Serial 3: The Edge of Destruction

Doctor: William Hartnell (1st Doctor)
Companion: Susan, Barbara, Ian


Written by: David Whitaker
Directed by: Richard Martin & Frank Cox

Background & Significance: Doctor Who was under threat of cancellation.

There's only a few times you can say that about. One time is during Michael Grade's attempt to completely shut down Doctor Who starting in the late late Davison era and continuing all the way through until the show's ultimate cancellation in 1989. Another was at the end of the Troughton era, during which the show was more or less floundering creatively and underwent a massive reboot to get it into a place where it was palatable to a brand new audience.

But the first time was episodes twelve and thirteen of season one, also fondly known as "The Edge of Destruction". The BBC's initial order for Doctor Who only took them to the end of this story, so really, it was entirely possible Doctor Who would have been cancelled once it was done.

Now granted, by the time this episode aired the show was almost assuredly going to stick around for a while. "The Daleks" had done gang-busters for the show in terms of ratings and the BBC ordered more scripts and episodes immediately. There would be no interruption in the production process (remember that at this time Doctor Who was producing some forty plus episodes a year), but the production team required an extra week or so to prepare the elaborate sets for Lucarotti's forthcoming historical epic "Marco Polo", so to save on money and set construction script editor David Whitaker took matters into his own hands and wrote what's essentially a bottle episode(s) of Doctor Who set entirely on the TARDIS and featuring no one but our main cast of characters and the one character you rarely ever think of but who's around all the time...

So let's get to it!

Serial 7: The Sensorites

Doctor: William Hartnell (1st Doctor)
Companions: Susan, Barbara, and Ian

Written by: Peter R. Newman
Directed by: Mervyn Pinfield & Frank Cox

Background & Significance: Because the first season alternated between educational historical adventures and educational sci-fi tales, the original plan was to have a sole pair of writers write the whole show. Based on his success with "The Daleks", Terry Nation was the obvious choice to continue carrying the sci-fi torch for the show. Hence, "Keys of Marinus". For the historicals they chose John Lucarotti, who did a kick ass job writing "Marco Polo," and then knocked it out of the park writing "The Aztecs", which is to this day the quintessential historical.

Of course, this didn't quite pan out in the way they wanted it to. Writing takes a while. That's why you have Dennis Spooner writing "The Reign of Terror" and Peter R. Newman writing this story.

"The Sensorites" is a much maligned story. In that big ol' "Mighty 200" poll, it was voted the worst Hartnell story not called "The Space Museum" and the worst of its season. And "Second Worst Hartnell" had to happen to some story some time. It just happened to happen to "The Sensorites". It's unfortunate, really, because "The Sensorites" is still Doctor Who at its most nascent. The goal was to do a story based on spectacle and mind-bending (heh) concepts. This was limited by the BBC's casual disregard for the programme's potential, as they had decided it would be filmed in the cramped and inferior Lime Grove Studios. Producer Verity Lambert fought valiantly against this and (being Verity Lambert) managed to get better studios on the other side of the season. For now, smaller sets were what was available for "The Sensorites", which greatly limits its ability to go for "spectacle."

And I can tell people this background. They still won't listen. The only way to MAYBE change minds is to talk about it.

So let's get to it!

Serial 8: The Reign of Terror

Doctor: William Hartnell (1st Doctor)
Companions: Ian, Barbara, and Susan

Written by: Dennis Spooner
Directed by: Henric Hirsch & John Gorrie

Background & Significance: One of the things that strikes me most about the first season (or really, the first two and a half ish seasons) of Doctor Who is the way they applied a structure to the show's stories. It's something that's repeated later in Doctor Who's history (see the Davies era), but it's never more readily apparent than it is here. The structure here was to alternate between science fiction and historical stories, with the original plan to be one person writing the historical stories while another wrote the science fiction stories. And this pattern holds for the first few stories, where we have Terry Nation doing two science fiction stories in a row and John Lucarotti doing two historical stories in a row.

