When the Doctor Turned on His Companions
The Edge of Destruction has an edge all right.
Plot Summary
When the TARDIS suffers a critical malfunction, anger and paranoia set in among its passengers.
Notable for:
First “bottle episode” in Doctor Who
First time the TARDIS is hinted at being more than a mere machine.
Ian says the Doctor’s heart, singular, seems alright.
Pete commentary:
The Edge of Destruction is so mental to watch now! You get such strange feeling with everyone regaining consciousness in the TARDIS, not knowing each other, and acting weird, that it’s very unsettling — especially when you come back to it after 60+ years of watching a familiar formula. Totally subverted here, though obviously that wasn’t the intent back then.
The TARDIS getting shaken and slammed at the outset of a story, with everyone rendered unconscious, is reminiscent of Time and the Rani. Maybe we came closer than it seems to a regeneration here!
The only thing that I think comes close to this kind of feeling — essentially waking up and getting plunged into an ongoing situation where all the characters have zero clue what’s going on — is Time Heist. I’d love to see Who try this again. To swap franchises, I think this idea was done extremely well in the ST:TNG episode Conundrum.
Ian and Barbara acting all weird gets your attention, though William Russell is a bit more convincing with his robotic tone. It also leads to a nice mislead, that maybe some kind of creature is hiding “in one of us.” Ian’s flailing around in episode 2 gets a little OTT, though.
Those drop-down futons show the Doctor’s been rocking Ikea furniture since long before Planet of the Daleks.
When Susan pulls out the bandage, it unfurls like a condom package!
Lots of groundwork laid here for future TARDIS lore. It’s an interesting thought exercise to reconcile this episode with the rest of Doctor Who. What happens here ends up being the basis for the TARDIS telepathic circuits and, later, it having some kind of consciousness. Barbara even suspects “another intelligence” at work.
That said, the fact that a broken spring can lead the TARDIS to its own destruction is hilariously low-tech, and emphasizes the TARDIS is a machine. I don’t think this is a contradiction at all: after all, we are machines, and hardware can sometimes fail in dumb ways (funny bones come to mind). Doesn’t mean we’re not also special.
Also: the Doctor insists “My machine can’t think.” Which might be literally true, but it seems a little incomplete of an answer if he’s at all familiar with TARDISes. (He might just be new at this — that he never had any hands-on experience with them until his journeys, and didn’t get too into the subject at the academy.)
The Doctor’s threat to toss Ian and Barbara from the TARDIS feels very serious. The implication seems to be to get rid of them mid-flight, not even stopping to let them fend for themselves on some planet.
The low-fi black-and-white format is more of a liability here: The clock being melted doesn’t really come through at all — you wonder why they’re so upset while looking at it
This filler episode might be one of Carole Ann Ford’s most memorable performances. With her memory jumbled, she becomes downright scary. Her eyes are intense, and when she’s holding those scissors… brr.
This is arguably the last “the Doctor as an anti-hero” story. I think his regret at nearly throwing Ian and Barbara off is palatable, and the final scene with Barbara works well. He asks for her forgiveness and shows that he really does have empathy. We’re seeing real growth from the Hartnell of An Unearthly Child
What did Pete’s family think?
It held Grace’s attention throughout, but she thought it was “really weird.”
Four Questions to Doomsday
Why did the Randomizer take us here? Both Planet of the Daleks and Planet of the Spiders involve the TARDIS being more than a machine: the telepathic circuits in Daleks, and in Spiders it finds both where Sarah is and the Doctor’s way home at the end because of its built-in instincts. Also: Heaven Sent had no TARDIS action; this time it’s all TARDIS, all the time. Gotta balance things out.
What if the evil plot had succeeded? Back to event one! The Doctor finds Terminus at the end of the Fast Return Switch rainbow. Or rather, sees it eject the fuel pod, which creates the universe. Might that jog the switch loose? Would the TARDIS be consumed by the explosion? You have to think yes, but perhaps the Doctor and his companions are then imprinted on everything!
Where's the Clara splinter? Time Lady Clara pre-decorated the TARDIS with a weird-ass looking clock.
Dalek, Ogron, Professor Hayter, Viscount Banger, Fixed Point in Time, Lady Cassandra, or Zarbi? As filler episodes go, this one is more interesting than it has a right to be. The end scene between the Doctor and Barbara elevates it to Dalek status. It’s an important moment in the (First) Doctor’s journey to becoming more than an anti-hero.