An Unearthly Child/100,000 BC

Za make fire!

I'm going to break the first story down into two components because An Unearthly Child should be judged as a completely stand alone episode. It has no real bearing on the the following three episodes with the cave folk and you could have picked any of the early stories to stick in front of and it would have worked just as well. So let's treat it as its own thing.

An Unearthly Child is a very good set up episode which hints at the promise to which the show would eventually achieve. Barbara, Ian, and Susan are all introduced in a very simple and easy to follow fashion. They are likable and the teacher's source of concern is easy to recognize and their following reactions seem logical. It is also easy to see how the writers envisioned the show early on with Ian as the true lead and the Doctor as the knowledge fount (sort of a Ian as Kirk and the Doctor as Spock vibe) given that the Doctor is not introduced until the story is nearly 2/3 past.

If I did have to give a bit of a quibble, it's the future short shrift they give Susan. In this episode, Susan is shown to be a more or less typical teenager but with a taste for adventure if not the ability to keep her knowledge expressly straight. That she became a simpering screamer is not her fault, but it such a disappointment in hindsight.

Then comes the caveman story (The Cave of Skulls, The Forest of Fear, The Firemaker). I honestly have no idea why this story was chosen. I suppose that with Ian and Barbara's lack of understanding of what was going on, it was important to give them a scenario where they would have the intellectual advantage if not any other advantage. But when you take out the ability of articulation, the personalities of the tribe just go flat and that leads to the worst case scenario of a TV show: being boring. It was only three episodes long but there was almost nothing of interest going on. I didn't care about the caveman politics because all sides came across as stupid. What difference does it make if Za or Kal is in charge if both act like fools (even though the audience is meant to support Za).

I think elements of this story would have worked a bit better if it had been done in either a Celtic Britain or even the Dark Ages. There would have been a better chance for the locals to have interesting personalities while still giving the travelers the technological advantage that allowed them to outwit the locals and escape.

I would happily watch An Unearthly Child again but I have no interest in treading the ground of 100,000 BC again.

Overall personal score: An Unearthly Child - 4 out of 5; 100,000 BC - 1.5 out of 5