Many months ago, back in November sometime, I was having a difficult time sleeping at night.  I'm not much of a television viewer, but I succumbed to the fact that I was not going to sleep, yet I was too tired to do anything useful, so I clicked the power on and began flipping the stations on the remote control.  I landed on a BBC station and intrigued by some eerie music, I decided to watch.  It happened to be a relatively new episode (and version) of Doctor Who starring David Tennant as the 10th Doctor.  I was captivated by the show immediately and stayed wide awake through the whole show (very rare for me!).

The next day, I went to my computer and did some research about the Doctor Who show - a show that has been in existence for well over 50 years with various actors playing the good doctor's role.  The show went away after a stint during the 1980's, then came back as a movie in the 1990's.  In 2005, the BBC revived the show with a brilliant fresh new cast and extraordinary features and special effects.  I went to BBC.com to learn more about the show and found out that show has been airing (on BBC) since 2005 and as of 2009, would be winding down with the 10th doctor leaving the show after finishing up four special episodes during this year, with a new 11th doctor taking over in 2010 (buggers!).

I then went to Ebay and bid on this Doctor Who Series 1 Volume 1, without reading too much of the description.  I wanted to see the new version of the show from the beginning and figured it would be best to start from the start, because I was never really that much into the old Doctor Who shows from the 1960's - 1990's. 

When the DVDs arrived, I was a bit disappointed to learn that a different actor, Christopher Eccleston, played the part of the doctor.  Huh?  I was bummed out because I thought David Tennant made the show when I watched the one episode I saw on TV.  However, boy oh boy was I ever wrong!  Christopher Eccleston was fantastic as the new Doctor Who!  And the first episode was amazing!

The first episode, "Rose", is more or less an introductory episode (what a relief! I am glad I at least got that right in my presumptions!).  This episode introduced Rose, the doctor's first companion (he has several along the way).  Rose, a beautiful 19 year old woman living a hum-drum life in the UK as a salesman in a department store accidentally stumbles onto a plot by aliens to take over the planet earth.  Holed up in the basement of the store, plastic manicans come to life and begin to chase after Rose.  It appears she is cornered against locked doors and about to meet her doom when Doctor Who pops in to save her life.  He introduces himself to Rose - and the world - simply with: "Oh.  By the way, I'm the Doctor."

During this first episode, we also meet Rose's boy friend, Mickey.  Mickey is (at first) a bit of a coward and becomes frightened of the danger he encounters later on.  He is a bit of a typical fellow that enjoys eating fast foods, watching sports on TV, and living a routine life.  He loves Rose and constantly tries to shroud her from the doctor.  As the stories move on, I find Mickey's part to be a bit tiresome and he is more or less a drone.

We also meet Rose's mom, Jackie, a rather typical mother who loves her daughter, and helps provide for her in a city apartment.   Jackie also tries to hold Rose back from teaming up with the doctor.  I find that Jackie's and Mickey's part in the first episode is to provide an anchor for Rose to keep her from going off with the Doctor.

As for the Doctor, he appears to be a forty-ish year old fellow, slim, clever, and agile.   He is a "time-lord" - an alien from another planet that is able to travel through time and space via a special vehicle called a Tardis. The tardis appears to be an old, blue police telephone booth that was once used around the streets of London.  The doctor had come to earth, at this time, to battle these alien creatures that are able to manipulate plastic to change form in order to take over the planet.  With Rose's help, the doctor saves humanity!

We find that Rose has a great appetite for adventure and decides to leave her mundane life behind to travel along with the doctor in the Tardis time machine.  The first episode ends with the beginning of the story of the second episode: "The End of the World".  The doctor asks Rose where she would like to go?  Forward in time or backwards?  She replies forward.

The doctor takes Rose five billion years into the future to see the explosion of the sun (and the end of earth).  There, the team meets aliens from other planets who have gathered to witness the spectacular event aboard a hotel-like satellite.  One of those present (who happens to be the last human in existence) has a fiendish plot to murder everyone aboard the satellite to profit from the experience.  Doctor Who and Rose must stop her.  This show has some amazing special effects and the alien costumes are truly out of this world!  In the end, the Doctor then offers to take Rose back in time - back to the year 1860, in the Earth's past.

We learn that the Doctor posesses a great deal of knowledge about almost everything.  However, his Tardis space craft has some flaws, as the machine does not take them to the exact place the Doctor said he would take them, and nor the time, as they land back in the UK in the year 1869 instead.  In "The Unquiet Dead",  the third episode,  we find that dead people are coming alive again and killing everyone they can.  The Doctor and Rose also get to meet the real Charles Dickens, who becomes an ally to the team in fighting the paranormal spirits that possess the dead.  In this episode, it is not Doctor nor Rose that saves the day, but a servant girl who they meet up with that has the ability to hold the spirits back until the team escapes, then the servant girl blows the spirits up by igniting a gas filled room.

The presence of Dickens in the story does not really do anything spectacular for the story.  He does help out the Doctor and Rose.  I believe the writer's intent was to make the storyline more real by adding actual real people from the past, as was done in several other past episodes.  The actor playing Chuck did a fine job!

I cannot say enough good things about this show, in general.  It has totally blown me away.  The ONLY bad thing about the first volume is that it only contains the first three episodes.  I spend a lot of time doing Google research to find out more about Doctor Who.  I have since bought the entire new Doctor Who collection of DVDs (from 2005 through the end of the fourth season).  I have finished watching the entire first season already and the episodes are ALL absolutely terrific!  Those people at the BBC really know how to make entertaining television shows!

Needless to say, the show is science fiction, however, it has a sort of romantic quality about it, as a relationship blossoms between Rose and the doctor.  Unlike a lot of new shows put on TV today, there is nothing overtly sexual about the show.  It is rather wholesome - a true family show. There are no trashy scenes, no explicit language, and no gory violence. Yet the show is captivating (imagine that! Are you reading Hollywood?)  I should point out that the aliens are scary and may be too much for very young viewers - so be careful!

The two main stars: Christopher Eccleston, as the Doctor, and Billie Piper, as Rose, carry the show.  They have great chemistry together and their acting is superb!  I later discovered that Eccleston, a seasoned actor, just happened to be out of work at the time the show was starting up so he had asked for the part - which the producer was elated to give to him.  Billie Piper on the other hand was a rather new face in acting world.  Previously, she gained fame as a pop star with Britney Spears-type music.

The three episodes are stamped on a single DVD disk.  The disk opens with the standard FBI warning, followed by the Warner Brothers intro, followed by the BBC intro, followed by the Tardis travelling through time, ending up at a very cool interactive menu display that looks like the controls of the Tardis!  The DVD quality is sensational, leaving nothing to be desired.

As I previously mentioned, I purchased this first series on Ebay several months ago for about $8 shipped to my home.  At the time, I could not find it any local stores, although it was offered for sale on the internet for about $20 via Amazon, BBC, and other movie sellers.  I would highly recommend these DVDs to anyone who enjoys Sci Fi shows (sort of a cross between Star Trek and Quantum Leap and the X Files).  However, I would recommend buying the set of all four seasons together because you are going to want to watch the whole thing!  Thanks for reading my review and best wishes for a nice day!

Mike

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12