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So, there is where it all began. We open, of course, with those titles and that theme tune. The original title sequence is much more psychedelic than the ones from the mid-70s. It is would certainly be interesting to know whether the modal viewer in on 23 November 1963 (or, more likely, 30 November) would have seen or heard anything like the title sequence and theme tune. It is so familiar to us now, but what did people make of then? This is pre-2001 and the Stargate sequence, which might makes us wonder where Stanley Kubrick got his some of ideas from. It is also (arguably) much more psychedelic that the programme itself. But there are so many examples of misdirection that we might wonder if the programme makers themselves knew what the programme was about. Well, yes. This is a discussion I suspect we will be returning on a number of occasions in the years to come.
We are back on slightly firmer ground as the title sequence dissolves: a good, old bobby, apparently (at least to 2010 eyes) searching for something in the foggy gloom (but the theme tune is still going). Out of the murk emerges a double wooden gate on which is painted "I.M. Foreman, Scrap Merchant, 76 Totter's Lane". The policeman appears to check the gate to see if it is locked (see below) and then exits right (never to be seen again). The right door of the gate then opens with a creek (so who has opened it, we might wonder) and the camera moves into the scrapyard. We see a few pieces of random junk and then the camera pans round to reveal - a police box inside the scrapyard! To emphasis this point that it is a police box, we get a close up of the legend on front of the police box, before a dissolve to the Coal Hill School noticeboard.
"I.M. Foreman". Lawrence Miles has called it DW's oldest mystery (but what about the policeman?). Larry came up with some convoluted explanation involving a travelling Gallifreyan circus. I don't know if it turns out in his novel that I.M. Foreman is the Doctor in the end (I don't think so), but come on, Larry. Do we really need all that? "I'm foreman." Susan is definitely Susan Foreman. And the Doctor is certainly the Foreman. There you go. Although it is hard to imagine anyone would thought that in 1963. But then again why is it I.M. Foreman? As opposed to, say, John Smith?
Coal Hill School appears, from the look of the corridor we see, to be a fairly modern school. We don't know what kind of school it is. Susan is "fifteen", and we can assume that it is November (1963), so presumably she is in the fifth year as it is unlikely that she has had her "birthday" yet as it is still relatively early in the academic year. The pupils we see are not wearing uniform. How common was this in 1963? But if CHS is a secondary modern, some (many? most?) of the pupils would have left at the end of the fourth year. In which case, there might only be a few pupils studying towards O-levels and perhaps they might be allowed to wear ordinary clothes (see "The Web Planet"). It's also possible that Susan is in the sixth form (I know that at Lytham St Anne's High School in 1991-2, the sixth formers did not have to wear uniforms, although the lower school did, but sixth form boys did have to wear a tie - and we do see a boy wearing a tie here); the fact that she is stared to be fifteen and is studying both chemistry and history would argue against that. Given that Susan is a scientific genius with an encylopaedic knowledge of history, and her guardian is a doctor, we might wonder why she did not choose to enroll at a grammar school - surely she came from the right sort of social background -
We get rather a long and lingering shot of Susan. Carole Ann Ford certainly has a somewhat exotic and alien look to her here, which may have been a reason why she was chosen for the part. She looks pretty hot to be honest and there must have been quite a few middle-aged patresfamilias feeling somewhat of a Lolita-like frisson (Ford was 23). Susan is listening to a transistor radio. Well, they were certainly explicitly banned at Cuthbert Mayne, but perhaps it was one of the special privileges of being in the fifth year at Coal Hill School, along with no uniform. John Smith and the Common Men are playing on the radio. "John Smith" indeed. More misdirection?
In the original version (it's not really a pilot), Susan puts the book on the French Revolution that Barbara gives her away in her satchel. After B&I I have left, she then creates, to the sound of dramatic crescendo in the background music, a Rorschach pattern, around which she then draws a hexagon before screwing up the piece of paper with a look of fear in her eyes as though she might have spotted making the hexagram and revealed some secret. All of this gives the director an opportunity for a gratuitous leg shot that we don't get in the canonical version. In the canonical version, Susan starts reading the book (not superfast as it is implied she is capable of by the thickness of the book in the first episode and Susan's statement that she will return it in the morning; see also Nine in "Rose") and then announces that "That's not right". But maybe she has just read a few other books on the French Revolution.
