Doctor Who (1963) Season 1 Episode 1

Doctor Who was conceived as an ongoing series, lasting for at least 52 weeks, consisting of various stories each of between four and seven episodes.

The first 118 episodes (1963-1966) were aired with individual episode titles, and the final episode of each serial would commonly link directly into the first of the next. No episode titles were broadcast for the first 25 serials. Over the years, the titles of the first 25 serials has been the subject of much discussion.

In June 1963, Anthony Coburn assigned the working title "The Tribe of Gum" to his draft script, and internal BBC documents refer to "Doctor Who and the Tribe of Gum". By October 1963, the production was being referred to internaly as "Dr. Who and a 100,000 BC". Camera scripts, normally a reliable guide, refer to "Serial A". Overseas sales documents consistently refer to the serial as "Dr. Who and the Tribe of Gum". A tenth anniversary tribute magazine from the BBC's Radio Times in 1973 named each of the first 25 serials after its opening episode, so the serial was incorrectly renamed as An Unearthly Child. Unlike some of the other titles on this list, this new title for Serial A stuck. A novelisation in 1981, and a video release in 1990, both adopted the new form.