Can’t
argue with the very first Doctor-companion relationships the show ever gave us.
While Doctor Who has had many
truly-exquisite dynamics between the Doctor and their companions over the years
– and the One era itself features some other good groupings – there’s something
magical about this unlikely quartet wandering the fourth dimension together (a few spoilers.)
Elephant
in the room first. This is not your
typical Doctor-companion meetcute in which the companions meet the Doctor at
the onset of some sort of alien crisis, impress the Doctor with their
cleverness/heart/bravery/etc., and get a TARDIS invitation by the end of the
story. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Ian and Barbara have all those things in
spades. Case in point, they both recognize something’s off about Susan, are
concerned enough for her that they want to investigate, and poke around an
eerie junkyard at night looking for clues. It’s not until a bit later that they
have their respective 20th-century minds blown by TARDISes and time
travel, but even in a situation that barely hints at the fantastical, they
prove themselves to be companion material.
But at
the time, the First Doctor isn’t in the market for companions. His only company
is Susan, and that’s the way he likes it. When Ian and Barbara do some snooping
and discover the TARDIS, he’s angry at them for learning his secret and is
prepared to go to extreme measures. And yes, he straight-up abducts them in
time. That is a thing that happens.
And so,
the relationship does not start well. Ian and Barbara are two ordinary
schoolteachers who’ve been forced against their will on a bewildering journey
in time and space, the Doctor is the distrustful, mysterious alien who’s taken
them, and Susan is the “unearthly child” caught in the middle, trying to help
her teachers and her grandfather see the best in one another. As such, the
early episodes are filled with Ian and the Doctor clashing over authority,
Barbara taking the Doctor to task for how he treats them, and the Doctor doing sneaky
things to get his way.
But even
as this friction is going on, very gradually, the Doctor, Susan, and the two
humans are beginning to understand, respect, and even like each other. Getting
into tight situations together (because it’s Doctor Who – no matter where the TARDIS takes them, they’re going
to end up in a tight situation pretty quickly,) they need to collaborate and
come up with plans to stay alive/save the day/whatever’s required of them, and
that means discovering what each of the others brings to the table. Before too
long, almost without realizing it, these four people become a group, one that
grows closer with each passing adventure.
One thing
I really enjoy about this era of the show is the “hanging-out” scenes that tend
to come at the start of a new serial. While stories of six or more episodes
usually wind up dragging at some point, it does
leave space for these low-key moments of the original team TARDIS exploring a
new era/planet: examining local fauna, finding appropriate clothes for the era,
and just generally enjoying poking around a new time and place. I like that,
not jumping straight into the crisis/mystery within the first few minutes of
the story and spending a little time just showing these four having a good time
together. It’s a nice way to establish their ever-evolving relationships with
one another, and while Who still
squeezes in moments like this, they tend to be a lot more condensed than they
are in these earliest seasons of the show.
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