doctor who

Doctor Who is every genre. The show as a whole has a science fiction candy coating with a delicious fantasy core, but follow it from story to story and you’ll stuff yourself on other genres – horror, western, pirate, murder mystery, slice of life, romance, and on and on and on. But the first serial, An Unearthly Child, beginning with its second episode, “The Cave of Skulls,” tackles one of my favorite genres of all. Shakespearean drama. More specifically, it’s a Shakespearean historical.

Yes, I know, it’s about cave people. But it’s also about a struggle for leadership with life and death stakes. It’s about a son of a dead ruler struggling to live up to his father’s legacy. It’s got a populace in turmoil, a father who disapproves of his daughter’s suitor, and a widow spitting barbs so vicious that Henry VI‘s Queen Margaret could study at her feet.

And they’re not speaking in iambic pentameter, but the language is nevertheless elevated. Take this speech from Kal, exaggerating his abduction of the Doctor in order to score political points over his rival, Za:

“When I saw fire come from his fingers I remembered Za, son of the firemaker. And when the cold comes, you will all die if you wait for Za to make fire for you. I, Kal, am a true leader. We fought like the tiger and the bear. My strength was too much for him. He lay down to sleep. And I, Kal, carried him here to make fire for you.”

Poetry! Writer Anthony Coburn uses our cliched expectations for how primitive people would have spoken – speaking of oneself in the third person, using simple words and short, clipped sentences. But within these self-imposed dialogue restrictions, his characters express a broad range of powerful emotions and epic motivations. His tribespeople are unlearned, not stupid. Kal begins to win the tribe over with the speech above, but when the Doctor says he can’t make fire, they waver. Za seizes the moment to win them back:

“You want to be strong like Za, son of the great firemaker. You all heard him say that there would be fire. There is no fire. Za does not tell you lies. He does not say, I will do this thing, and then not do it. He does not say, I will make you warm, and then leave you to the dark. He does not say, I will fight away the tiger with fire, and then let him come to you in the dark. Do you want a liar for your chief?”

Kal just called Za “son of the firemaker” to mock him, to highlight how he’s failed to provide the life-giving fire that should have been his inheritance. But when Kal fails to deliver his promised fire via the Doctor, Za flips this back on him, calling himself “son of the great firemaker” to emphasize his legacy, and, implicitly, his right to be leader.

Zap these two forward a couple of tens of thousands of years, and they’d fit right in on opposing sides of the War of the Roses, or trying to bring down Richard II.

An Unearthly Child has an unfair reputation for being boring. Some fans recommend watching the first episode, then skipping ahead to the Daleks. But they’re wrong! There’s so much to love here. Coburns’ script is full of subtleties woven within a bleak and brutal storyline. It’s a five-act courtly drama played out across three half-hour episodes in a prehistoric cave by people wearing animal skins. It’s fully genius and partly ridiculous, which is what Doctor Who is when it’s at its best. It’s the perfect place to begin.

I must have tried a dozen times by now, at least, to write about the first episode of Doctor Who. I’ve tried funny takes, serious takes, a recap format – every time, I stop. I give up. It’s too big. I love this show so much that I’m compelled to document that love, but my love is so great that nothing I could write is ever going to be sufficient.

Which is, obviously, an absurd way to feel about a television show. Possibly even an unhealthy way to feel. I’m wary of any uncritical love of corporate owned media. I’m a big enough nerd that I’ve got plenty of other, lesser loves – comics, Star Trek, and, most notably for this blog’s purposes, Star Wars, which I manage to love to a lesser enough degree that I can write about it. Fan love can be a beautiful thing but it can also be toxic. I don’t mean the racists and sexists and all the other petty bigots – if you’re reading this, I’m guessing you’re not in the GamerGate crowd. I mean the Marvel movie stans who cheer on the type of corporate merger that’s a symptom of the capitalism that’s killing our planet because it means Wolverine can meet Captain America, or the Potterheads who turn a blind eye to Rowling’s transphobia because they just gotta try the butter beer at Wizarding World.

But that’s me. I’m those people. No matter what happens behind the scenes on Doctor Who, I’ll be there. And there’s a lot of behind the scenes stuff to be critical of. Plenty of in front of the scenes stuff, for that matter. For most of the show’s history, I could take solace in it being a BBC production, not some megacorporation’s favored branded content, but now that Disney’s got a piece, well… what’s a capitalism-hating socialist to do?

Defend it, of course. Dig in my heels. Doctor Who is not like the MCU, or Star Wars, or Harry Potter. It’s better, it’s bigger. It’s magic. It’s mercury. This first episode, “An Unearthly Child,” is miles away in tone and structure from the episodes streaming now on Disney+ and yet it is recognizably the same show. I wouldn’t say we could draw a straight line from then to now – Doctor Who is not a story about straight lines – but we can certainly put our pen down on November 23, 1963, and draw a loopy, blurry, doubling-and-tripling-back-on-itself line to today. And no one person or even one corporation could ever sour that for me. I mean, Fox got ahold of it in 1996, and that worked out all right. (Okay, not in the short term, but eventually.)

If my love survived “Kerblam!”, it can survive anything.

