The Beginning - ★★★½☆

The Beginning is an interesting story with a marketing that works against itself. It's not about the Doctor and Susan's departure from Gallifrey, even though we do see a snipt of it in the first few minutes. It's is, in truth, their first travel in the TARDIS. The beginning of what matters. Phrasing it like that reveals my instance on telling much about the Doctor's life in Gallifrey; I'm mostly against it - for me, when you focus on that you miss the point of the series. But I understand who is left frustrated by this. Everybody comes to this story expecting something it isn't. Only the first of a series of weird, weird choices.

For a start, it's the first in a triology in the Companion Chronicles, celebrating the 50th year of Doctor Who. It makes sense to tell us the first adventure ever in a anniversary story, but the element that truly ties the triology is an original character - the man, the legend... Quadriger Stoyn. And I truly can't understand WHY. After their departure from their home planet, the Doctor and Susan are surprised to find a third person on board the TARDIS. You guessed it, it's Stoyn. From the get go, he and the Doctor are on opposite sides, since on of them is a fugitive and the other wants go to back home.

I don't dislike the concept, but I admit it doesn't feel right to have someone else on board before Ian and Barbara enter the picture. It doesn't feel natural. Which is the point, but still. However, his presence in the narrative do bring out interesting facets of the First Doctor. This is an incarnation that it nothing alike the modern public perception of the character in many ways; but especially his moral. This version of the Doctor, even more so before his character development as we see on TV, is marked by bouts of cruelty, selfishness and arrogance. All of that is present here; he doesn't care even a bit about what could happen with Stoyn and sees him as an obstacle in his and Susan's path. That gives us scenes of him sabotaging the TARDIS so Stoyn can't go back to Gallifrey, essentially keeping him a hostage. Much of the clash between them, more so in the second part, revolves around Stoyn trying to get back a piece of the TARDIS the Doctor took with him, which without is impossible to travel, so he can escape. I want to highlight that nothing of this is a problem for me, the opposite actually; it's a very good characterization for the First Doctor and is one of the elements that distinguishes him from his future selves and makes him so interesting for me. There has been some stories in the expanded media that I actually missed his moral ambiguity.

However... Stoyn is an efectivr antagonist, but there in nothing that makes me care about him in a personal level; even though the Doctor is wrong I am never on his side because Stoyn sounds like a jerk all the time; and I don't think the text goes much deeper than him wanting to go back home. There is potential for the future of the character, since the Doctor leaves him in a terrible situation, almost a death sentence, so he has plenty motive to go for revenge. The only moment that gave me any stronger feeling towards him was not for the best; he insinuates himself to Susan and tells the two of them to run away together and leave the Doctor to die. It's nothing very explicit, but his ulterior motives towards her are palpable and it's an element that, for this story, I find out of place and unnecessary.

Susan herself is really good; Caroline Ann Ford's acting obviously matured a lot throughout the years and here she delivers an enthusiastic and emotional performance. The Companion Chronicles are by large narrated in first person by the companions themselves reflecting or remeniscing on a past adventure; and therefore is a format that allows a more psychological and intimate approach to the character than the usual full cast format. This time that is used to its fullest in the first half, since the first twenty minutes are mostly about Susan's feelings about their escape from Gallifrey and her first impressions of the TARDIS. Likewise, when the story picks up where it left off in the second part, the narrative is restructured based on Susan's disorientation due to the sudden change of events. She is also the one who voices the First Doctor and, although I don't think it's as much of a personal or emotionally charged performance, it is done with palpable affection and conveys the character's mannerisms very well.

But I also like the plot itself. The first place they land is actually the Moon, a long, long time ago, at the beginning of the development of life on Earth. One of the twists in the plot is precisely that the Moon is already inhabited by this species called Archaeons. Their meeting with the rest of the cast is friendly at first and marked by the Doctor's sense of adventure and exploration; his and Susan's excitement about discovering new worlds and other people is really cool. In addition to creating some interesting science fiction ideas. Archaeons, apparently, are not carbon-based life forms and therefore their biological and physical functioning is extremely different. Their technologies are also quite weird. There's a scene in the first part that I particularly like in which Susan faces a body of water that behaves strangely and shows distorted reflections of the characters. She is swallowed by water and Ann Ford's performance builds a crescendo of panic and shortness of breath and this sensation of drowning not only literally but also in her feelings. It's perhaps my favorite moment in the entire story.

The narrative takes another turn at the end of the first part when it is revealed that the Archaeons have manipulated the development of life on Earth so that it occurs in an organized way according to their wishes. Their plans are thwarted when they try to enter the TARDIS but inadvertently cause a disturbance that temporally freezes the characters for millions of years; When things return to normal, life on Earth has already developed chaotically, humans already have a colony on the Moon and the Archaeons enter a kind of cultural existential crisis. I like how this plot develops because it deals with one of the central themes of the First Doctor's era, interventionism. Part of the “cruelty” of this phase of Doctor Who is precisely the frequency of addressing fixed points and how History should not be changed; even though this is a contradictory element to the Doctor's own nature because he is, in his own words, a meddler. He even uses this word in this story although I think it is more appropriate a little later in the character's life, when he is already traveling with Vicki. Despite his very strong policy of non-intervention here, he decides to act against the Archeons because they are influencing life in a very extreme way, he does not see this as something natural.

In another story I could talk about this plot from a point of view of determinism or even eugenics. They are valid interpretations but I wouldn't say they are the most relevant this time. The main conflict is order versus chaos. Although they are the interventionist force of the story, the Archaeons serve as agents of order while the Doctor is a chaotic figure. I find it a very interesting approach because normally this role of non-interventionism for the Doctor is associated with maintaining the order of things; and while that still holds true here – he wants to maintain the natural order – the story consciously reverses roles and plays with what is expected of the character.

The Beginning is a very interesting release to discuss and for which I have mainly positive impressions, as is obviously palpable from the text, but it is not on the list of my favorites yet. In the future, who knows.