List Price: $44.98You Pay Only: $26.49 You Save: $18.49 (41%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Binding: DVD
Brand: Warner Brothers
EAN: 0794051248923
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, NTSC
Label: BBC Warner
Manufacturer: BBC Warner
Number Of Items: 3
Publisher: BBC Warner
Region Code: 1
Release Date: March 28, 2006
Running Time: 311 minutes
Sales Rank: 3153
Studio: BBC Warner
Theatrical Release Date: 1963
Related Items:
Editorial Review:
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
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Solid Retro Scifi
First, I want to make clear that untill I purchaesd this set I never actually saw this program before,I actually heard the theme song once and felt I had to see the show, so I would like to think that I might be more objective than some people. So, on with the review. First, for such an old program this has a solid look that still stands the test of time. Other than the models the special effects and especially the set work is sitll hold up even when compared wit hmoder effects. As I mentioned before only the models and the Daleks really show their age. But, that is not why this DVD set is a good buy. The primary reason that this set is so good is the casts performance. Compared with most shows that came out that period and even today the acting is quite good. It's not perfect but very solid and in most episodes is actually beleiveable. Now, the special features are ok but not great. I find that the music vedio is rather neat as are some of the comedy skits. But, most of the rest of the material will be of intrest only to those who would wish to make a study of Dr. Who. The only other complaint I had is that there wern't enough episodes I really would have liked to see at least one more. Other than that I recomend it to any one who likes old scifi or wants something that has a appeal to people of all ages.
Rating:  - Early Doctor Who
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!
Rating: - Doctor Who The Beginning
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.
Rating: - The Beginning of a Legend
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.
Rating:  - Daleks, and Cavemen, and Kahn... Oh My
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!
Browse for similar items by category:
|
