An Unearthly Child – Part 1

Just let me get this straight. A thing that looks like a police box, standing in a junkyard, it can move anywhere in space and time?                                                    

-Ian Chesterton

Hello, my dearest audiences! I appreciate your presence a lot. Today I am going to start analysing An Unearthly Child. 

All of you know that An Unearthly Child is the first serial of Doctor Who, so there is no need of me jabbering about its significance here. There are numerous interesting elements to examine, but for the time being, I will bring up only three points today. The others are going to be tackled in my following entries.

First of all, the plot
In a few words, An Unearthly Child is about two middle school teachers, Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright. They follow their middle school pupil, Susan Foreman, to her home, because of her strange behaviour and knowledge. Susan’s odd grandfather later kidnaps them with a space-time machine called the TARDIS (they referred it as the ship) to roughly 100,000 B.C.

They encounter a bunch of savages in 100,000 B.C. and had to get back to the TARDIS.

Plots are essential to all stories, but weaker or simpler ones does not make the stories bad. The advantage of a relatively simple plot is that we can work with it more easily. Stories are held up by other aspects. Clearly, the first episode is supported by a stronger plot in comparison to the latter three. I would say a lot has happened in the first episode. Our regular casts, the TARDIS is introduced. An Unearthly Child feels as if it were split into two. The discontinuity between the first and second episode is the reason. The first episode has a complete exposition to falling action, a resolution is enough to bring the closure. In “The Cave of Skull”, the story is given a new set of exposition. Technically, what follows “The Cave of Skull” could be a separated story from the preceding episode.

We can feel how the pace starts to slow down once we enter the second episode. Nevertheless, if you realise how the purpose, the focus and the goal of the latter three episodes shift, you can see why they do not require a tight plot. They are chiefly about the chemistry of the characters, namely the TARDIS crews. In contrast to the latter three, the goal of the first one is to introduce the TARDIS crews. Once that is accomplished, the story can move on to a new goal, which is to develop the relationship of the TARDIS crews. With a new goal, the story must change its tone and focus as well. By having three adventurous episodes, characters get the time to know each other better. This established a solid foundation for Doctor Who to grow on.

A Cliché
Most television programmes if not all follow a pattern of some sort. There are many instances in which a show has to repeat itself or copy an idea from other shows. Doctor Who is no exception. If the pattern is used properly, it could still be a good story. The TV trope website has a good collection of cliché for each Doctor Who serial that will possibly either ruin the story and franchise altogether for you or make your day. Be careful about the visit.

An Unearthly Child introduced a very typical political situation to Doctor Who. Its variations are also used in many other dramas. A brief talk about the main feature and issue of this situation at this point may be a good idea before we go back to An Unearthly Child. 

The reason anyone would like to construct such a scenario is to generate optimal tension.

On the other hand, it is overused in the world of drama. There is a common strategy to partially tackle this problem. I will mention it below because Doctor Who exploits this method all the time.

What exactly are we talking about?

Well… you are probably not surprised to know the aforementioned is an imitation of the Cold War. This idea came from pagefillers.com/dwrg. I had the same idea in mind, but could not find a name for it. Thanks to Tim Roll-Pickering on the site, I finally find the right name for it. “Cold War” makes it easier for me to explain. There is “cold”, the source of tension; there is also “war”, symbolising the competition between two powers.

Keep a question in mind, which is, how exactly does An Unearthly Child fit into the Cold War model? From there, we can judge if the use of the Cold War model is effective. 

We can begin to answer it by imagining the tribe as the world. The prize for the victor. Za and Kal are the two potential leaders of the tribe with equal reputation. They are the USA and the Soviet Union respectively. Now we all know the central idea, but how should one integrate it?

“Huh? It is simple. Just uh… introduce some complications and uh… yup… that’s it.” Said you.

Precisely!

One can always introduce more fractions (like Doctor Who); alter the resolution or use the setting to his advantage and do whatever you want. The goal is to differentiate your work from others’. Simple strategy, right? At least that is how I see it.

