There are probably ways in which Tribe of Gum juxtaposes with Unearthly Child, which may even be intentional. The door is left half-open for the Doctor and Susan to be from our future, so there’s a connection in taking Ian and Barbara to their past. But there’s no real causal link between the two.

Jennie – you’re right! (In fact Andrew Stevens says just such a thing further down in the link from where Andrew quoted.) But for a repeat offence you should get a worse sentence, not more leniency!

RAB, The Word Isthat Susan gets to be a bit more interesting in The Sensorites. Unfortunately, The Word Also Is that The Sensorites is excruciatingly dull, so I’ve never bothered watching it to find out. The only other possible contender is Edge of Destruction.

I will finish and post my piece on Susan… umm… sometime.

BTW, the idea that Ian is the protagonist sticks around as long as he does. It gets dimmed a bit, but the Doctor doesn’t fully become the protagonist of his own show till Ian and Barbara leave.

(I kid. But owing to a certain chapter of my biography, I already know far more about the distinctions among various subsets of fundamentalists and evangelicals as well as ID and creationism than I ever wanted to learn, so I skimmed a bit there.)

Anyway, yes, that’s true about Susan being replaced by a screaming schoolgirl. It’s a bit more evident in the first Daleks serial than in the remainder of the Tribe of Gum story…but beyond that I’ve only had the opportunity to see one other story with Susan, her farewell, so I have no idea if any flashes of the original conception showed up in her other stories. Not that it matters as long as I can cherish the pilot.

And all this talk prompts me to remember watching the Tribe of Gum story not too long ago and realizing with a slowly dawning horror that the production team seemed to have thought Ian Chesterton was going to be the lead character!

“Funnily enough, I’d just got to War Machines in my great watch-through. It’s certainly the point where Doctor Who gets introduced to the Swinging Sixties, so perhaps the ‘attractive companions’ come in there. More, Polly is presented as a reasonably strong character, independent and not deferring to any adult authority.

But how long she might stay like that is another matter. Susan starts as quite a splendid character, a space-age adolescent who mystifies her elders. Carole Anne Ford’s ‘unique’ looks (you’re right there!) certainly enhance this. But she lasts for precisely one episode, then they replace her with a screaming schoolgirl. Oddly, this new character not only seems to have the same name but is even played by the same actress…”

” If you’ve seen the original pilot of Doctor Who, you’ll know that Susan was even more interesting in that than she was in the aired pilot. Carole Ann Ford’s rapid disillusionment with the part is easily explained when one realizes what role she really signed on to play compared to the role she actually got. I blame Carole Ann Ford’s descent as a character on Sydney Newman who famously wrote “Need a kid to get into trouble, make mistakes.” Sadly, Susan got saddled with the part and I believe Carole Ann Ford got the rawest deal of any actor to appear on the show with Colin Baker the only possible exception. When you look at Newman’s original conception for the programme, it was half genius and half ridiculous cliches. A science teacher and a history teacher indeed. Partly, of course, that was because Newman took the BBC’s educational remit seriously and thought Doctor Who should be used as a vehicle for that (and criticized the programme frequently after he left the BBC since he didn’t believe it was educational at all anymore).”

Other than that, I think you nailed it.

small world ;)

Great post, Andrew. I feel a Lib Con link coming on in the morning…

Possibly not, but then until New Who nothing else was ever conceived of as single episodes so you’re rather stacking the deck.

I do think it’s about time we saw Unearthly Child as a single episode, and jettison this absurd convention that’s it’s coupled with the unrelated tribe of Gum. (Which as you say is far less good.) I’m sure it would then score much higher in fan polls.

I do wish you’d said a little more about Carole Anne Ford. Especially as this was really the only episode she ever got to shine. Mind you, I’m thinking of posting something about the character of Susan soon myself…