Talk:An Unearthly Child

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Copyright Duration of the Arc's episodes
According to Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, episodes of this storyline will be out of copyright in the United Kingdom as "wireless broadcasts" after 50 years of the end of the calendar year, December 31, 1963, and December 31, 1964. In other words, 2014 and 2015. I wonder if I'm wrong. The copyright owner is BBC; if I'm wrong, who is the copyright owner? I wonder if I must have misinterpreted. --George Ho (talk) 07:33, 17 November 2011 (UTC)


 * I'm not a copyright lawyer, so don't take my word as absolute truth, but as the original broadcast did not transmit with a copyright notice intact, doesn't that automatically place this episode in the public domain in the United States upon broadcast? Atomicblue (talk) 10:26, 12 December 2013 (UTC)
 * No. See Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States 1 January 2013, under the headings "Works First Published Outside the U.S. by Foreign Nationals or U.S. Citizens Living Abroad" → "Works Published Abroad Before 1978", we find that since this is "Published in the US more than 30 days after publication abroad, without compliance with US formalities, and not in the public domain in its home country as of 1 January 1996", and none of the Special Cases apply, the copyright expires 95 years after publication date. -- Red rose64 (talk) 20:00, 12 December 2013 (UTC)


 * I suspect it would be argued that the episodes are protected as a film, and the scripts as a literary or dramatic work, which were then subsequently broadcast, in contrast to the broadcast of e.g. an unscripted sporting event.


 * The scripts therefore are likely to be subject to the "life + 70" rule, where the life (or lives) in question will be Anthony Coburn (d. 1977) and perhaps also David Whitaker (d. 1980). So copyright would expire at the end of either 2047 or 2050. Copyright in the script would protect the rightsholder (ie the BBC) against derivative works based on the script (eg restagings or adaptations of it).


 * The filmed episodes would also be subject to "life + 70", the relevant life in question being that of the last-surviving principal director, author (here in fact meaning producer ) or composer. Composer Norman Kay died in 2001, and producer Verity Lambert in 2007, but director Waris Hussein is happily still very much alive; so copyright in the recorded episodes is likely to persist until at least 2083 or (one would hope for Waris) substantially longer.


 * And yes, a copyright duration of over 120 years is utterly insane. Jheald (talk) 08:23, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * (Note that for the purposes of the act, the CDPA (as amended) defines film as "a recording on any medium from which a moving image may by any means be produced" -- so that fully includes videotape, telerecordings, etc; and would seem even to cover recordings of unscripted sporting events, such as I raised above). Jheald (talk) 08:37, 13 December 2013 (UTC)


 * "... a copyright duration of over 120 years is utterly insane." The insanity is sometimes called the "Mickey Mouse rule." Years ago when Disney realized that Mickey Mouse was getting close to being in the public domain, they sent an army of lobbyists to Congress to get it extended so that they wouldn't lose out on more money. Who would have thought that Mickey was still worth so much cheese? __209.179.62.240 (talk) 15:48, 30 March 2015 (UTC)


 * Nope that's a myth. British copyright is not dictated by Disney. It's this long because the principle of life of author + so many years is the underlying basis of European copyright law (which takes a very different philosophic approach to that prevalent in the US) and got to life + 70 years as part of an EU harmonisation that has become the global norm. The US has tended to steadily conform to international norms on intellectual property rather than going its own way because of old cartoons. Timrollpickering (talk) 15:00, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

Stone Age
As far as I can recall, there is no reference in the story to this being set in the Stone Age or even on Earth at all? Episodes 2-4 could have been set on another planet.--Tuzapicabit (talk) 14:32, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Earth, agreed; but some of the characters (Kal and Za) definitely use stone tools - an axe and a knife - so whether Earth or not, they are people whose primary material for making tools is stone, so it's a stone age, even if not The Stone Age. -- Red rose64 (talk) 18:50, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
 * You raise an interesting question T and you are correct that the WP:PRIMARY source - ie the episodes themselves - doesn't specify Earth. However, there are numerous WP:SECONDARY sources, including (I am pretty sure) some original production notes, that state that the setting is Earth. As to the "stone age" I concur with Redrose64's assessment of the situation. MarnetteD | Talk 19:02, 22 November 2013 (UTC)

Plot section
The plot section states that, "The time machine retains its outward appearance when it travels through time, which Susan explains as a malfunction in the circuitry that is supposed to adapt its appearance to its surroundings." For the record, that sentence is misplaced. From what I remember of the episode, Susan only explains the circuitry malfunction after the TARDIS appears in the stone age - not when the TARDIS is still in Totters Lane, as the current placement of the sentence suggests. FreeKnowledgeCreator (talk) 00:59, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

Some questions answered, and Stef Anthony Coburn's contact/verification details here provided
Stef Stargazer (talk) 23:36, 15 August 2017 (UTC) Legitimately interested persons (perhaps those Wikipedia editors: contending and pedantically reversing my greatly more authoritative and easily verifiable edits) seeking to verify my identity (which seems to be the principal objection to my repeated accurate corrections to this otherwise erroneous page) are welcome to email me at either: or follow Stef_Anthony_Coburn on Twitter and DM as appropriate for a phone number if required.

As it has recently been implied that I might be just some lying 'dog' off the internet (thanks for that), only pretending (for *Grod alone knows what arcane reason) to be who I verifiably am, I'll be happy to provide whatever bona-fides are required to prove beyond reasonable doubt that I both am who I unequivocally am, and know what I unequivocally know, regarding both the life of my father, and his involvement in and contributions to that Grodawful bloody children's programme.