But why do I love it so much? I’ve written before about why I started watching it – thanks, Dad – but not why it transfixed me so. My age is certainly a part of it – I think it’s safe to call eight a formative time in one’s life – but I was already a fan of the aforementioned comics, Star Trek, and Star Wars by then, and Doctor Who vaulted past all of those obsessions easily.

Being queer is also part of it. It’s hardly groundbreaking analysis to say that queer people tend to be drawn to outsider narratives, particularly stories in which an outsider gets theirs on the establishment, and that’s Doctor Who all over. (Except when it’s not. Kerblam!) Just look at this debut episode. What little gay boy doesn’t feel like he himself is an unearthly child? I certainly did, and yes, if I’d known about this episode I would have been pretentious enough to describe myself that way, even at age eight. Especially at age eight. (“I am… an unearthly child,” I’d have whispered to myself in the dark, a single tear dripping dramatically onto my pillow.)

Ian and Barbara are meant to be the audience identification figures for the adults watching – stalwart schoolteachers, trusted and responsible. But Susan was included to give the children and teens someone to connect with, which is, in retrospect, an unusual but brilliant choice. The kids’ identification figure is literally an alien, bizarre and otherworldly, both too smart and too strange for her peers and her teachers. And yet Susan loves being among them, wants desperately to fit in, even as her intelligence and her odd behavior continually mark her as different. She’s loved but not listened to by her grandfather, who won’t accept that she might know herself better than he does.

Queer kids would feel what Susan felt. Plenty of straight kids would too, I’d imagine. I certainly would have, if I’d been alive and watching in 1963. I feel it now, and every time I rewatch “An Unearthly Child.”. Watch this episode, and see if you feel it too.

(If you can find it – sadly, copyright issues mean this first story isn’t available to stream anywhere.) (Legally.)

I want to say more about this episode. About a moment at the beginning between a couple of supporting artists playing students that’s so beautifully normal, it throws Susan’s unusualness into stark relief. About the introduction of the Doctor, our supposed hero who’s anything but. About Barbara’s face when she enters the TARDIS for the first time, and how her wordless reaction says more than any line of dialogue ever could. About how much I wish the modern series would show us a party on Gallifrey where everyone is doing Susan’s weird hand-dance.

But that’s the trap I’ve fallen into so many times before. In trying to write everything I feel about Doctor Who, I write nothing. So I’ll leave it here, with just a light touch on the queerness of Susan, a thread I may follow through later episodes, or I may abandon completely. Doctor Who is ever changeable, after all, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t be, too.

Maybe that’s why I love it? A show that’s constantly reinventing itself? It’s a trait I’ve noticed in myself, sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. Is this where I got it? Did Doctor Who influence my life more than I think? Is that why I’m so drawn to it? I’ll keep watching, and keep writing, and maybe I’ll find out.

I’m very slowly rewatching all of Doctor Who from the beginning, and I’ve finally finished season 3 from 1965-1966. Here’s my ranking, and some quick thoughts. (Click for Season 1 and Season 2.)

1. The Daleks’ Master Plan – Not a surprise that the Dalek story takes top marks again this season. At twelve episodes, it’s an epic, but the odd Christmas episode mid-way, followed by a tangential mini-arc with the return of the Monk, keeps it feeling fresh.
2. Galaxy 4 – The new animation had me enjoying this story a lot more this time around. The Drahvins are camp as hell, how could I not rate this highly?
3. The Celestial Toymaker – Similarly, the new animation improves this story drastically – this is probably the only story that would drop in my ratings if the lost episodes were found. The animated people take some getting used to, particularly Steven, but the Toymaker’s games look fantastical.
4. The Savages – A high placement considering all the episodes are missing, but it’s a great exit story for Steven. Plus, “colonialism is bad” is a message that’s always timely.
5. The Myth Makers – Another one that’s risen in my esteem after rewatch, despite no episodes surviving. It’s a load of fun until the sudden tonal shift in the last episode takes it dark. Points off for Vicki’s goodbye happening off-screen.
6. The Massacre – Drags a bit, but a good focal episode for Steven; and William Hartnell shines in his double roll as both the Doctor and the evil Abbot.
7. The War Machines – The first two episodes are great, and it introduces two of the best companions, Polly and Ben. But the latter two episodes lean into dull 50s-style sci-fi, and poor Dodo is shuffled off the show without a word.
8. The Ark – The first two episodes hold up a lot better than the first. It’s not a bad story, really, but massive points off for the “colonialism is good, actually” message, which really doesn’t jibe with Doctor Who‘s core. (They should put this in a box set with Kerblam! and call it “Right-Wing Tales”.)
9. Mission to the Unknown – A bit unfair to judge this on its own, since it’s really a prologue to “Master Plan,” but who said Doctor Who was fair? I may be rating this low because I watched the fan-produced animation, which is dreadful.
10. The Gunfighters – For years, fan consensus, based on the memory of those who’d watched it on airing, was that this story was terrible. Then it was released on VHS, and fan consensus was that it had been treated unfairly. I am here to tell you that fan consensus was right the first time. This was a chore to get through, and that song… dear god, that song…