Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) Read Online Free

scene entails the camera panning around all the caveman as they watch with awe and fervour as Derek Newark (playing Za) attempts to ignite a stick by rubbing it with his hands – until finally, we’re shown a child extra who, displaying some obvious irritation and boredom, turns away from Za as the camera passes by. It could be accidental – but the child seems too foregrounded for that, and it seems to me instead rather a witty comment upon the action of the scene. We’ve moved from a spaceship travelling through the time vortex to the almost-comical contrast of a hairy man grunting with enthusiasm as he caresses a bit of wood.
    It’s in the contrast that the episode works, though. Barbara is pleasingly all too eager to accept the insanity of the Doctor Who premise, even before the TARDIS doors are open. It’s rather a lovely character note that the woman who teaches history is more open to the technological impossibility of what’s before her very eyes than the man of science. But as Ian steps out into the Stone Age, actually knocked giddy by the shock of it all, he still finds himself denying what he sees before him and tries his hardest to rationalise it all away. It’s very human, and very real – and not so very different a reaction from the grubby cavemen squatting at the other end of the studio to the bogglingly new invention of fire.
    There’s also a lovely bit of comedy in the way that Za keeps insisting upon, as leader’s privilege, his rights to take Hur as his significant other. Hur is presumably the best looker in the Tribe of Gum – she’s certainly the only one of fertile age who has any dialogue. But given – and I mean no disrespect to actress Alethea Charlton – Hur’s blacked-out teeth and grubby face, the constant offer of her as top prize in this leadership struggle looks more and more like something of a poisoned chalice.
    Anyway, there we are. First day of the year, and two episodes under my belt. Only another seven hundred plus to go. I wonder how Toby got on?
    T: It’s my birthday tomorrow, and although K is packed off to wrap my birthday presents, my hope that I’ll get a Dalek cigarette lighter is dashed as I’m reminded I’m supposed to be giving up smoking. So to take my mind off the fags, I watch Doctor Who: The Difficult Second Album...
    I’ve worked on shows where everyone thinks they’re doing a piece of crap, and the finished product is awash with lazy acting and little invention. Well, Derek Newark may have justifiably wondered why the hell he was being made to shout at a stick, but there’s nothing in his performance that suggests this is the case. Nobody involved seems to think they’re above all of this, or that they’re appearing in a disposable piece of ephemera. In fact, I remember that Newark’s Guardian obituary in 1998 received a follow-up article from the great Harold Pinter... that one of our country’s greatest dramatists noted and mourned the passing of this jobbing (albeit excellent) actor made me feel proud that Newark had made a palpable contribution to the genesis of my favourite programme.
    And then we get the first “Doctor who?” gag, when the Doctor is a bit befuddled at Ian calling him “Doctor Foreman”. Hartnell wonderfully fits Sydney Newman’s brief by being the tetchy outsider – here he’s all imperious and haughty, looking splendid in that hat and brilliantly patronising Ian. Then there’s his lyrical talk about being able to touch the alien sand, just as evocative as the previous episode’s poetic lament about what it would be like to be wanderers in the fourth dimension. Under scrutiny, this episode isn’t merely a historical – Kal’s world is as alien to us as any mocked-up Mars or Venus, and it’s far more visceral and shocking than any planet inhabited by a silver clad, bewigged alien with a silly name. Doctor Who starts out as a strange (in the proper sense of the word) programme, and this very strangeness keeps us