'100,000 BC' (4 Parts) Story Code 'A' by Anthony Coburn Aditional material by C.E. Webber

In London, 1963, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton, two schoolteachers from Coal Hill School, become intrigued by one of their pupils, the strange and mysterious Susan Foreman. They decide to visit her at home, but her address - 76, Totter's Lane - turns out to be a junkyard. Here they meet a strange old man, the Doctor, who acts hostilely to them. Ian and Barbara hear Susan's voice coming from inside a London Police Box standing in the junkyard, but when they push past the Doctor and enter it, they instead find themselves inside a huge, brightly lit and futuristic control room, at the heart of which stands a hexagonal console. The Doctor and Susan reveal that they are aliens, exiles from their home world who travel through time and space in their spaceship, the TARDIS - Time and Relative Dimension In Space. Frightened that they will tell the police about him and his granddaughter, the Doctor kidnaps the schoolteachers, and the TARDIS takes them back to Earth's Palaeolithic era. They encounter a Stone Age tribe whose leader, Za, is struggling to regain the lost secret of fire. The tribe's elders are becoming impatient with Za, believing that the young Kal should become leader instead. After Kal sees the Doctor light his pipe, he captures the four travellers, and forces them to make fire for the tribe. But the Doctor has dropped his matches; they are imprisoned in the Cave of Skulls, a place of skeletal remains whose skulls have been split open. Za and Kal battle, and Kal is killed. Ian makes fire by rubbing two sticks together, but Ka wants to keep them prisoner in the cave. Susan invents a plan to escape - by placing the skulls on burning sticks, they terrify the tribe and escape back to the safety of the TARDIS.

William Hartnell (Dr Who), William Russell (Ian Chesterton), Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright), Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman), Derek Newark (Za), Alethea Charlton (Hur), Eileen Way (Old Mother), Jeremy Young (Kal), Howard Lang (Horg)

Produced by Verity Lambert
Directed by Waris Hussein

TX:
'An Unearthly Child' - 23rd November, 1963 @ 5.15pm - 5.40pm
'The Cave of Skulls' - 30th November, 1963 @ 5.30pm - 5.55pm
'The Forest of Fear' - 6th December, 1963 @ 5.15pm - 5.40pm
'The Firemaker' - 13th December, 1963 @ 5.15pm - 5.40pm

Notes:
*Introducing the First Doctor, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright and Susan Foreman

*Also known collectively as 'An Unearthly Child' and 'The Tribe of Gum'

*Working titles: 'Doctor Who and the The Tribe of Gum'; Ep 1 - 'Nothing At the End of the Lane'; Ep 3 - 'The Cave of Skulls'; and Ep 4 - 'The Dawn of Knowledge'

*This is the first use of the Ron Grainer theme tune and 'cloudy' title sequence

*First appearance of the TARDIS

*The first episode, 'An Unearthly Child', was actually transmitted at 5.16 pm; it was repeated the following week, immediately before the second episode, as many viewers had been unable to see the original transmission due to a widespread power failure

*There is also an untransmitted pilot version of 'An Unearthly Child', with several script variations and outtakes *Early documentation refers to the Doctor's ship as the 'Change and Dimensional Electronic Selector and Extender' - 'CADESE' doesn't sound nearly as good as as 'TARDIS' (Time and Relative Dimension in Space)!