B&I go to 76 Totter's Lane. Interesting that Barbara doesn't think that there might be an error in the information the secretary has ("16" perhaps rather "76"). I am not sure what modern teaching standards would make of stalking a pupil in quite this way, but at least they are demonstrating their commitment to the pastoral aspects of the teacher role. Interesting that they speculate that Susan might be meeting a boy as she is fifteen. In a scrapyard on a foggy night? Who exactly is this programme supposed to be aimed at? We get some flashbacks (we won't see those much in the DW to come). I am not sure what kind of science Ian teaches or Susan knows, but it doesn't sound much like the O-level Chemistry I was taught. Given that Time Lords have little use for money (presumably Susan, like the Doctor, doesn't carry any), perhaps it is not so surprising that she doesn't realise that the UK isn't on the decimal system yet.
Susan eventually turns up and pushes the gate open without having to unlock it, so what was the policeman doing at the start (a scrapyard would presumably be open for business presumably at quarter to five or whatever time it is after school on a November evening). To our modern minds, it would seem that B&I should have shown more concern for Susan's physical safety up to now that they have done (she enjoys walking through the romantic, English fog and that's not something you'd imagine a fifteen year old saying in 2010). B&I follow her into the scrapyard (Ian doesn't bother locking his car). After a cursory examination (and Ian dropping his torch; the fact that he has no matches on him might be to suggest that he is the clean living type), they notice... a police box. It is buzzing. "It's alive!" declares Ian after touching it. Well, yes. Someone comes into the junkyard. B&I naturally hide. The first thing we see ever the Doctor doing is having a cough. We are eleven minutes into the episode and the Doctor has finally appeared (compare "Rose"). "There are you, Grandfather!" comes Susan's disembodied voice as the Doctor fiddles with the lock. "Susan!" exclaims Barbara. Ian shushes her loudly enough to relieve their presence to the Doctor. Perhaps his jungle fighting training during his National Service in Malaya wasn't as effective as it might have been. The Doctor first word, is, disappointingly, "What". Ian tells him "We are looking for a girl." Well, yes. The Doctor's plan to get B&I to go away by ignoring them and fiddling with bits of random junk presumably in the hope that they will get bored and wander off is doomed to failure. Inevitably Susan opens the TARDIS doors, there's a bit of argy-bargy, B&I end up inside and it's bigger on the outside than the inside! And the rest is history.
This is the point that everything changes. Up to now you might think (probably in 1963 if you were seeing this cold would think) this is going to some kind of supernatural mystery story of the kind that the BBC and ITV did so many of in the 1960s and 1970s (consider also that Alan Garner's Elidor was published in 1964). Enigmatic teenager. Handsome schoolteachers. Creepy scrapyard. London smog. Pseudonymous leaders of popular beat combos who are actually members of the aristocracy. A sense of undefined threat and danger. And who is (to coin a phrase) "Doctor Who"? Susan's grandfather has been referred to as a doctor and those people who take the Radio Times might realise that "Dr. Who" is going to be Hartnell. So we can add a cranky and sinister old man to the mix. Doctor No and Goldfinger are named after the villain. How are we supposed to know who the hero of the story is?
But suddenly we are in an OpArt console room. Susan says she "was born in another time, another world" (not the 49th century as in the pilot) and the Doctor tells B&I that he and Susan are wanderers in the fourth dimension, exiles from their planet. Almost everything is in place for the next forty-six years. The Doctor compares Ian's reaction to the TARDIS to that of the savage mind of the Red Indian. Humh. Perhaps not. And then the ship is off. The TARDIS's flight is accompanied by vertiginous video effects (more 2001!), including a aerial photograph of some kind of modernist office or apartment block seen on the scanner, presumably to suggest that the TARDIS somehow takes off like a rocket. B&I are rendered unconscious by their brief trip, so. yes, not everything is yet quite as it will be.
