Style: The quality of this season is fairly low and it’s entirely in black and white. The effects, when there are any, are almost laughable from a modern perspective, and the writing and dialogue is very 60s hammy - especially the death scenes, which are very unbelievable.
That said, if you give some permissions for the era, it’s not… terrible. It’s a bit slow and drags from a modern PoV, but I didn't find it completely un-stomach- able. And I hate watching anything made before the 1990s, so that should tell you enough.
Character: You have four main characters, the Doctor and his three companions - Susan, Barbara and Ian.
The Doctor - The First Doctor is very different from what we are used to see as a the building blocks of the Doctor’s personality, at least in New Who. He is a bit of a trickster and kind of a dick. He basically kidnaps Ian and Barbara in the beginning; lies for his own benefit; and within the first story, tries to finish off a cave man with a rock and Ian has to stop him. The Doctor is also kind of selfish and more interested in saving his skin and running away, than staying to help. In fact, even when he does stay, it’s always with the purpose to explore and the very real intention to run away at the first sign of trouble. He does become more… caring as the season progresses and in particular shows a great deal of caring to his companions, but he is definitely no Ten.
Susan Foreman - from what I can tell, Susan is the Doctor’s true, biological granddaughter and therefore Gallifreyan. She calls him “grandfather”; explains she is from a different world; later doctors make references to her and to the Doctor having a family at one point, and her description of Gallifrey is also echoed by later Doctors. How she came to be and whether she is a Time Lady or not is left up for debate, but there you go.
Susan is very much the child of the group. She is very young, only fifteen, and in several ways she acts like a typical teenage girl, especially one from the 60s. However, she is also smart and shows bravery and desire to grow up several times. Overall, I liked her a fair amount, in many ways I find her more easy to stomach than even Rose (although the fact that she has zero romantic interest in the Doctor - you know, with them being related and all - certainly helps.)
Ian Chesterton - Ian is a kind of a masculine ideal of the era, but not in a bad way. While he has leadership qualities, and wants to be heroic, he wants to do the physical work and he acts as the sort of the protector of the group, but he is also willing to step aside when needed, listen to other people and even let the women do some of the hard work. Overall, he was much better than what I was expecting and I can’t say I have many complaints within regards to his characterisation.
Barbara Wright - Barbara is a BAMF. She is consistently the character who gets the most shit done, is very smart, very clever, willing to stand up for herself and call out the Doctor on his shit. Not only that, but she is compassionate, a sort of a substitute mother to Susan, without smothering her, and just a very well rounded character. I’m confident in saying that she is most certainly one of the best companions in the entire history of the show. And once again, the fact that she has no romantic interest in the Doctor - or anyone else for that matter - certainly does help not to distract from her awesomeness. She has a few cute moments with Ian, but they are not over the top, and personally I think they'd make a cute couple,
In terms of the side characters, they were alright. No one terribly written, but also no one I was desperate to see more of. Honestly not much to say here.
Story - The plot of the season starts with two of Susan’s high school teachers - Ian, science/chemistry and Barbara, history/government - being concerned about her, because she is strangely smart and capable in many ways, but lacking knowledge or having strange ideas in other ways. Barbara in particular, is very suspicious, because there doesn’t seem to be anything on the address Susan gave. So she and Ian decide to follow her home, eventually stumbling upon the TARDIS and the first Doctor. Pushing their way inside, they find it all very strange and have a hard time believing it’s a spaceship travelling in time and space. The Doctor, deciding he can’t let them go, as they might give him away, kidnaps them. The rest of the season is spent with them going on several adventures, while trying to get back to their own time.
The stories are as follows:
The Unearthly Child:
- Meeting Susan, then going back in the past to the cave men times (4 parts).
The Daleks
- The Doctor and his companions end up in Skaro, millions of years in the future, meeting the Daleks and the Thals (7 parts)
The Edge of Destruction
- an entirely TARDID-based story (2 parts)
Marco Polo
- The Doctor and his companions end up in the 13th century and meet Marco Polo (7 Parts). This only an audio, so I skipped it.
The Keys of Marinus
- The Doctor and his companions end up in a strange planet and have to get five keys to the machine called Marinus, so they could go back to the TARDIS (6 parts
The Aztecs
- The Doctor and his companions end up in the past amongst a civilization called the Aztecs, where Barbara is confused for a reincarnation of one of their goddesses (4 parts)
The Sensorites
- The Doctor and his companions end up on a scape ship controlled by an alien race called the Sensorites, who turn out to be good-intentioned after all (6 parts)
and finally,
The Reign of Terror
- The Doctor in his companions end up smack in the middle of the French revolution (6 parts, but episodes 3 and 4 are missing)
Amongst the separate stories, the action drags somewhat from a modern perspective, and most a are fairly long, between 4 to 7 parts, each part around 22-25 minutes. My personal favorite stories are probably The Sensorites, as it remind me most of a core Doctor Who adventure story, while trying to help an alien race (strange, as it’s rated the lowest of the season on IMDB). I really wanted to like The Daleks, but it was too unnecessarily long and tiresome, though there were definitely moments of it I enjoyed.
A strange thing I found is that The First Doctor says several times that “you can’t change history,” which is very much in contrast to New Who doctors claiming that “time can be rewritten just like that!’”, and also a bit strange as a concept, because what even is history? Any point in time is “history” to another point and don’t they change history by helping the Sensorites or finding the keys of Marines? Or is that just Earth history? Kind of a weird rule to have, really. But anyway, I’m very curious to see how the Doctor changes his mind about that.
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