Unwilling Adventurer

K and C’s favourite Hartnell era moments/scenes.

Vicki and Ian go exploring.

Just the best. Ian promises to look after Vicki and she leads him off to explore the desert planet with so much enthusiasm. Like an older brother, Ian teases her constantly and indulges her curiousity and imagination. This is really the first episode that plays on the Ian/Vicki dynamic and it’s lovely.

there’s lots of fun and banter and the adorable scene where Ian tries to pull the ring from the sand and Vicki tells him about the stories from her childhood about castles and drawbridges. When Ian pulls the ring and it comes loose and into his hand, he raises the ring into the air and exclaims ‘Excalibur!’, which we absolutely love for obvious reasons *cough Lancelot* 

And then they meet the mire beasts and when Vicki gets scared, Ian calls her a little fool and in return she calls him a ‘nit’ when he freezes from fear. the whole thing is perfect. William Russell and Maureen O’Brien have such chemistry and in the Chase commentary, Maureen comments on how much she likes those scenes the two of them had together. Someone else on the commentary is talking about how you can see the set dressing and Maureen says something like ‘I wouldn’t notice that, I’m looking at the people and what they’re doing and the storytelling, if you always notice those little things then you’re not watching it properly.’ or something along those lines. How true.