So we arrive in a desolate landscape, a shadow looming towards the TARDIS. And what an unexpected shot that must be in 1963. We won't see 1963 London or Coal Hill School or 76 Totter's Lane again (well, not for years). Wherever we are, we're not in Kansas anymore or even Kilburn or Kensal Green. But more about that later.
We are back on slightly firmer ground as the title sequence dissolves: a good, old bobby, apparently (at least to 2010 eyes) searching for something in the foggy gloom (but the theme tune is still going). Out of the murk emerges a double wooden gate on which is painted "I.M. Foreman, Scrap Merchant, 76 Totter's Lane". The policeman appears to check the gate to see if it is locked (see below) and then exits right (never to be seen again). The right door of the gate then opens with a creek (so who has opened it, we might wonder) and the camera moves into the scrapyard. We see a few pieces of random junk and then the camera pans round to reveal - a police box inside the scrapyard! To emphasis this point that it is a police box, we get a close up of the legend on front of the police box, before a dissolve to the Coal Hill School noticeboard.
"I.M. Foreman". Lawrence Miles has called it DW's oldest mystery (but what about the policeman?). Larry came up with some convoluted explanation involving a travelling Gallifreyan circus. I don't know if it turns out in his novel that I.M. Foreman is the Doctor in the end (I don't think so), but come on, Larry. Do we really need all that? "I'm foreman." Susan is definitely Susan Foreman. And the Doctor is certainly the Foreman. There you go. Although it is hard to imagine anyone would thought that in 1963. But then again why is it I.M. Foreman? As opposed to, say, John Smith?
Coal Hill School appears, from the look of the corridor we see, to be a fairly modern school. We don't know what kind of school it is. Susan is "fifteen", and we can assume that it is November (1963), so presumably she is in the fifth year as it is unlikely that she has had her "birthday" yet as it is still relatively early in the academic year. The pupils we see are not wearing uniform. How common was this in 1963? But if CHS is a secondary modern, some (many? most?) of the pupils would have left at the end of the fourth year. In which case, there might only be a few pupils studying towards O-levels and perhaps they might be allowed to wear ordinary clothes (see "The Web Planet"). It's also possible that Susan is in the sixth form (I know that at Lytham St Anne's High School in 1991-2, the sixth formers did not have to wear uniforms, although the lower school did, but sixth form boys did have to wear a tie - and we do see a boy wearing a tie here); the fact that she is stared to be fifteen and is studying both chemistry and history would argue against that. Given that Susan is a scientific genius with an encylopaedic knowledge of history, and her guardian is a doctor, we might wonder why she did not choose to enroll at a grammar school - surely she came from the right sort of social background -
We get rather a long and lingering shot of Susan. Carole Ann Ford certainly has a somewhat exotic and alien look to her here, which may have been a reason why she was chosen for the part. She looks pretty hot to be honest and there must have been quite a few middle-aged patresfamilias feeling somewhat of a Lolita-like frisson (Ford was 23). Susan is listening to a transistor radio. Well, they were certainly explicitly banned at Cuthbert Mayne, but perhaps it was one of the special privileges of being in the fifth year at Coal Hill School, along with no uniform. John Smith and the Common Men are playing on the radio. "John Smith" indeed. More misdirection?
In the original version (it's not really a pilot), Susan puts the book on the French Revolution that Barbara gives her away in her satchel. After B&I I have left, she then creates, to the sound of dramatic crescendo in the background music, a Rorschach pattern, around which she then draws a hexagon before screwing up the piece of paper with a look of fear in her eyes as though she might have spotted making the hexagram and revealed some secret. All of this gives the director an opportunity for a gratuitous leg shot that we don't get in the canonical version. In the canonical version, Susan starts reading the book (not superfast as it is implied she is capable of by the thickness of the book in the first episode and Susan's statement that she will return it in the morning; see also Nine in "Rose") and then announces that "That's not right". But maybe she has just read a few other books on the French Revolution.