Unfortunately, this pattern didn't quite work out in the way the production team thought it would (writing takes a long time) and Nation wasn't able to write the sci-fi story after "Keys of Marinus", leaving us with "The Sensorites." Likewise, Lucarotti couldn't do the historical after "The Aztecs".

Enter Dennis Spooner.

Dennis Spooner was a successful children's television writer who found his way into the Doctor Who offices through a relationship with Terry Nation. He was pitched the concept of doing a Doctor Who story set during the French Revolution by script editor David Whitaker, leading Spooner to reappropriate the historical into something much more... comic. Spooner's interests and talents were in comedy after all, and unlike Lucarotti, he didn't have a background in the historical subject he was writing about, which led to a much... broader sort of tale.

What we're left with is "The Reign of Terror", which is easily the forgotten historical. Everyone knows "The Aztecs," and "Marco Polo" is legendary for the fact that it's missing. "Reign of Terror" is not so talked about.

That's unfortunate, I think, but not terribly surprising. It's hardly Spooner's best work, as he would go on to write the comic genius of "The Romans" and the revolutionary "The Time Meddler" as well as overseeing the script editing for a particularly strong stretch of stories across Doctor Who's second season. It doesn't help that this story had something of a changing of the guard behind-the-scenes, where the director of this story (Henric Hirsch) didn't quite enjoy working on the program and also happened to become rather ill amidst the rehearsal process for episode three. In fact, the story so disagreed with him that shortly after excusing himself from the rehearsal space (because of his illness) he was found just outside the production gallery by a PA, having collapsed.

The lesson? Doctor Who isn't necessarily for everyone. Needless to say, Hirsch never directed for Doctor Who again.With little time for a replacement, the production team quickly brought back John Gorrie, who had previously and recently directed "The Keys of Marinus".

I will say this about Hirsch, though. He is responsible for the first location shooting on Doctor Who, in which there were shots of The Doctor taking the long trek to Paris. It wasn't Hartnell, though. Just a stand-in. Which amuses me. But we still do get some lovely exterior shots, the first of many for the show. And I must admit I really enjoy that because it's iconic but also tremendously silly. I mean. It's not even Hartnell. It's a ruddy stand in!

We'll talk on this more. Maybe. Okay. Not really. You caught me.

So let's get to it!

Serial 9: Planet of Giants

Doctor: William Hartnell (1st Doctor)
Companions: Susan, Ian, and Barbara


Written by: Louis Marks
Directed by: Mervyn Pinfield & Douglas Camfield

Background & Significance: One of the things that strikes me about watching Doctor Who out of order like this is the show's approach to season openers and finales. It's most interesting early on in the show's history, when Doctor Who was broadcast weekly like clockwork and there was very little delineation between seasons. (Really, it was just a sixish week gap, which is barely anything when you're broadcasting over forty weeks a year).

So this is the kickoff to Doctor Who's second season, and what a kick off it is.

The most interesting thing about "Planet of Giants" is the core conceit/concept, which, for those who don't know (MAJOR SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST HALF OF EPISODE ONE) is that the TARDIS and her crew are all shrunk down to miniature and it basically becomes "Honey I Shrunk the TARDIS" for three parts. This was, interestingly enough, one of the major ideas the production team wanted to do right from the very beginning. It was planned to be one of the first things they ever did on the show (going so far as to be one of the first four stories to be transmitted), but it was pushed back and back and season one became season one (scifi, historical, scifi, historical, etc), and then here we get this new story that is something totally different.

It's written by Louis Marks who would later go on to write "The Planet of Evil" and directed by Mervyn Pinfield with additional work by Douglas Camfield (specifically the "abridged" final episode).

But the thing that strikes me most about this story is the way it just sets up things that are coming down the line. Susan's departure, for one, seems nothing but inevitable, and the whole shrinking thing just pushes The TARDIS into weirder "let's do whatever we want" territory that's... extremely welcome, if you ask me. Watching the Hartnell stories later in the watching of Doctor Who (and helped by reading the thoughts of people who've watched the show differently than I did, that is to say: in order), it's rather brilliant to see just how far the production team is really pushing itself in these first two seasons, where they're only Doctor Who stories in retrospect, not in any sort of "this is a Doctor Who story" sorta way.

