Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child

Who Un Earth?

Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child
Airdate: 23rd November -
14th December 1963
BBC 1 - Region 1 DVD
Four Episodes

I hadn’t seen the very first Doctor Who serial since it was repeated, when younger viewers such as myself could finally see these older episodes, as part of a five story collection of 18th Anniversary shows called The Five Faces Of Doctor Who (which kinda cheated since the only footage we’d seen as yet of The Fifth Doctor thus far, repeated as part of this season, was the last 20 or so seconds of Tom Baker’s last story). I remember at the time being extremely intrigued by the opening episode of this one but, finding the following three parts somewhat underwhelming. However, I thought I’d revisit the serial again, this time as a DVD, which is a third, bonus disc included in the US Blu Ray edition of An Adventure In Space And Time (which I reviewed here).

Now, I remember the first episode being extraordinarily well written and suspenseful and, sure enough it is. It tells the story of two teachers and ‘about to be companions’ of The Doctor, who are discussing a mysterious and ‘ahead of her time’ student, Susan Foreman. They want to get a handle on her strangeness and, eventually follow her home, to an old junkyard where they end up meeting Susan’s grandfather, The Doctor (after about ten minutes into the first 25 minute installment), get into an argument with him, get alarmed about the inside of the TARDIS being bigger than the outside and, eventually, by the end of the first episode, being pitched back to the days of the cavemen. The following three episodes, while definitely fulfilling the brief to educate kids, shows them embroiled in a power struggle between two violent and ‘would be’ leaders of a tribe, held captive until they can show one or the other how to make fire. Yeah, episodes 2-4 are still pretty much silly shenanigans but, it’s really not as badly written as I remember.

So much for the plot. The actors and script are all superb (in the first episode), however. We have Carole Ann Ford as Susan, playing her as a teenager (although she was in her twenties when she took this role) and in a much different but striking way to the much younger version of her presented in the two movie adaptations. There’s also Jacqueline Hill as history teacher Barbara Wright, who is mostly the scream and act like a damsel person in this first serial but I seem to remember she got much better things to do in later stories.

Then there’s William Russell as science teacher Ian Chesterton, who I always kind of liked and he’s the ‘young man’ member of the cast, presumably to be the one to do any fighting or heavy lifting as required in each story. He later returned to the role as a cameo in Jodie Whittaker’s last story, The Power Of The Doctor (reviewed here by me) in 2022, marking it as the longest gap for a returning actor playing a character in TV history, I believe.

And, of course, we have William Hartnell, who was finally persuaded to join the show and, after a very short while, rather took to it. It’s a very different version of The Doctor than most kids would perhaps accept easily today and, the same can be said of the show as a whole. The nice thing about Hartnell’s portrayal of the role was that he was stubborn, tetchy, antagonistic and, in the early days, you never knew if he was a hero or a villain so much. For instance, in this story, when a caveman has been badly mauled by a beast and his companions, who have all been trying to escape from the victim, stay to help said caveman recover form his wounds... Ian catches The Doctor about to bash the wounded caveman’s head in with a rock because he’s slowing down their retreat back to the TARDIS.

And when I say it’s a very different show... well, for instance, when the caveman is mauled (off screen) by some kind of animal, his torso is absolutely covered in blood. Pretty sure they wouldn’t get away with that in that time slot these days.

There are a few interesting things about the show so let me just quickly point out the obvious ones but, before I do that, I noticed a big continuity problem this time around which I’d never thought of before and so I’ll maybe point that out here (I’m sure I’m not the first to do so). When Barbara lends Susan a book on the history of the French Revolution, once left on her own she begins to read it and mutters to herself... “That’s not right!” Well, all well and good but, bearing in mind she doesn’t actually visit the French Revolution until a 1964 story, later in the same series, one has to wonder how the heck she would know the history books have got it wrong.

The show starts out with the chilling title sequence and Ron Grainer’s catchy theme tune, rendered all the more unearthly, to match the first episode premise, by the uncredited arrangement by the late, great Delia Derbyshire. It must have put fear into the hearts of children everywhere whenever it started each week and it’s still, pretty much, the most effective arrangement of the theme tune (various modern arrangements don’t stand a chance against it).

In the last part of the final episode of the first serial (each series was put together by a number of Doctor Who serials), the episode bleeds into the next story, where the needle on the TARDIS Geiger counter slips into the danger zone, unnoticed by the crew. This is, of course, because they have just landed on the planet Skaro and are about to come face to face with The Doctor’s most famous and popular villains, The Daleks.