There are two other fractions here with different goals which serve as the complications. The first ones are the TARDIS crews. They only want to get out of there, so they will help whoever that aids them; then there is the old woman who is against fire. Opposition to fire implies that she is against both Za and Kal. (No wonder why she had to die…)

Notice that the death of the old woman was the first on-screen death of Doctor Who. Although the kill was not explicitly shown, it and the death of Kal featured in “the Firemaker” are strong evidence which contradicts the premise of Doctor Who being a children’s show at the beginning.

We have understood the mechanism of the model through an effortless dissection. How well did it work then? That is to be discussed in our next point through the primitives.

The Portrayal of the Primitives
I have had messy fights my mind about the primitives. There was a problem for me to form an opinion on the primitives. Right now, I will settle with this: they are better than the average supporting character.

A character on TV has one extra dimension more to analyse than a regular character in books. The acting. This is where the primitives get tricky.

“Acting itself isn’t tricky”, some of you are saying, “you know whether you like his acting or not by instinct.” That is true, indeed. However, my instinct is not reliable and I should think about the characters more carefully when analysing them.

Let’s try to break the obstacles we are facing down to three specific points. Specifications always make our life easier.

#1: What elements should I take into consideration?

When we analyse something, we are interested in the actual “properties” of it as well as the relationship between these “properties”. The second is overlooked oftentimes.

It might be a bit confusing right now. Thinking about our story at hand may help. Properties of a character can be the acting of the actor or the attributes of the character. Everything the existence of a character contributes to the story. By relationship, I mean how a “property” is related to another. (Analogy to the notion of functions and sets in mathematics if it helps)

To answer the question, for “properties”, I will take the acting, the personality and the storyline into consideration. As for the connection, I would like to see how well can they complement each other.

#2: “Properties” of the primitives (Acting, Attributes & Storyline)

Acting is a subjective matter. Generally, the primitives aren’t so different from each other in terms of acting. The unsophisticated dialogues of the primitives do fit quite well into the story. At the same time, the dialogues enhance the atmosphere. But it is merely sufficient if we are talking about acting purely. (The TARDIS crews had way more dynamic performance in comparison, but they are not the centre of our discussion today.) 

Regarding personality, there are two ways to approach the primitives. The first way to depict them is to treat them as any character, try to give every one of them a unique personality. But here, Anthony Coburn chose a different way from how Terry Nation did the Thals (though technically, Thals are not savages like these).

Under his depiction, the primitives lack distinction (of personality). Instead, they are driven by the very fundamental and raw human nature. They are driven by the uncontrollable needs to survive; to have power over others; to revenge; to do things caused by fear etc. These needs are always present in the story, although we are only able to catch a glimpse of them. All named primitives demonstrated it at some point. The most obvious examples are Kal and Za. They both showed the need for power. Kal also attempts to revenge after he has failed.

BUT…there isn’t enough emphasis on the “raw human nature”. The domino does not have enough momentum right now. Here is where the storyline comes into play and complemented the former “property”. Anthony Coburn did not only exploit the “raw human nature” to subtly push the plot to go on smoothly. The plot, on the other hand, substitutes the need for explicit emphasis on human nature. Two deaths show how far human can be driven by raw human nature and brings an elegant closure to the issue.

#3: The down

Being predictable damages the quality of tension severely and the characterisation (slightly). Potentially, predictability can cause further consequences. For instance, it can overshadow the excellence of the storyline because the sequence of events is predicted by the audience. Stories aren’t exciting once it is spoiled. (For many people, well… of course some people don’t mind.)

Coming to a conclusion of the primitives, their characterisation is believable (which is essential and to some degree successful) with different factors backing each other up. To conclude today’s blog, I’d say the plot and the conception of the primitives are impressive. But the tension was not well delivered.

Thank you for your attention today! Next time we are going to take a look at the TARDIS crews. See you then!