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 for the first time.

This is not an effort 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.

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

With Susan left stranded on a post-apocalyptic Earth, The Doctor, Ian, and Barbara continue on without her. To their credit, all three reminisce about Susan and say they miss her. But I’m not buying it. Barbara wistfully suggests that she’s “probably learning to milk cows.”

Um, yeah. Because that would certainly be a welcome change for a time traveler.

In any case, this is the first serial without Susan, and it’s a somewhat historic point in Doctor Who history as it’s the first time we swap out companions. Susan’s out… and Vicki (Maureen O’Brien) is in.

“The Rescue” (First Doctor, Second Season, Story 11) is composed of the following episodes:

• “The Powerful Enemy” (January 2, 1965)
• “Desperate Measures” (January 9, 1965)

This brief serial is only two episodes, and it seems like its entire reason for being is to bring Vicki into the cast and onto the TARDIS crew.

The Doctor sleeps through the landing, and our trio soon finds themselves on planet Dido – which The Doctor has apparently been to before. They get split up (of course), and Barbara chances upon a crashed spaceship. The two survivors – Vicki and Bennet – are awaiting rescue but living in fear of the native monster Koquillion.

Koquillion – who looks to be straight out of Majora’s Mask – is basically gaslighting the two survivors and claiming he’s their only protection from the rest of his species. But he’s not all talk. Koquillion threw Barbara off a cliff almost right away, which is how she ended up with Vicki to begin with.

For their part, The Doctor and Ian spend almost the entire story walking through a tunnel and bickering with each other. So, pretty much like always.

Meanwhile, back at the crashed ship, Barbara and Vicki spend some quality bonding time while Barbara recovers from her fall and Vicki explains how they crashed on Dido, what Koquillion did to the rest of the crew, and that a rescue ship is less than two days away.

“Look, Barbara, I have a gun!” *points it straight at her face*

They also do their best to avoid Bennet, who is sick in another room and really kind of a huge asshole.

At one point, fearing for her life, Barbara kills a giant lizard monster outside the ship (and really, who could blame her?). Turns out, the lizard was Vicki’s friend. Oops.

You’ve only just arrived, and you’re trying to ruin things! Nobody asked you to come here! Nobody!
–Vicki

A face only Vicki could love

Anyway, in a SHOCKING twist, Koquillion is actually Bennet! Yep, Bennet was under arrest for the murder of a crewmate before their ship crashed. And then after the crash, in order to cover up his crime, he… killed the rest of the crew and committed genocide by killing everyone on Dido, too.

Sure.

For some reason, he left Vicki alive to be his alibi and invented Koquillion to keep her in line.

Uh huh.

Well, he apparently wasn’t thorough in his extinction attempt on Dido’s people. Just after his villain monologue to The Doctor, a couple of native Dido people show up and scare him off a cliff… to his death.

As the last surviving member of the crew and still stinging from the trauma inflicted by Bennet, Vicki is obviously in a vulnerable position – and completely susceptible to The Doctor’s suggestions. So when The Doctor says, “Why don’t you come with us?” Vicki says, “Sure, why not?”

And, just like that, our trio is back to four.