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."

However, I maintain that our heroes’ Neolithic adventure works brilliantly for three reasons:

·         To introduce the style of the show. You are trying to sell a show that changes its setting every few weeks. How do you convince BBC bosses that this will work? Not with spaceships and monsters, or renaissance court scenes; it only takes a good writer to make those interesting. However, it takes a great writer to make the deliberations of a bunch of primitive cavemen an engrossing watch for 75 minutes, and Anthony Coburn absolutely succeeds.

·         To introduce the tone of the show. As I insinuated before, the Hartnell era was all about the desperate struggles of a tiny group of people just to stay alive in hostile world after hostile world. There are few environments more challenging than prehistoric Earth in the grip of an ice age while cavemen try to kill you.

·         To build character. In the first episode, the Doctor compares Ian and Barbara to Native Americans, implying that he sees them as savages. However, here he is confronted with genuine savages, and, to his amazement, finds not only that the two teachers prove themselves better than them, but also, in more ways than one, better than him…

Still, it takes a lot to pull off the plight of a bunch of violent savages, and, oddly, it’s once again down to the theatrical nature of early sixties television that I mentioned last time. The show is filled with a cast of professionals who deliver lines like “Without meat, we go hungry. Without fire, we die!” like Shakespearean dialogue, bringing a palpable dignity to the piece.

No one brings gravitas and sophistication to a grubby primitve like Althea Charlton. She's incredible. See also 1965's The Time Meddler.

Aside from the scantily-clad extras, there are five guest stars in this story: Za (Derek Newark), the leader of the tribe desperately trying to maintain authority over his continued failure to produce fire; Kal (Jeremy Young), the aggressive stranger from the tribe over the mountains; Hur (the incredible Althea Charlton), who will become the woman of whoever leads the tribe; her father Horg (Howard Lang), who commands respect, mainly because of his age; and, of course, the wonderful character simply named “Old Mother” (Eileen Way), who, in her capacity as representing the old generation and conservative values (see! Even back then, the show was topical!) gets to stagger around cackling lines such as “Fire will kill us all in the end!”

 

Old Mother contemplates the job offer from the Daily Mail.

The driving force of the story is the race between Kal and Za to make fire first and thus become tribe leader. Za’s strategy is to rub some bones a lot and scream at the gods, while the more proactive Kal goes out hunting. It is on a hunting expedition that Kal comes across the Doctor, who has left the TARDIS to go exploring… and who then produces a large pipe and starts to smoke it.

The incongruity of the moment is not helped by the sheer ridiculous size of the thing. Don't smoke, kids! You'll be attacked by a hairy man with no trousers!

Naturally, Kal immediately captures this strange man who breathes fire and takes him back to the tribe to be his firemaker. Susan, Ian and Barbara go in pursuit, and quickly get themselves captured and thrown into The Cave of Skulls. It’s a macabre direction for the show to go in, surrounding its cast members with caved in human skulls, but it’s just one more sign of the gritty and tough attitude to storytelling which would remain prevalent throughout the vast majority of what are now known as the ‘pure historicals’- i.e. stories which took place in Earth’s past but contained no alien characters or influences.

 

It’s very clear from quite early on that this story is about the four travellers learning to work together as a team, with Ian and the Doctor battling it out for alpha male status, while Susan and Barbara set a lifetime’s worth of clichés in motion by screaming loudly at everything that moves. Of course, this is terribly unfair, as the women prove themselves time and again, with Barbara insisting that they help Za when he is wounded, Susan coming up with the idea of setting fire to skulls to scare the cavemen, etc.

Doctor-companion relationships, old school style: i.e., they hate each other.

Indeed, looking at the story as a whole, it’s quite apparent that episode 3, The Forest of Fear, is entirely pointless structurally, beginning with the crew escaping the cave, and ending with them being recaptured. However, it’s through their run through the forest that Ian proves himself, agreeing with Barbara and Susan that the wounded Za should be helped, and issuing orders to the group, something the Doctor takes issue with. Indeed, the Doctor continues his role as antagonist here, refusing to help treat Za, insulting the cavemen, and generally reaching his lowest moment in one of the most infamous scenes in the show’s history.