B&I go to 76 Totter's Lane. Interesting that Barbara doesn't think that there might be an error in the information the secretary has ("16" perhaps rather "76"). I am not sure what modern teaching standards would make of stalking a pupil in quite this way, but at least they are demonstrating their commitment to the pastoral aspects of the teacher role. Interesting that they speculate that Susan might be meeting a boy as she is fifteen. In a scrapyard on a foggy night? Who exactly is this programme supposed to be aimed at? We get some flashbacks (we won't see those much in the DW to come). I am not sure what kind of science Ian teaches or Susan knows, but it doesn't sound much like the O-level Chemistry I was taught. Given that Time Lords have little use for money (presumably Susan, like the Doctor, doesn't carry any), perhaps it is not so surprising that she doesn't realise that the UK isn't on the decimal system yet.
Susan eventually turns up and pushes the gate open without having to unlock it, so what was the policeman doing at the start (a scrapyard would presumably be open for business presumably at quarter to five or whatever time it is after school on a November evening). To our modern minds, it would seem that B&I should have shown more concern for Susan's physical safety up to now that they have done (she enjoys walking through the romantic, English fog and that's not something you'd imagine a fifteen year old saying in 2010). B&I follow her into the scrapyard (Ian doesn't bother locking his car). After a cursory examination (and Ian dropping his torch; the fact that he has no matches on him might be to suggest that he is the clean living type), they notice... a police box. It is buzzing. "It's alive!" declares Ian after touching it. Well, yes. Someone comes into the junkyard. B&I naturally hide. The first thing we see ever the Doctor doing is having a cough. We are eleven minutes into the episode and the Doctor has finally appeared (compare "Rose"). "There are you, Grandfather!" comes Susan's disembodied voice as the Doctor fiddles with the lock. "Susan!" exclaims Barbara. Ian shushes her loudly enough to relieve their presence to the Doctor. Perhaps his jungle fighting training during his National Service in Malaya wasn't as effective as it might have been. The Doctor first word, is, disappointingly, "What". Ian tells him "We are looking for a girl." Well, yes. The Doctor's plan to get B&I to go away by ignoring them and fiddling with bits of random junk presumably in the hope that they will get bored and wander off is doomed to failure. Inevitably Susan opens the TARDIS doors, there's a bit of argy-bargy, B&I end up inside and it's bigger on the outside than the inside! And the rest is history.
This is the point that everything changes. Up to now you might think (probably in 1963 if you were seeing this cold would think) this is going to some kind of supernatural mystery story of the kind that the BBC and ITV did so many of in the 1960s and 1970s (consider also that Alan Garner's Elidor was published in 1964). Enigmatic teenager. Handsome schoolteachers. Creepy scrapyard. London smog. Pseudonymous leaders of popular beat combos who are actually members of the aristocracy. A sense of undefined threat and danger. And who is (to coin a phrase) "Doctor Who"? Susan's grandfather has been referred to as a doctor and those people who take the Radio Times might realise that "Dr. Who" is going to be Hartnell. So we can add a cranky and sinister old man to the mix. Doctor No and Goldfinger are named after the villain. How are we supposed to know who the hero of the story is?
But suddenly we are in an OpArt console room. Susan says she "was born in another time, another world" (not the 49th century as in the pilot) and the Doctor tells B&I that he and Susan are wanderers in the fourth dimension, exiles from their planet. Almost everything is in place for the next forty-six years. The Doctor compares Ian's reaction to the TARDIS to that of the savage mind of the Red Indian. Humh. Perhaps not. And then the ship is off. The TARDIS's flight is accompanied by vertiginous video effects (more 2001!), including a aerial photograph of some kind of modernist office or apartment block seen on the scanner, presumably to suggest that the TARDIS somehow takes off like a rocket. B&I are rendered unconscious by their brief trip, so. yes, not everything is yet quite as it will be.
So we arrive in a desolate landscape, a shadow looming towards the TARDIS. And what an unexpected shot that must be in 1963. We won't see 1963 London or Coal Hill School or 76 Totter's Lane again (well, not for years). Wherever we are, we're not in Kansas anymore or even Kilburn or Kensal Green. But more about that later.
