"The Beginning" is a BBC box set encapsulating the first three adventures of the First Doctor, played by William Hartnell.
This is where it all began, folks. From such humble beginnings: two school teachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton follow one of their pupils home. Susan seems out of sorts with the world around her: she has an in-depth knowledge of history but her knowledge of science dwarfs even Ians, yet she has hardly any street savvy and acts extremely mysterious, so much so that Ian and Barbara want to learn more about her. When she leads them to a junk yard on Totters Lane and walks into a discarded Police Telephone Box they are both bemused. They are surprised when she never comes out, and shocked when they force their way inside and are faced with the incomprehensible sight of an interior that is not only completely alien but also much larger on the inside. It is then that they are introduced to Susan's grandfather... The Doctor.
This is a masterful introduction, full of mystery and intrigue and when we first see the TARDIS interior (even after 46 years) it's still a shock -and we know what to expect. Quite what this did to audiences back then is beyond me. The Doctor though is the real enigma. We are so used to the Doctor being a friendly and upbeat character that to see William Hartnell as an irascible and thoroughly unfriendly old man is a shock. In the early episodes of the series he is shown to be an unpleasant troublemaker and the story focuses on the plight of the two schoolteachers. This changes, of course, as the series progresses, but for these first three adventures we are witness to the growing tensions and disputes between the TARDIS crew.
The first adventure, "The Unearthly Child" has a rather forgettable storyline as the TARDIS crew are transported to the beginnings of time by mistake -due to Ian's meddling. However the storyline merely serves as a backdrop to the growing tensions between the two groups of characters: the school teachers and the time travellers. It's this tension that drives the story and means you can almost forgive the dodgy sets and special effects. However, one must remember that this was never envisaged being a cultural phenomena and none of the BBC executives had any idea what it would lead to. None of them could ever have dreamed it would become world renowned as one of the most popular science-fiction franchises.
The second adventure sees the TARDIS landing on an alien planet, which has been decimated by nuclear war. The Doctor wants to investigate further by Ian and Barbara want simply to go home. The Doctor deliberately sabotages the TARDIS so they will have no choice but to explore further, putting the whole crew at risk to radiation poisoning. On discovering a vast metallic city Barbara is separated from the others and trapped deep within where she is faced by something menacing and frightening. Something that would lodge deep within our collective subconscious and send child after child to the back of the sofa: The Daleks. I've often wondered about the reasons for their longevity - why they frighten people still. It could be because of their complete lack of emotion and their total single-mindedness. They are a faceless killer, one you can not reason with or emote against. They live to kill and destroy; annihilate and exterminate. And it is because of the Doctors meddling this time that the companions are threatened by this unimaginable evil.
With The Edge Of Destruction, the third episode in this box-set, the story focuses solely on the four characters and is centred wholly in the TARDIS. Something causes the TARDIS console to explode mid-flight, rendering the crew unconscious. When they all come to they're confronted by a TARDIS which behaves strangely: the main doors open of their own accord and tensions start to fray amongst the teachers and the time-travellers as they have to deal with the realisation that something very deadly might be going on. This is a tense and fraught episode, and a stroke of genius focusing on just the underlying conflict between the TARDIS crew. This is the type of story writing I feel is sorely missing from the recent episodes of Dr Who where they focus on either the big events happening at the cost of the interactions between the characters or focusing on minute details of the characters at the cost of the story.
This is where it all began, as I said at the start, and its easy to see why Dr Who has had such an impact on the imaginations of the thousands and thousands of lives its touched. It was a stroke of genius -as much as out of budgetary constraints, etc- for the writers to shroud the Doctor in mystery and led to the creation of one of the most enduring characters in popular culture of the last century.
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