…1963, and everything’s a bit black and white, and fuzzy and
crackly (still, only forty years until vid-FIREing’s invented, after which
it’ll all look as bright as a new pin), yes, it’s…
100,000 BC
In which two nosey teachers discover one of their pupils
lives in something resembling an old shed in a junkyard with an elderly
bloke who has a penchant for astrakhan and not bothering to remember his lines,
while two rival cavemen argue about the central heating…
- Coal Hill School…yup, Remembrance of the Daleks even
had to bugger about with its name, didn’t it…sticking a ‘Road’ in for no
apparent reason. It feels like one of those strikingly modern comprehensives
that became ever more prevalent from the mid Sixties onwards - a beacon of hope
and achievement for the masses back then, but full of rather scary children
from certain backgrounds who wear their ties with unfeasibly large knots in
them by our day and age and who insist on playing their fucking music on the
bus for all to hear (I’m getting old, aren’t I)!
- the episode title must surely refer to Susan…after all, the
Doctor’s always calling her child; plus, this is the 1960’s - you were
considered a youngster up until about the age of thirty-two back then. However, The Fact
of Fiction article in Doctor Who Magazine Issue 337
fiercely disputes this! The reason given? Susan can’t possibly be the “unearthly
child” because her tits are too big! Nope - I’m not making it up, go and have a
read for yourself if you don’t believe me.
- ‘I like walking through the dark…it’s mysterious’ says
Susan. That’s settled it…she’s on the game!
- from the flashback sequences we can see that class sizes
were much smaller in 1963. Susan’s only consists of about six. Um…I also see
that her fellow female classmates are…how should one put it…erm…rather well
developed “up top”, aren’t they! I wonder what they’re being fed for school
dinners? Maybe Coal Hill’s been infiltrated by an alternate band of
Krillitane intent on giving the next generation of British women unfeasibly
large chests by coating their chips and boiled cabbage in some dodgy cooking
oil.
- ‘Feel it! Feel it’ insists Ian to
Babs as he has a good old fondle of the vibrating TARDIS exterior. She does
have a feel, although she looks as though she’d be far happier sitting at home
having a cup of tea listening to Mrs Dale’s Diary.
 |
| 'And this is the switch I shall point to when I haven't a bloody clue what my next line is...' |
- I’m sorry, but the Doctor plays his first scene completely
wrong. He’s the one with the advantage to begin with, having caught these two
interfering teachers trespassing on his property, but he loses the upper hand
by being so downright obstreperous and rude. If he’d have played the whole thing
a little bit more ‘Peter Cushing-y’ he could’ve avoided the confrontation that
inevitably follows. Silly old goat!
- before you can say “bugger me with a brontosaurus” they all
find themselves back at the dawn of time in the sort of place one might expect
Doug McClure to have a holiday home.
- Cry-Watch - oh it’s
not just the New Series that has me reaching for the man-size
three ply you know. Here the thing that gets me snivelling (and anybody mention
the words ‘big’, ‘old’ and ‘poof’ in the same sentence will get a slap!) is the
TARDIS taking off for the very first time. There are two reasons for this. The
first is that it’s the moment when everything changes for Ian and Barbara.
They’re being forcibly torn away from everything they hold dear, and from this moment
on their lives are going to change forever. It’s a scene that always makes me
reflect on the day I left home, a move that signified childhood’s end and a
loss of innocence, a time when I suddenly had to toughen up and face full on
all the uncertainties the big wide world had to offer. And the two teachers are
going to have to do exactly the same, albeit on a much bigger scale. They look
so small and insignificant in the face of their discovery and the way they’re
flung about like rag dolls and rendered unconscious by the movement of the ship
is a surprisingly affecting. The other thing that really gets me at this point
is the knowledge that this is the precise moment where it really did all begin.
This is when we too set off on our travels through time and space in the
unlikeliest of spaceships with someone who’d become one of our greatest hero. It’s the
moment when an institution that still continues today (and perhaps always will in some
form or other) was born, and that’s just awesome.
 |
| With things beginning to get on top of him, the Doctor decided it was time to light his crack pipe. |
- sssssh - nobody mention The Time Machine.
