Review of Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child (1963) by Callum B — 08 Oct 2014

The very first Doctor Who serial introduces us to two school teachers who are perplexed by Susan, a teenaged girl who attends their classes. Ian teaches natural sciences, and is amazed at the scarily vast knowledge of Susan, knowledge that seems to far exceed his own. History teacher Barbara on the other hand is struggling with the girl as she doesn't seem to know anything about her subject.

The teachers follow their mysterious student to a junkyard, where they discover a lone police call box. They enter the box only to discover Susan's intimidating grandfather inside a futuristic control room that far exceeds the outer proportions of the box. The box is indeed a multidimensional craft known as a T.A.R.D.I.S, capable of travel through time and space. Susan and her grandfather are aliens living in London in order to study the human race.

Fearful of discovery, Susan's grandfather- who calls himself simply The Doctor- hijacks Ian and Barbara and takes them to Earth's stone age, where a tribe is being torn apart by internal conflict which soon involves our protagonists.

"The Unearthly Child" is a fairly unoriginal piece of writing. A straightforward time travel adventure that does a good job in presenting the main characters but does little else. As a Who serial it's not awful but a bit tedious. Still, you can detect the ambition of the writers already when you put the tale in the context of its times. It's raw, but already transforming into a series that has withstood time for half a century already, forever transforming and reinventing itself. It all started with a mediocre whimper, but soon shone as something uniquely innovative and enduring.