Doctor Who: Looking back at An Unearthly Child before the 60th anniversary

Sixty years ago, Brits sat down on the sofa for another evening of old-school telly.

Families huddled around tiny boxes, watching black and white screens and bemoaning the daily struggles of satellite signal. But on this particular evening, their usual programming was changed for the arrival of a new TV show.

In this new show, a pair of schoolteachers - Ian and Barbara - take an interest in one particular schoolgirl called Susan, who seems to be an ordinary young girl (albeit a bit odd). But when they follow her home to a scrapyard, the pair find her living in a police box, which turns out to be a disguise for a time-travelling spaceship.

The owner of the spaceship, the titular Doctor Who (as they were credited at the time) is Susan's grandfather, and kidnaps Ian and Barbara and takes off into time and space. So began an epic space opera began, with William Hartnell at the helm of the TARDIS.

An Unearthly Child, as the episode was called, has not exactly aged well. Old Doctor Who episodes were filmed live, so if an actor forgot their lines it was immortalised on-screen. Towards the end of his run Hartnell suffered greatly from this, but in the first episode he pulls out all the stops. His grumpy, rude and borderline anti-hero incarnation of the Doctor is a a unique take on the character, who has evolved plenty over the past six decades.

Since then, Hartnell's character has been played by two other actors - Richard Hurndell in The Five Doctors (an anniversary special) and David Bradley in Twice Upon a Time.

Now, as we approach the 60th anniversary episode, The Star Beast, we again see the return of a beloved incarnation as David Tennant returns to our screens. However, he is confirmed to be playing the 14th Doctor; this isn't necessarily a return to his 10th incarnation, just the face. Time will tell what this means for the plot of the specials themselves...