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Going into Doctor Who, I have to admit that it felt like a daunting task, considering its history, its length and the fact that I’m not the biggest Science Fiction fan of the bunch. But after making my way through this box set, I found that Doctor Who: The Beginning was a pleasant surprise. While supposedly aimed at children,Doctor Who doesn’t feel exactly like a children’s show – it isn’t condescending towards the audience, the characters are likeable yet quite flawed, and while many elements might come off as silly to modern audiences, the storylines are strong enough to pull you away from the camp factor.

My favorite serial in the set is An Unearthly Child. The four-episode length feels perfect for the story in comparison to the fun but lengthy Daleks (at seven episodes, it seems a tad odd to dedicate twelve of those episodes to jumping over a chasm) and the obviously rushed Edge of Destruction. But I found each storyline enthralling enough to go through the entire set in a day – while An Unearthly Child is the most balanced, The Daleks has the monster factor and the Edge of Destruction has the confusion and tension throughout. I must say that while it might not have converted me into a die-hard fan of the series, it sparked my interest in checking out the rest of the series.

Presentation
Reading up on the restoration of the episodes, I have come to learn that the original video tape recordings of Doctor Who mainly exist on transferred 16mm film. The restoration uses VidFIRE technology in order to give the appearance of live video, and in that they succeed – these episodes feel like live video recordings, almost documentary-like in the filming technique, and sports an image that one would expect from the then newly emerging video format. Because of its origins, the transfer is understandably soft, with a hint of grain throughout the series that can be attributed to its source, but without an extra dedicated to the episodes’ remastering, I can’t really gauge how cleaned up the series is.

The audio is a clean, distortion-free mono soundtrack. Rather impressive for a show from 1963, but there isn’t much to discuss about the subject.

Extras
Knowing that Doctor Who is a culture icon, BBC Video has showered this set with an ass-load of extras. Quite interesting though dryly written, every episode comes with information text, a subtitled fact track that provides information, mostly insights into the script and cultural. Fanatics will probably enjoy the script differences pointed out, but it left me, a new viewer, feeling a bit left out.

Disc one features both the pilot episode (full of little errors, script revisions and even character re-writes – The Doctor is much meaner in his original incarnation) and the Studio Recording of the Pilot Episode (includes commentary), a theme music video which features an extended cut of the theme song (available in 2.0 stereo, mono and an impressive 5.1 mix), Comedy Sketches featuring The League of Extrodinary Gentleman’s Mark Gatiss (who would later go on to pen a few episodes for 2005’s Doctor Whorevival), and a revealing photo gallery which gives a much cleaner look at the show’s jumbled sets.

Finally included on Disc one are two commentary tracks on episodes one and four, featuring moderator Gary Russel with producer Verity Lambert, Actors Carole Ann Ford (Susan) and William Russel (Ian) (Lambert is jettisoned in favor of director Waris Hussein for Episode Four). Russel keeps the conversation lively while interrogating and gets an impressive amount of anecdotes from a group of people trying to remember events that happened four decades back. Since the commentaries are more personality-driven, they’re very different from the information text.

Disc two features the standard information text, serial-specific gallery and commentary tracks for episodes two, four and seven (added this time around are directors Christopher Barry and Richard Martin). Since The Daleks is the longest serial on the set, the only additional feature is the seventeen-minute documentary The Creation of the Daleks, which covers the evolution of the story and the creation of the Daleks themselves, right down to including a few interesting rough sketches.

Disc three holds a treasure trove of bonus material, including the extensive hour-long Doctor Who: Origins that manages to combine theinformational tone of theinformation text with the intimacy of the commentaries. Centering on the creation of the series(though including a tie-in with the 2005 launching) rather than being an overall view of the whole, of course there’s a bit of overlapping with the information, but it’s still worth watching.

Over the Edge is a thirty-minute discussion of The Edge of Destruction, and doesn’t sugar coat the subject: this was a money saver with a dodgy ending. A very balanced look at the serial, a few hold it up as a good example of budget stretching, while others call it for what it is.

Inside the Space Ship describes… the creation and design of the ship, of course.

Masters of Sound covers the electronic sound design of the series.

Maybe most interesting is the feature titled Marco Polo. Marco Polo was the story that came after The Edge of Destruction, but was subsequently wiped from the BBC’s archives. This condensed (originally seven episodes, whittled down to thirty minutes) version recreates the episode through the original audio and on-set photographs.

And we wrap up with the traditional material, commentaries, a serial-specific gallery, information text, a few .PDF documents for those with a DVD-Rom drive, and even an Arabic soundtrack for episode two of The Edge of Destruction.

That’s a lot of stuff!

Overall
Doctor Who fans will treasure this set for both the episodes and the ridiculous amount of extras. People new to the series (such as myself) who can put aside the cheap sets and a few goofy costumes will find something to like in the series: science fiction, monsters, historical dramatization and character interactions might rope you into watching. At heart, the episodes featured in this Doctor Who showcase fine family programming. Grab your kids (if they have patience, mind you), sit down and enjoy together.

Or if you’re alone, desperate and lonely you might already own this set. In that case, you might as well watch it again.

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