History Recap / DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild

* RealityEnsues: The story shows how people from the 20th century would cope with travelling to the past. Turns out the dawn of time was dangerous and they end up in desperate quest for survival.

They arrive at Susan's home address of 76 Totter's Lane. It's a junkyard. They hear Susan's voice coming from inside a police box. Thinking that her grandfather, "I. M. Foreman", has locked her in there, they proceed to open the door and enter a room bigger on the inside than out. This is Time And Relative Dimension In Space, or TARDIS, a time machine and spaceship with the ability to disguise itself to match its surroundings. And her grandfather, a crotchety old man, is the Doctor, who reveals the two of them are renegades who stole the TARDIS and left their planet in order to explore the universes temporal and physical.

Deciding that he can't have them tell the world about the CoolShip and that the "Foremans" will need to leave the 1960's again, he starts up the TARDIS, acquiring the first two companions via abduction. Ian and Barbara are knocked unconscious by the time travel.

A friendly (well, less hostile) tribesperson unties them, and they make tracks. Eventually, the Doctor tricks the hostile aspiring caveman leader into admitting he's a murderer, Ian gives the less hostile aspiring caveman leader the gift of fire, and they all escape back to the TARDIS. But since they had to take off in a hurry on account to avoid being speared, the Doctor was unable to make the calculations necessary to chart a course back to 1963. Hopefully their next landing spot will be a bit less eventful...

* ActionGirl: Susan attacks one of the cavemen with a rather disturbing enthusiasm.

* BadLiar: When caught trying to grab a rock with an implicit intend to attack, the Doctor attempts to claim he merely wanted the caveman Barbara was tending to to try and draw the way back to the TARDIS. Understandably, Ian doesn't buy this.
* BigBad: Kal, the first in a long line of ''Doctor Who'' villains and the person responsible for its first two deaths before becoming the third.

* EntertaininglyWrong: The novelization has Za concluding that the four strangers were emissaries of the sun god. Given his understanding of the world, that was the only logical conclusion.

* SocietyMarchesOn: The Doctor telling Susan "remember the Red Indian!" - not only is this racist nowadays, it doesn't make any sense for the Doctor to hold these views. While the show had not yet decided for certain that he was an alien, he was at the very least from the distant future.

** The Doctor describes himself and Susan as being "cut off" from their home planet, making it seem like they're exiles or refugees. Later on it's made very clear that the Doctor is a willful DefectorFromDecadence who got fed up with his own people. More worryingly, the Doctor mutters that someday, he and Susan will return home, but his tone makes him sound less wistful and more vengeful.

* UnbuiltTrope: A commonly remarked-upon part of the show's premise is that it's about an old, sinister, extremely powerful man who goes travelling extra-legally with [[NaiveEverygirl naive]], [[ParentService sexy]] young women and holds total power over whether they come with him, get abandoned or die – and that this is played for [[WishFulfillment Wish Fulfilment]] rather than as a really creepy variant of the DirtyOldMan. However, in the ''very first episode'', it's clear that the reason Ian and Barbara are scared for Susan's safety is because they think her mysterious grandfather, the Doctor, is keeping her locked up in a police box in a junkyard, and refusing to let her see the outside world. Even after they are taken into the TARDIS, they believe that her grandfather has brainwashed her into believing they are aliens in order to keep her distressed and dependent on him, and Barbara attempts to explain to her that it is a game that he is playing with her.

* UnbuiltTrope: A commonly remarked-upon part of the show's premise is that it's about an old, sinister, extremely powerful man who goes travelling extra-legally with [[NaiveEverygirl naive]], [[ParentService sexy]] young women and holds total power over whether they come with him, get abandoned or die – and that this is played for [[WishFulfilment Wish Fulfilment]] rather than as a really creepy variant of the DirtyOldMan. However, in the ''very first episode'', it's clear that the reason Ian and Barbara are scared for Susan's safety is because they think her mysterious grandfather, the Doctor, is keeping her locked up in a police box in a junkyard, and refusing to let her see the outside world. Even after they are taken into the TARDIS, they believe that her grandfather has brainwashed her into believing they are aliens in order to keep her distressed and dependent on him, and Barbara attempts to explain to her that it is a game that he is playing with her.

