Revisiting Old Doctor Who: The Original Pilot

[Patrick Degan]

The first cut of "An Unearthly Child" was shot in late September of 1963 as the intended introduction to the series proper. Not a "pilot" as such, as the practise of specific pilot episodes for a television series was not done in that time on BBC. This episode had to be reshot due to both mistakes in the performances and also difficulties with the TARDIS set —specifically with operating the huge main doors to the console room, which made too much noise to be masked and also, at one point, would not close. Fixing these problems resulted in the delay of the series premier for one week, to 23 November, 1963 instead of the planned launch date of 16 November.

The differences are mostly minor: Susan's outfit is different than in the aired version of the programme, the sound effects are different for bot the console room and the TARDIS dematerialisation, and mostly minor variations in dialogue. Susan's statement that she was born "in the 49th century" was dropped so as to obscure the origins of the Doctor and Susan better and add to their mystery. However, one outstanding change in dialogue was with regard to the Doctor's reasoning for kidnapping the schoolteachers:

DOCTOR (to Susan): "These humans cannot know of us; it would have the most appalling consequences. Imagine if the Romans had gunpowder, or if Napoleon had the aeroplane! These people cannot be allowed to suspect that a ship like the TARDIS is even possible!"

BARBARA (to Ian): "Ian, it's possible that we've stumbled into something that's beyond our comprehension."

DOCTOR: "You see —the first faint glimmerings!"

The TARDIS set is also slightly different in this version: the back wall of the console room behind the monitor and glass partition consists of very large roundels instead of the "fault locator" computer bank which became a feature of the design in the first years of the programme.

All in all, it's interesting to view today this "rough draft" of the episode that launched a legend.

[FaxModem1]

There's also the part of the pilot that was changed because Ian and Barbara were acting rather non-chalant about Susan supposedly being locked in a police box by her grandfather. So while in the pilot, they discuss things with the Doctor as if it's just a Sunday chat, in the aired version, Ian and Barbara are banging on the TARDIS, trying to rescue Susan from what they assume is a horrible situation.

That, and the other small thing I remember them changing is Susan, instead of making her own ink blot test and examining it, examines a history textbook and is complaining about certain things being wrong.

[Drooling Iguana]

The Doctor was also more of an asshole (even by early Hartnell-era standards) in the pilot. Most of his lines were the same, but the tone of the delivery was significantly different.