Now, about that. Sidney Newman, the show’s producer, tasked Verity Lambert with bringing a science fiction programme which would educate children and families... his big edict was “no bug eyed monsters”. If Lambert hadn’t rebelled against that idea and ran with The Daleks as the follow up story, I believe Doctor Who would not have survived it’s first season. They had some ratings issues for sure. In addition to some of Britain being hit by a power cut the night the first episode aired, it was also the day after the assassination of President John F Kennedy, with news programmes and national trauma (to an extent) overshadowing proceedings. The BBC took the opportunity to repeat the episode again before the second one aired, which picked them up a fair few more viewers but, honestly, the rating were not what they would have liked (although, compared to ratings today for a TV show, the viewer numbers would seem a smash success). Doctor Who was, though, a smash success... but only because Lambert went ahead and ran with a science fiction story featuring the mechanistic, exo-skeletoned Daleks. She realised the gambit had paid off over the next few days when kids in playgrounds and on buses were stretching their arms out and yelling “Exterminate”. Plans were quickly put in place for the Daleks to return the following year and there was also some development considered for a spin-off Dalek television series... which didn’t quite happen but, with various bits of strange news coming out of new co-owners Disney just recently, this still might occur.

And that’s me pretty much done on the opening story. A lot of the mythos surrounding the character of The Doctor is established in these first few episodes... more than you might think. Names and places are not revealed as yet but various pieces of lore built on and expanded over the years have certainly been thought about due to the open ended nature of some of the things said. If you’re a fan of the show and you’ve never seen it before, Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child, is well worth a look... especially the first episode, which sets things in motion. It’s not all that dated and surprisingly well written... maybe give it a go sometime.

The Omega Man

He Am Legend

The Omega Man
1971 USA
Directed by Boris Sagal
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Region B

As far as I can make out there have been, to date, four movie versions of Richard Matheson’s classic sci-fi/horror novel I Am Legend. The Last Man on Earth from 1964 (starring Vincent Price and reviewed here), The Omega Man (the subject of this review), I Am Legend (starring Will Smith) from 2007 and a straight to home video release, also from 2007, called I Am Omega. Of the four, I still haven’t got around to watching that last yet but I was gifted with a copy almost two years ago and it’s gaining traction and moving to the top of my “to watch” pile finally, you’ll be glad to know. Hoping to check that one out before the end of the year.

Matheson was reported to be unhappy with the Vincent Price version of his book but I’d have to say that, of the film adaptations I’ve seen of it, that first version is the one that’s closest to the novel. In the book the main protagonist is the sole survivor, kind of, of a virus that wipes out the world and either kills the rest of the population or turns them into vampires. And I mean vampires... proper blood sucking, daylight fearing vampires. The main protagonist spends most of his time hunting them out by day, banging stakes through their hearts and holing up at night.

The Price movie follows this pretty well, as far as I can remember, but if The Last Man On Earth is a version of I Am Legend that Matheson wasn’t happy with, I can’t even imagine what he made of The Omega Man. It’s here that I should go on record saying that, although I love all three movie versions of the book I’ve seen, The Omega Man is by far my favourite of them because it’s just plain, outright fun.

Starting off with Neville, the main protagonist played by Charlton Heston, riding around the city in the far future of... um... 1977, we hear Max Steiner’s theme from A Summer’s Place on the 8 track he puts in the car stereo... before he stops and spots something moving in one of the windows. He immediately stands up in his car, pulls a machine gun from the passenger seat, and opens fire at the window before driving off into the opening credits, with Ron Grainer’s haunting main titles playing over shots of him driving around the deserted city.

Charlton Heston was fast becoming the “go to” man for this kind of film which belongs as part of a collective pre-Star Wars science fiction strike, launched at cinema directly from Hollywood in the late sixties up to the mid-seventies. These films commonly projected cynical and depressing dystopian futures which were popular in their gritty depiction of a world that spiralled off into decay, or in this case, is the inherited fall out from an apocalyptic virus. Heston had recently proven himself suited to this kind of movie with his appearances in Planet Of The Apes and Beneath The Planet Of The Apes and would do so again, after this, with his turn as the main protagonist in Edward G. Robinson’s final film, Soylent Green. Actors such as Yul Brinner, James Caan and a various others were also getting good roles in similarly grim science fiction movies such as Westworld, The Ultimate Warrior, Rollerball, Silent Running and Logan’s Run (which was about the last of the cycle before Star Wars hit and changed the course of on-screen science-fiction forever).

The Omega Man firmly belongs in this camp and, as you may expect, Heston proves himself a pretty good actor as he slowly starts going mad and talking to himself before coming across a bunch of survivors who also have the plague... teaming up with them to find the cure made from in his own blood.

The film finishes both cynically and hopefully with a bittersweet conclusion that more or less mirrors the book without actually fully grasping the concept that the creatures Neville has been hunting for his own survival are actually more afraid of him than he is of them. To them he has become a legend, hence the title of the original novel.

The movie tries to do the novel in very basic structure, and does attempt to address that issue... but really only pays it lip service. The vampires have been replaced by light sensitive, virus infected mutants and any references to vampiric myth has been unequivocally vanquished from the movie. But still, it’s got guns, a babe (in Rosalind Cash) and some “right on” hippy values thrown in as a metaphor created by the fate that has befallen the human race. Like I said, it may not be accurate to the book but it is fun...

