Hartnell Watch: The Cave of Skulls/ The Forest of Fear/ The Firemaker (Series 1, Episodes 2-4)

As I move into the three episodes that make up the story proper, I find, perhaps thankfully, that there’s less to incoherently gush about (Note from future Gnu who's finished the review: this will turn out to be a lie). I mean, I still think it’s bloody marvellous, but I’m not going to spend the entire review essentially going “William Hartnell is awesome in this scene because he’s William Hartnell.” Critics of these episodes, and there are a fair few, have said that the struggles of a Stone Age tribe to discover the secret of fire was maybe not the most exciting way to follow up on the discovery of a machine that can take you anywhere and anywhen. Indeed, quite a few people have said that it would have been better to skip straight to the next story, with its exciting alien worlds and exhilarating battles against the… ah, but I’m getting ahead of myself. 

More key dialogue:
"Just open the doors, Doctor Foreman."
"Hmm? Doctor who?"
Also, check out a time before technobabble: the TARDIS has a "yearometer."

Hartnell Watch: An Unearthly Child (Series 1, Episode 1)

As excitement builds for the half-century anniversary of the Doctor Who franchise, it’s worth pointing out that it yesterday, it was just one year until we find out what Steven Moffat has planned for the show’s fiftieth. Maybe, just maybe, Moffat will actually give us some answers for the first time in his Producership.
But enough of my grouching. If it was one year until the 50^th anniversary yesterday, that means that it was also Doctor Who’s 49^th! And so, in celebration, I decided that there had been enough negativity on this blog. It was time to get to the heart of why I love this mighty show so much. And that meant going back right to the beginning, to my favourite era of the programme: the time of the First Doctor, played by William Hartnell. It’s time to sit back and enjoy how it all began…

When reviewing the very first story, many people choose to divide the four- parter into episode one, An Unearthly Child, and episodes two, three and four, titled The Cave of Skulls, The Forest of Fear and The Firemaker respectively, and with fairly good reason. An Unearthly Child, a name most people today give to the story as a whole, concentrates solely on the efforts of two schoolteachers, Ian Chesterton (William Russell) and Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) as they work to unravel the mystery of one of their pupils, Susan Foreman (Carole Ann Ford), who claims to live in a junkyard, deserted but for the conspicuous presence of a Police Telephone Box, which seems to hum as if it were alive…

Possibly the most unassuming cultural icon ever.

Picture Time: Is it just me...

 

Or does Sarah Lund's new sidekick for Season III of The Killing bear a disturbing resemblance to a certain CGI version of a comic book character?

 

 

I honestly can't watch the show without automatically thinking, whenever he's onscreen, "Wow! This CGI is really good!"

What I've Been Watching: 18th November

Without a show so devoid of intelligence as Doctor Who on the box to get me riled, I tend not to be able to find the passion to write frequent reviews. I have a tendency to be able to find a lot more to say about the negative aspects of a programme than the positives. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that.

Nevertheless, for the sake of giving this blog a point outside of complaining about what I still claim is the greatest TV show of all time, let me take you through the shows I’ve been watching recently.