* UnbuiltTrope: A commonly remarked-upon part of the show's premise is that it's about an old, sinister, extremely powerful man who goes travelling extra-legally with [[NaiveEverygirl naive]], [[ParentService sexy]] young women and holds total power over whether they come with him, get abandoned or die – and that this is played for WishFulfillment rather than as a really creepy variant of the DirtyOldMan. However, in the ''very first episode'', it's clear that the reason Ian and Barbara are scared for Susan's safety is because they think her mysterious grandfather, the Doctor, is keeping her locked up in a police box in a junkyard, and refusing to let her see the outside world. Even after they are taken into the TARDIS, they believe that her grandfather has brainwashed her into believing they are aliens in order to keep her distressed and dependent on him, and Barbara attempts to explain to her that it is a game that he is playing with her.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:

When they've landed again, the foursome step out of the TARDIS and Susan quickly exposits that it was supposed to have changed shape: the first clue that while it's more advanced than any Earth technology, it's still the equivalent of [[Main/TheAllegedCar a used car]]. Before long, the Doctor is kidnapped by a tribe of cavemen when they see him smoking his pipe [[EarlyInstalmentWeirdness which he never smokes again]]. This tribe has lost the ability to make fire, and the Doctor agrees to placate them by giving them fire, but unfortunately he has lost his matches. His three companions try to rescue him, but only succeed in getting themselves captured too. In the middle of all that, the Doctor decides to simply kill a friendly but wounded cavemen who's slowing them down a bit. This earns him his first ever WhatTheHellHero from Ian, who prevents the murder. The tribe of primitive humans with monolithic names keep their captives in a cave full of skulls, skulls that have been obviously split open. Charming.

* EarlyInstalmentWeirdness:

When they've landed again, the foursome step out of the TARDIS and Susan quickly exposits that it was supposed to have changed shape: the first clue that while it's more advanced than any Earth technology, it's still the equivalent of [[Main/TheAllegedCar a used car]]. Before long, the Doctor is kidnapped by a tribe of cavemen when they see him smoking his pipe [[EarlyInstallmentWeirdness which he never smokes again]]. This tribe has lost the ability to make fire, and the Doctor agrees to placate them by giving them fire, but unfortunately he has lost his matches. His three companions try to rescue him, but only succeed in getting themselves captured too. In the middle of all that, the Doctor decides to simply kill a friendly but wounded cavemen who's slowing them down a bit. This earns him his first ever WhatTheHellHero from Ian, who prevents the murder. The tribe of primitive humans with monolithic names keep their captives in a cave full of skulls, skulls that have been obviously split open. Charming.

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness:

* IdiotBall: The Doctor carries it in episode 2. Despite being from an advanced civilisation that has mastered time travel, and himself being a scientist, the Doctor appears to only know how to make fire using matches and not any number of other methods boy scouts have been using for generations to create flame. (A possible rationalization is he's playing dumb out of concern he might introduce fire too early to earth civilization, even though he's within earshot of cavepeople speaking openly about fire, meaning it isn't an unknown concept)

* NoNameGiven: At no point is the name "Tribe of Gum" uttered on screen. They wouldn't be named officially until a comic story much, much later.

* EstablishingSeriesMoment: The first fifteen-odd minutes could have been a fairly straight-forward drama about a couple of teachers trying to help a troubled, slightly unusual student who apparently lives under the thumb of her sinister, hostile grandfather. Then those teachers, trying to find that student in a darkened junkyard over the objections of her grandfather, suddenly stumble into a police box -- only to discover that it's bigger on the inside than the outside and can travel through time...