(*Grod: a phonetically acceptable substitute phoneme, allowing use of widely employed conversational phrases without otherwise implicit appeals or references to conceptually improbable putative deities.)

To laterally respond (whilst I'm here) to two of the other queries expressed: First, yes of course, the damned thing is set in our Terran 'stone age'. Second, to anyone wondering who it is who presently owns the copyright in 'Doctor Who and The Tribe of Gum? (the eponymous 'Gum' features in extant earlier drafts [carbons] of the script but was written out by the broadcast version)

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Stef Stargazer (talk • contribs) 23:08, 15 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your contribution. Alas, a tertiary source such as an encyclopaedia works by citing and summarising reliable secondary sources. Please publish your personal knowledge in a secondary source so that we can cite you. Thanks. DonQuixote (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for taking the time to post this story – it's fascinating stuff. However, it looks like you might have been misinformed regarding how Wikipedia gathers and sources information. Generally speaking, this site does not allow people to add information from their own lives and experiences. Instead, editors are expected to track down reliable external sources – newspaper or magazine articles, or posts on notable news websites – and use those to back up their edits. Any information that does not appear in one of these published sources can be removed. It's an imperfect system, as you can tell, but it's a necessary compromise to keep the site from being monopolised by people with fringe views or biases.
 * If you can arrange to have your story published elsewhere, in a magazine or at a reasonably notable website, we can use that as a source for the Anthony Coburn, Doctor Who, and An Unearthly Child articles (and if your information conflicts with the "official" version, then it can at least be presented alongside it so that readers can make up their own minds). Might I suggest contacting Doctor Who Magazine? They print every month (and in all honesty publish a great deal of filler material), so I imagine they'd be very interested in a first-hand account of the circumstances surrounding the show's creation from someone who was there (especially if you offer them a previously-unreleased interview with Verity Lambert!). Failing that, less notable (but still reliable enough to serve as a citation) outlets like doctorwhotv.co.uk may also be worth a try. At the very least, it might be worth posting the Lambert recording on YouTube, where it would suffice as a primary source for any information she divulged (eg, the reason behind the argument that scuppered The Masters of Luxor). But my main point is that this is more a job for a journalist – Wikipedia itself isn't an outlet for publishing new information, and the editors here don't have the authority or wherewithal to examine your evidence or make pronouncements. —Flax5 12:46, 16 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Well said!
 * Cuddy2977 (talk) 10:23, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

William Hartnell's copy of The Tribe of Gum script on Antiques Roadshow
William Hartnell's copy of The Tribe of Gum script featured on the Antiques Roadshow on 31 December 2017:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09l255k

Starts at 48:34 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.153.175.67 (talk) 20:54, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

Recent edits
There are a couple problems with the recent edits. First I have no idea why the "2" is being added to the alternate title nor is there any need to add extra quote marks. Second the parenthetical items are not needed. Several editors have removed these so the current consensus is to leave them out. They should not be added again until that consensus changes. MarnetteD&#124;Talk 13:35, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Unsourced Information / Trivia
May I ask what parts of the following are considered unsourced or trivial? The information is almost entirely straight out of the text it's replacing, so if you're concerned about sourcing or trivia, you might as well delete the whole section. The only information that isn't in the original, I think, is the publishing companies to the two translated versions of the novel. That hardly seems trivial, and I don't know that a source is particularly important as it shouldn't be contentious. It's listed right there on the cover, which you can find with a Web search of the title.

The paragraphs may be fairly straightforward in their own right as a collection of words, but not for their function of gaining a quick understanding of specific, detailed information. You have to read through a large block of lopsided prose, largely focused on the oddities of various translations, phone cards, and other business, to grasp the more pertinent information about how one might access the material and in what form. For the kind of summary that a Wikipedia article serves to exhibit, this is less than an ideal informational structure.

The matrix scans quickly. As the reader who scrolls to the commercial releases section, what format are you looking for? DVD? Well, here's the same information that was buried in the paragraphs. This is what to look for. If anything, I think the below matrix suffers from inadequate information, as it adds almost nothing to the (inadequate) information already present on the page. This situation is best resolved not by deleting it and replacing it with a worse solution but by expanding it.

Or, you could ask the reader to puzzle over phone cards and out-of-print script books, then to assemble the scant information on VHS and DVD releases in their head. That could work too.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Aderack (talk • contribs) 17:56, 24 May 2018 (UTC)


 * First of all, there are a few pieces of unsourced information added with the table: "version 1" and "version 2" of the unaired pilot being included in The Hartnell Years and The Edge of Destruction, respectively, on VHS is not included anywhere in the source; and the publishers of the translated books and the VHS releases has not been sourced either—as editors, we have the burden to provide sources, not state that "a Web search" will find the answer. Secondly, the purpose of prose (according to WP:MOS) is to "explain", not to provide a "quick understanding" of information nor a "kind of summary". I'm not sure what you're referring to when you describe the paragraph as "lopsided", and I don't see how it focuses on the "oddities" of the releases: as I see it, it provides the necessary information about the releases without useless rambling. You should also consider WP:WHENTABLE, which states that "if the information you are editing is not tabular in nature, it probably does not belong in a table"—considering the paragraphs are seven and four sentences, respectively, I don't see how they could be perceived as "tabular in nature". Lastly, Wikipedia is not a store; a script book is still relevant to our readers, whether it is out of print or not. The "scant information on VHS and DVD releases" is sufficient detail for a Wikipedia article without divulging into trivia. Or, we could explain every little detail about the releases. That could work too. – Rhain  ☔ 22:13, 24 May 2018 (UTC)