Welcome to The First Eight – The Roarbots’ classic Doctor Who watchthrough. We’re going through the 50+ year history of the Doctor Who franchise in chronological order. This is not a “rewatch”; I’m watching these shows fresh. For the first time. I’ll do my best to leave preconceptions at the door, but I have no baggage at all that pertains to pre-Ninth Doctor reboot.

Want to watch along or catch up on classic Who on your own terms? Check out BritBox, which has every existing episode available for instant streaming.

I’m not here to write an authoritative history or connect all the dots among the characters, planets, and eras of the franchise. I’m simply here to correct one of my most flagrant Geeky Blind Spots. And I hope you’ll join me on the journey. There’s only 26 seasons and 8 Doctors to catch up on. Easy peasy.

Welcome to a filler story. Seriously. This is a two-episode story sandwiched between two much longer storylines, and everything about this one screams throwaway.

If you’re playing the home version and watching along, prepare yourself for this one. The entire story takes place inside the TARDIS, the pacing is interminable, the story just plods along, it has some of the worst acting of the show so far, and the characters act insane for no discernible reason.

In short, these two episodes felt like twelve.

“The Edge of Destruction” is composed of the following episodes:

• “The Edge of Destruction” (February 8, 1964)
• “The Brink of Disaster” (February 15, 1964)

The in-a-nutshell description of this story is: All four of our characters get knocked out. They eventually come around, but they’re all changed somehow. They’re distrusting and suspicious of one another (even more blatantly than before), and the belief that someone or something has entered the TARDIS passes like a wave through the group – first one of them believes it while all the rest declare it impossible, then another one believes it while all the rest (including the one who just thought the same thing) declare it impossible.

The TARDIS is also acting strangely. For example, the door keeps opening and closing on its own, the water dispensing machine reports that it’s out of water when it’s not, and so on. We’re led to believe that it’s malfunctioning somehow, but we were also led to believe that the TARDIS has been malfunctioning since the very first episode, so I’m not sure how anyone knows.

The Doctor, true to his character so far, has no idea what’s happening. He doesn’t have the first clue why the TARDIS is malfunctioning or how to fix anything. He just stares blankly into the middle distance, “thinking,” and he has an incredibly short fuse for Ian and Barbara, who dare to ask ridiculous questions like “Where are we?”

From the moment they all regain consciousness at the beginning of the first episode, all four of them act strangely. It takes time for them to recognize one another, and they all have recurring bouts of amnesia and psychosis. Susan, especially, acts like someone possessed.

The story slowly becomes a whodunit as all four characters eventually believe an entity of some sort has entered the ship and taken possession of one of them. Accusations fly as each claims the other isn’t who he or she appears to be. From the audience’s perspective, none of them is acting normally, and we begin to think they’re all possessed.

The Doctor even goes so far as to try throwing Ian and Barbara out of the TARDIS. His distrust of them has apparently reached its pinnacle, and he’s perfectly willing to abandon them just to get them off his ship. Lovely.

Then suddenly we’re all thrust onto the “brink of destruction,” yet there’s absolutely no sense of urgency. There’s plenty of time for long, contemplative stares and silence.

The TARDIS is about to blow up, and The Doctor has resigned himself to his fate since he has no idea how to fix the problem. He sends Barbara and Susan to watch the door while he confides in Ian that he’s deliberately not telling the women they’re about to die.

Delicate female sensibilities and all. They might start to panic.

Then Barbara (yes, Barbara) finally pieces the “clues” together and stumbles onto the solution. Much to the chagrin of The Doctor, who is beyond condescending. Even though Barbara has an idea for how to save everyone, The Doctor would much rather stand around and do nothing. No good idea ever came from a woman, right? When he finally realizes that Barbara has the solution, he chooses to monologue and explain everything. Early example of mansplaining, right there.

In any case, this slow response to save themselves betrays the idea that they’re on the brink of destruction with only seconds to live.

So, in the end, the mystery turns out to be relatively simple. (Spoiler warning.) One of the buttons on the TARDIS’s control panel was still depressed. Broken spring. All of the odd occurrences were the TARDIS trying to warn them.

So . . . nothing was ever really wrong with them. Which means they all acted insane for absolutely no reason. And The Doctor really is a complete asshole who will toss you off the ship who knows where/when without a second thought.

But we already knew that much about our human characters, right? The real development here is with the TARDIS. We see that, to a certain extent, it’s a self-aware, thinking machine. It acted on its own to warn the group of a problem. That is an interesting development, for sure. And one, I’m guessing, that will have lasting repercussions.

I leave you with this beautiful bit of patronizing condescension:

Doctor: “You haven’t forgiven me, have you?”
Barbara: “You said terrible things to us.”
Doctor: “Yes, I suppose it’s the injustice that’s upsetting you. And when I made a threat to put you off the ship, it must’ve affected you very deeply.”

I certainly hope this won’t become a trend. The unpleasant sexist overtones of this episode were an unwelcome addition to The Doctor’s character. We’re still early days here, so there’s still hope for The First Doctor.