Doctor Who pilot

For the titles of the BBC’s new ‘adventure in space and time’, producer Verity Lambert commissioned designer Bernard Lodge, who filmed and manipulated the ‘howlaround’ feedback of a TV camera pointing at its own monitor. A column of light rises before ripping and swirling, as if to suggest a journey through time. Delia Derbyshire’s extraordinarily original arrangement of Ron Grainer’s sheet music accompanies this footage, in its day the most alien-sounding piece of music hitherto recorded – and still prone to sending a shiver up the spine.

The programme’s pilot suffered numerous technical problems and William Hartnell’s Doctor was distant and almost callous. Executive producer Sydney Newman called for the episode to be remounted and the star’s performance was made warmer. The echoing thunderclap at the start of this theme arrangement was removed as well, and made more atmospheric for the broadcast version of ‘An Unearthly Child’ which went out on the Saturday evening of the 23rd of November, 1963.