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Doctor Who: The Beginning (Boxed Set) (Includes: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, and The Edge Of Destruction)
 
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Doctor Who: The Beginning (Boxed Set) (Includes: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, and The Edge Of Destruction)

William Hartnell (Actor), Carole Ann Ford (Actor) | Rated: NR (Not Rated) | Format: DVD
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
List Price: CDN$ 48.00
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Doctor Who: The Beginning (Boxed Set) (Includes: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, and The Edge Of Destruction) + Doctor Who: The Dalek Invasion of Earth + Doctor Who: The Aztecs
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The "unearthly" strains of Ron Grainer's soon-to-be-famous title music announced the arrival of Doctor Who to British TV screens on Saturday, November 23, 1963. It must have been quite a baffling experience for first-time viewers: the swirling abstract graphics, the weird electronic sound effects courtesy of the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop, the very oddity of the show's title. This really was groundbreaking TV. "I think you'll find there's a very simple explanation for all of this", says schoolteacher Ian Chesterton (William Russell) condescendingly, shortly before being taken on board the TARDIS and transported to an alien planet. For audiences, too, this was something entirely unfamiliar, yet obviously appealing: Doctor Who ran for almost 30 years and remains one of the BBC's most popular shows. His later incarnations were all eccentric in their different ways, but William Hartnell's original Doctor is an irascible and distinctively alien character, not at all happy having to put up with ignorant 20th-century humans. The "Unearthly Child" of the title is his granddaughter Susan (Carole Ann Ford), temporarily attending school on Earth. She is conspicuously different from her classmates and attracts the attention of two of her teachers who resolve to find out why. After an encounter with her mysterious grandfather they are whisked away on an adventure to a different time and place where angry cavemen are trying in vain to learn the secret of fire. Thus the show's trademarks are established from the outset: the Doctor and his more or less reluctant human companions, the mechanical unreliability of the TARDIS, the cliffhanger ending of each episode. It was a formula that rarely changed but that allowed apparently limitless variation, the only constraint being the BBC's budget. In later years the show tried vainly to compete with blockbuster special effects movies; but its original low-key incarnation relied more on inventive scenarios and good writing--qualities that are just as important now as then. --Mark Walker

The Daleks (sometimes called "The Dead Planet") is the second-ever Doctor Who serial. First broadcast between December 1963 and February 1964, the seven-episode story ensured the program's success by introducing the Doctor's most iconic enemies. Five hundred years after a nuclear war has devastated the planet Skaro, the Doctor (William Hartnell), Barbara, Ian, and Susan materialize in a petrified forest where the pacifist, and decidedly camp, Thals face starvation. Our heroes visit a nearby city, the home of the last remaining Daleks, terrifyingly cold-blooded mutants encased in armed, pepper-pot-like shells, and become involved in a desperate battle for survival. Given a nightmarish atmosphere by Tristram Cary's surreal electronic score, The Daleks proved the template for many a future Doctor Who adventure. Hartnell's Doctor is a surprisingly self-serving hero and the ambitious storytelling, which reflects the Cold War fears of the time, belies a tiny budget. The remastered picture sometimes looks digitized, but this story, remade for the cinema as Dr. Who and the Daleks (1965) and starring Peter Cushing, is still both an effective, if at times unintentionally hilarious, entertainment and an essential piece of television history. A superior sequel, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, was screened in late 1964. --Gary S Dalkin

One of the rarest of the early Doctor Who series, with William Hartnell as the crusty old Doctor, Edge of Destruction is entirely based in the TARDIS, which has stopped somewhere between worlds and times. The Doctor blames Ian and Barbara, the two teachers who came aboard in search for answers about his granddaughter, Susan, assuming they have committed sabotage in an attempt to return to their own time. They, in turn, in spite of recent shared escapes from Cavemen and Daleks, have no particular reason to trust his sanity. Something is causing one after another of them to act with violent irrationality, and the clock is ticking towards their destruction... This is a claustrophobic two-episode plot in which the series examines closely some of its more beloved assumptions. --Roz Kaveney

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Customer Reviews

6 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.5 out of 5 stars (6 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The Beginning... of the Sci-Fi Icon, Feb 10 2006
By 
JohnD (Winnipeg Manitoba Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Doctor Who: The Beginning (Boxed Set) (Includes: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, and The Edge Of Destruction) (DVD)
First things first: as anyone who buys DW on dvd will know, the releases are expensive in comparison to pretty well everything else out there, with the exception of other British releases. So, basing a review around cost of a set and absolutely nothing else is completely ridiculous.

The Beginning set is exactly that: the beginning of the sci-fi iconic series known as Doctor Who. Overshadowed in November of 1963 by the assassination of President Kennedy, what's contained in this set set the tone and established standards for what would follow for the next 26 years, one TV movie and the 2005 revival of the series.

The episodes themselves are in black and white and are a little slow moving for 21st century audiences, so I'd suggest watching only one episode at a time.

In An Unearthly Child we are exposed to the mysterious Doctor and his TARDIS for the first time, and travel back to prehistoric times. The first episode of this story outshines the remaining three.

Then we travel to a Dead Planet in The Daleks for our first exposure to Doctor Who's iconic and most popular adversaries: the Daleks (surprise surprise...). If the prior four episodes hadn't grabbed viewers by the neck, the cliffhanger of episode one and what followed certainly did. At seven episodes, there are only a few stories in the history of the show that match The Daleks in length.

In The Edge of Destruction, the Doctor and his companions find themselves inside a malfunctioning TARDIS, fighting to overcome strange and inexplicable psychological attacks. At two episodes, it is a self contained story and does a lot for character development.

In addition to these three stories, you get an alternate (unscreened) version of the pilot for the show, which shows subtle differences from what was finally decided on for episode one of An Unearthly Child. You also get commentaries and a number of documentaries on these episodes, as well as how the show itself got started. To top it all off, these 40+ year old episodes have been lovingly restored to pristine condition by the RT.

A top notch release. Finally the Powers That Be have started releasing the show in a manner that approaches a boxed set. Five out of five for certain!

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant especially the comical extras!, Nov 29 2006
By 
Iphigenie (Laval, Quebec, Canada) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Doctor Who: The Beginning (Boxed Set) (Includes: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, and The Edge Of Destruction) (DVD)
I had to buy this because the channel I'm watching for the old Doctor Who episodes doesn't play William's and Patrick's anymore. I wasn't disapointed, the 3 stories are excellent. The unearthly child makes you fall in love with the Doctor all over again. The Daleks lets you explore the mythology of the Daleks and even in black and white they are scary and fascinating. The third one is not as good, but lets you really get to know the characters as they are no non regular players in this story. What was really fun though were the extras... with cameos from Nicolas Courtney and Peter Davison. I recommend it to fans maybe not to people who only have watched the new series though, they might be a little lost, but they might find themselves after all this is the beginning: stories 1, 2 and 3.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars The first three story arcs that started it all., Aug 19 2009
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This review is from: Doctor Who: The Beginning (Boxed Set) (Includes: An Unearthly Child, The Daleks, and The Edge Of Destruction) (DVD)
These are the story arcs that started all, which includes the first appearance of the Daleks. William Hartnell is no Tom Baker, but he carries himself with a professorial manner: some arrogance but empathy for the underdog.

As anyone purchases Dr. Who DVD's, they are more expensive than your average DVD, but, in my opinion well worth it. These DVD's are loaded with extras. The DVD's are black and white. Some of the episodes are leisurely paced, perhaps some will find them slow. Some scenes are much like a silent film with just music, which appeals to the true film buff. All in all the scripts are good and the acting is satisfying.
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