Doctor
Who: An Unearthly Child Story No.
1
Directed By Waris Hussein
“I feel frightened, as if we were about to interfere in
something that was best left alone…”

2013 is the 50th
Anniversary of Doctor Who, the worlds longest running science fiction
television series, so it seemed like a good a time as any to pound out some Doctor
Who DVD reviews. And where better to
start than the very beginning, Story No. 1, An Unearthly Child.
Coal Hill School teachers
Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) have a
mystery on their hands: a strange transfer student, Susan Foreman (Carole Ann
Ford) seems to be far too intelligent for her age, knowing too much about
science and history, and possibly even the future. The mystery deepens when the teachers follow Susan home one night
only to find a deserted junk-yard, a police box, and Susan’s grandfather, an
odd old man calling himself The Doctor (William Hartnell). Before the night is over, Ian and Barbara
will find themselves hurtling through time and space, to the beginnings of
mankind, to the end of the universe and beyond…
Despite its extremely
strong first episode, the remainder of the story set on prehistoric Earth seems
quite pedestrian by comparison, nevertheless it remains one of my top ten
favourite Doctor Who stories, perhaps getting extra points for being “the
original you might say.”
The beauty of Doctor Who
from its inception has always been the brilliance of its main story telling
device, the TARDIS (Time And Relative Dimension In Space), the greatest ship in
the universe, capable of travelling anywhere in time and space. This of course opens up story possibilities,
and may very well be one of the main reasons for the show’s longevity. When all of time and space is your canvas,
there are no limits to the stories that can be told.
An Unearthly Child was
released for the first time on DVD in 2006 as part of The Beginnings Box
Set which also included Story No. 2: The
Daleks, and Story No. 3: The Edge of
Destruction.
The box set also contains a good deal of extras including but not
limited to audio commentaries, the
original unaired “pilot”, a 30-minute condensed version of the lost 7 part
story Marco Polo, and the absolutely
fantastic 54-minute documentary Doctor Who: Origins. The doc is
a no holds barred look at the series from its creation by Canadian Sydney
Newman, and the constant battles he had with the BBC old guard over budget, and
pretty much everything else. It makes
one wonder how the show ever got off the ground considering just how much the
stuffy BBC brass at the time were at best unsupportive of the programme, at
worst actively sabotaging the production of the show at every turn.
The video quality is
actually quite good thanks to the re-mastering work done by the Doctor Who Restoration Team, in
fact it probably looks better than it did in November 1963 when it was first
broadcast. The audio is re-mastered to
Dolby Digital 2.0 and sounds awesome considering the source material.
A decent story, and a
wealth of extras Doctor Who: An Unearthly
Child gets 3.5 crotchety old Time Lords out of 5.
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