I am, of course, referring to the one moment in which, with Za having been mauled by a wild animal, and the rest of the tribe in pursuit, the Doctor picks up a rock, and for one brief moment, considers murdering the caveman in order that the rest of them might escape. And here we see the Doctor at his lowest point, which in turn shows just how high he can rise over the next fifty plus years. And it’s all down to one human being, Ian, the same person he earlier accused of being a savage, showing him that there is a better way.

I love Ian's barely concealed contempt, and it's so refreshing to have a fallible Doctor. A shame this angle would be all but gone within a year.

Nevertheless, this can’t prevent everyone from being recaptured, and in episode 4, The Firemaker, they find that Kal has murdered Old Mother and blamed Za for it. However, the Doctor indulges in a spot of CSI: Stone Age, pointing out that Za’s knife has no blood on it, and tricking Kal into pulling his own blood-splattered weapon. Kal is driven out, but the TARDIS crew are thrown back into the cave, to be imprisoned until they produce fire.

It’s over the course of this episode that our heroes try to encourage the tribe to look beyond their own natural selfishness: Ian tells Za that “Kal is not stronger than the whole tribe,” while the Doctor states that amongst the crew, “The firemaker is the least important, because we can all make fire.” However, the most notable point comes when, upon being asked by Za who their “leader” is, Ian names the Doctor. It’s a moment that proves both that Ian is beginning to trust the Doctor, but also that he is still in control.

However, no sooner have they finally made fire than Kal returns and attacks Za, a move so shocking it causes the picture to change from video quality to film. So they have a rather brutal fight, which Za wins, before he triumphantly drags Kal’s body back into video again.

Bam! The cave is suddenly three times larger!

...And back again. In all fairness, I guess three minutes is quite excessive for a fight scene. But, hey, Avengers Assemble was nothing but one big fight scene, and people still like that.

However, even though the tribe now has fire, Za still won’t let the crew leave, so Susan comes up with the idea I mentioned earlier of setting light to some skulls to distract the tribe while they escape. This in turn leads to some intense scenes of Hartnell, Russell, Hill and Ford jogging on the spot while stagehands whip them with branches, erm, I mean, intense scenes of the Doctor, Ian, Barbara and Susan running through the forest.

I like how mucky Hartnell manages to get by the end of half his stories, and yet he's wearing pretty much the exact same thing the next time we see him. He's got an infinite stash of identical yellow woollen waistcoats.

The thing with this story having such a simplistic plot (Make us fire! Make us fire! Oh, you’ve made us fire) is that there’s not a great deal of room for plotholes. Indeed, critics of these episodes never challenge it on the grounds of having a weak storyline. The main, and indeed, only, criticism levelled at it is that… well… it’s kind of a bit dull. And I suppose that’s true when compared with say, the following story, with its high- octane conflicts with the Da- no, I’m getting ahead of myself again.

Nevertheless, I absolutely love this story. I’m firmly prepared to concede that this may be nostalgia speaking: I think I was eight when I watched this on VHS on my Grandmother’s battered old TV for the first time. But nevertheless, I think it stands up, primarily as a character piece, much more so than The Edge of Destruction in two stories time, the story usually cited as the big character development story for the original crew. And overall… no. I don’t think it’s dull at all. It’s seventy five minutes of Shakespearean cavemen debating the pros and cons of using fire, yes, but it never drags. And, indeed, you could say that about almost every story over the next three years, because I swear to you: I have never been bored watching a First Doctor story. Now, admittedly, that’s not necessarily because of the quality of the stories so much as a fascination with the period, but I still maintain that the Hartnell era was the most interesting and creative time the show ever saw. These years were the best, and An Unearthly Child is among the best of the best.

9/10 (oh, alright… the dialogue does get a bit silly sometimes).

Next time: A story made very much in the shadow of the Cold War sees the moment when sink plungers became a generation's favourite toys...