Doctor Who was originally seen as an entertainment and educational programme, in season one we were introduced to the Doctor, an older man travelling around the universe with his granddaughter Susan, they were said to be cut off from their home planet.
Susan attended an Earth school in the year 1963. When two of her teachers discovered the TARDIS, the Doctor had no choice but to kidnap them as he believed they’d tell everyone what they had seen.
Broadcast: 23 November – 14 December, 1963
Writer: Anthony Coburn
Director: Waris Hussein
Incidental Music: Norman Kay
Schoolteachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton become intrigued by one of their pupils, Susan Foreman, and visit her home address – a junkyard at 76 Totter’s Lane – where they meet her grandfather, the Doctor. The Doctor and Susan are aliens who travel through time and space in their ship, the TARDIS, which looks like an ordinary police box but actually houses a huge gleaming control room. The TARDIS takes them all to a Palaeolithic landscape where they encounter a tribe that has lost the secret of fire.
Broadcast: 14 December, 1963 – 25 January, 1964
Writer: Terry Nation
Directors: Christopher Barry (episodes 1, 2, 4, 5), Richard Martin (episodes 3, 6, 7)
Incidental Music: Tristram Cary
The TARDIS has brought the travellers to the planet Skaro where they meet two indigenous races – the Daleks, malicious mutant creatures encased in armoured travel machines, and the Thals, beautiful humanoids with pacifist principles. They convince the Thals of the need to fight for their own survival.
Joining forces with them and braving Skaro’s many dangers, they launch a two-pronged attack on the Dalek city. The Daleks are all killed when, during the course of the fighting, their power supply is cut off.
This was the very first Dalek story, it was also made into a feature film Dr Who and the Daleks (1965)
Broadcast: 8 – 15 February, 1964
Writer: David Whitaker
Director: John Gorrie
Incidental Music: Tristram Cary
As they slowly recover from the shock of being thrown to the TARDIS floor, the Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara all seem to be acting strangely. A number of unexplained events occur and suspicions are raised that some alien force may have entered the ship. The Doctor at one point even accuses Ian and Barbara of sabotage.
It gradually dawns on the travellers that what they have been experiencing is an attempt by the TARDIS itself to warn them of something. The Doctor ultimately realises that the ‘fast return’ switch he used when leaving Skaro has stuck, and the ship has been plunging back to the beginning of time and its own destruction.
Once the problem – a faulty spring – is corrected, the TARDIS returns to normal and the Doctor is forced to make some apologies.
Broadcast: 22 February – 04 April, 1964
Writer: John Lucarotti
Directors: Waris Hussein (episodes 1, 2, 3 ,5, 7) and John Crockett (episode 4)
Incidental Music: Tristram Cary
Arriving in Central Asia in 1289, the Doctor and his companions join the caravan of the famous Venetian explorer Marco Polo as it makes its way from the snowy heights of the Pamir Plateau, across the treacherous Gobi Desert and through the heart of imperial Cathay.
Having witnessed many incredible sights and survived a variety of dangers, they eventually arrive at the mighty Kublai Khan’s Summer Palace in Shang-tu, where the Doctor strikes up an extraordinary friendship with the now-aged ruler.
They move on at last to the even more sumptuous Imperial Palace in Peking, where the travellers manage to save the Khan from an assassination attempt by the Mongol warlord Tegana – supposedly on a peace mission – before departing once more in the TARDIS.
Broadcast: 11 April – 16 May, 1964
Writer: Terry Nation
Director: John Gorrie
Incidental Music: Norman Kay
The TARDIS arrives on the planet Marinus on an island of glass surrounded by a sea of acid. The travellers are forced by the elderly Arbitan to retrieve four of the five operating keys to a machine called the Conscience of Marinus, of which he is the keeper. These have been hidden in different locations around the planet to prevent them falling into the hands of the evil Yartek and his Voord warriors, who plan to seize the machine and use its originally benevolent mind-influencing power for their own sinister purposes.
