![]() ![]() One wonders whether Waris Hussain was indeed pressured to adopt a more in-house directorial style for the remount or whether time was simply against them. When Ian and Barbara talk in the car, there’s an interesting lighting effect in the pilot, where the silhouette of Barbara’s face is cast on the side of Ian’s face it gives an altogether more cinematic feel than the same scenes in the broadcast version. ![]() The setting is darker and foggier in the pilot and looks less like an outdoor location built in a studio. The scenes of Ian and Barbara waiting outside the gates at Totter’s Lane mark the biggest directorial change between the two and I have to say that I much prefer the pilot version of these. These are largely the same in both versions, though Ian and Barbara’s discussion about Susan is tightened up for the remount and Carole Ann Ford’s portrayal of the character is a bit more unearthly in the pilot, including her strange ink-blotter scene, which is interesting but adds nothing to the plot. As I mentioned earlier, a shot in the pilot where Jacqueline Hill gets her heel stuck on the edge of the scenery is tactfully excised for The Beginning, along with Susan saying that John Smith and the Common Men have gone from ‘2 to 15’ instead of ’15 to 2’ in the hit parade, so we’ll skip past those and onto the bulk of the school scenes. There’s a scene where a couple of schoolgirls in the corridor whisper to each other and I’ve always thought this looks a bit staged in the remount, but that’s a minor quibble because it’s got nothing to do with the plot. The next scenes are in Coal Hill School, where teachers Barbara Wright (Jacqueline Hill) and Ian Chesterton (William Russell) discuss their concerns about their mysterious pupil Susan Foreman (Carol Ann Ford). They’re probably still there in the televised version, only less prominent in the pilot, there’s a particularly eerie-looking doll just to the right of frame as the title caption comes up – you’ve probably missed her before, but once you see her, she can’t be unseen! The level of creepiness is definitely played down in the televised version. ![]() There’s also something slightly more sinister about the set decoration on the pilot, with a few creepy-looking dolls scattered around the place. I have to confess, I prefer the pilot’s take on this scene, as the movement of the camera seems a lot more fluid around the junkyard. Nevertheless, ditch it they did and the ‘thunderclap’ would never return to the beginning of Doctor Who.Īn Unearthly Child starts with the iconic scene of a policeman on a foggy night poking his nose in the gates of a junkyard and as he departs, the camera lingers on a Police Box standing in the corner, which seems to be making a strange humming noise. I’ve never understood what possessed them to ditch that because it sounds fantastic, as if the whole of space and time is tearing open to introduce this amazing new show. Although both versions have basically the same opening title sequence, the pilot has an unused version of Delia Derbyshire’s theme arrangement featuring a ‘thunderclap’ at the beginning. Are they changes for the better? Well, that’s to be decided. It’s no Star Trek’s The Cage, put it that way there are a few tweaks to the dialogue, the actors play it in a slightly different way and the direction becomes a more in-house BBC style. ![]() It’s probably not very close to the version that the Head of BBC Drama saw in 1963 and demanded a reshoot, but it gives a good idea of the original intended direction for the show.įor anyone who’s never seen the pilot episode, it’s not the radical departure you might expect. Now, it’s worth bearing in mind that there are several different edits of the pilot in its raw form it’s pretty rough, with Susan fluffing her line about the hit parade and Barbara tripping over the door-frame, but for this feature I’ll be using the cleaned-up version from the The Beginning DVD boxed set, which eliminated a lot of these problems. 57 years! That’s two generations! So, in celebration of this milestone, I’ll be taking a look at the two versions of the first episode An Unearthly Child – the pilot recording and the broadcast version – and comparing the two. If you’re reading this on the day it was posted (and why should you?) it has been exactly 57 years since Doctor Who was first broadcast. ![]()
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