One of my favourite dramatic themes are those where something apparently perfectly normal then gives rise to something mysterious and alien to what one originally expected. However, this revelation is often blown away by advertising or an 'irregular' scene before you even get started. Two of my favourite films uses that kind of approach, The Thing and Predator, and both fell foul of their advertising campaigns and opening scenes clearly setting the sci-fi theme, even though that element doesn't rear up until later in the films. Similarly, Doctor Who was no exception, with the blurb for the new show informing the potential audience that it was going to be sci-fi from the outset, and kicking off with a mysterious opening scene involving a humming police box in a junk yard - but did that have the potential to completely ruin the surprise in the story?

With An Unearthly Child, however, I think it gets away with it. Perhaps that's because it broadcast long before my time which means I've always looked at it in retrospect (and already familiar with what Doctor Who is about), and this means that my expectations are already set and so cannot be disappointed in that regard. Then again, friends who did see it on original broadcast didn't feel they were "spoilt" either, so this might be an unfounded worry.

Mind you, there's more mystery and suspense in the opening moments of "An Unearthly Child" than in many complete dramas - it's easy to see how potential fans would become immediately hooked by that haunting music that melts into a foggy backstreet of East London, a policeman slowly pacing his beat, and as he passes by a scrap merchants he misses the thrumming tone of a commonplace Police Box ...

If you'd tuned in a minute late you'd have missed that, of course, and so you'd be in the territory of familiar drama - a typical high school at the end of lessons, with a couple of teachers discussing a problematic student. It's the music that accompanies those scenes of Susan that alert us to there being something odd about her (though her comment of "That's not right" on opening a book on The French Revolution" should already have raised alarm bells!).

Even the encounter with a strange old man in a junkyard, though intriguing, is not something to spiral us off into sci-fi territory ... then, Barbara enters those police box doors and ...

"It's Alive!"

That moment is just as impressive now as it must have been back in 1963. The way in which the teachers' cosy world is suddenly thrown into scientific chaos must have been echoed in viewers as they try to get to grips with what just happened on screen. A murky junkyard transformed into a brightly lit stark white room, and within it a pupil they both know totally at ease and somewhat surprised to see them. "Is this where you live?" they wonder, as do we.

Then another revelation: Doctor Foreman ("Who?!!") and Susan are not from Earth at all, but have come from another planet entirely, and not only that they are also wanderers in the fourth dimension, too, in their Ship the TARDIS. And then, as the Doctor decides to kidnap the two teachers rather than lose his granddaughter we are flung through a whirling vortex to a stange, new "alien" world. (Okay we know that isn't the case by the following week, but you know what I mean!)

Well ... I'm hooked for the next 49 years ... :)

Trivial Bits

• I thought my mobile had gone off at one point ... being I have John Smith and the Common Men as my ringtone at the moment!
• I still think the mention of the decimal system is a great moment with hindsight, even if it was a safe bet even in the 1960s
• We never seem to get such "good" foggy days any more, though thank goodness the smoggy daze is long gone!
• Is Susan's comment on The French Revolution to become the first continuity of the series?
• "If I thought I was just being a busy body I'd go straight home" ... thank goodness Barbara didn't else where would we be now?!!
• So what does the girl whisper into the ear of the other one ... ?!!
• I'm not entirely sure why Susan had such a problem with D and E - why couldn't she just use them as constants (like the rest of us)?!?!
• "It would be so wonderfully normal" if Susan had been meeting a boy - would she have been shocked/outraged if she'd been meeting another girl in that junkyard!
• "Not quite clear is it?" - nor to me either, I'm still not sure how the skyscraper in TV analogy matches the dimensional transition from the outer plasmic shell into the interior!
• Time And Relative DIMENSION in Space, it's definitive, dontcha know!
• Another subtle difference in the early days is mentioned here, where the Doctor says they are cut off from their own planet, and then wistfully says to Susan that they'll get back one day. Later, it transpires he was effectively a fugitive from his people. I suppose these don't actually contradict each other though.
• And why was the Doctor seemingly initially worried that Ian and Barbara were the police? What had he been up to?!!!
• Shame we never had the long version of the dematerialisation/travel sequence sound in the TARDIS again in the series.
• Finally, wouldn't it have been strange if we were celebrating the 16th November as the anniversary, had the show gone out on its original schedule? And would it have lasted as long because of it [we have the pilot to compare against, would it have been so successful as the polished version we finally saw?]