An Unearthly Child (pilot)

This makes me think of Buxton and Jimmy Edwards. The former is a famous bottled water town in Derbyshire where I once saw Nicholas Parsons live on stage, the latter was the owner of television’s first truly great moustache and star of a situation comedy in the early days of the BBC. Before I knew there were two versions of Doctor Who’s first episode, I saw the pilot as part of a Lime Grove tribute day on BBC2. Amongst the other delights on show that day was an episode of “Whack-o” – the sitcom that took Edwards from radio to television with some success. I was big into radio comedy in those days – this would probably have been 91 or 92 at a guess – and I was aware of Edwards from “Take It From Here”. The Lime Grove tribute was on a bank holiday Monday and at some point in the afternoon we went to Buxton for a wander round. Possibly a second hand book fair. I can’t remember. I do have a vague idea that they played up this being the first transmission of the pilot which confused me as I was sure I'd seen it before, but I wasn’t in the zone enough to care in those days. There are several different versions of the pilot floating around. I don’t know which this was – did it have the reluctant doors or not? It must’ve had two-to-nineteen-nineteen-to-two because that’s in every one except the RT’s attempt to tidy it up on the DVD.

Jimmy Edwards

An Unearthly Child (proper)

An Unearthly Child can only have debuted in my memory in the “Five Faces of Doctor Who” season broadcast between Tom’s demise and Peter’s debut. The reason I’m so sure it was such a long time ago is that I was convinced for many years that the episode ends with the shadow of a dinosaur over the Tardis. I know now that it was a cave man but I must’ve believed it was a dinosaur until well into the 1990s. I’m ashamed to say I wasn’t disabused of this fancy the first time I saw the story with more grown up eyes. I didn't even realise my error when I'd watched it and knew there were no dinosaurs in it. Not even knowing that there are sixty five million years separating humans and dinosaurs was enough. The penny refused to drop.

DINOSAUR~!

I saw An Unearthly Child for real on the debut night of UK Gold – a channel designed apparently for me and people like me. I only say that because I never get the chance to write "people like me". It had the Goodies followed by Doctor Who. And not just Doctor Who but ALL of Doctor Who (except Terry Nation’s stories for legal reasons). A strange cartoon Labrador wandered across the screen on that opening night and a vaguely familiar voice welcomed us to Doctor Who. It was the second programme in the channel’s young history and it was fantastic. Sure, it was Doctor Who with adverts and a logo but I could live with that. Needless to say I got bored of it after a few days and taped the next month of episodes. And then I recorded over them. I am Pamela Nash. It took years to get some of them back.

Sidestep

What should’ve followed An Unearthly Child was of course “The Masters of Luxor” by Anthony Coburn. It didn’t get made but was complete enough to be released as a script book in 1992. I remember it being quite good – I sold the book for an inflated sum a while ago and now regret it a little – but mainly I remember Ian Chesterton’s very mild swearing throughout. None of it would’ve made the final script of course but for the couple of hours it took to read, I had William Russell very slightly swearing in my head and it was great.

God! For Christ's sake, Doctor, damn well do something!

The Daleks

I have no memories at all of when I first saw The Daleks. I know that the film had been on often enough that I grew up believing that in the old days of Doctor Who, Daleks had claws rather than plungers and they shot smoke instead of video effects. The film of “…and the Daleks” didn’t register as much as the sequel (which I’ll cover later) and if you blend the two together – as a child’s mind is prone to do – the bits which stick out will always come from the Invasion of Earth in 2150 AD. The campest Thals in the universe aside, there isn’t much in the first film to excite or interest an eighties child. I didn’t get the video of the real thing until the remastered version was released in the year 2000. The first issue of the story – in the early days of the VHS releases – was over two tapes and came before anyone invented a box capable of holding two cassettes. Instead it was in two single boxes generally – but not exclusively – held together with cellophane. Or tape. Or rubber bands. Stores went to varying degrees of trouble to keep the two differently coloured tapes together. I once found a copy of tape two in a second hand shop for a fiver or so. Father wisely counselled me not to buy it because it wasn’t much use without the first four episodes. I would’ve eventually seen it on UK Gold when they acquired the Nation stories a year or two after launch but for something so pivotal I was apparently as blasé as heck.

The Edge of Destruction

I don’t think I got as far with my nightly UK Gold viewing as the Edge of Destruction. If I did, it was probably the Edge of D which ended my enthusiasm. I was so flaky in those days that it’s a wonder I didn’t melt or get lightly chewed by a pretty lady in a breezy room. I wouldn’t have minded that. I still wouldn’t. I know that during my Hartnell mopping up phase (I’m not going to make an old man joke here but you’re welcome to add your own mental footnote) in 1998 this was one of the stories I watched. Getting up at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning to watch Doctor Who wasn’t my favourite thing to do but as Doctor Who generally ended at about 10am at that time, it was better than a four part story which started at eight or a six parter starting at seven. Needless to say I hadn’t got a clue about Edge of Destruction. No one has. It is a myth. We know what happens at the end and we know how significant it can be made out to be in the development of the characters but when you watch it – through bleary eyes or jacked up eyes – it is still just a bunch of weird things which happen in a random order because there is one place in the universe which gives less helpful error messages than Microsoft. I can’t honestly say that watching it in 1998 left me any better disposed to it than watching it in 1992. Now that I think about it, I did see it in 1992 because it would’ve followed straight on from An Unearthly Child (no Daleks remember) and I definitely lasted more than a week. But by 1998 I was a completionist and flakiness was no longer an option.

Something which made that omnibus harder to watch was that it deviated from the normal UK Gold advert pattern. They had a simple system – they’d put adverts between episodes and an extra break during the final part. Or, sometimes, for a bit of acceptable variety, they would put the extra ad break in the middle of the first episode. Or, because they were wacky, some stories would have two extra ad breaks. Though these were rare and copies exchange hands for money. Edge of Destruction, sourced from an overseas edit, was all wrong. They put an ad break a third of the way through and one two thirds the way through. There was no cliffhanger. It just ran through. I could accept the abrupt way it ended – chopped off to avoid any tantalising hints of Marco Polo – or the modern omnibus credits which were added at the end. But the one thing in the whole of Edge of Destruction which actually made a bit of sense was the cliffhanger and that was gone. It was smoothed over in as undramatic a way as possible and events continued along their baffling course. I know how this paragraph sounds but I warned you that you’d be getting everything.