Day: November 23, 1963

In London, 1963, teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright discuss their most problematic student at Coal Hill School, one Susan Foreman. Susan’s knowledge vastly exceeds that of her instructors in science, but she has also been known to challenge long-standing historical facts…yet she also has some things completely wrong, including one occasion where she notes that British currency isn’t on the decimal system “yet.” Ian and Barbara follow Susan discreetly when she walks home one night, and the teachers are puzzled when home seems to be a junkyard. When they follow her into the junkyard, Susan has disappeared, and the only place she could have gone is a police call box which is emitting a strange hum. Moments later, an elderly man appears, apparently determined to enter the police box himself. Ian and Barbara force their way in, along with the old man, and find that the police box is actually a time-space vehicle, bigger on the inside than out. They also discover that neither Susan nor her grandfather, a mysterious and irritable man known only as the Doctor, are human beings. The Doctor, worried that Ian and Barbara will draw unwelcome mass attention to the presence of his ship (called the TARDIS), hastily sets it into motion over everyone’s protests, and when Ian and Barbara next step out of the doors of the TARDIS, they are no longer on Earth as they know it.

Season 1 Regular Cast: William Hartnell (The Doctor), William Russell (Ian Chesterton), Jacqueline Hill (Barbara Wright), Carole Ann Ford (Susan Foreman)

written by Anthony Coburn
directed by Waris Hussein
music by Norman Kay

Guest Cast: Derek Newark (Za), Althea Charlton (Hur), Jeremy Young (Kal), Howard Lang (Horg), Eileen Way (Old Mother)

Broadcast from November 23 through December 14, 1963

LogBook entry & review by Earl Green