Doctor Who: The Edge of Time was a first-person VR game released in 2019 that was developed by Maze Theory and published by Playstack, and stars Jodie Whittaker as the Thirteenth Doctor.
The game is told from the perspective of a customer at laundrette, who is suddenly greeted by the voice of the Doctor, who explains that she needs the players help. Moments later, a "time glitch" occurs as a result of a Reality Virus, which is corrupting the universe and creating alternate realities as everything is slowly destroyed. The Doctor requires the player to travel to three locations in the universe to find three time crystals which can be used to stop the Reality Virus and whoever is responsible. The game features Daleks, Weeping Angels and two new monsters called Hydrorks and Zlysters.
To tie-in with the multi-media project Time Lord Victorius, a free DLC was released in 2020 which involves players finding items relevant to the event. In 2021 The Edge of Reality was released to PCs and consoles, which tells almost exactly the same story as Time, but with a bonus storyline at the end which includes the Cybermen and David Tennant as the Tenth Doctor.
Tropes in The Edge of Time and The Edge of Reality
- Abusive Parent: The First sees herself as the mother of all other sentient being in the universe, but doesn't see anything wrong with killing them.
- Alternate Self: Near the end of Reality, the CyberReaper reveals that, due to the Reality Virus altering the universe, a new timeline had been created where the Tenth Doctor married Madame de Pompadour and had a child, with the alternate Doctor's voice being heard where he explains how happy he has been since giving up adventuring to settle down and be a father.
- Alternate Timeline: The Reality Virus creates several alternate timelines such as: an Earth where the Daleks invaded along with monsters called Hydrorks, one where Weeping Angels seemingly take over Victorian era London, and a once peaceful alien planet now inhabited by a hostile species. Reality also shows an alternate timeline where the Cybermen invaded Earth instead and a timeline where the Tenth Doctor married Madame de Pompadour.
- The Cameo: The Tenth Doctor is essentially this in Reality, only appearing a few times after the storyline in Time is resolved. In some ways he could almost be considered an Advertised Extra, with the most he does being to broadcast a message to the player and later join them while being chased by the CyberReaper.
- Cosmic Entity: The First is this, being the first sentient being to ever exist in the universe and therefore sees all other sentient creatures as her children. However, she isn't a straight example as she seems to have some limits as she needed to create the Reality Virus to try and destroy all other life instead of just wishing them out of existence, and the Time Lords were able to create a device which traps her in a time loop.
- Foil: The CyberReaper accuses the Doctor of being just like the Cybermen, claiming that she can be just as cold and logical as the Cybermen despite having always said that emotions give people strength and that she "upgrades" her friends into soldiers to fight in her battles against evil.
- Mythology Gag: Emer's story of believing she is a human trapped on a hostile world brings to mind Clara in "Asylum of the Daleks", especially when Emer insists that the player is looking right at her much like Clara insisted the Doctor was at the door of her cell.
- Never the Selves Shall Meet: The Thirteenth and Tenth Doctors never actually meet during the game, though they both interact with the player and influence the events of Reality. The closest they get to meeting is when the Thirteenth Doctor shows a hologram of her past self so he can talk to the player and confirm that Emer did become his companion, so while he knew he was being helped by his future self they never directly interact with eachother.
- The Reveal:
- Emer isn't actually a person and is instead the AI of a ship that went mad after failing to protect it's crew, and adopted the identity of one of the crew.
- The person responsible for the Reality Virus is the First, a powerful being that is literally the first sentient being in existence.
- Stable Time Loop:
- Throughout the game, you will find pages for the Journal of Impossible Things, with the first page saying that it was written by you in the future with some extra details added by Emer and the Doctor, with these apparently meant to help the player on their journey by explaining some things in more detail. Given that other character show familiarity with the player, such as Emer and the Doctor, it's likely that in order to leave those pages where they were the future player makes contact with the Doctor and meets the other characters briefly while leaving the pages.
- It turns out the First is actually stuck in a time loop, being sent back to the start of the universe by the player and then going through her life all over again until she unleashes the Reality Virus leading to the Doctor asking for the player's help.
- In Reality Emer is given a synthetic body by the Thirteenth Doctor and sent to become a companion of the Tenth Doctor, and is the one who fills him in on what he needs to eventually do as Thirteen during the events of the game.
- Subtitles Are Superfluous: Often the subtitles don't match what is being said by the characters and other times they disappear before the characters finish speaking.
- You Are in Command Now: At the end of Reality the Doctor is unable to destroy the Reality Virus due to it creating a new timeline where her tenth incarnation had a family with Madame de Pompadour, so she tells the player that they are the Doctor now and that they must make the choice for her.
