Since my last post, when I announced that I would be looking at some of the things which didn't quite go to plan, or just don't make much sense, I decided to rename the series - see above (sorry Homer).
I also had a thought about boom mike shadows, which other blogs catalogue in painstaking detail, and decided not to bother mentioning them at all. An actual boom mike in shot is another matter, however.
Our first story is, of course, that which is generally titled An Unearthly Child. I did a whole post a couple of years ago on the names of the stories up to and including The Gunfighters, so I won't be revisiting that debate again here.
William Hartnell is generally on good form here, but there is one instance when he and William Russell talk over each other when standing outside the TARDIS in the junkyard.
Just why did the TARDIS assume the form of a Police Call Box? It must have happened on this landing, as Susan and the Doctor are surprised and upset when they see that it hasn't changed its shape when it lands in the prehistoric landscape. Police boxes were not made of wood - only the doors were, the rest was concrete - yet Ian doesn't comment on this. They were already starting to go out of use and were being dismantled by 1963, being replaced with radios in cars.
Ian rightly remarks on it being strange that such a box might be located in a junkyard. There is an explanation for this. The Chameleon Circuit (as it will later be called) is on its last legs, evidenced by it breaking down altogether when the ship next moves, so hasn't quite got things right for the time period or the location.
Once inside the ship, Ian states that the Doctor closed the doors: "He closed the doors from over there. I saw him." - when in fact it was Susan who did this, as the Doctor had instructed her to do: "Close the door, Susan".
When Ian goes to operate the control there is a slight pause before the sound effect kicks in, and you can just about hear someone off camera giving him his cue.
When the TARDIS dematerialises we see an aerial shot of London (presumably Shoreditch) which implies that the ship lifts off vertically - which it doesn't do at this stage. The dematerialisation makes the Doctor and Susan ill, and is enough to knock Ian and Barbara unconscious. The lights dim, and the dematerialisation sound is heard within the ship. Whilst the noise might be heard again in the TARDIS on a couple of other occasions (such as the end of the following story), the rest of this is unique to this story. A possible explanation here is that the ship hasn't been properly repaired and has taken off when not ready. It would be some design flaw if you invented a ship which made you ill every time you used it.
The first episode ends with the shadow of a figure looming over the terrain in front of the Police Box. This was shot on a forced perspective set, so the shadow is too big.
Why does the Doctor take a Geiger Counter with him, when the ship has a built-in one - as we'll see at the end of this story?
We will be looking at some plot elements with the benefit of hindsight as we proceed with these posts - so not things which were wrong at the time, but look odd when viewed back. The first of these is the Doctor smoking a pipe. The next three episodes are all about fire, and the TARDIS crew's inability to provide it for the tribesfolk. Ian dropped his torch in the junkyard, and told Barbara he didn't have any matches when she suggested using one to find the torch. Clearly she doesn't have any either. The Doctor loses his pipe and matches when he is attacked by Kal. It seems very odd indeed that neither Ian nor Barbara smoked in 1963, a time when even doctors used to endorse cigarette brands.
As for the Doctor and his pipe, he is never seen to smoke again, or even mention having smoked.
Later Ian will make fire, in best Boy Scout fashion, by rubbing two sticks together. Why didn't he think of this when they were first locked up in the Cave of Skulls?
Just how long have the tribe gone without fire? The chronology is very hard to work out. Did Za's dad just die, taking the secret with him? If it is just the approach of their first winter without fire that the tribe is worried about then why does Horg talk about fire like it was something he hasn't seen for a very long time - a memory only the old people have? If they have gone many years without fire, why worry now - it's not as if they would know there was an Ice Age round the corner.
There is another mistimed cue as Susan screams long before the Old Woman even starts to push her way into the cave by the secret entrance. And if the tribe live here, why don't the rest of them know about the other entrance?
We have our first example of a prop which is supposed to be very heavy indeed looking lightweight, as Za and Hur try to move the great stone from the main entrance.
Talking of the Cave of Skulls, I previously mentioned that some cliffhangers were filmed afresh at the start of the following week's recording. This is noticeable when you look at the skulls at the end of Part Two, and the more plastic-looking ones at the start of Part Three. One of the skeletons seems to have managed to remain wholly articulated, but has the oddest collar bones. It looks like a single bone running from shoulder to shoulder, like something from a joke shop.
After the time-travellers have been recaptured and placed back in the cave, Jacqueline Hill stumbles over one of her lines - the one about the stone with a hole in it, which she almost gets back to front before correcting herself.
The cave on film is far larger than the cave in studio - a common issue when episodes have a mix of filming (usually at Ealing) and studio recording (in the cramped Lime Grove Studio D).
When the Doctor and his companions place the skulls on flaming torches to scare the superstitious tribesfolk, the trick lasts only until one of the torches falls over. Or rather gets yanked by a piece of out of sight string.
Last, but not least, we have the conclusion with the aforementioned radiation meter. This takes an age to register the heavy irradiation at their next landing sight - so long that Susan has had a good look at it and they have all wandered off to freshen up. It doesn't have any sort of aural alert, which seems to be another design flaw - or is it also faulty?
Apart from the naming protocol for the story, the other big debate about An Unearthly Child is just where and when it is set. Later episodes will suggest that it was prehistoric Earth the TARDIS visited, but this is never mentioned in the story itself. The Doctor states that his "year-o-meter" is reading zero and so not working, implying they have travelled in time but not necessarily in space.
One of the alternative story titles was "100,000 BC". However, there is a gap in the fossil record in Britain covering 180,000 - 60,000 BC - apparently because it was far too cold this far north at that time. There was a land bridge where the English Channel now is, and any people living in the area where London later grew would have migrated south. One popular fan theory, for those who don't think this is prehistoric Earth we are visiting, is that we are actually in the far future, when the human race has been reduced to a primitive state following some great catastrophe, such as nuclear war. Fire is a metaphor for the technology which will lead to our destruction. Another theory is that this is actually the planet Skaro they are already on - so Ian giving the cave people the secret of fire will eventually lead to the creation of the Daleks...
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