The main story arc of the season involves the Sanctuary working against the Cabal, an organization who seek to control all abnormals for their own gain.

Amanda Tapping, Robin Dunne, Emilie Ullerup, and Christopher Heyerdahl are billed in the opening credits as the main cast.

Series creator and head writer Damian Kindler hired Sam Egan, and the two wrote all the episodes and composed the season-long storyline.

[10] Christopher Heyerdahl plays two characters: Bigfoot, an abnormal who works in the Sanctuary, and John Druitt, Magnus' former fiancé and father to Ashley.

The producers wanted Henry to set a lighter tone to the series and add "goofy and fun" humor, including in somewhat dire situations.

The character was originally named Ernie and was played by director Peter DeLuise in the webisodes,[12] but he was unavailable to reshoot his scenes for the season premiere.

For the same episode, Sarah Strange and Thai-Hoa Lee had to learn how to speak Standard Tibetan phonetically a week in advance of filming.

During a readthrough of the script, Shuttleworth decided his character should speak with a British accent like in the film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

[11] At times after the scripts were written, Sci Fi executive Mark Stern fed back to the writers, asking for certain elements to be explained so the audience could understand.

[24] In writing "Instinct", Kindler, inspired by Cloverfield, wanted to show the audience the protagonists hunting an abnormal in real-time, where it does not always go according to plan.

Egan decided not to include a full explanation of how he survived a hundred years without aging, but wanted to hint to the audience that he was in fact cryogenically frozen by the Cabal.

In the first season, the producers decided that she would not be aware of this until midway through, and even then, they did not want Druitt to tell her directly, but rather hint it to her, so that Ashley can pick up the pieces herself.

Difficulties with this included the fact that Cainan Wiebe, who portrays Alexi, grew taller,[9] and the actors consciously played the characters to be more open to each other.

However, Tapping felt strongly that it would make a great stand alone episode after "Sanctuary for All", and the characters appeared more comfortable with each other in "Folding Man".

[23] Swapping the episodes caused a major continuity issue, in which Ashley appears to show scratches on her neck from "Sanctuary for All" in "Folding Man", but not in between.

[23] Among the characters, the movement of two-faced guy's rear face were made with Computer-generated imagery (CGI), though it was a difficult effect to produce.

[9] Creating the eponymous abnormals in "Nubbins" and their predator was what Sam Egan described as "a proper budget-driven issue" because rendering several CGI creatures at once and having them move would be difficult.

[13] Because of the hard work by Anthem, the producers made "Kush" and "Requiem" into bottle episodes, to give the visual effects team a break.

[10] The abnormal shown at the end of "Kush" was a stand-in who wore a full prosthetic suit; the costume took a long time to apply.

[8] Among the prosthetics used in "Warriors", Dunne wore a muscle suit that was previously worn by Vinnie Jones during the 2006 film X-Men: The Last Stand.

Because of the high ratings, views of Sci Fi's Sanctuary page rose to 1.2 million, as well as 287,000 video streams the day it was broadcast.

Otherwise, there's little to recommend this dense drama, which recycles a number of familiar sci-fi tropes, as a mysterious woman leads a shadowy group in policing the wilds of the paranormal.The season received generally mixed reviews from critics.

[39] Linda Stasi of the New York Post stated "the monsters are first rate, the virtual sets are very cool, the acting is excellent.

Hard-to-sell dialogue such as 'Such imperfect children are often adopted by well-meaning immigrant families' doesn't make it flow any faster", but still stated "it looks great".

[42] Brian Lowry of Variety called the first two episodes "competent but uninspiring", and said it "suffers by comparison with any number of similarly themed dramas, most recently BBC America's fun-loving Torchwood".

[38] Mike Hale of The New York Times felt that Sanctuary "sits at about the same level of writing and performance as the Stargate shows, which means it doesn't have the narrative force of Battlestar Galactica or the wit and creativity of Sci Fi's best original series, Eureka", adding that "it's not an embarrassment for the channel, but it doesn't raise the stakes either".

"[44] Alex Walker of Den of Geek rated the first season three stars out of five, stating "the acting and scripting is good, but Sanctuary lacks the wit and charm of the genre's top shows like Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica.

[45] Paul Simpson of Total Sci-Fi rated the season 7 out of 10, and summed it up as "although frequently predictable, Sanctuary usually provides an entertaining hour.

"[46] John Sinnott of DVD Talk, being a fan of Tapping's earlier work of Stargate SG-1, believes the first season is "highly recommended".

Actor Ryan Robbins won "Best Guest Performance by a Male in a Dramatic Series" for his role as Henry Foss in "Edward",[49] beating co-star Jonathan Young.