It’s also kinda groovy with Ron Grainers score really knocking it out of the park and clear across the world. Even from the opening titles you know this score is going to be special. Grainer was mostly known for TV work, writing familiar themes such as the opening titles music of The Prisoner and, as realised by Delia Derbyshire, the main signature theme for Doctor Who. But he did do a few movies and was known for bringing in some unusual instruments from his personal collection to go in certain scores, like the water bell on this score. The music in this is absolutely perfect and I don’t know why Grainer didn’t get a hell of a lot of other big Hollywood movie gigs off the back of this. I can’t believe it took something like 30 years just to get a limited edition CD of this released (now in it’s remastered and corrected second incarnation from the Film Score Monthly label). Some of the action cues sound a little like his music for The Prisoner but I think this should maybe just be attributed to his style and, frankly, I think this is one of the best scores written for a movie. Why they didn’t make a big thing of this one I’ll never know.

The action is fast and furious in places and the performances are all fine, especially Heston’s man living with himself and Anthony Zerbe as the head of “the family” of mutants, although his preachy, pseudo-religioso performance does start to grate a bit towards the end. There’s a strong Christ analogy at the finish which is not exactly subtle and that fits right in with the general zeitgeist of the time, methinks. Whether you like it or not, I think I’d have to peg The Omega Man as a sci-fi classic... a film that I’m likely to travel back to every few years (not like the other versions I’ve seen). Matheson probably wasn’t best pleased with this version, which does tend to subvert his original narrative into other concerns of the screenwriters, but if you can pull yourself away from the template of the original (and excellent) novel then I think, if you’re a fan of science fiction, you may find The Omega Man worth taking a good, long look at.

The Kissogram and the Time Lord

Doctor Who: The Eleventh Hour

Airdate: April 3rd 2010. UK. BBC1

So... eleventh Doctor... Eleventh Hour and... yeah, this opening episode is also extended to an hour in length.

Watched this when it was aired (switched my mobile phone off and then forgot to switch it back on until this morning).

Not sure how I feel about this. I have a great respect for Steven Moffat’s writing in Doctor Who and he did some nice stuff in this one. The episode was certainly not a terrible episode... that’s for sure. But it wasn’t exactly a great episode either. It did drag in places... which would be okay... although it sent my mother to sleep so that’s not necessarily a good thing.

I think my problem with it was that all of the character stuff and the chemistry between the new Doctor and his new companion Amelia Pond was really great. Loved the fact that he meets his companion as a little girl and then comes back “in five minutes” which lasts fourteen years for her. All that was good... as were all the characters in this episode. I think where the episode felt draggy... and why I might myself have lopped a good ten minutes or so off the running time... was the actual “let’s defeat an alien invasion” stuff. Tired old running around and saving the planet story. Possibly to give the new guy room to breathe? I don’t know. Bit humdrum I thought.

Then there were the new prophecy references about the Doctor having caused the “crack in time” and tearing bits of the universe asunder which seem to point to being addressed at a later point in the series. Yeah, ok. That kind of stuff worked well with the previous four seasons and the specials but... it’s getting a little tired now. I’m kind of hoping that all that stuff is just Steven Moffat playing with the formula and living up to the audiences expectations so that he can somehow do an “about face”on it later on and ditch it all and surprise us. Probably he won’t do that... but you never know.

Matt Smith's Doctor is... okay so far. Not terrible and it’s not fair to pass judgement yet. The only Doctor I’ve never really liked was Colin Baker. Don’t know why and it certainly wasn’t his fault. Matt Smith seems to be committed to the role and that’s always a good thing.

Karen Gillan, however, is really great. What a fantastic new companion he’s picked up! She’s better than the Doctor. That red hair is so good to give the frame a vibrant shot of colour too. Bit shame they toned her down to “kissogram girl” when they had obvious references to internet pornography later on in the episode. Maybe kissogram girl was supposed to be a euphamism (it’s hinted that aside from her police uniform she also does nurse, french maid and nun)... I’d like to think so. It would be nice for the Doctor to have a sex worker as a companion and give people in that kind of profession the respect they deserve in a popular TV show. Probably won’t happen though.

There were some nice visual references to previous episodes of the show. Good to see a brief glimpse of a Sea Devil again!

There were some nice surprises. The new TARDIS interior works better in the context of the show with a camera moving about it than in the dreadful “still” photographs that were released of it previously. Nice colours. Wish there were more of the old circles in there... hope this doesn’t mean we’ve lost those for good.

The new logo is good (frankly anything would have been an improvement on that last one, which was the worst one in the show’s long history) and the title sequence... well that might take a little more getting used to.

There were some nasty surprises also. What were they thinking. It’s okay to rearrange Ron Grainers original theme... it’s really hard to do that any harm if treated sensitively. Now I loved the music for this episode but that main theme variant was awful! They managed to totally destroy it! Would humbly suggest they go for a less “augmented” arrangement of that real soon. This is not good and really upset me!

Ok... so all I can do is wait and see what the next episode brings. Timewise it looks like they’re going to continue to do some interesting things with the way the Doctor and his new companion interact. Looking forward to it.