gets a bit odd
at the end of David Tennant’s reign), Paul McGann’s TV movie and some other
ephemera, including the two Peter Cushing movies from the 1960s. And by then, I should have some Peter Capaldi episodes to write about as well (not to mention spin-off shows, audio adventures, New Adventures books...)
Up first, the season that started it all. The early days of
the series have been well documented, including in a film I will tackle on the
other end of this series. The beginning of the show was as fraught as much as the
program – which often was on the edge of collapse – was during its long
history). The BBC was unsure of this new enterprise, but Sidney Newman and
Verity Lambert were dogged, and were rewarded with a hit.
An Unearthly Child/The Tribe of Gum
The debut episode (which was recorded twice) set up the
adventures that would follow, but featured a decidedly different Doctor than
would be seen in later years. William Hartnell, a character actor through and
through, played the character as an enigma: aloof, hard-edged and even a bit
angry when schoolteachers Ian and Barbara burst into the Tardis for the first
time, concerned about Susan, one of their students and the Doctor’s
granddaughter.
And that’s a startling moment. Barbara pushes her way into a
dusty, disused police box and emerges into the gleaming white of the control
room, with an electronic hum behind it all. In a fit of pique, the Doctor sets
them on their travels, and wouldn’t return to 1960s Britain – at least in
normal form – for as long as the pair was on board.
The rest of the series isn’t nearly as memorable: The
quartet get ensnared in a political struggle 100,000 years in the past, and –
in a story beat that will be repeated quite a bit early on – are just trying to
get back to the Tardis and away from the trouble.
The Daleks
I’m writing this just a couple days after the 50th
anniversary of the Daleks’ first appearance on the show. What a Christmas week
that must have been for the young viewers! At the end of the first episode –
after exploring a frightening petrified forest and what seems like an abandoned
city – Barbara is alone, and stalked by something (all we see is the end of the
plunger arm). She gives the first great companion scream and then roll to
credits.
Like the Tribe of Gum, the actual serial is a bit of a slog
that stretches the action out over seven episodes. The Daleks are wobbly and a
bit daft, but you can understand where the terror and fascination came from,
especially when we get a glimpse of what’s inside the travel casing: a clawed
hand reaching from underneath a blanket.
The Edge of Destruction
Doctor Who started with a 13-episode order, which meant
there were two episodes left and really no additional budget. That resulted in
this interesting experiment, where the Tardis is in trouble and the crew
struggle to work out what’s going on. The solution is a bit charming in its
simplicity (a broken spring?) but the episode is best at deepening the
relationship among the characters, and a bit of softening in Hartnell’s character.
Marco Polo
The first of the “lost” series. About a third – 97 to be
exact – of the shows from the six black and white seasons are not known to
exist. At the time, the show was recorded to video tape and then broadcast. The
BBC chose to junk the existing tapes during the ‘60s (short sighted as it
turned out). Plenty of episodes were lost that way. Over the decades, film
copies made for foreign transmission have emerged, which has led to the return
of a number of the missing episodes.
That’s not true of Marco Polo, where all seven of them are
missing. Not all is lost for intrepid Doctor Who fans, however. When the shows
were transmitted, there was a committed legion of fans who, armed with early
home tape machines, recorded the audio. Armed with these tapes, the
one-would-think sheepish BBC compiled audio adventures (with surviving cast
members doing additional narration) of each of the missing stories.
Marco Polo usually gets mentioned in the list of “I wish I
could watch it” series. Imbued with the early success of the series, Marco Polo
featured, at least from the stills, some impressive costumes and sets. This is
a pure historical story, with our quartet interacting with Polo and Kublai Kahn
in 13th century China. It’s certainly a fun listen, and among the
best of the historical series.
The Keys of Marinus
Dalek creator Terry Nation wrote the script for this uneven
adventure, which is notable for taking the Doctor out of action for a couple of
weeks. The show was rehearsed and recorded (in about 75 minutes!) each week,
which put a strain on the lead actor. Occasionally, Hartnell (and later
Troughton) needed a break from the nearly year-round schedule. Often that meant
knocking out the character and having hang out in the corner for a episode. Here,
they just split up on their quest for the keys.
The Aztecs
Early on in the series, they would alternate between future
science fiction adventures and purely historical stories set in the Earth’s
past. Apart from the Daleks, the historical adventures owned the first season,
as Marco Polo was followed by the Aztecs. We have an intriguing story and the
first real examination of what kind of affect the Doctor and his companions
could have on history. Barbara, after putting on a bit of bling in a tomb, is heralded
as the reincarnation of an Aztec god. She wants to put an end to the human
sacrifices, but the Doctor forbids her to do this, intimating that he has tried
to interfere with history in the past and failed.
The Sensorites
And then there’s the Sensorites, which apart from the
mysterious first episode never really goes anywhere, and features alien
creatures with rather preposterous feet. This is a series that has fans
shouting at the TV gods, as it exists fully in the BBC’s archives while the
likes of The Evil of the Daleks does not.
The Reign of Terror
The first season ends with a romp during the French
Revolution, with Hartnell wearing a magnificent hat and coat for much of the
series (he’s in disguise you see) and featuring the first-ever location shooting
of the series. Don’t get too excited though, it’s just the Doctor (and not even
Hartnell) walking along a road. It’s also an example of a series partially in
the archives. In recent years, there has been an effort to animate the missing
episodes of these stories. It’s not a perfect solution, but it is a bit easier
than listening to the audio and watching tele-snaps of the episodes, which was
how they were bootlegged down the years.
Up next: The crew gets tiny, goes to ancient Rome and
tangles twice with the Daleks in the second season.
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