Doctor Who and An Unearthly Child Playset

Entering the yard

An Unearthly Child (sometimes referred to as 100,000 BC) is the first serial of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on BBC TV in four weekly parts from 23 November to 14 December 1963. Scripted by Australian writer Anthony Coburn, the serial introduces William Hartnell as the First Doctor and his original companions: Carole Ann Ford as the Doctor's granddaughter, Susan Foreman, with Jacqueline Hill and William Russell as school teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton. The first episode deals with Ian and Barbara's discovery of the Doctor and his time-space ship TARDIS in a junkyard in contemporary London. The remaining episodes are set amid a power struggle between warring Stone Age factions who have lost the secret of making fire.

Strolling down Totter's Lane

I.M. Foreman's scrapyard, located at 76 Totter's Lane, houses an incongruous-looking police box emitting an eerie hum. In 1963, Susan Foreman, attends the nearby Coal Hill School, and has given the school the junkyard's address as her home address. Her suspicious teachers, Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton follow Susan home one evening and witness Susan enter the junkyard alone. Following from a distance, they search the junkyard for her in vain. Upon hearing someone coming, they hide as an old man approaches the police box and unlocks it. Upon hearing Susan's voice inside the police box, the teachers emerge and demand to be let inside but the old man refuses.

76 Totter's Lane

Forcing their way inside the police box, Ian and Barbara are surprised to find Susan in a futuristic control room that is much larger than the exterior. Susan explains that the object is a time and space machine called the TARDIS and the old man is her grandfather. The unnamed old man, whom Ian and Barbara refer to as the Doctor, says that he and his granddaughter are wanderers in the fourth dimension, exiled from their own planet. Refusing to let Ian and Barbara leave, the Doctor sets the TARDIS in flight, ending up in the Stone Age of 100,000 BC...

This papercraft set, recreating I.M. Foreman's Scrapyard located at 76 Totter's Lane, was completely scratch built using set plans from AFT Downloads as inspiration and various images found here and there on the Internet.

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