Um...oh...nobody has. Which is a bit odd really as it’s the one piece of
literature this story (not to mention the series as a whole) bears most obvious
comparison to. If such a reference were going to be made, it’d have to be by
Ian and/or Barbara as they exit the ship and try to come to terms with what’s
just happened to them - before they get caught up in a sequence of
life-threatening events that preclude any kind of small talk. Surely one, if
not both, of them would’ve read Wells’ novella at some point in their lives, or
seen the Rod Taylor film that’d only been in cinema's a couple of years before.
But no. No mention is ever made.
- The Tribe of Gum - a
bunch of hairy primitives with greasy hair and bad teeth. And that’s only the
women (no bikini clad Raquel Welch look-alikes here I’m afraid - the females of
the tribe look as though they’ve come off three straight shifts down the sewage
works, where they’ve been sorting through the
probably spent at least half an hour stitching together on
her pedal operated Singer before going to bed the night before) and worship the Orb! Yes, I quite like their music too - especially ‘Little
Fluffy Clouds’. If ever a family were destined for a spot
on The Jeremy Kyle Show its Za and his kin. Brutish in
appearance, unshaven, none too bright, general lack of teeth, son shouting at
the mother and calling her a slag - they’d fit right in (there can’t be much of
a trade for birthday card peddlers in this period). They could’ve turned out to
be an embarrassing, laughable bunch (just look at the Space: 1999 episode
‘The Full Circle’ if you want an idea of how bad they could’ve been
[what the frig was Barbara Bain on?]), yet I always find myself being drawn
into the rather simple plotline totally, thanks in no small part to the guest
casts’ great, and at times very subtle, performances (and it’s not easy being
subtle when you’re prancing about barefoot in what is in effect a fairly small
warehouse in West London, covered from head to foot in the contents of a
grow-bag and wearing bits of something that died pre-war).
 |
| Horg, pictured yesterday. |
- I bet the fact that Horg keeps rattling on about how great
a guy Kal is really winds Za up. It wouldn’t surprise me if, once things have
settled down, and Za and Hur have moved into a nice little cave all of
their own, the father-in-law’s getting booked straight into that Swiss
euthanasia clinic Za's already got the prospectus for.
- Old Mother has to sleep right at the very end of the bed
(or rather hard bit of cave floor). Obviously no one wants her hands wandering
into their bear-skin pyjamas half way through the night.
- Great Stone my arse! Great Big Bit of Polystyrene more
like! ‘We cannot move the Great Stone’ grunts Hur as she and Za attempt to
budge it from the entrance to the Cave of Skulls. What? A good fart should be
enough to shift it dear. Pity there aren’t any Slitheen around.
- the TARDIS crew faffing about in the aftermath of the
attack on Za is a bit like watching a load of civil servants during a team
building weekend in the Peak District. And when they improvise a stretcher on
which to carry the bloodied caveman it suddenly gets a bit Casualty: 100,000
BC.
- The Forest of Fear:
Great unanswered questions the series has posed over the years: 1. Which Doctor
fought the in the Time War?; 2. Who the buggeration were those other blokes on
the mind-bending thingummy screen in The Brain of Morbius?; 3. Why
the feck did JNT insist an actress - who had, let’s face it, put on a few
pounds since she'd last appeared in Doctor Who in
the late Sixties - wear a crevice hugging powder blue leotard topped off with a
couple of roles of bubble wrap for a guest appearance in The Five
Doctors (which resulted in her looking like a frumpy Wirrn larva that’d
been left out in the cold overnight)? and 4. Was the Doctor really going to kill Za?
- the time travellers actions in the aftermath of the attack
seem to teach both Za and Hur an invaluable lesson, one so great it might even
be responsible for putting mankind on the path to becoming the most successful
species on the planet. For it seems to me the whole purpose of this story,
outside of it being the vehicle by which the regulars are introduced, is to
provide us with Doctor Who’s very own explanation of how man made
the crucial jump from knuckle dragging ignoramus to Scrabble playing, Guardian reading,
Tuscany holidaying sophisticate. Erm...sort of. Yes, this is (supposedly) the
moment when the TARDIS crew, and Ian and Barbara in particular, miraculously
endow these primitives with the fundamental building blocks needed to create a
caring, interdependent, civilised society! Good job then that Barbara didn’t
think “Sod the little fecker” and leg it after the others, otherwise I might
not be sitting at my laptop writing this shit. I’d be rolling around in my own
faecal matter, eating beetles and picking the nits out of my mother’s body
hair.
 |
| Honestly! Boys! They're all the same...one minute it's 'Fuck off mate, I ain't no poof', yet five pints later you're on your back in the pub car park with them on top of you! |
- ‘I can smell something’ says Susan. ‘So can I’ chips in
Barbara. Yes, well, it’s probably Ian, who’s sweating like a pig in a nylon
sleeping bag as he frantically rubs two sticks together in an attempt to get
the barbecue going. By this late point in the story they’re none of them a good
advertisement for the Lynx effect.
