s01 e01 An Unearthly Child

In which the Doctor kidnaps some hapless school teachers and everyone gets beat up by a lot by cavemen.

Review:  

Everything is awesome until they actually travel in the TARDIS, at which point we're treated to 2 hours of nonsense about cavemen or fire or some shit that is so godawful that it makes it hard to believe that Mark Gatiss wasn't even born yet.  

Important Firsts:

• First appearance of the Doctor
• First appearance of Susan
• First appearance of Ian
• First appearance of Barbara
• First appearance of the TARDIS
• First utterly inane episode
• First "Doctor?  Doctor Who?" joke
• First time the Doctor and his companions get separated in the first few minutes of a journey.
• First stupid hat.
• First, um, everything?

Musings:

• DAMN that theme music is good.  Can you even imagine how pimpin' spacy that was back in the 60's?
• I also miss those lava lam graphics in the opening.
• Okay, say what you will about the rest of the episode, but the first time we ever see the TARDIS as it is revealed in a junkyard with that creepy humming it one of the most delightfully bone-chilling moments in the history of television.  Think what an epic this episode began.
• Wow Barbara and Ian really need to bone already. 
• "He's a Doctor, isn't he?" in reference to Susan's reclusive grandfather.  FUCK YEAH he's a Doctor!
• I like how the new series dances around the question of whether the doctor has ever had kids.  Unless timelords can spontaneously generate grandchildren, I'm pretty sure there had to be some sort of intermediary step to produce Susan.
• On that note, I am kinda sad that Susan must be dead now :-(
• Is that a BETAMAX thats Susan's listening to?  I wouldn't be able to distinguish it from some weird Time Lord shit.
• Why did the production crew have to make a FAKE textbook about the french revolution?  Was their production budget really that low?
• Susan is really terrible at pretending to be a normal schoolchild.  It make you wonder how she and the Doctor went undetected for so long.  Seriously, if you want to pretend to not be a time-traveler, maybe you should not talk about the fourth and fifth dimensions and shout things like "THE DECIMAL SYSTEM HASN'T STARTED YET" in class.
• Given the above, I like that Ian's first idea is that she "could be a foreigner." 
• "I feel frightened, as if we are about to interfere in something that is best left alone"  Fuck yes.
• Easy to forget that a police telephone box was actually not a strange thing to see in the 60s.  When they first travel back in time, the Doctor wonder why the TARDIS doesn't change.  This, it seems, it the moment when the chameleon circuit breaks.
• The Doctor wears an incredibly stupid hat.
• The Doctor gets accused of being a incestuous pedophile based on the fact that he pops out of a tiny box which also contains his granddaughter. 
• Wow, the Doctor started out as SUCH a crotchety asshole.  In fact his character development is one of the coolest parts of the first few seasons.
• And YET, the Doctor is also so immediately badass.
• Wow that is a stupid hat.
• First time they enter the TARDIS.  So cool.
• They never actually say "bigger on the inside" this time around--that's a first that will have to wait.
• Susan implies that she made up the name "TARDIS."  What a wanker. 
• I'm still glad that the doctor acquires his first companions by kidnapping.
• Wow the last 75% of this episode is dumb
• For some reason the TARDIS year indicator doesn't go below 0. AD. That seems like a bit of an oversight for some reason.
• Ian and Barabara REALLY need to bone.
• FIRST "DOCTOR WHO?" JOKE.
• The Doctor tokes up. Why doesn't he do this more often?
• The cavemen knock the Doctor's hat off.  Thank god.
• The Doctor and his companions get separated in the first few minutes of their journey.  This only happens another 215 times in the series.
• Wow Susan is a hysterical whiner
• Good thing science teachers have advanced knowledge of hand-to-hand combat. It would have been awkward if they were killed several times over in the first episode.
• Wow the cavemen are dumb
• The Doctor considers bashing a wounded dude's head in with a rock because he's slowing them down.  Kind of a dick move by modern Doctor standards.  A later novel would retcon this to say that 8th Doctor actually appeared in this moment and convinced him not to.
• Wow the cavemen dialog is stupid
• Wow this whole episode is pretty stupid.
• Wow.
• And at the end, a cliffhanger involving a Geiger counter.  Sigh.
• OH WAIT NEXT EPISODE HAS DALEKS.