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

rapt.
    Oh, and brilliant, the Doctor bloody smokes... this is taking my mind off kicking the habit how, exactly?
    I’ll send my thoughts to Rob, but he’s probably hibernating. Either that, or texting some poor bugger in Australia.
    January 2nd
    The Forest of Fear (An Unearthly Child episode three)
    R: One of the most interesting early discussions we had at BBC Wales, in those talks on the revived series of Doctor Who, was about death. What could we get away with? Could it be shown on screen? Could it even, frankly, be implied off screen? The standards for what was deemed acceptable for family viewing were very different in 2004 than they were in 1963. This was why Russell T Davies’ pilot script, which all of us freelancers were using as a template, was so shy about the Auton killings – all the stage directions clearly indicated that everyone who got blasted down by a shop mannequin did so comfortably off camera.
    The Forest of Fear is the episode which sets the tone for all the death and carnage that follows Doctor Who ever onwards – because, let’s face it, for a show which is at least partly designed to appeal to pre-teens, it’s extraordinarily bloodthirsty. (And it’s an interesting side note that although The Sarah Jane Adventures is clearly billed as a Doctor Who spinoff, it’s far more wary about the whole matter, and sometimes almost seems to bend a storyline just to avoid anything fatal befalling even the monster of the week.) So with all of that in mind, this episode is a big tease – it keeps on inviting the audience to second-guess it, to work out whether the series has the balls to kill anyone off. Old Mother takes a knife into the Cave of Skulls, and we imagine she intends to murder the TARDIS crew... but instead, she just wants to cut their bonds and set them free. Then Barbara falls over a dead body in the forest – but it’s okay, it’s just a wild animal. Then Za gets attacked by some savage beast and ends up covered in blood – but again, it’s okay, the blood isn’t his, and the caveman will pull through with just a bit of water sprinkled on him. The Doctor looks bemused throughout the whole sequence, where all his fellow companions stop racing for freedom and instead start dishing out medical advice – it’s as if he too is asking what sort of adventure serial this really is. Are their lives genuinely ever going to be at stake, or is this the sort of kids’ programme which will offer a hint of jeopardy, but in fact be directing its young audience towards safe moral homilies – such as “Stop and help a wounded caveman chasing you with an axe, and he too will become your friend”?
    And then, after 20-odd minutes of Anthony Coburn playing around with the idea of death, he gives us a corpse. Even here it’s a tease – Kal pretends to the Tribe of Gum (and therefore to the audience watching) that Old Mother is sitting upright alive and well. And then she topples backward, eyes staring open, dead as a doornail, and at last we understand that this is a programme where life and death really are at stake. These adventures in the TARDIS can kill.
    Someone should tell the Doctor and his friends pronto, because they may not realise they’re genuinely under threat. Much has been made of the sequence where the Doctor picks up a rock, presumably to bash Za’s brains in so the travellers can dispense with helping him and continue their flight through the forest – it’s as if the Doctor, at least, has some inkling of what a very dark and dangerous programme they’re all embarking on. But although it’s Ian who stays the Doctor’s hand, only a few minutes before, he was the one who wanted to take advantage of Za being attacked by something with a loud roar and have everyone make their escape to the TARDIS. What I love about these sequences is that there’s really no simple morality on display here: Barbara does the humane thing in wanting to tend Za’s wounds, but isn’t she just