|
After twenty-two minutes of
claustrophobic story-telling, the climax to the first ever episode of Doctor
Who comes as a sublime visual and aural shock. Having departed the East London junkyard - in reality the impossibly cramped
Lime Grove studio - TARDIS comes to rest at a tilt in a dark and barren alien
landscape (filmed at the much larger Ealing Studios). After a long sequence of
visual and aural overload, the viewer is thrown away from the centre of action
and dumped into the eerie landscape, the sudden silence of radiophonic sound
adding to the sensory detachment. A lone figure cuts between us and the ship,
his shadow lengthening impossibly across the landscape towards TARDIS. When the
end titles and theme music start up, the eerie recognition threatens to become
full blown horror as we are left to face the awakening of our repressed pasts.
Next week, the titles inform us, THE CAVE OF SKULLS. The entire sequence is
perhaps the most impressive in the history of the programme, and one that left
an impressive scar in the mind of this child viewer. |
|
