| abstract | - The BBC initially committed to four episodes of Doctor Who. Mid-way through the production of An Unearthly Child, this was upped to thirteen. Together, An Unearthly Child and The Daleks only totaled eleven. With a tiny budget, The Edge of Destruction was commissioned to fill the remaining two episodes and fill out the season. Narratively, the story was crucial as its events bonded the travellers so they were no longer just mismatched people forced together, but a group who could trust one another. It also offered the first hint that the Doctor's TARDIS was not his own, shown by his lack of understanding of its abilities. Finally, it was also the first instance of the Doctor namedropping historical figures. The second episode of this serial, "The Brink of Disaster", is as far as viewers can watch the Hartnell era, and the series itself from the very beginning in televised format, before running into a single missing episode: the following serial, Marco Polo, remains absent in its entirety.
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