Writer’s note: As stated specifically in the review itself, this is the first time I have managed to watch any sort of Doctor Who in any incarnation. Because of this, I will probably get a few things wrong, due to ignorance of the subject itself, or because things were changed in the continuity of a twenty-five-plus year television show. I know how rabid a fan base can be, so please, cut me some slack on the material. I don’t want to open up my email, or a feedback thread, and read about how horribly misinformed I am on the subject of Doctor Who. I’m well aware of that fact.

Thank you.

I know nothing about Doctor Who.

Absolutely nothing. My mind comes to a blank when it comes to the subject. Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. I know there is a television show called Doctor Who. I know it hails from a foreign land, it’s apparently science fiction-y, and that it’s been on television for a lengthy amount of time. But, thanks to BBC video and , I have been graced with Doctor Who: The Beginning, which collects three serials from the very beginning of the series, spanning from 1963 to 1966. And thank God for this box set – if I was given anything else from the remainder of the series, I probably would have been lost, confused and angry.

First up is the four-part serial An Unearthly Child; the very first story in the history of Doctor Who.

Disc One: An Unearthly Child
Susan Foreman, a pixie-ish cute (though her exaggerated eyebrows are edging towards Erica Gavin craziness, but far from Kim Novak’s spastic brows in Vertigo) teenage girl. She seems normal on the surface, but to teachers Ian Chesterton and Barbara Wright, Susan seems a bit off. While Susan excels in the subject of science, she does seem to go off on strange tangents about time and space. Spurred by impulse, Ian and Barbara decide to follow Susan home one day, only to find the girl entering a junkyard, which seems kind of strange to the two.

Entering the deserted trash heap, Ian and Barbara encounter a stuffy old coot of a man and a police box that emits Susan’s voice. To the old man’s protest, the two squeeze into the box and find not only Susan, but that the inside of the telephone box is surprisingly larger than the outside. The angered elder, The Doctor (just “The Doctor”), reveals their situation: The police box is obviously not what it seems to be, but is in actuality the T.A.R.D.I.S.: Time and Relative Dimension in Space. Simply put, it’s a time machine. The Doctor, running purely on logic, makes his decision: the secret can’t be leaked, Ian and Barbara are captives, and they’re off to another time and place in order to keep said secret.

But the group has no idea where or when they’re going, and by random chance they end up traveling to the dawn of man, where Za, the leader of a tribe, is striving to create fire in order to save his position in the clan. While Za spends his time rubbing a bone between his hands and generally wasting time, Kal is providing everyone with meat in hopes to become the leader.

Back over to The Doctor and his group, whose “Let’s go exploring without thinking of the possibilities of negative repercussions” mentality rivals the characterization in Scooby Doo (though the initial run of Doctor Who was supposed to have an educational slant, which explains the blind curiosity), and The Doctor is captured within five minutes out of the ship. Susan, Ian and Barbara decide to go out on a hunt for The Doctor, and they are also taken captive. But The Doctor hatches a plan: show the cavemen the way to make fire, and pray that their primitive minds will decide to let them leave.

Since the show ran 26 years, you can naturally assume that all works out. The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara make their way back to the ship and fly away to yet another world. A world of petrified trees, strange mechanical beings and radiation run amok.

Disc Two: The Daleks
Landing on a distant planet faces many possibilities. For example, it might be a good idea to not leave your ship when you come across a land of Petrified Forest, where the wind blows yet the trees stand still. It also might be a good idea to keep an eye on your radiation detector throughout your visit, rather than giving it a quick, once-over glance before setting out on your adventure. The Doctor and his companions, in order to provide a story, do not follow these simple suggestions and make their way through said forest, coming upon an empty city. The Doctor wants to investigate, the othersknow better. But it’s The Doctor’s show, and when they’re back in the TARDIS, The Doctor sabotages the ship in order to satisfy his own impulses and forces everyone into the city to look for mercury to “repair” his “damaged” magical flying police box.

Around this time it might dawn on you: The Doctor is kind of a dick – but a loveable dick, mind you. Wanting to uphold his own cold logic, he’s still ruled by impulse to the point of leading his group – which consists of forcing his kidnapped companions and his granddaughter down into the land of Lymphoma, only to be captured by the Daleks – a race of weakened monsters who have managed to gain power through their mechanical bodies. Fueled by hatred of everything but themselves, the Daleks wish to exterminate the Thals, the last remaining race on the planet that has managed to survive through medicine.

Through the wonders of science and legs (they allow you to run!), they manage to escape the Daleks, finding the company of the Thals, who have renounced their warrior pasts in favor of hoping for peace. But there’s a little problem: Ian left a missing piece of the TARDIS back in the city, and now he and The Doctor have to convince the Thals to drop their pacifist ways in order to satisfy their own needs. Obviously, it’s a win/win situation and nothing can go wrong. Well, okay, some of the Thals die. But The Doctor and his cohorts make their way back to the fully functioning TARDIS with relative ease, which leads us to…

Disc Three: The Edge of Destruction
The shortest serial in the set (at two episodes) and a blatant time and money saver in the long run, The Edge of Destruction is surprisingly convoluted considering the previous stories’ straight-forwardness. After the chaos of the Daleks, the TARDIS crash-lands in a mysterious area, knocking The Doctor, Susan, Ian and Barbara out cold. When they all come to, they find the ship acting rather strange; doors open and close on their own, the ship’s water provider reads empty despite dispensing bags of the stuff, and a clock in the corner has melted down into a Dali-esque nightmare. Even with these alarming problems, something worse is going on: everyone has lost their memory, and Susan is starting to violently react to her surroundings. Could an alien life form have invaded the ship while the group was out cold? Is the ship trying to warn them about their meddling with time and space? Oh wait; it was just a loose wire. Sorry everyone.

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