(Yes,
I am calling this The Edge Of
Destruction like the VHS, the DVD, the Doctor Who Magazine
polls and, in fairness, the title card of the first episode. Yes,
when I was growing up and fans were brought up proper this was called
Inside The Spaceship
but general social pressure seems to have out-voted me on that one.)
The
Edge of Destruction
2
episodes
written
by David Whitaker
originally
transmitted 8th - 15th February 1964
An
interesting thing about Doctor Who fandom is that we're as obsessed
with how the series was made as we are about what makes it on screen.
Doctor Who Magazine regularly carries whole-page articles about what
order the next series is going to be filmed in. I subscribed to Star
Trek Magazine for a while in the late 90s and they never went that
far: they'd mention upcoming guest stars or the director if it was a
cast member but things like production order never entered into it
except when they needed to explain why actors remembered making
episodes in the wrong order.
Production
details are a big thing to Doctor Who fans, though, so I know that
this two-parter has the production code Serial C; that it ends the
initial thirteen episode run the BBC ordered before renewing the
series for a full season; and that it is set entirely aboard the
TARDIS and features only the four regular cast members because the
series ran out of money.
Yes,
this was a story made entirely to balance the books. Sets are
expensive and hiring guest actors is time-consuming. In Star Trek
this problem is easily solved: those series take place on starships
or space stations with lots of standing sets and a cast of nine or
ten characters. Doctor Who, by contrast, has a single standing set
and a far smaller recurring cast. Even when its cast is at its
largest in Season Eight there'll only be six regulars and one of
those is the villain. Here we have four people, the console room set,
the food machine room built for the first episode of The Daleks
and whatever other space can be made by moving the walls around. On
the plus side we have story editor David Whitaker on writing duties,
a fact that will come to mean wonderful things in the future.
So
it is with some reluctance I admit the opening of the story does not
grab me, in fact I don't like it at all. I've only watched this story
once before and these opening scenes are the reason why. At the end
of The Daleks the TARDIS took off and everyone was knocked
unconscious by an unexplained explosion. This story is about working
out what's wrong with the TARDIS, sorting out the tensions between
the four characters and delivering two science lessons of varying
quality but first we get this horrible bit of time-consuming faffing
about.
Okay,
so everyone wakes up and all of them are acting odd: BRabara and Ian
don't recognise the Doctor or the TARDIS; the Doctor is
half-conscious and babbling; and Susan moves slowly and cautiously,
reacting to everything on a time delay. The director is obviously
going for weird and alienating but the simple fact is it comes across
as nothing more than actors missing their cues and forgetting their
lines. Considering we're talking about an era when scenes did go out
where actors miss their cues and forget their lines this is deeply
unfortunate. William Russell suffers the most. I don't think Russell
is a bad actor but Ian is a very narrowly-written part who tends to
switch between anger, amusement, bewilderment and very little else.
Divorcing Ian even from that limited range and having him react to
everything as if he has a concussion is not a recipe for success.
Then
Susan threatens Ian with a pair of long-bladed scissors and proceeds
to stab up a mattress whilst screaming hysterically. Not unnaturally,
and here we return to the Doctor Who fan's deep knowledge of
production history, this led to the series' first serious viewer
complaints. The cavemen and Daleks might have been a bit too scary
for some children but at least they weren't doing anything that could
be imitated by kids. This is a character going nuts with a household
implement you could actually kill someone with. These days the BBC
has rules about “imitable violence” so that, for instance, when
all the A-positives walk up on the roofs in The Christmas Invasion
you won't see even a single child up there.
These
opening scenes dominate my memory of my first viewing and I was glad
to see that everyone aside from Susan settles down by the end of
episode 1 and we get onto the meat of the story: the tensions between
the crew.
Something
is clearly wrong with the TARDIS, a fact communicated by odd
incidents like the doors opening on their own, Susan fainting when
she touches the console, and later on when the clock and everyone's
watches begin to melt. Everything weird in this story is put down to
the fault, which doesn't quite make sense. The idea, put forward by
Barbara in an interpretation of events even Jacqueline Hill can't
quite sell, is that the TARDIS is trying to communicate with its
occupants that they're in danger. From this we get the origin of the
idea that the TARDIS is sentient, or at least self-aware, though this
theory suffers from a few holes. The first hole is that the Ship has
chosen to communicate in the most obtuse, obscure manner possible
considering that she knows her existence is under threat. The other
is that at no point is the Great Mattress Scissor Massacre explained,
Susan simply snaps out of her paranoia in time for the climax.
Here
we come to the saving grace of the story because once you're past the
jarring early scenes and the explanations that make no sense the four
regulars put in strong performances. The big one is Barbara yelling
at the Doctor when he accuses her and Ian of sabotage. She points
out, stridently, that the Doctor would have been killed several times
over if not for the two of them pulling his fat out of the fryer. Its
powerful, its delivered with conviction and by the end of the story
the Doctor is far more respectful of her. They have a lovely scene
just before the end that has the Doctor offering her his arm. There's
a respect there that will underlie the whole of their relationship
from now on.
There
are similarly powerful moments with Ian, including a moment where he
graciously steps in and accepts the Doctor's contrition without
forcing him to actually apologise. The two men are coming to an
equality in their relationship which is just as well since the
continuing softening of Hartnell's performance, especially in that
last scene with Barbara, means he'll be ready to share Ian's leading
man position just as soon as he's done becoming a hero. We'll get
there but the hostility hasn't died completely yet. He's willing to
throw Ian and Barbara out of the TARDIS when he thinks they're
against him no matter where they've landed and in spite of Susan's
objections.
Oh,
yes, Susan, who doesn't get an apology of any kind. During the final
crisis of the story the Doctor lies to Susan and Barbara, telling
them they have more time than they actually do before the Ship is
destroyed. Afterwards he doesn't apologise for this but he does
concede to Barbara that she was right in her interpretation of events
and from that moment things between the Doctor and Barbara settle
down. He lied to Susan too, though, but even after everything the
story puts Susan through she gets no apologies, no words of comfort,
she's just expected to bounce back and forget that her grandfather
came very, very close to abandoning and possibly murdering her
teachers. Susan actually goes through more than most of the others in
this story yet it isn't judged worthy of comment at the end.
An
apology would certainly have been a better use of screen time between
the Doctor and Susan than having him explain, for the second time in
five minutes, how the whole problem with the TARDIS was down to a
stuck switch.
Ah,
yes, the Fast Return Switch, clearly labelled on the TARDIS console
in felt tip. What stands out about this isn't the sheer low-tech
degree of mechanical fault because complex mechanisms are broken by
small faults all the time. No, what stands out is how boring the
explanation is with the Doctor whipping out a pencil torch and using
the on-button to demonstrate to Susan (who is, lest we forget, an
alien genius from a society that can build time machines) how a
switch works when it was entirely obvious what had happened from the
dialogue the Doctor and Ian shared when they discovered the fault.
Worse,
this scene follows Hartnell delivering a great speech to camera
explaining how solar systems are formed through the accretion of
matter which actually comes out quite poetic. We get a fun but
largely useless science lesson (at least at the middle school level
the series is currently pitching for) followed by a practical but
unbelievably boring one. The educational aspect of the series isn't
going to last long and this, even more than the condensation bit in
the next serial, shows us exactly why.
