Loosetooth’s Tardis Chronicles: Episode Two

In an attempt to review every episode of Doctor Who Loosetooth continues with the Doctor’s first official adventure An Unearthly Child (Read part one Here)

An Unearthly Child part two: The Cave of Skulls.

The Tardis sits on a barren land as a stone-age man looks on astounded. Ian and Barbara awake to find Susan and her grandfather attempting to figure out where they have landed. After a back-and-forth between Ian and the Doctor the foursome step-out to investigate their new surroundings.

The Doctor is perplexed to see the Tardis still looks like a 1960’s police box, whereby Susan explains to Barbara that it should have changed to blend in with it’s surroundings. Suddenly Ian, Barbara and Susan here a cry, and soon discover the Doctor has vanished.

Cut to a group of cavemen discussing a potential power struggle if Za, their leader, cannot make fire. Suddenly Kal, the newest member of the caveman tribe, and Za’s rival, enters carrying the Doctor. Kal, who saw the Doctor lighting/smoking a pipe, believes the Doctor has fire within him.

While Za and Kal squabble the Doctor awakes and promises to make them fire, only to realise he dropped his matches when Kal abducted him. The other cavemen begin to mock Kal who then threatens to kill the Doctor if he does not make fire. Suddenly Ian, Barbara & Susan turn up, and while they prevent Kal from killing the Doctor they are quickly restrained. Za instructs they be taken to The Cave of Skulls.

In an effort to give Doctor Who a fighting chance the first episode, which had been over-shadowed by the assassination of JFK, was repeated immediately before The Cave of Skulls. It’s a move that undoubtedly helped launch the programme, it allowed people to really see what the show was, and could be, about. The mystery of the first episode set against a backdrop of then modern London coupled with the stark contrast of episode two’s bleak landscape and cavemen.

It was certainly enough to get even more people watching when episode three aired the following week, the ratings shot up by another million viewers, from 5.9 to 6.9, quite a feat when you consider in 1961 the population of Britain was only 46 million, and a lot of those people still didn’t have TVs.

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Next Episode: The Forest of Fear