Contrary to believe, they had one adventure before The Unearthy Child
The Beginning, as the name implies, tells the first adventure the Doctor had after leaving Gallifrey. In fact, we are treated to the scene just prior to them boarding the TARDIS. Mark Platt, the writer, manages to stay true to the television mythos by putting in a few nods such as the Doctor “conversing” with someone before switching to another TARDIS. We know this person is Clara. We are treated to the TARDIS in its default form, which is the same as how the television series presents it and we have the Doctor committing one of his first acts of meddling.
The Beginning, as the name implies, tells the first adventure the Doctor had after leaving Gallifrey. In fact, we are treated to the scene just prior to them boarding the TARDIS. Mark Platt, the writer, manages to stay true to the television mythos by putting in a few nods such as the Doctor “conversing” with someone before switching to another TARDIS. We know this person is Clara. We are treated to the TARDIS in its default form, which is the same as how the television series presents it and we have the Doctor committing one of his first acts of meddling.
The Beginning shows us the Doctor and Susan stealing the TARDIS,
but also kidnapping another Time Lord – Quadrigger Stoyn – played by Terry
Molloy, better known for playing Davros in the classic series. Now, I’ll be
honest with you guys, I dislike the Doctor in this story. I love the story, I
dislike the Doctor. He is careless, selfish and spoiling things in advanced for
you guys, he not only kidnaps Stoyn from Gallifrey, who was only doing his job of
decommissioning the Type-40, but he also abandons Stoyn at the end of the story
instead of doing something…well Doctorish. I understand not taking him back to
Gallifrey, but abandoning him on an alien world? Nope. This isn’t the Doctor.
This is a selfish bastard!
Stoyn is the victim of this
story. You can’t blame him for vowing to take revenge on the Doctor. He
deserves it. I (the listener) agree with him. You can tell by my emotion that I
enjoyed the story. You can tell that it was emotionally stimulating. There was
a struggle inside of me similar to the Doctor and Stoyn’s struggle for control
of the situation. Stoyn wants to go back to Gallifrey, the Doctor just wants to
use the first opportunity to leave him behind and poor Susan is stuck in the
middle.
Carole Ann Ford does a much
better job at imitating the First Doctor than she did in the Destiny of the
Doctor series. The Doctor here is even worse than in The Unearthly Child, which is good I suppose as this is the Doctor
at the very start. Terry Molloy just steals the show really. His portrayal of
Quadrigger Stoyn is spot on. He conveys so much emotion with his voice that it’s
almost a pity that this character is doomed to not to be upgraded to the
television series. Who knows? He might, but it’s very unlikely. Molloy also
manages to convey the air of superiority and bureaucracy that the Time Lords
are known for which is very important in my opinion.
As I covered above, this story
ends on something of a bad note, at least for me anyway. It does however manage
to set the Doctor up for The Unearthly
Child, but this will go down as one of the worst moments for me concerning
the Doctor – abandoning an innocent just because it was more convenient.
Rating this story, I’d given it
an 8.5/10. I recommend it as it is chalk full of nods and references and
because there aren’t many accounts concerning the Doctor pre-Unearthly Child.
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