- The Gay Agenda - (I bet
most of us think of this as having been invented by Dame Russelty Davies when
she got her little pink mittens on the ship’s main drive, but no, this so
called children’s show appealed to “friends of Dorothy” across the land right
from the word go.) Why is it that Za and Kal’s fight in The Firemaker always
reminds me of that fireside wrestling scene between Oliver
Reed and Alan Bates in Women in Love? A tad more baby oil and it
would’ve rated an eighteen certificate on its commercial release.
 |
| The guard outside the Cave of Skulls was prepared for any trouble - he was armed with a giant Ciabatta and he wasn't afraid to use it! |
- Death-O-Meter: (an
attempt to keep a running total of who croaks it in the series and how.) 1. Old Mother - Za’s
mum is the first of many to kick the bucket in the show when Kal decides to put
her out of our misery with a sharpened stone knife. Well, it’s kinder than
having her put in a home I suppose; 2. Caveman -
after being given the thankless task of guarding what is basically a hole in a
bit of rock for hours on end in order to make sure the TARDIS crew don’t leg it
out the back door of the Cave of Skulls and high-tail it back to their “blue
tree”, does this poor bloke receive any thanks? Does he buggery! Instead he’s
strangled by Kal. Some days things just don’t turn out the way you’d like, do
they; 3. Kal -
well it serves him right really doesn’t it after what he did to numbers 1 and 2
on the list. A lesson in karma I’m tempted to say. After a bit of a punch up
that wouldn’t look out of place in the Queen Vic on a Friday night, Za snaps
his neck before smashing his skull in with a bloody great rock. Still, with
this taking place in the Cave of Skulls it couldn’t have happened in a more
appropriate place.
- after giving him the secret of fire, the time travellers
officially become Za’s best friends. Hmm, that could be another *ahem*
fabulous reality TV show from ITV2 methinks.
- the tribe celebrate their new found fortune by throwing a
party. And, good heavens, if they get so excited by a bit of cooked meat,
imagine if the story had featured Donna and she’d introduced them to Pringles!
- okay, its official…Susan’s cracked! Time to get the leather
restraints and syringe full of Ketamine at the ready. I mean, what on Earth
makes her think of placing a human skull on a burning torch? An
Unearthly Child? After this I think we should rename Episode One A
Twisted Fuck! Is she a fan of The
Evil Dead films?
Score on the
TARDIS Doors - 10 - never fear, I’m
not going to be dishing out 10’s willy-nilly. A story’s going to have to work
really hard if it wants to earn itself top marks. And 100,000 BC does
just that! The first episode is magnificent. It’s not only a fine example
of Doctor Who, but a superb instance of television drama in
general. I’ve always maintained when pressed for an opinion (which is usually
from an intoxicated friend, round a beer soaked, varnish chipped, wobbly table
in some insalubrious homosexualist pub after far too many lager and limes as some
old drag queen in an ill-fitting Liza Minnelli wig belts out River
Deep, Mountain High in the downstairs bar...badly) that the first ever
episode of Doctor Who could be re-filmed word for word and
shot for shot today and still pack exactly the same punch as the original did
when it was first transmitted back in 1963. It’s just so right in so many ways. It's just a shame that the remaining three episodes are usually met with complete
silence from the majority of fans. Why? They’re equally fantastic! Okay,
admittedly, once the first episode’s over its land, get captured, escape, get
captured, make fire, escape again. But so what. It's all so engrossing, who
cares if it’s not exactly stretching. We could’ve ended up with some hokey
run-around featuring big bosomed, bottle-blonde, Victoria Vetri wannabe’s being
pursued by some anachronistic, anatomically incorrect, wobbly old stop motion
dinosaurs (which, let's face it) the budget wouldn’t have stretched to anyway) but instead we
get a serious, play it for real character piece. Rejoice.
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