[subego]

Embarassingly, I'd never seen it, so I fired it up last night.

I thought the first episode was utterly brilliant. It had some technical issues here and there, but I wasn't expecting anything nearly that good. The Doctor's granddaughter was full-on unearthly. The scene where she makes the inkblot is riveting, and unexpectedly, like, really hot too.

Likewise, I had heard Hartnell was something of an "anti-hero" Doctor, but I wasn't expecting him to find humans so contemptible. His disgust is just as riveting as Ford's weirdness.


Floored, I start in on the second episode and notice it's oddly similar to the first, as in the exact same episode, with changes.

I soon learn the history, and realize they reshot the episode I had thought was so crazy brilliant, and decided to, wait for it... remove everything I just talked about. Much kinder Doctor. Inkblot scene removed completely. Ford was asked to lay-off on the sexy. In other words, they said "less unearthly please".


God dammit.

[andi*pandi]

Huh, I must have never seen that original then... only the one as aired, which I did like, but what you describe sounds good too.

[subego]

Here's one of my favorite examples:

In the aired version, the Doctor calls the TARDIS a "ship" because "it doesn't roll around on wheels, you know". In the unaired version he calls it a "ship" because "[through gritted teeth] that's what your primitive language uses to describe anything which doesn't roll on wheels".

[andi*pandi]

heh.

And the inkblot sounds interesting, because as I recall, the only thing that really set Susan as "different" was that she was smarter than her teachers. She listened to radio and seemed like she was trying to assimilate.

[subego]

That's another example. It's subtle, but in the unaired version, when she listens to the radio she gives off a vibe of "wow, humans did this?"

It's also what makes the inkblot scene sexy. She's turned off the radio at that point but is still swaying to the music playing in her head while she makes the inkblot.