Embedded Files
Welcome, everyone, to Doctor Who! Get ready for exciting adventures in time and space! But also, don't get too ready, as first we have to hang out in this school for a bit, watching people talk for ages.
This girl, on the right, is Susan. She's the Unearthly Child that the story is about. She's doing Spooky Dancing to some top pop hits.
Those guys behind her are her teachers, and they're all, "What's with this spooky madam?"
The teachers are called Ian and Barbara. They're worried that Susan keeps saying things like, "I'm from the future," and "What planet is this?" and "I laugh at your human concept of homework."
Barbara is the lady one, on the left, and she's asking Susan why she's so weird all the time, and has she considered just getting older and wearing a cardigan instead?
Ian looks much less concerned, doesn't he? He's a man from the 1960s, so he's just thinking how amusing the ladies are, and whatever will they do next, and might one of them be prepared to make him dinner?
Ian and Barbara follow Susan home. That's weird behaviour, right? This story is called 'An Unearthly Child', but it should be called, "The Slightly Unusual Child, and the Two Mad Stalker Teachers Who Don't Understand Boundaries."
Well, the joke's on them because look - they've run right into Doctor Who. He's the name of the show! He jumps out of the shadows and instantly engages Ian and Barbara in some top quality weird-old-man tomfoolery. Look at him, smirking at Ian as if to say, "Prove I'm drunk! You can't!"
Ian jumps immediately to the conclusion that Doctor Who has kidnapped Susan and put her in a box. Why, Ian? He's just a drunk in a slightly anachronistic hat and scarf combo. You can't go round the 1960s assuming everyone with weird dress sense is a kidnapper - you'll never get anything done.
Doctor Who runs off, and they chase him, and look - they've found Susan! But Ian doesn't say, "Hurray, I was right!" because he's too busy going, "Oh no, a massive spaceship is happening to me!"
It turns out that Susan and Doctor Who live in a spaceship, you see. I think it's meant to be a secret. That's why Doctor Who is shouting at Susan. "Remember the bit about it being a secret?"
Barbara seems relatively unimpressed, as if she's thinking yes, this is an amazing wonder the like of which I've never seen before, but I bet it takes ages to clean and why is no-one taking off their shoes?
Doctor Who has an amazing idea, and that idea is 'Let's go off on adventures, and maybe the teachers will get killed and leave me alone." This is a pretty shrewd idea and, by the look on Susan's face, it's not the first time he's tried it.
How many of Susan's friends, teachers and babysitters has Doctor Who thrown to their deaths to avoid having to make small talk, I wonder?
The TARDIS zooms off into the past. This is what it looks like on the outside - a blue box. You can't tell it's blue, sorry, you're just going to have to accept it until the 1970s happen.
That shadow is of a caveman, who has just seen the TARDIS appear out of nowhere. He'll be thinking one of three things:
This is an inexplicable event which transcends my understanding of the material universe.
Magic box!
Oh no, it's Doctor Who again, wanting us to kill more teachers. Hide the gin.
Doctor Who wakes up to find he's been captured by cavemen. His face suggests that his main priority is to find some painkillers for what looks like a colossal hangover.
The cavemen can't be helping, can they? They're clearly having a huge row, and that can't be any fun to hear through a massive headache. I think they're arguing about who is best at making fire. It's not a very sophisticated argument and mostly consists of them shouting, "Fire!" at increasing volumes.
Everyone runs around for quite a bit and has a fine old time getting captured and escaping and so on. Here, I think they're looking at a tiger, or maybe loads of guys with spears... something dangerous. Barbara and Susan are going, "Oh no! Death! Help!" Ian seems mildly concerned, but only about as much as you'd be if you were really looking forward to the steak and ale pie, and the waitress told you they'd just run out, and now you have to choose something else.
Doctor Who, meanwhile, appears to have gone feral, and it's impossible to predict what he might do next. Headbutt a leopard? Start singing a racist song? Throw Susan to the cavemen, shouting, "She says she wants to marry you" as he runs away? It's all up for grabs.
Everyone gets captured for the second or third time this story, and taken back to Caveman HQ. Which is a cave.
Luckily for Doctor Who, the cavemen are a flighty, temperamental bunch who keep falling out with each other as if they were teenagers at a sleep over. This one with the extra sulky face has recently murdered an old lady with a stone because she laughed at him, and now Doctor Who is telling on him.
"Look - his stone is covered in old lady blood!" shouts Doctor Who. Everyone gets very excited and gangs up on the sulky faced guy, who is forced to run off and get killed. This does not help Doctor Who, though, as everyone instantly turns on him for being a tell tale and puts him in a cave full of skulls and death.
Lead caveman guy is visiting Doctor Who and the gang, to see how they're enjoying the skulls, the ambience and the impending threat of execution.
Ian has invented fire, which is pretty neat, but no-one looks anywhere near as excited about it as you'd expect. Caveman guy should be all cock a hoop - he's been going on all story about how ace it would be to have fire. But I think there's clearly a bit of an atmosphere, and it feels inappropriate to rejoice.
It looks like there's been something of a row and now no-one is talking to each other. I would imagine a large part of the row was people blaming Doctor Who for taking them to a place full of leopards and murderers without even the most rudimentary risk assessment.
Remember how, at the beginning of the story, everyone was weirded out because Susan was doing a slightly wavy dance to a pop song? Well, things have escalated somewhat, and now she's set a skull on fire and she's waving it around and laughing. I guess it is a slippery path after all.
Anyway, it turns out that this is an excellent idea, because all the cavemen see it and absolutely freak out, allowing the TARDIS team to run away. Hurray for Susan tipping over into a nervous breakdown.
Everyone has survived and made it back to the TARDIS. It's clearly been quite a harrowing ordeal. Doctor Who, in particular, looks like he fell out of a tree after eating a whole pack of cigarettes.
They're all gazing at the scanner, looking at the new planet they've arrived on. Everyone has the kind of mad, wide eyed stare of people thinking, "The sun may be coming up, but if anything that's a sign that we're indestructible and should carry on drinking all day."
They're going to go right into another adventure, aren't they? I hope they at least have a wash first - they must really smell of smoke.
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