Title of episode: “The Cave of Skulls”
Title of Serial: An Unearthly Child
Part: 2 of 4
Doctor: William Hartnell
Companion(s): Susan Foreman, Ian Chesterton, Barbara Wright
Written by: Anthony Coburn
Original air date: November 30 1963
Oh dear. With a title like that, you’re not really expecting a lot, are you? Probably wise. A strange-looking dude who reminds me of Nicholas Lyndhurst if he hadn’t shaved or washed for about a month watches the appearance of the TARDIS, but seems to be thinking “How the fu
ck did I get roped into this trash?” more than “What is this strange box with surely godlike beings whom I should worship?” Cut to, well, a cave, where, as you might expect, cavemen and cavewomen seem to be performing some sort of ritual, rather worryingly with a bone of questionable origin. They seem quite put out: I wonder if the guy leading the ceremony is some sort of caveman witch doctor? Witch doctor? That one, there, in camera shot. Sorry, had to do it. I know, I know. Okay, looks like head cave guy is only trying to make fire - which seems to be forbidden, by who I don’t know - but as he gets increasingly agitated and rubs two bones together (who said cavemen were poor?) and grunts, his hands moving rapidly, it all looks decidedly dodgy, so much so that a child in the crowd turns away with an uneasy look. Or maybe he’s just going to have a long and frank talk with his agent. What, after all, is wrong with an ad for beans, or washing-up liquid?
I suppose for literary purposes (to use the term very generously) all the cavepeople speak perfect English, so no trying to decipher grunts or making shadow animals for the Doctor and his companions when they meet them, I guess. Head cave guy - his name could be Za, maybe - seems to be having no luck making fire, though he has a brilliant idea: to shout at the wood. The wood, however, is not impressed and remains completely unburned. Well it was worth a try. The old woman who is laughing at his attempts to make fire - well, not laughing: none of these people seem particularly happy, but then, I guess if you had to spend your time in a freezing cave avoiding Wooly Mammoths and Sabre-Toothed Tigers, you wouldn't be too jolly either - seems to either know the secret but be unwilling to share it with him, or pretends she does. Either way, it’s pretty clear our Za thinks she’s a bitch, as he rants “You should have died with him,” possibly meaning his father, if anyone cares, which I don’t, nor I’m sure do you.
Now there’s some mention of a Kal, who one of the other cave beauties (!) warns Za may be after his job, as she says “the leader is the one who makes fire.” Oh great. You can just see the election campaign for Cave No. 34997 now, can’t you? “Vote for me, Kal, and I will rub the bones together like you wouldn't believe! Hey, I may not actually make fire, but I tell you what, I won’t fuc
king talk to it like my opponent, Za does!” Meanwhile, in the TARDIS, where fire has been mastered for ever so long, the Doctor and his Companions try to figure out where the hell they are. Seems in the early days - and for quite a while, if I remember the little I did see as a kid - putting the TARDIS in drive was a lottery: there was and is no way to predict or control where or when it will go, and the Doctor is rather bemused when his calendar readout says 0. Oh for the love of Daleks! He calls it a “yearometer”! Come on, BBC! I know the budget was about three ham sandwiches and a can of fizzy pop, but you could have come up with a better name than that! Even chronometer would have been better. Era meter? Hell, time tracker would do. Year-fu
cking-ometer? Jesus.
Quite a clever line here, when Chesterton calls the Doctor by Susan’s name, assuming his to be the same. “Dr. Foreman” he says, and the Doctor responds with “Hmm? Doctor who?” Classy. Anyway Chesterton is still not convinced, thinking it all a trick, while Wright seems to be more inclined to believe, um, her own eyes. The Doctor invites them all outside as he goes to collect soil samples, the better to determine what era they are in. Even so, faced with an alien landscape (well, one from Earth’s distant past. All right then, a disused quarry! Happy now?) Ian still cannot bring himself to credit it. The Doctor tsks that the TARDIS has remained as a police box, when it should have changed to blend in with its surroundings, something we know today is achieved by the chameleon circuit, which has never worked. While he’s digging in the sand of the disused quarry sorry ancient Earth soil, the Doctor is observed by our mate Za from the cave.
Incidentally, if you're thinking all these pictures look basically the same, you're right, and it underlines how boring and slow an episode this is. Mostly it features a bunch of second-rate actors talking in a cave. Gripping.
What’s weird to me is that from the moment they exited the TARDIS there has been the cry of some strange bird in the air - kind of more like someone opening and closing a squeaky hinge really - but none of them have thought to look up into the sky once. I mean, are they thick, or deaf? They find an odd-looking skull and try to identify it, but can’t, as no doubt it’s an animal long extinct in our time. Susan seems to confirm the chameleon circuit has worked but is not working now, but then we’ve only her word for that. Maybe it never worked. Hey, maybe she broke it. Ian finally accepts that there are more things in time and space than are dreamed of in his philosophy, but when they go to rejoin the Doctor, he’s nowhere to be seen. For someone who has surely experienced many adventures with her grandfather, Susan is very hysterical when they can’t find the Doctor. Overacting much? Not doing a lot for the image of the modern, cool and collected woman here, Suzy!