"Planet of the Giants" itself was considered by the BBC unfeasible and boring as a four part story and was, unfortunately, edited for time. This resulted in episodes three and four being mashed together and sliced down into one. Honestly, I doubt you'd be able to notice (that said, I'm looking for it this time), but it's a point to note. There's rumours that it'll be around in some capacity for the forthcoming DVD release, but that's another point for another time.

So let's get to it!

Serial 4: Marco Polo

Doctor: William Hartnell (1st Doctor)
Companions: Susan, Barbara, & Ian

Writtten by: John Lucarotti
Directed by: Waris Hussein

Background & Significance: "Marco Polo" is something of a legendary Doctor Who story. For starters, it's the chronological "first" story with missing episodes in the entire Doctor Who catalog; not only that, even, but it's the first story that is missing in its entirety. Missing stories, of course, are endlessly elusive in the eyes of the fans. The promise of what exists beyond cheap and blurry screencaps and a cleaned-up-but-not-perfect audio recording of the episode will always have that air of curiosity to it, even if the story doesn't really end up delivering in the end (this is the point when I call out "The Space Pirates").

But Marco Polo is different.

Because all that survives of Marco Polo is its soundtrack and a couple of photographs from director Waris Hussein's personal library, the promise has perhaps never been greater. What we see on the images promises sets that were gorgeous and lush. Something with a fairly big budget and that would capitalize on the always-so-famous BBC period drama showcase. What we hear in the dialogue is rather strong and excellent. What we experience from the story is thrilling, simple, and intricate. As such, "Marco Polo" is the first real historical, and it's a historical epic at that ("Unearthly Child" doesn't quite count, as that's more adventure than historical educational) taps into the promise of early Doctor Who, when the basic conceit of the show was one that alternated between science fiction for one story and then historical for the second, with little to no sci-fi elements beyond the basic premise of "These traveling dudes landed in this time. Isn't that cool?"

Not only that, but this is the first story to air after the initial thirteen episodes, the ones that were Doctor Who's basic trial run and initial pickup. After "The Edge of Destruction", producer Verity Lambert was allowed to continue on with "Marco Polo" and the show as a whole. So that's neat from an external "isn't this cool" standpoint. But from an internal, what-is-happening-in-the-narrative standpoint, the show has gelled completely, with the main characters taking the lessons from the short-but-sweet "Edge of Destruction" and advancing the narrative of them working as a trusting team. No longer do Barbara and Ian question The Doctor at every single turn (only a couple of times, I'd say). No longer does The Doctor act like a murderous git. No. Well. Sort of. That stuff's still there. BUT REGARDLESS. This is when the show is allowed to breathe some more and take its time to get to what it's doing.

And this all adds up to what is a legendary story. Not only that, but what is (perhaps) the greatest tragedy of the erased episodes from the missing BBC archives, because man is this just a total gem.

So let's get to it!

Serial 1: An Unearthly Child

Doctor: William Hartnell (1st Doctor)
Companions: Susan, Barbara, Ian

Written by: Anthony Coburn and C.E. Webber
Directed by: Waris Hussein

Background & Significance: It all starts here.

In the early 1960s, the BBC sought to create a new science fiction edutainment children's television show. That show, as we all know, is Doctor Who, a show designed to focus on teaching children about science and history. There would be the eponymous main character, an elderly man traveling from place to place, taking the crew on wondrous sights and on adventures that were designed to expand the mind and broaden an understanding of the world to British children.

"An Unearthly Child" is the first foray into this wonderful world that is, at this point, almost at the fifty year mark.

The beginnings are humble, and the first episode has very little to do with the next three, which are big on the historical leanings and edutainment and what have you. Most interesting, though, is the first episode itself. Where, of all places, does this show start? Does it hold up today? What can we learn from the original vision of this show and how does that inform our modern understanding and the current, revised version that came about forty two years after the initial broadcast of this episode? Not only that, but what do they get right?

