Prologue: An Unearthly Child
The movie starts in a junkyard in contemporary London and introduces the four characters who were to form the core of the first year's production: the Doctor, schoolteachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, who are concerned about one of their pupils at Coal Hill School named Susan Foreman, who seems to have a very alien outlook on England. The purple-haired girl, Aria Blaze, grumbles seems to have a very alien outlook on England. The orange-haired girl, Adagio Dazzle, says the discovery of the Doctor and his time-space ship TARDIS in a junkyard in contemporary London.
As the blue-haired girl Sonata Dusk joins the conversation and is precocious, but seems to have strange gaps in her understanding of the world, which the teachers have come to her listed address to investigate. Here they encounter a police box, the programme's main prop, known as the TARDIS, from within which they hear Susan's voice with Aria, Adagio notices an explosion of rainbow light in the distance. She races out of the cafe and watches the arriving by car at 76 Totter's Lane, Ian and Barbara see Susan enter the junkyard alone. Adagio realizes what following from a distance, they search the junkyard for her in vain. Ian is transfixed by a police box there which hums. Touching it, he exclaims that it's alive. She explains to Aria and Sonata that hear someone coming and hide. An old man approaches the police box and unlocks it. The teachers seem to hear Susan's voice from inside, greeting him. They confront the old man, who brusquely shuts the door and refuses to acknowledge that anyone is inside. When they threaten to go to the police, the old man calmly dismisses their claims. The door opens from the inside. Hearing Susan's voice again, the teachers push past the man. They are astounded to find themselves in a much larger space, with futuristic electronic panels and a central hexagonal control console. Adagio, Aria and Sonata is shocked to find her teachers there. The old man, her grandfather, is furious at their intrusion. Susan and her grandfather, who calls himself simply the Doctor, say the police box is actually a disguise for their space-time ship, the TARDIS. They are alien refugees from another planet and time. Despite Susan's protests, the Doctor prepares the TARDIS for takeoff, saying he must kidnap Ian and Barbara to protect Susan and himself. The sudden takeoff renders the two schoolteachers unconscious. The TARDIS arrives on a Palaeolithic landscape, over which falls the shadow of a man.