Doctor Who A-Z #03: The Edge of Destruction (1964)

For its third story, Doctor Who attempted a character-driven bottle episode, a bold move for a show whose characters didn’t have much to bottle at this point. The series needed a quick two-parter in order to complete its initial order of thirteen episodes; the decision to set it entirely on board the TARDIS was presumably made to offset the expense of the control room set. Yet this pragmatic motivation resulted in a deeply strange pair of episodes. It is, perhaps, more interesting for what it points the way ahead to, rather than what it is. Yet it still offers an unusually unfiltered look at what the production team felt the show was about in these early days.

The most alienating part of The Edge of Destruction, in terms of reconciling this very early story with what Doctor Who became, is its conception of the TARDIS. It’s not just that the Doctor can’t pilot it – that would remain the case until well into the Tom Baker years. It’s that the machine is actively hostile to its inhabitants, a hangover from the very first episode, when it rendered everyone unconscious on take-off. You can sort of see why this was written into the series; it acknowledges that the TARDIS is more a magic box than a spaceship, and there is something beguilingly oneiric about the idea of the TARDIS crew waking up at the start of each story in a different place. Keeping this idea, though, would mean any scenes on board the ship would be somewhat difficult. Scriptwriter David Whitaker is clearly trying to acknowledge this side of the TARDIS with the ending, and it’s not the most visionary idea this great writer bequeathed to the series. A machine that sends you insane every time it needs fixing has a pretty obvious design flaw.

On the positive side, watching the original TARDIS crew go insane and start at each other’s throats has a certain sacrilegious thrill. It happens quickly, too – no sooner is the Doctor rendered unconscious than Ian starts behaving extremely oddly, and if Ian’s behaving oddly Susan is stranger still. This is, remarkably, Whitaker’s only script to feature Susan, meaning this is the one chance we have to see how Doctor Who‘s original script editor handles Doctor Who‘s original companion. It would be fair to say he’s not one of the writers who sees her as a relatable viewpoint character. Whitaker works on the assumption that Susan is already a weird character, so if the viewer has any chance of realising what’s happening to her, she needs to go even weirder still.

The most obvious sign of this is her threatening Ian with a pair of scissors, a disturbingly extended scene that forced producer Verity Lambert to apologise to BBC Drama. (Perhaps it was the backstage unease about this scene that led to the serial’s only cliffhanger being fudged; the most frightening thing about it, the fact that the Doctor’s assailant is his friend Ian, is only revealed in the recap) Even without this, the inexplicable behaviour of Ian and Susan would be very unsettling, particularly as it happens without explanation or build-up. The Doctor and Barbara are not unaffected by the TARDIS’s malfunction, but Ian and Susan definitely get the worst of it, which has a certain symmetry. By episode two, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the crew have segregated along species lines, with the Doctor and Susan facing off against the humans Ian and Barbara.

This is where The Edge of Destruction becomes something more than a cost-saving curio. Viewers who started watching Doctor Who in its 21st-century incarnation are often fascinated by the gradual softening of the First Doctor’s character, because it feels so much like the kind of multi-season character arc the show currently practices. It isn’t, because nobody in 1960s television was talking about “multi-season character arcs”, and yet it still works on those terms. The First Doctor’s progress is the result of a smart creative team looking at what elements of the show were working, and tweaking things in order to maximise them. The Doctor’s behaviour in The Edge of Destruction is a case study in why this works, and how effectively it set up the rest of the series. Given the task of following straight on from the Doctor’s first unambiguously heroic moment at the end of The Daleks, David Whitaker fashions a character beat so forward-looking, not only does he reuse it next year, but it still appears in Ncuti Gatwa episodes today.

It’s this: the Doctor is very impressed by someone who can out-argue him. In this context, it’s Barbara; next year it’ll be Vicki, and arguably – though he’ll never admit it – the Meddling Monk. The idea that the Doctor needs companions in order to keep him in check is obviously one that echoes throughout the show’s history, and there’s a thrill to finding a clear example of it this early on. Whitaker uses his position as script editor to bolster it with the show’s first real engagement with continuity, as Barbara angrily reminds the Doctor of how she and Ian helped him against Kal and the Daleks. These references, standard-issue now but unusual for Hartnell-era Who, help sell The Edge of Destruction as an intriguing moment where the early series pauses to takes stock of itself, before moving on to a new epic.

Next: Marco Polo (1964)

Graham’s Archive – The Edge of Destruction

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