"ACTIVATE... THE DEVICE"*

For some reason, I've so far avoided blogging about one of the best things in the world EVER - namely, Doctor Who. OK, so I've snuck in a couple of brief mentions, but now that I've written nearly 7000 words about other stuff, I'm going to bloody indulge myself.
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OK, the minor freakout about where to start has subsided and I now have a strategy. I had thought, why not write about each of the Doctor Who stories I'd seen since Christmas? The answer to which is: that would be silly. What with the Christmas special, the DVD box sets Santa so kindly left us, and lots of lovely time off work, there's been LOTS of Doctor Who watched round our gaff over the last few weeks. So instead of everything, I'm going to start at the beginning...

An Unearthly Child

First broadcast 23 November 1963

When I was 11, I read and wrote a report on H.G. Wells' The Time Machine as one of my English homework assignments. My summing up of the book went something along the lines of: "not a bad story, but not very original. The idea of time travel has already been done better by Dr Who", against which my teacher, Dr Wilkinson, wrote in the margin, "HG Wells wrote this years before Dr Who!" Even so, I still got 8/10 for the essay.

Now, I'm not in the habit of remembering my homework marks from 20 years ago, but that one's always stuck with me. I can even remember that I wrote "Dr Who" as opposed to "Doctor Who" as I would now. Of course, as soon as I got the essay back I couldn't believe how stupid I'd been. It had simply never occurred to me that there was a time before Doctor Who existed. It illustrates how embedded into the cultural landscape Doctor Who had become. Even in 1988, when the Classic series was in its death throes, it was impossible to dismiss it. Maybe it was part of that taking it for granted that allowed us to let it get a bit shit in the '80s and limp off our screens with a whimper...

So, given that to some extent I grew up with the impression that Timelords were the first beings to harness the power of time travel, it was fascinating, at last, to watch the first ever episode of Doctor Who. Even though I'd seen numerous documentaries and read lots and lots about the almost clinical design of this new show, it still gave me tingles to see how they introduced it to the 4.4 million people who were watching on 23 November 1963.

Of course, what strikes you first is the opening credits. No matter how many times I see them, there's still something extremely weird about them. Right from the outset, they take you somewhere else. Maybe it's to do with the fact that visually, the howl-around is made out of TV itself? However it works, it sets it up brilliantly. I'd love to know what it was like to see/hear those credits when they were first broadcast... but then again, there's some that say the entire '60s looked and sounded just like that.

And when it starts, it doesn't start all cosy and familiar. It starts creepy and dark. A junkyard. Broken things. Forgotten things. Things without purpose. Things out of place. A police public call box, humming, vaguely... It's properly creepy. In fact, the tone of the first episode is consistently eerie - particularly in the pilot recording (the episode was re-recorded with minor changes - principally lightening the tone of The Doctor's character - for broadcast).

One of the most impressive things about this first episode is how concise it is. 45 years and a whole expanded Whoniverse later, it perhaps seems like a more massive idea than it was at the time, but it was still asking its audience to get their heads around some pretty mindbending concepts in 23 minutes:

a) Aliens that look like humans
b) A space/time ship that looks like a police box.
And of course...
c) The TARDIS - it's bigger on the inside.

Cleverly, the episode focuses its attention on introducing these ideas. Susan's oddness - her alienness - is what stirs the teachers' concern (or curiosity - as the science teacher, Ian Chesterton points out). There's no adventure as such in this first ep - unless you consider getting lost in a junkyard at night with no matches, an adventure. It's the discovery of this portal to adventure that is focus of it. The Doctor asks:

"Have you ever thought what it's like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension?"

and that's the question. And the fact is, Ian and Barbara have been curious. No matter how pissed off they get subsequently, they got curious about Susan and barged their way into the TARDIS. They didn't not notice, they weren't not warned and they still didn't hang back. And what you get for keeping going into the dark and the fog, is cavemen, Daleks and the TARDIS getting clever about communicating. That's just the first three stories.

A lot of Doctor Who is about intrusion. Consequence. The indelibility of the footprint you leave, no matter how touristy your intentions. Interestingly, it seems to take the line that, no matter how back and forth you dart in time, as a traveller, your memory of events is chronological to your experience of them. To quote Futurama, "You watched it. You can't unwatch it." And then what do you do with that knowledge? If you could go back in time... if you could see the future... if you could go to another world where no-one knew anything about you... ?

And since we haven't yet harnessed the power of time travel (though I heard someone on the radio a couple of months ago, who was attempting time travel via a point of light, lots of mirrors and - I think - a cup of coffee), it's still worth thinking what it might be like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension.

If you're interested, there's a detailed breakdown of the episode here. In theory, it's linked to the following three episodes which form a lacklustre runaround involving cavemen and the search for fire, but frankly, it's too dull to bother with in the same breath as the opening episode.

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* "Activate... The Device" is one of my favourite Doctor Who quotes. It's from a Peter Davison era story called Earthshock. It's from when the Cybermen had rubbishy voices and sounded a bit like a bunch of posh old men who'd had a bit too much to drink.
"Activate," says the Cyberleader. Pause. What? we say. Activate what? the tension is immense.
"The Device" says the Cyberleader, at length. Ah! we say. The Device.