Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Science Fiction Mile Stone - The First Airing of Doctor Who

Today was the first episode of Doctor Who it aired right after the announcement that Kenndy had been shot!
 The Unearthly Child's Plot went something like this:
The first episode starts in a junkyard in contemporary London and introduces the four characters who were to form the core of the first year's production: Schoolteachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright are concerned about one of their pupils, Susan Foreman, who seems to have a very alien outlook on England. She is precocious, but seems to have strange gaps in her understanding of the world. They have come to her listed address to investigate.
The programme's main prop, the TARDIS, is also introduced, when the teachers hear Susan's voice apparently coming from inside a police box. At the time, such boxes were a fairly common sight on the streets of London, but only police officers held a key to open them. The TARDIS proves to be no ordinary police box: when Ian and Barbara enter, they discover it to be much bigger on the inside than the outside, and furnished with futuristic-looking controls. The time machine retains its outward appearance when it travels through time, which Susan explains as a malfunction in the circuitry that is supposed to adapt its appearance to its surroundings.
Susan lives with her grandfather, the mysterious Doctor, who does not otherwise identify himself. He is a cranky, hostile, suspicious old man who appears to be a fugitive. Fearing that Barbara and Ian will give away the secret of the TARDIS and make life impossible for him in London, he takes the machine to the Stone Age.
In the remaining three episodes, the four become involved in a brutal power struggle within a Stone Age tribe. In "The Cave of Skulls", the group encounters a Paleolithic tribe and are subsequently imprisoned by them in a large cave. In "The Forest of Fear", they are shown to escape from the settlement, but are subsequently intercepted before reaching the TARDIS. They barely escape with their lives by exploitation of Ian's knowledge of how to produce fire, which induces fear and respect in the primitive Stone Age society. The final episode, "The Firemaker", has the group mediating separate factions of the tribe before fleeing successfully to the TARDIS. They travel, seemingly at random, to a new destination; even the Doctor does not know where. The TARDIS's view screen shows a mysterious scene, a petrified forest, which acts as a teaser for the next story. As the time travellers leave their machine, a radiation meter is shown on the console of the machine, unheeded by them, registering "Danger".
Other facts -The four episodes of the serial are, respectively, "An Unearthly Child", "The Cave of Skulls", "The Forest of Fear" and "The Firemaker". In common with Coburn's original acronym TARDIS, as component parts of his script texts, these titles now remain the copyright protected property of his estate.
Some Other Odd Facts About the Transmission
The first episode was transmitted the day after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It has been written that the transmission was delayed by ten minutes due to extended news coverage; in fact, it went out just eighty seconds late.[8] However, because it was felt that the coverage of the events of the assassination as well as a series of power blackouts across the country may have caused too many viewers to miss this introduction to a new series it was broadcast again on 30 November 1963, just before the broadcast of episode two. This repeat was not broadcast in Northern Ireland. The serial was repeated on BBC2 in November 1981, daily from Monday 2 November 1981 to Thursday 5 November 1981 at 5.40pm. The Pilot was transmitted on BBC2, 26 August 1991 at 2.15pm.

So here's to one of my favorite Doctor's William Hartnel ! 
Some great behind the scenes information found right Here

4 comments:

  1. I haven't seen all the doctors yet, but the ones I have watched, I've liked. Great fun, this show.

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  2. I love this show & so does the other half. Its great fun! Can't wait to see what's coming up in it as well!

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  3. I haven't seen the latest doctor, yet.

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  4. The Matt Smith ones are fun & I really don't get the sense that they take themselves too seriously. Very cool show though.

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