'An Unearthly Child' (Ep 1 'An Unearthly Child')

My musings on 'An Unearthly Child';

• The full version of Delia & Ron's brilliant theme music lasts over 1m30s into first episode; it sounds great across the gloomy interiors of the junkyard and fades into the iconic hum of the TARDIS as the camera moves in to a close up on the doors.
• Ian & Barbara have an immediate rapport in the classroom scene. An engaging team from the get go.
• Susan certainly has an alien quality and seems even a little dangerous, it's a better characterisation at this point than the slightly drippy whinger we get at times with the character later on.
• Was the later 'dummed down' Susan because she was deemed too aloof and alien for kids to relate to?
• Hartnell's cough upon entrance into the junkyard is the only cough we hear from him all episode.
• Hartnell is line perfect! No coughs or mumbling to buy time or bluster through, no hesitance, it's great! When he knows his lines this well he can really concentrate on nuance and there's loads of it in his line delivery, interaction, movement and facial expression. I'm really enjoying it. A very early, in fact immediate, peak.
• Hartnell is acting like he's singing for his supper and trying to convince everyone, and mostly himself, that he deserves the part. Lots of effort. Not like someone who has already won over the public and feels either entitled; content to drift along tossing off their Doctor's 'isms' hither and thither, or too tired from the nearly year round production grind to really relish new material.
• Hartnell's also moving differently here to how he will through most of his tenure, he's quite agile and moves with purpose, not the crooked-backed shuffling amble we associate with him. He's not really playing 'doddery old man' here. I'm not sure if he forgets himself and moves more like Billy Hartnell or whether he played up the 'forgetful old codger' shtick deliberately later on to help in covering up line and plot uncertainty.
• The camera zoom on the scanner screen across the glowing console as the TARDIS takes off for the first time is superb, as are the white noise and howlaround effects.
• Peter Brachaki's interior TARDIS design is phenomenal; rightfully cherished and iconic. Waris Hussein didn't (and still doesn't) like it. Waris needs his head read. Considering the budget, it's stupendous.
• Now that I've tutted him for lack of taste, the direction from Waris! - energetic and edgy, lots of cutting between his multiple cameras, pacily mixing up long shots, mids and close ups and moving camera, the viewer is as wrong-footed and on edge as Ian & Barbara. 
• The editing in this episode has much more in common with the modern series than that of its stablemates in season 1, which are often guilty of tedious several minute long mid or long shots with actors spouting dialouge in a lazily composed half circle and directors getting away with as few camera moves and edits as possible. Waris made it hard for himself and took some no doubt sweaty risks, but it pays off handsomely with one of the most odd and gripping pieces of fledgling telly you're likely to see!
• The final shot of a human shadow falling across the relief stage near the crooked TARDIS is a wonderful invite back for part 2.