History Recap / DoctorWhoS1E1AnUnearthlyChild

* FutureSocietyPresentValues: Implied. The Doctor's line to Susan "remember the Red Indian!" in comparing the savage primitiveness of humans to themselves hints at his views, while his statement that the children of his civilization would be insulted by Ian's ignorance out and out confirms them. The Doctor is from a more technologically advanced civilization and he looks down on the world of 1963. The broadcast episode doesn't make it clear whether the Doctor and Susan are from the future or not (though his line about "tolerating this century would seem to indicate that he is), but he out and out says that he's from another planet and another civilization.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: The First Doctor acting like a senile old man to his future companions. Barbara is introduced being neurotic about a girl in her class. Ian is introduced supporting her and suggesting a plan of action. Susan is introduced alienating everyone around her and dancing to pop music coming from a strange futuristic radio.

* EternalEnglish: The cavemen and women can somehow communicate perfectly well with visitors from the future using the power of English.

* FutureSocietyPresentValues: Implied. The Doctor line to Susan "remember the Red Indian!" in comparing the savage primitiveness of humans to themselves- 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.

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, which for some reason is sitting in the junkyard instead of out in the street. Thinking that her grandfather, "I. M. Foreman", has locked her in there, they proceed to open the door and enter a room BiggerOnTheInside than out. As Susan explains, this is Time And Relative Dimension In Space, or the TARDIS, a time machine and spaceship with the ability to disguise itself to match its surroundings. And her grandfather, a very 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, he starts up the TARDIS, acquiring the first two companions via abduction. Ian and Barbara are knocked unconscious by the TARDIS as it begins to time travel.

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]]. The one person in this tribe who knew how to make fire died, leaving the other cavemen there cold and helpless. 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. 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.

The old woman, afraid of the change that fire will bring, unties them, and they make tracks. However, the tribe's leader Za follows them into the jungle, still hoping to obtain the secret of fire from them, and gets mauled by a beast. Ian, Barbara, and Susan stop to tend to Za's wounds. It's strongly implied that the Doctor intends to disable or kill him, not wanting to be slowed down. This earns him his first ever WhatTheHellHero from Ian, who prevents the murder. The stop to help Za does indeed slow the group enough that the tribe catches them.

Eventually, the Doctor tricks Kal, the hostile aspiring caveman leader, into admitting he killed the old woman, and leads the tribe in driving him out. Ian gives Za the gift of fire, but Za still will not let them leave. Some burning skulls terrify and distract the superstitious cavemen, allowing the travelers to escape, and they barely make it back to the TARDIS in time to avoid being caught yet again. 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. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E2TheDaleks Hopefully their next landing spot will be a bit less eventful...]]

* AccidentalMisnaming: Ian is known to the tribe as "Friend".

* ArrangedMarriage: Horg says his daughter will marry the Chief of the tribe. With Za it seems a PerfectlyArrangedMarriage.

Za, a friendly (well, less hostile) tribesperson, unties them, and they make tracks. However, Za follows them into the jungle, still hoping to obtain the secret of fire from them, and gets mauled by a beast. Ian, Barbara, and Susan stop to tend to Za's wounds, but the Doctor decides to kill him instead, not wanting to be slowed down. This earns him his first ever WhatTheHellHero from Ian, who prevents the murder. Eventually, the Doctor tricks Kal, the hostile aspiring caveman leader, into admitting he's a murderer, Ian gives Za 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. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E2TheDaleks Hopefully their next landing spot will be a bit less eventful...]]

* DamselInDistress: Barbara in the last two episodes.

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 BiggerOnTheInside than out. This is Time And Relative Dimension In Space, or the TARDIS, a time machine and spaceship with the ability to disguise itself to match its surroundings. And her grandfather, a very 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 TARDIS as it begins to time travel.

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 the TARDIS, a time machine and spaceship with the ability to disguise itself to match its surroundings. And her grandfather, a very 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.