The most interesting thing I find about this initial broadcast is that it's all here, and it shows you why Russell T Davies's reboot of the show with the episode "Rose" in 2005 is more in line with this than the 1996 Movie starring Paul McGann. There's a reason that "An Unearthly Child" and "Rose" work more than the 1996 Paul McGann movie.

I think this all speaks to the brilliance of the creative team behind the first few seasons of the show, perhaps most important being Verity Lambert, the scrappy producer who demanded the show get the respect she felt it due, and brought a good sense of vision and all that to the proceedings. Likewise David Whitaker, who is totally rad if you ask me. I'm a huge fan of him and his sense of character and what it is he brings to the table in terms of story sensibility. You can actually kinda see that here, as it's VERY character driven, at least in this first episode.

I apologize for all this talk of the first episode, but that's where I focus my energies in this. Nevermind the next three. They're just okay, pretty standard, and nothing remarkably special. What's important, and why it's taken us so long to get to discussing this point, is the first outing, and why it works at setting up a science fiction television show that's coming up on fifty years old and how it is (after everything) still completely relevant and insightful to everything that came after. The vision, the focus, the energies, The Doctor, the everything. It all starts right here.

So let's get to it!

Serial 5: The Keys of Marinus

Doctor: William Hartnell (1st Doctor)
Companion: Susan, Barbara, Ian


Written by: Terry Nation
Directed by: John Gorrie

Background & Significance: Terry Nation is crazy. No, really. He is. We have a sort of pet name for him over here at Classical Gallifrey, and, much like Robert "The Goddamn" Holmes, "Madman" Terry Nation is not unearned. But we'll be talking about that more in the weeks ahead.

In the early days of Who, though, that wasn't readily apparent. I mean, I suppose you have to be a little crazy to invent something like the Daleks, but other than that... nah. Just a regular bloke. But his ideas are quite excellent, when he wants them to be. A watch-through of "The Keys of Marinus" (and hopefully this blog entry) will show you what I mean.

Still in the midst of the freshman season of Doctor Who, "The Keys of Marinus" provides something of a reprieve for the cast; the way the serial is formatted, not everyone needs to be present for the mini-adventures that are relatively self-contained and episodic, yet serialized in the fact that they're all to one end: locate the Keys of Marinus. It's a pretty straightforward quest adventure, and though not everyone is present for a few of the episodes (Hartnell actually is absent from two of them, which is kinda lame, but the others totally bring it), it's still tons of fun with lots of energy and shenanigans and some really excellent sci-fi concepts.

Which, despite his flaws, is why I love Terry Nation; because he is crazy enough to come up with this stuff.

Let's take a closer look, shall we?

Serial 6: The Aztecs

Doctor: 1st Doctor (William Hartnell)
Companions: Susan, Barbara, and Ian

Written by: John Lucarotti
Directed by: John Crockett

Background & Significance: After the success of long-lost Doctor Who adventure "Marco Polo", script editor David Whitaker asked that story's writer John Lucarotti to write another historical epic about whatever he chose. Lucarotti chose "The Aztecs", a culture which had fascinated him, and they were off to the races.

While it is considered one of the great stories of the classic series, and very memorable in terms of Hartnell's tenure on the show, to call "The Aztecs" a wonderful epic story of awesome is... hyperbole. It's best defined by two very important events that happen over the course of the adventure:

Barbara tries to re-write history and The Doctor gets engaged.

The second bit we'll laugh at when we get to it in the story, but "The Aztecs" does (to an extent) deal with the threat of changing the course of history. In this, "The Aztecs" is, perhaps, most important. The idea that Barbara can, through the aid of The Doctor bringing them to that moment in history, alter the past to fit her worldview and design is nothing short of revolutionary in the scope of the series. Now, The Doctor wouldn't be just having to run away from people who want to kill him and saving his companions (or having them save him). This story established that he needs to have history play out as it should play out and that they can't go and change anything.