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece: One of the reasons why Susan is considered unusual is because she doesn't know how pre-decimal currency works, and that she thought the UK was on the decimal system. At the time this is perfectly reasonable, but given the UK really did switch to decimilised currency in 1971, nowadays it's perfectly reasonable for a 15-year-old to not understand it.

* TheTheTitle: Individual titles for each episode mean that we get "The Cave of Skulls", "The Forest of Fear" and "The Firemaker". Also, "The Tribe of Gum" was a working title (although the naming convention used in those early days would have properly named it "Doctor Who and the Tribe of Gum")

Two teachers, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, think their super-bright pupil, Susan Foreman ([[Music/VanMorrison a brown-eyed girl, complete with transistor radio]]), is a bit on the strange side. She's bored with regular physics and maths and wants to move on to multidimensional physics and maths, and she thinks that the UK has decimalised its currency, which hasn't yet happened in 1963: Britain would decimalise the pound in February 1971, after a few years of preparation.[[note]]Amusingly, at the time this serial aired, pretty much all of the rest of the Commonwealth had either already decimalised, like South Africa, or was in the process of doing so, like Australia and NZ. And for those who are confused, let's say UK/SA/AU currency back then was a ''lot'' more complicated.[[/note]] So, they decide to follow her home one night. This being 1963, it's benign concern for the welfare of a child, and [[ValuesDissonance not at all creepy]].

Two teachers, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, think their super-bright pupil, Susan Foreman ([[Music/VanMorrison a brown-eyed girl, complete with transistor radio]]), is a bit on the strange side. She's bored with regular physics and maths and wants to move on to multidimensional physics and maths, and she thinks that the UK has decimalised its currency (which hasn't yet happened in 1963: Britain would decimalize the pound in February 1971, after a few years of preparation. Amusingly, at the time this serial aired, pretty much all of the rest of the Commonwealth had either already decimalized, like South Africa, or was in the process of doing so, like Australia and NZ).[[note]]And for those who are confused, let's say UK/SA/AU currency back then was a ''lot'' more complicated.[[/note]] So, they decide to follow her home one night. This being 1963, it's benign concern for the welfare of a child, and [[ValuesDissonance not at all creepy]].

** In the unaired first version of the episode (dubbed the "pilot" version, but not a {{Pilot}} in the modern sense), the Doctor appears even ''more'' belligerent and sinister, including actively berating Susan for leading Ian and Barbara back to the TARDIS. Susan also acts and dresses older and more "unearthly". Then there's Susan's reference to coming from the 42nd century, a background element which was abandoned. The TARDIS also doesn't make its distinctive "wheezing and groaning" yet when they travel back in time. Interestingly though, some other details in the pilot sound ''more'' like the Gallifrey eventually established a few years later - the broadcast version is much more vague about their origins.

* HumansThroughAlienEyes: "Before your ancestors invented the wheel my people had made time-and-space travel into child's play!"

* IdiotBall: The Doctor carries it in episode 2. Despite being from an advanced civilisation that has mastered time travel, and himself being a scientist, the Doctor appears to only know how to make fire using matches and not any number of other methods boy scouts have been using for generations to create flame. (A possible rationalization is he's playing dumb out of concern he might introduce fire too early to earth civilization, even though he's within earshot of cavepeople speaking openly about fire, meaning it isn't an unknown concept.

* TheDiscoveryOfFire: The Tribe of Gum hold the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara prisoner and try to force them to make fire for them.

* RandomSmokingScene: The Doctor is shown lighting up a pipe upon landing on prehistoric Earth - the story is about him being captured by a group of cavemen who want him to create fire for them, but he loses his matches. This was 1963, and public opinion about showing heroic characters in children's shows smoking changed soon afterward, meaning that neither he nor any of his future incarnations are ever seen smoking again

* NoNameGiven: At no point is the name "Tribe of Gum" uttered on screen.

** Susan claims that she made up the term TARDIS from the initials of Time and Relative Dimension in Space. It is later revealed that Gallifreyan society is several million years old.