TV: Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child blog tasks

Language and close-textual analysis

An Unearthly Child

Narrative:

Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child, at the start, follows a police narrative enigma with flashbacks of unusual situations that the character of Susan gets into. There are repeated references to the police when the teachers, Ian and Barbara, meet the Doctor and believe that he has kidnapped their student Susan who had recently walked into the junkyard. When they all enter the TARDIS ( Time And Relative Dimensions In Space)there is a use of dialogue to create a division between the Doctor and Susan- who are aliens- and Ian and Barbara- who are humans- to show how Susan and the Doctor have a higher intelligence and understanding of life and the universe than Ian and Barbara. The episode ends on a cliffhanger possibly foreshadowing time-travel in the next episode.

Character:
There are only 4 named characters in this episode: Doctor Who, an alien scientist who looks like a human, Susan the alien scientist's granddaughter who also looks like a human, Ian a human scientist teacher and Barbara a human history teacher. In this episode Doctor Who seems to be the anti-hero as he is shown to deliberately harm the teacher and is thought by the teachers to have kidnapped Susan.

Iconography: At the beginning of the episode, during the title sequence, there is a series of robotic synthesized sounds for the intro song. As the episode goes along there are many references to time and space such as when they walk into the TARDIS and the shiny silver outfit that Susan is wearing that is associated with space and the future.

Setting: The beginning of the episode is set in a normal school but then moves into a junkyard as this is possibly a reference to the horror genre. Most of the scenes in the school were set in the science lab which is a feature of sci-fi. The TARDIS is then the next location which defies physics as it's bigger on the inside and has a lot of new looking technology which are features of the sci-fi genre. We finally end up in a new deserted setting possibly foreshadowing time-travel in the next episode. 


2) Equilibrium- In school normality is evident with normal teachers and a brilliant student

Disruption- When the teachers the Doctor and it seems as though Susan has been kidnapped

Recognition-When the teachers realize that Susan is in the TARDIS in the junkyard

Reparation-When the teachers enter the TARDIS and realize it is not a kidnapping

New Equilibrium- There is no new equilibrium.



3) In this episode, the Doctor is an anti-hero character because he is made unlikable by not co-operating with Ian and Barbara and looks down on everyone as though they were inferior. Susan is the princess character as she seems as though she needs to be saved from the Doctor when the teachers think that she is being kidnapped. Barbara is the helper/ sidekick character as she is sidelined by the Doctor but does assist Ian in saving Susan, this plays into the stereotypical gender roles of the 60s. Ian is the hero character as he is the one who wants to save Susan.  


4) Susan has a shiny silver vest and trousers, this shows that she is from the future as she is wearing a stereotypically male costume in a time with very traditional gender expectations (girls wear only skirts and dresses while boys wear trousers). When the doctor is introduced, there are low angled shots to make him seem more powerful.

5) Young and old is an example of binary opposition in Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child. This is shown with Susan and the Doctor. Susan is only worried about whether or not she will still be able to attend school however the doctor is concerned about Ian and Barbara spreading their identities. Another example of this is gender. Male and female are shown by Barbara and Ian, while Ian is physically confronting the issue the way a stereotypical man would, Barbara goes inside the TARDIS to look for Susan.



Representation

 1) Men are presented as brave and strong through the character of Ian, who is desperately trying to save Susan. Men are also presented as intelligent, this is evident when the Doctor states that Ian and Barbara could never understand the wonders of space and time. It is also evident when we find out that Ian is a science teacher.

2) The characters of Barbara and Susan are treated as though they were ignorant and inferior. The Doctor only refers to Ian, using the term 'young man' to show that he didn't even consider Barbara as being any sort of threat to him at all. At the beginning of the episode, Susan seems to be the focus of the narrative but later on, she is being told off by her grandfather and made to look powerless. When explaining space and time, the doctor seemed to be the main fountain of knowledge and Susan was only his underling. However, from the short flashbacks, it is clear to see that Susan is really intelligent which subverts female stereotypes of that time alongside Barabara being a History teacher.


3) The stereotype of young people at the time was that they were interested in current trends which are reinforced by Susan's character as she is fashion-forward, wearing trousers in some scenes and is listening to pop music in the classroom. However, the stereotypes of old people of that time were that they were wise and insightful while being angry and hostile. This is reinforced through the character of the Doctor.


4) All of the actors in An Unearthly Child are white, this is not surprising as there were not many acting opportunities for people of a diverse background in the 60s. Gender roles are very binary as Ian is the main hero and Barbara just helps him and is sidelined in most exchanges with the Doctor through the repeated phrase of 'Young man' used by Hartnell.


5) Education is an important middle-class value, the fact that Susan dreams of an education when her grandfather tries to stop her from going. Her teachers also admire her genius and are willing to help her so that she can make something of herself which is also an important middle-class value - to get a future through education rather than labour work.



Audience

1) I believe that the target audience for Doctor Who was and always will be a mainstream family audience. In 1963, there were only 2 channels available, the BBC and ITV so Doctor Who had to attend to a wide audience. Nowadays, although some episodes have elements of the horror genre, there is no explicit sexual content in Doctor Who or gory violence so viewing times for Doctor Who are before the watershed and so children can watch it along with their parents.


2) Mainstreamers, as it can be watched by the entire family and explorers because in the 60s Science Fiction was a relatively new genre and may not have gone down well initially by everyone because people are often standoffish when it comes to change.

3) Personal Identity: A normal school setting is used because everyone is either experiencing or has experienced school life.

Personal Relationships: The Doctor is made to be an unlikable character so the audience may love to hate him, Susan is an innocent child who is being mistreated by her grandfather so the audience may feel sympathy and keep watching to see what happens to her.

Diversion (Escapism): Living in a fictional world with the TARDIS and time travel is far more interesting than the normality and routine nature of everyday life.

Surveillance (Information / Facts): The decimal system is mentioned along with other historical developments. Barbara is also a history teacher and time travel is hinted at by the cliffhanger at the end.

4) Nostalgia could be part of the uses and Gratifications as our parents or grandparents may remember the initial release of this episode.

5) Vicarious pleasures can be applied to Doctor Who because the audience (Whovians) can imagine that they are travelling through space in time through the characters of the Doctor and Susan.

Industries

1) There were only 2 TV channels in England in 63 which were ITV and the BBC.


2) Doctor Who brings together different kinds of BBC fans, different ages because it is a long-running family show so both younger and older people would have an attachment to it and different demographic groups because it is aimed at a mainstream audience.


3)  When the Doctor and his companions travel back in time, they educate the audience about the past. Doctor Who is an entertaining franchise because it gives the audience pleasure of diversion as living in a world of the TARDIS and travel in space and time is something people use to escape their everyday lives.

4) The BBC is funded by the annual TV license in which every TV owner has to pay for the right to watch TV in England without being fined or imprisoned.



5) The BBC was self-regulated until 2017 when OffCom started regulating it. The watershed is that, after 9:00pm, there can be more uncensored and sexually explicit content to protect children when they are channel surfing.