(Anything, of course, being rather subjective as a term.)

Really, though, that just makes this story sound much more epic than it actually is. It's not like Barbara goes around and shows the Aztecs guns or anything. She just tries to change their culture in a very small way, which, while not massive and epic on the scale of what other characters (from Time Lords to humans to Daleks) will try to do later on in the series, is at least the first story to tackle the issue, thereby giving them all the license to do it in the future.

So let's get to it!

Serial 10: The Dalek Invasion of Earth

Doctor:William Hartnell (1st Doctor)
Companion: Susan, Barbara, Ian


Written by: Terry Nation
Directed by: Richard Martin

Background & Significance: Daleks are popular.

I know that goes without saying, but that's the way the world is. Since their first appearance, The Daleks have always been major players in the scope of Doctor Who. It was their appearance in Doctor Who's second story that rocketed the show into its must-see-TV status.

And as with all things, they needed to monetize on what they had.

To cope with the insane popularity of that second story and ignoring the fact that The Daleks had been completely defeated in their first story, the producers re-hired Terry Nation, creator of The Daleks, to pen another Dalek invasion story, something bigger, badder, and awesomer.

He came up with this, the story of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, explaining away everything, and writing a bad ass story that's a bit more worthy of The Daleks. Again, the Daleks need epic, and this was the first time they really fulfilled the scope and promise of The Daleks as these great and evil bad guys.

Not only that, but this serial is ridiculously significant not just for the return of the Daleks, but also for the first companion departure. Carole Ann Ford, who played Susan, decided to leave the show after she was not allowed to develop the character as she wanted, which is a shame, especially when you consider how important and meaningful a character like "The Doctor's Granddaughter" actually is. That said, this ending is.... just...

Well... We'll touch on that when we get there.

All in all, this is just a great serial, and after spending a ton of time dealing with The Doctor Who of the 70's and 80's, it's really fun to get back to the cheap B-movie delightful science fiction stories of Hartnell/Troughton Who. Not only that, but this could have been awful, but it wasn't. It's here that "Dalekmania" started, and the Daleks' popularity started to skyrocket. This was the first of several notable Dalek stories that would get told over the course of the next several seasons.

But enough of this blather! Let's get to it!

Serial 2: The Daleks

Doctor: 1st Doctor (William Hartnell)

Companions: Susan, Barbara, and Ian

Written by Terry Nation

Directed by Christopher Barry and Richard Martin

Background and Significance: In 1963, Doctor Who hit The BBC as an educational children's show. It's come a long way since then, obviously, and I could go on about it more, but really that's what Wikipedia is for.

The reason I mention that here is because in their second serial, The Daleks, Doctor Who took a huge turn that no one had expected or anticipated. Some dude named Terry Nation came in and wrote this serial. Starting here, the show became this "thrilling" adventure show with aliens and action and adventure and started its evolution into the show it is today.

And really, that makes this serial important for two reasons:

1) It sets up Doctor Who as a vehicle to tell exciting sci-fi adventure stories.
2) It introduces one of The Doctor's great archenemies: The Daleks

But enough introduction. Here we start. Endless fun. It's kinda rough, but endlessly fun. The serial (collection of episodes making a story; this storytelling method holds until Doctor Who's cancellation in 1989) itself is seven episodes long (all the episodes (save a few) I'll be talking about are twenty five minutes long) and boy howdy did it not need to be. But it's still fun.There's charm and innocence coming off this in waves. It's fantastic in the way the original Star Trek is fantastic.

One more disclaimer: There is zero budget for this show. Like. There's so not. Doctor Who has always had a reputation for being a show that's made on the cheap. Even the modern stories are done on the relative cheap, but their budget is much more respectable than the budget for this. What we're watching here is an educational kids show that aired on Saturday nights. There'd be no budget anyways (look at modern American public access children's programming), but put it in the 1960's and that just makes this laughable in the most charming way.

But enough of this silliness. What happens?