A Sort of Time Television: 8-14 February 1964

Saturday 8 February

Initially the BBC would only commit to 13 episodes of Doctor Who, which was a pain as the planned stories wouldn't slice up that way. The first two serials used 11 of these, but what about the other two, for which there was precious little in the way of budget left? The only option was for the show's script editor, David Whitaker, to come up with a story using only the regular cast and existing sets. And as so much of the show's budget had been spent on constructing the TARDIS interior, it made sense to make good use of it. So the next two weeks see the Doctor, Susan, Barbara and Ian trapped aboard the ship, the tensions that have been simmering between the time travellers and their abductees over the past 11 weeks roaring to a head.

We pick up from the explosive ending of last week's episode, with the travellers gradually coming round after being knocked unconscious on their departure from the planet Skaro.

Barbara's the first to come to her senses, surveying her companions in puzzlement. Susan's next, suffering terrible head and neck pains.

Together they minister to the Doctor, who's cut his head open in his fall. Susan provides a special bandage with stripes of ointment that fade as the wound heals. Susan doesn't recognise Ian, who initially thinks he and Barbara are still at school when he comes round. Jacqueline Hill's the only one of the four actors to avoid staginess in conveying her character's confused state, with William Russell's stilted performance as the spaced-out Ian especially hammy.

When she goes to fetch water for her grandfather, Susan's puzzled to find the food machine claiming it's empty, though it dutifully provides her with a plastic bag full of the stuff.

Returning to the control room, Susan's shocked to find the TARDIS doors are open. Having finally remembered where they are, Barbara thinks that the ship must have crashed. Susan puts forward the troubling theory that something unknown has got inside the ship. Outside the doors is a white void. As Ian approaches them, they close. When he retreats, they open again.

Susan tries the controls but, like Ian in the show's first episode, gets an electric shock. This one knocks her unconscious again.

Ian hoists her over his shoulders and takes her for a lie-down, allowing us our first glance at the ship's fold-away, sun-lounger like beds.

After fetching her some water (and getting the same curious message from the machine), Ian returns to find a wild-haired Susan threatening him with a lethal-looking, daggerlike pair of scissors. When she asks him who he is he responds "Susan..." which is hardly likely to make her any less confused.

Ian, still wonky himself, tries to pacify her, and eventually she goes all Psycho on the bed, finally collapsing.

Ian returns to the control room to find the Doctor up and about. He and Barbara are discussing Susan's theory that someone's inside the ship, to which Ian responds with a zonked-out snigger that's practically a premonition of Beavis and Butthead.

The Doctor also pooh-poohs the idea. "It's just that one's been through so much..." sighs Barbara. Jacqueline Hill is just astoundingly good in this episode.

Barbara goes to see Susan, now dressed in an, erm, interesting black garment, and manages to get the scissors, which she snuck into the control room to grab back, off her. Susan's disquieting behaviour ("I never noticed the shadows before...") gives Carole Ann Ford get the chance to recapture some of the original strangeness of her character, which has been diluted over 10 episodes of falling over and screaming. Most unsettlingly of all, she suggests that if an intelligence of some kind is in the TARDIS, it came aboard inside one of the travellers.

By the way, in long shot the food machine looks like a goggle-eyed robot. It's a shame they didn't take the opportunity to make Foodie more of a character in the show.

On learning that her grandfather plans to switch the scanner on, Susan hysterically tries to stop him getting shocked by the console like she was. The controls work perfectly OK for him though, and the scanner shows a delightful pastoral scene (complete with birdsong).

But the Doctor thinks the image is just "a photograph", and when the ship's doors open, the white void is there once more.

The scanner keeps showing different pictures, which the Doctor has deduced are taken from the TARDIS's memory banks.

Suspicious that Ian and Barbara didn't hurt their heads in the crash the way he and Susan did, the Doctor accuses them of sabotage. His rage is marred slightly by William Hartnell's lines getting away from him: "And you both knocked Su - you know you both knocked both Susan and I unconscious!"

Barbara is spectacular in standing up to him here, also catching any viewers up on what's been happening in the show so far: "How dare you! Do you realise, you stupid old man, that you'd have died in the Cave of Skulls, if Ian hadn't made fire for you?... And what about what we went through against the Daleks? Not just for us, but for you and Susan too. And all because you tricked us in going down to the city. Accuse us? You ought to get down on your hands and knees and thank us. But gratitude's the last thing you'll ever have, or any kind of common sense either."

Unfortunately, her big speech is slightly undermined by the fact that directly after it she screams at a clock. But as the clock's melting (as is her wristwatch) this seems fair enough. Barbara's been the only one clinging on to her sanity in this episode, and suddenly it seems to slip away from under her. It's a terrifying moment.

Ian sits Barbara down to recover, and suddenly the Doctor, appears with drinks for everyone. He's behaving in such a ridiculously sinister manner that it's something of a surprise that Ian and Barbara each take one. It's a nightcap, he tells them. "We have no way of telling [when it's night] now," sighs Ian, who doesn't seem to have realised that the time your watch tells you means very little when you're hurtling through time and space.

Susan apologises to Barbara for her behaviour, but the Doctor still seems highly suspicious of the teachers. The way he hovers over each of them once they're asleep certainly suggests he put something in their drinks.

With clear purpose of some kind in mind, the Doctor advances on the console while the others sleep. But then someone unseen grabs him by the throat...

Sunday 9 February

Judy Parfitt guest stars in tonight's (now lost) episode of Dr Finlay's Casebook on the BBC, alongside her husband, It's Dark Outside's Tony Steedman.

Monday 10 February

Tonight's exciting edition of Come Dancing on the BBC pits Central London (from the Lyceum in the Strand) against South London (from the Orchid Ballroom, Purley).

Tuesday 11 February

Wednesday 12 February

Tonight's Festival play on the BBC is Alexandre Dumas' The Lady of the Camellias, directed by Rudolph Cartier and with a deluxe cast including Billie Whitelaw, John Fraser, Dennis Price, Alexander Knox, John Le Mesurier, Sandra Dorne, Brian Oulton, Vanda Godsell, Gary Hope, Hilary Mason and Bruce Montague.

Thursday 13 February