Back caveside, Za has a brilliant idea to solidify his grip on power. “I shall have to spill some blood,” he says, not confirming if he means his own, though that’s doubtful. The redoubtable Kal has brought the Doctor (so I guess it was him watching and not Za; hell, you seen one caveman, you’ve seen them all, right?) whom he saw “making fire” (he was lighting his pipe) and from whom, no doubt, he intends to force the secret. Kal makes his play, setting out his manifesto (“Za rubs his hands and waits for Orb to remember him! Za will give you to the tiger and to the cold!” All right there, Kal: remember the rules of Cave Elections! No deliberate smearing of the opponent, unless it’s with woad). Kal and Za face off, and I don’t think it’s to debate one another on the finer points of stone age living and equal rights for cave women, but then the Doctor wakes up and taking in the situation at a glance, confidently asserts he can make fire for them.
Until he realises, to his horror, that he has lost his matches. Disaster!
This is, I think unintentionally but nevertheless hilarious! A man of power and knowledge such as the Doctor, a man who has - presumably - been from one end of the galaxy to the other and backwards and forwards in time, and he can’t light a fire without matches? Was he never a boy scout? Does he not know about rubbing sticks together, or, as the news announcer in
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy incorrectly put it, “the trick is to bang the rocks together, fellas!” Oh dear. Surely such simple and basic knowledge should be elementary to him, but no: he’s panicking now as he pats his pockets and gasps in horror like a man who has lost his wallet with the winning lottery ticket in it!
Kal is somewhat crestfallen by this unexpected turn of events, which is to say, he desperately grabs the Doctor by the lapels and shakes him, saying “Make fire! Make fire!” with a subtext of “Come on, man! I vouched for you. You’re making me look bad in front of my homies. Not cool!” But our timelord is useless without the power of matches, and so Za decides, in the manner perhaps of the first true politician, to capitalise on his rival’s embarrassing failure to deliver on his promises, and starts bigging himself up. “Za does not say he will do something, and not do it!” he crows, conveniently forgetting (as do they all, with the probable exception of his arch-nemesis Kal) that only a few moments ago he was trying to explain how he couldn’t make fire, which he had promised/boasted he could.
Somewhat ticked off, Kal decides it’s time to ditch the Doctor, who has become rather less than the bonus he had expected in his campaign to be elected cave leader, and this takes the form of, well, killing him. Just then Ian and Barbara rush in, and are immediately taken prisoner. What are Companions for eh? The Doctor admonishes the cave folk that if they kill his Companions (and, presumably, him too) there will be no fire, somewhat, I would have thought, of an empty threat, since he’s already failed to provide this necessity of life, due to the lack of matches. Hasn’t he ever heard of a Zippo by the way, or don’t they use them on Gallifrey? The order is for the intruders to be brought to the Cave of Skulls, which does not sound like a place you would wish to be taken to, but does at least give the episode its title.
And by the way, where in the blue jumping f
uck is our intrepid Susan while all this is going on? Still screaming about her grandfather and wishing she had stayed behind and concentrated on her A-Levels? Point of note: the sand, as the Doctor pointed out (when he was a real man and had matches at his disposal, oh how well I remember it!) is cold, and it seems that for some unknown reason the sun is gone from the sky. This is obviously the stone age or one of those times when people dwelled in caves - actually it has to be the stone age; surely fire was discovered if stuff like bronze and iron were in use? - and I don’t recall history ever telling us of the Earth being without sun. Wouldn’t all life die? Perhaps this is just after the extinction of the dinosaurs? But wasn’t that a hell of a long time before we infested the planet with our presence?
An interesting and hilarious exchange between the father of “Za’s woman” (who does not, of course, rate a name, other than “the woman” and Za:
Za: “The woman is mine.”
Woman’s father: “My daughter is for the leader.”
Za: “Yes. The woman is mine.”
Woman’s father: “Ah, you don’t seem to understand, Za. My daughter is for the
leader, yes?”
Za: “That’s me.”
Woman’s father: “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”
(Only the first three lines are in the episode; the rest I made up, but they give you a sense that Za is perhaps not quite the sharpest bone tool in the cave).
The daughter seems, as will daughters in centuries and even millennia to come, not to agree with her father. If daddy doesn’t approve of Za, then she wants Za even more.
“Za will be a strong leader of many men,” she says. “If you give me to him he will remember you, and will always give you meat.” (Whether he will give her meat or not now is another… stop that!)
This is both an attempt to convince her father, and a threat. The first part of what she says tells daddy he really had better not piss her boyfriend off, and the second tells him that if he plays nice he need never worry about having to eat again. Win/win. Maybe. Za looks on with the kind of expression of someone who can only be thinking “I do what now?”
Incidentally, spin to 22:52 to see the best actor in this episode. Yes, I know it’s a skeleton in the foreground that does nothing. My point is, I think, succinctly made.
The old woman seems obsessed with killing people, and says fire will kill them all. In this, she proves herself one of the most forward-thinking of her time. Oh look! Susan is with them all in the Cave of Skulls! Where did she come from? Oh well, at least they can all now moan about the fact that they can’t do anything. Hey, is the Doctor in his pyjamas??
