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Doctor Who - The Beginning Collection | 
 enlarge | Actors: William Hartnell, William Russell, Jacqueline Hill, Carole Ann Ford
Studio: BBC Warner
Category: DVD
List Price: $44.98
Buy New: $26.49
You Save: $18.49 (41%)
New (36) Used (8) from $26.49
Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 3710
Format: Box Set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 3
Running Time: 311 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.3 x 1.3
MPN: WARDE2489D
UPC: 794051248923
EAN: 0794051248923
ASIN: B000CNESV2
Theatrical Release Date: 1963
Release Date: March 28, 2006
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Product Description
Studio: Warner Home Video Release Date: 03/04/2008
Amazon.com
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: Read 44 more reviews...
 Early Doctor Who November 19, 2008
Marie Kimmey (Maui Hawaii)
Doctor Who, Torchwood, Sarah Jane Smith, the Daleks, et.al. have become my favorite weekend fare. In the interests of finding out where it all started I purchased a DVD set of the first Doctor Who stories. I was not disappointed. What has always fascinated me about the Doctor Who series is that all the stories are interrelated and each episode has at least one tidbit that serves to knit the tales together. The question of why the Tardis always looks like a police call box is neatly answered in the original Doctor Who. I love it!
 Doctor Who The Beginning October 22, 2008
M. Whitley
This is a product for diehard Dr. Who fans who are curious to see the first episodes of the longest running science fiction series in television history. The DVD's are in black and white and the special effects seem extremely amateurish by today's standards.
The first story "An Unearthly Child" unfolds over 4 episodes totally 95 minutes. Two teachers are concerned about one of their students who appears to live in a junkyard. When they attempt to visit her Grandfather, a doctor, they find a Police Box inside the junkyard. After hearing her voice coming from inside the Box, they all end up inside and the Doctor takes off because he can't let them go after seeing the TARDIS. They end up back in 200,000 b.c.
I found out a couple of things I had not known before and had wondered about such as how Dr. Who got his name and what the letters TARDIS stood for and so on. I recommend the DVD's but only if you are a true Dr. Who fan and want to know how it started.
The Beginning of a Legend October 14, 2008
Rogue Dragon
These are the very first three adventures of the Doctor, witch aired all the way back in 1963 as such some elements are completely and totally out dated but one thing remains the FUN! It's three fun adventures that are very different in style to the modren adventures, there are a total of 13 episodes plus one unaired pilot, and more then enough interveiws to keep you happy. If you can enjoy these oldies then go for it! However if you need the latest and newest these adventures will bore you. For thoses intreasted the second serial in this collection includes the first apperence of the Daleks.
 Daleks, and Cavemen, and Kahn... Oh My September 11, 2008
Luke C. Brennan (Pittsburgh, Pa United States)
Having watched only the new Doctor Who series (2005-2008 I think), I was worried this old production wouldn't compare, and largely it doesn't. That's not to say this is at all a waste of time, rather it seems so alien to my conceptions of the Doctor and TARDIS and Daleks that it was at first, a little off putting. As the intrepid Children of Time (two school teachers, and the doctors granddaughter) struggled to make fire in antediluvian earth I became concerned about the tone. Fortunately as soon as they had escaped the clutches of the cavemen, They encountered a dead and alien world. Terrifying at first, and even more so when the the first part of The Mutants ends climatically with an off screen foe brandishing an all too familiar plunger. From then on the show was Who through and through, and I loved it.
I even feel the old doctor bears an odd resemblance to a much older David Tennat, who is as it were MY Doctor. The whoniverse is born, and is a sight to behold. I heartily recommend this collection to any fan of RTD's newest incarnation.
Brilliant!
Easy to forget how good they were... August 18, 2008
Dr.? (Chicago)
It's really very easy to dismiss what a perfect storm came together in the 1963 to create the worlds longest running sci-fi progamme that became an institution. At 27 year old first time producer (Lambert), an out of work playwright (Nation), an aging tough guy (Hartnell), and a budget close to nothing, which they nearly blow through on the first two stories. See the beginning of it all.
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