I bumped this up my “to watch” list after reading ‘s review, and really enjoyed the first episode last weekend. warned me that it rather falls apart after a good start, and having now watched the following three episodes I tend more towards her viewpoint than ‘s – not so much the wobbly plot as the wobbly acting, to be honest, and the director’s penchant for keeping our regular cast together in what feel very awkwardly posed camera shots – but I think as a whole it is still better than almost any Sixth Doctor story (granted, not a high bar to surmount), and the first episode is one of the best single episodes from any era of Who: our heroes find themselves on exhibit in a museum, but can’t interact with the locals in any way, rather like Willow in the Season 7 Buffy episode “Same Time, Same Place”. The Doctor realises that they have jumped a time-track, and we have the set up for the rest of the story. Which, as mentioned, has its weaknesses but also some glorious moments – the Doctor, being interrogated by a baddie using a “mental imaging device”, is asked how he arrived on the planet Xeros, and the screen shows a penny-farthing bicycle!

I’m just a little sad now, because I have seen or listened to every single First Doctor episode. But it is over twenty-five years since I last saw eps two, three and four of An Unearthly Child, so I can watch them again before writing them up here.