Now the machine has been modified to overcome the Voords and can be reactivated, so the keys must be recovered. In their quest, the travellers – transported from place to place by Arbitan’s wristwatch-like travel dials – have adventures in the city of Morphoton; in a building besieged by ambulatory plants; with a lecherous and murderous trapper; and in the city of Millennius where Ian is falsely accused of murder and discovers that the legal rule is ‘guilty until proven innocent’.
The keys are eventually retrieved and the travellers return to the island. Arbitan has been killed by Yartek, who apparently tricks Ian into handing over the final key. Ian, however, passes a fake key instead and when Yartek tries to use it the machine explodes, killing him and the Voords.
Broadcast: 23 May – 13 June, 1964
Writer: John Lucarotti
Director: John Crocket
Incidental Music: Richard Rodney Bennett
The TARDIS arrives in fifteenth century Mexico inside the tomb of one-time Aztec High Priest Yetaxa. The travellers become cut off from the ship when they explore the temple outside and the tomb door closes behind them. Barbara is proclaimed by the High Priest of Knowledge, Autloc, as Yetaxa’s divine reincarnation. However, she incurs the enmity of the High Priest of Sacrifice, Tlotoxl, when – against the Doctor’s advice – she attempts to use her new-found authority to put an end to the Aztec practice of human sacrifice.
Events reach a climax on the Day of Darkness – the time of a solar eclipse. Ian’s unwilling conflict with the Aztecs’ ‘chosen warrior’, Ixta, ends in a fight in which the latter falls to his death from the temple roof. The Doctor manages to reopen the tomb door using a wheel-and-pulley that he has carved (the Aztecs not having mastered the use of the wheel) and the travellers make good their escape.
Broadcast: 20 June – 1 August, 1964
Writer: Peter R. Newman
Directors: Mervyn Pinfield (episodes 1, 2, 3, 4) and Frank Cox (episodes 5, 6)
Incidental Music: Norman Kay
The TARDIS arrives on board a spaceship in orbit around a planet called the Sense-Sphere. The alien Sensorites have trapped the ship’s human crew, Captain Maitland, Carol and John, in a state of semi-permanent paralysis. When the Doctor investigates, the aliens steal the lock mechanism from the TARDIS, thus trapping him and his companions.
The Sensorites allow all but Maitland and Barbara down to the planet, where Ian falls ill from a sickness that has been wiping out the Sensorites. The Doctor finds a cure. His investigations into the cause of the sickness are hampered by the subversive activities of the City Administrator, but eventually he uncovers three deranged human survivors from a past expedition who have been adding deadly nightshade to the water supply.
Broadcast: 8 August – 12 September, 1964
Writer: Dennis Spooner
Directors: Henric Hirsch (episodes 1, 2, 4, 5, 6) and John Gorrie (episode 3)
Incidental Music: Stanley Myers
The TARDIS materialises not far from Paris in 1794 – one of the bloodiest years following the French Revolution of 1789. The travellers become involved with an escape chain rescuing prisoners from the guillotine and get caught up in the machinations of an English undercover spy, James Stirling – alias Lemaitre, governor of the Conciergerie Prison.
The Doctor – posing as a Regional Officer of the Provinces – is twice brought before the great tyrant, Robespierre himself, and has to talk himself out of trouble. Ian and Barbara, meanwhile, have a close encounter with a future ruler of France, Napoleon Bonaparte.
As events reach their climax, Robespierre is overthrown – shot in the jaw and dragged off to the prison – and the Doctor and his friends slip quietly away.
Sources: BBC’s h2g2 guide, BBC’s official Doctor Who website, Doctor Who’s Tragical History Tour
The DoctorWilliam Hartnell
SusanCarole Ann Ford
Ian ChestertonWilliam Russell
Barbara WrightJacqueline HillIan Chesterton
We’d better keep an eye on him. He seems to have a knack of getting himself into trouble.
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