This one was, to put it bluntly, not fun.

“The Beginning” starts us off with the Doctor and Susan escaping in the Tardis. Leaving Gallifrey behind for the great unknown. After this initial departure, our duo lands on the planet Earth, where life is just starting to develop. Problems quickly arise, however, when we see that this process of natural selection isn’t as natural as it seems.

Let’s start with the obvious. I think this story betrays your expectations quite a bit. Look at that cover. Look at that title. You did not expect this story to be about the beginning of Earth. You expected it to be about the beginning of the Doctor. Even the synopsis does not hint at Earth in the slightest.

And I kind of feel two ways about that. On the one hand, I am not against being surprised. A nice twist on expectations can really work. If a story suddenly goes into the unexpected, you can really get swept off your feet. Think of the Sara Kingdom House trilogy, for example.

On the other hand, this is a big tale to twist away from. This is the foundation of the program. And while many people dislike messing around with that foundation, I think almost everyone is still a little curious. I know I am. On some level, you listen to this story to get answers you should never get. So, because of that curiosity, you pay the 10 bucks for this story. You put it on. You start listening to the Doctor and Susan’s escape. Maybe you even get invested. And 5 minutes later, all the escaping stops to start a “real story” on Earth.

That’s a tough sell. But hey, look on the bright side. Maybe that “real story” is actually very, very good. It starts off with a lot of interesting pieces in play. Maybe it will be worth it!

And then you’re stuck for an hour listening to an absolute slog. Opportunity wasted.

Let’s look at our replacement story: Shortly before their first landing, our duo discovers a man named Quadrigger Stoyn, a Tardis technician who was still on board the ship. An unwilling third traveller. The three of them land on Earth during the early development of man, which is apparently being controlled by a race called the Archaeons. This race is trying to push the human race towards a certain path of evolution. This counts as interfering in the Doctor’s eyes, which leads to a standard conflict between him and the Archaeons.

And already we’ve strayed very far from our unique starting premise. We have now replaced it with the most basic of status quos. Still, even that could work! Remember that everything that happens here is the first time it has ever happened to the Doctor. The story could still play with that!

Why not delve into how this standard story structure came to be? It’s a premise that comes up again and again, so let’s explore the core! How does this Doctor choose a side? What would the consequences of interfering actually lead to? And, since we have Stoyn, how do the Doctor’s ideals hold up to those of other time lords? What’s the big difference? Is there even one? This is THE first adventure, so maybe even make the Doctor uncertain, more passive. Make him realize why he has to take a stand at all! Even if it is to uphold the status quo! But that kind of depth isn’t here, and that leads to weird leaps in logic.

The villains in this story are a good example of those leaps. For all intents and purposes, the Archaeons come across as scientist. They aren’t hostile, but curious. They show intellect and a willingness to understand what’s around them. Only when the Doctor threatens to shut them down, do they become aggressive. Then they’re suddenly presented as villains. Their curious nature is completely gone.

So my question is, how do the Archaeons differ from human scientists? They aren’t time travellers and don’t necessarily have knowledge from the future. They’re just doing an experiment. The creatures they’re experimenting on are nothing more than globs and fish at this point in time.

Imagine the Doctor barging into a lab of human scientists who are doing experiments on lab rats. He urges them to shut down because rats will in the far future become the dominant race of this planet. You’d think he was a madman. Why would you believe him? Yet this story takes his side without question.

And that’s a crime in such an early story. It’s unearned heroism without backbone. It shows the Doctor as always right from day one. That’s a disservice to all the growth that’s, at this point, still to come.

No that the Doctor has thoughtlessly condemned them, the Archaeons become ruthless, faceless villains. They’re trying to reset their experiment and start from the beginning. They see humans as a failure and want to start again. Their scientific nature is gone. The Doctor stops them, leaves Stoyn behind because he sympathized with them and goes on with his life. Having learned nothing on his very first adventure.

“The Beginning” should have been a story of fundamentals. It had loads of options to choose from. It could’ve focused on the actual escape, the moral foundations of our hero, the role of interference, the start of a famous story structure, the difference in the Doctor’s perspective to other Time Lords. It should have been a base that all later adventures benefit from, even if it is in the smallest of ways.

But it gives up on that role completely. It does nothing unique. It is a filler story, made on auto pilot. The only real difference is really, really poor placement in the Doctor’s timeline. Realistically, it would be a 5, or a 4. But then you look at the external factors. The title, the cover and the synopsis all hype it up as THE origin story, only to drop it after 5 minutes in favor of a dull, boring, average tale. And that makes it lesser. If a story places itself here, at the very start, it better have some backbone. Otherwise, it shouldn’t exist at all.