tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202625234167413814.post6970956774673181033..comments2024-02-28T17:50:10.303+00:00Comments on LUCID FRENZY JUNIOR: WILLIAM HARTNELL'S DOCTOR WHO: 'AN UNEARTHLY CHILD'Gavin Burrowshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16347163260510316959noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202625234167413814.post-42915278236882874192022-07-05T18:38:05.555+01:002022-07-05T18:38:05.555+01:00Added to which, the ‘The Outer Limits’ episode ‘Zz...Added to which, the ‘The Outer Limits’ episode ‘Zzzzz’ seems ripe for comparison. Both feature a human couple trying to relate to a kind of honorary foundling, a child/ young woman in their care whose strangeness both befuddles and fascinates them. Both are base around compelling lead performances, where the way the actor looks feeling vital.<br /><br />Though there’s one obvious difference. Susan is a child, a charmingly innocent figure, as unworldly as she is unearthly, while Regina is not just a young woman but a ruthless femme fatale. (It’s essentially a faerie folk story transplanted to a queen bee to give it an SF veneer. And you wouldn’t need to be a strict Freudian to see it as Oedipal.) <br /><br />But the fact they came out within a year of one another (1963 and ’64) suggests there was a growing generation gap which SF was best placed to interpret. Adults come from Mars, children from Venus.<br /> Gavin Burrowshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16347163260510316959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202625234167413814.post-2978165116271482662020-01-10T19:07:12.035+00:002020-01-10T19:07:12.035+00:00Thanks for the comments. For me it's the '...Thanks for the comments. For me it's the 'Marco Polo' as-story-arc where I think that argument's at its weakest. For one thing, the Doctor has so little to do in that story. That would seem most bizarre not only to New Who fans, but anyone who'd seen it from Troughton on then went back to Hartnell.Gavin Burrowshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16347163260510316959noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202625234167413814.post-66981336297110041452020-01-10T17:08:36.429+00:002020-01-10T17:08:36.429+00:00Great post! I agree with absolutely all of it and...Great post! I agree with absolutely all of it and it's a very solid piece of artistic analysis. One very minor quibble:<br /><br /><i>We modern viewers see the early unheroic, wanderer Doctor and we wait for him to go away. Our minds construct story arcs to explain his turn to good, despite knowing full well we're just joining up the dots of happenstance.</i><br /><br />Well, yes and no. I don't think it fits that easily with the rest of the show and the backstory eventually given to the Doctor, but there's no question in my mind that David Whitaker deliberately wrote/guided the "Ian and Barbara rub off on the Doctor" story line. All accomplished within the first 13 episodes (the initial run the show was granted). It seems to me to be quite explicit in this, The Daleks, and (especially) Edge of Destruction and it's completely accomplished very early in Marco Polo. (He begins that story quite tetchy and anti-heroic, but by the end of episode 1 when Marco seizes the TARDIS, he has lost his seriousness and become the freebooting heroic wanderer that he would, by and large, remain. By the time Ian and Barbara leave, they've all become good friends.)Andrew Stevenshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13453328821252013152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4202625234167413814.post-53051529407113208542019-11-25T15:24:01.009+00:002019-11-25T15:24:01.009+00:00Bizarrely, it seems I have only now found this pie...Bizarrely, it seems I have only now found this piece. I don't have much to add or ask, I just want you to know I really enjoyed read it, and am glad you're pushing on with this series!Mike Taylorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06039663158335543317noreply@blogger.com