* 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 with some strange ideas who apparently lives under the thumb of her sinister, hostile grandfather, perhaps building up to some kind of socially aware message about child abuse. Then those teachers, trying to find that student in a darkened junkyard over the objections of her grandfather, suddenly stumble into a police telephone box -- only to discover that it's bigger on the inside than the outside and can travel through time...

The one where it all began...

* OneMillionBC: An alternate title for this story is "100,000 BC".

[[caption-width-right:350:''[[LongRunners And thus, an over half-century SciFi dynasty is born...]]'']]

** Episode 2 shows the Doctor smoking a pipe. This is the only on-screen occasion in which he is ever shown smoking; hereafter he is a non-smoker. (The smoking is plot-justified in this case as it propels the firemaker plotline.) Also, the Doctor's justification for taking Barbara and Ian captive was the apparent danger in allowing knowledge of things like aliens and the TARDIS to fall into contemporary human hands. He'd then spend the next fifty years taking humans as companions and telling them (both those taken as companions and those not) about things like aliens and the TARDIS.

[[caption-width-right:350:And thus, an over half-century SciFi dynasty is born...]]

Written by Anthony Coburn. This four-episode serial first aired from November 23 to December 14, 1963.

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.

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. [[Recap/DoctorWhoS1E2TheDaleks Hopefully their next landing spot will be a bit less eventful...]]

* BatmanGambit: How the Doctor exposes Kal for murdering Old Mother, which Kal attempted to frame Za for. When Kal shows Za's knife around, presenting it as the murder weapon, the Doctor notices that it's completely clean (this being prehistoric times, cleaning blood off a knife wasn't exactly easy). The Doctor then decides to brag about how good Za's knife is compared to Kal's, knowing that the egotistical Kal will pull out his own knife to refute such claims. Sure enough he does, and as the Doctor points out, it ''does'' have blood on it.

Written by Anthony Coburn. This serial first aired November 23-December 14, 1963.

* AdultFear: The first episode, which until the reveal could easily be a story about child abuse and the {{Subtext}} is very intentional. Imagine that you are a schoolteacher and in your class there is a strange teenage girl who seems ignorant about some things and very knowledgeable on others, waits in school until after dark before she goes home, works hard in school but never does her homework, and becomes very distressed easily. She claims to live with her grandfather who never comes into the school, and won't talk to her teachers because he 'doesn't like strangers'. You discover her address on the school's records is fake, because it leads to a junkyard. When you go and investigate an old man emerges, who treats you with disdain, refuses to talk to you about your pupil and dares you to call the police, but then you hear the girl's voice coming from a locked, junked piece of street furniture and realise he's got her locked up in there...

** Ian addresses the Doctor as "Dr. Foreman"; the Doctor responds, "Eh? [[ThrowItIn Doctor who]]?" With that, a half-century RunningGag heard its starting gun.

Written by Anthony Coburn. This serial first aired November 23, 1963.

* SocietyMarchesOn: The Doctor line to Susan "remember the Red Indian!" in comparing the savage primitiveness of humans to themselves- 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.

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]]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 [[UsefulNotes/OldBritishMoney much 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]].

* DefiniteArticleTitle: 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")

NB: This story is also sometimes called "100,000 BC", and less commonly called "The Tribe of Gum". "An Unearthly Child" is the title of the first episode (episodes were individually named until "[[Recap/DoctorWhoS3E9TheSavages The Savages]]" in Season 3), but the VHS and DVD released give the title "An Unearthly Child" to the entire story, as did the Target Books novelisation, so "An Unearthly Child" is now considered the official BBC-sanctioned title for the story.

NB: This story is commonly also called "100,000 BC", and less commonly called "The Tribe of Gum". "An Unearthly Child" is the title of the first episode (episodes were individually named until season 3), but the DVD also gives the name to the entire story, as did the Target Books novelisation, so "Unearthly Child" is now considered the official BBC-sanctioned title for the story.