Okay now what about when the cybermen fanfare blares over the Titanic narrowly missing Buckingham palace

I've said it before but Waris Hussain really is *that guy* when it comes to season 1's visual language.

Look at this fucken shot man

9/10. Banger.

The "red indian" line is obviously icky, but it also works in context of episodes 2-4. The Doctor is the bad guy with that line, condescendingly using imagery that Ian can understand while talking to Susan. All humans are "savage minds" to him, whether they're cavemen or 1960s physics teachers

Also this is episode ONE and IanBarbara are already being workplace flirtatious, MY LOVES❤️

And that pause after she says "I mean it" is palpable. The Doctor is TERRIFIED of Susan leaving.

This is one episode where Susan is written and performed pitch-perfectly. Not yet needlessly hysterical, but clearly desperate to keep having a stable life in one place (which retroactively was the Doctor's idea, the rat bastard!)

I've said it before but Waris Hussain really is *that guy* when it comes to season 1's visual language.

Look at this fucken shot man

Doctor Who S01E01 - "An Unearthly Child" (1963)

What a bloody triumph of television. A do-over shooting of the pretty tough unaired pilot with minor tweaks to the script turn what could have been a scifi flop-on-arrival into a first episode that still sings 61 years later.

Quinnis flows directly into the months at Coal Hill and it offers a good brief look into what the show would look like without our favourite schoolteachers stumbling though the TARDIS doors: much colder and sadder.

Pt 1 - 6/10
Pt 2 - 7/10

I love that Platt directly addresses, as @eruditorumpress.com calls it, the Problem of Susan. This paternal protectiveness that the Doctor exerts on Susan is anti-adventuring. Just as he in this story tells her they should stay in one place, it's clear he needs some more confrontational passengers.

The Companion Chronicles 5.6: Quinnis (2010)
Part 2 - "The Plain of Despair"

I'm a sucker for nightmare sequences and traumatising our companions. Oh look, this episode has both! Susan's mild telepathy is once again weaponised against her here, poor child's being put thru it.

Lol, sorry that happened

Bluesky: