Thursday, July 7, 2016

The Edge of Destruction by: David Whitaker directed by: Richard Martin and Frank Cox: As We Learn About Each Other, We Also Learn About Ourselves

The Edge of Destruction stars William Hartnell as the Doctor, Jacqueline Hill as Barbara Wright, William Russell as Ian Chesterton and Carole Ann Ford as Susan Foreman.  It was written by David Whitaker and directed by Richard Martin and Frank Cox with David Whitaker as Script Editor, Mervyn Pinfield as Associate Producer and Verity Lambert as Producer.  It was originally broadcast on Saturdays from 8 to 15 February 1964 on BBC TV.

 

Looking back on the very beginning of Doctor Who you have the Doctor being a vastly different character from what he would become.  He was nowhere near the hero that he is today and was much darker as he was ready to commit murder or leave Barbara on Skaro so he could escape.  I examined however in my review of The Daleks how the Doctor in meeting the Daleks began the journey to become active in fighting the evils of the universe as the Daleks were total evil, but he still wasn’t a good guy.  That step came in the next story, a two part serial featuring only the main cast, set in the confines of the TARDIS entitled The Edge of Destruction.  The main plot is that the TARDIS has developed a fault which causes the Doctor to suspect Ian and Barbara of tampering with the controls and putting them into the situation of near death.  Of course Ian and Barbara wouldn’t dare and the Doctor is forced to begin to trust his companions as people as he famously says near the end of “The Brink of Disaster” “As we learn about each other, we also learn about ourselves” summing up the point of the story.  Hartnell is great as the Doctor here and is obviously to see what exactly he could do to develop the character.

 

The development doesn’t just occur to the Doctor as Ian and Barbara both have the catharsis that although they would like to go home, the travelling with the Doctor is all around a safe thing and they will get home eventually.  This however isn’t explained in Whitaker’s scripts for the story and has to be portrayed completely by William Russell and Jacqueline Hill in their expressions.  Once the Doctor apologizes to Barbara in “The Brink of Disaster” we see they are both ready to explore with the hope that it is Earth, but an almost new sense of adventure to keep the travels going.  Carole Ann Ford however actually gets the shaft again in this story as here she doesn’t get any character development.  This is a fault I place completely on Whitaker as an author as Susan gets some decent scenes in the first episode, “The Edge of Destruction”, especially when being suspicious, but really just is Barbara’s shadow for “The Brink of Disaster”.  The scene where she terrorizes Ian with a pair of scissors is the one real scene that sticks out for Susan, but in context she is quite out of her head as it had been knocked on the TARDIS floor.

 

While the character development is great the pacing of The Edge of Destruction along with the distinct lack of music is really where the flaws start to show.  Being a two part serial there is about forty-five minutes of time to explore the ideas and the first installment is actually really good at getting us to the climax by the cliffhanger.  In fact it is ten minutes before the end where the climax begins and the cliffhanger is just tacked on to begin the falling action to lead into the resolution.  Sadly that resolution being a faulty switch comes way too quickly for anything to be done interestingly with it along with more time to work with that really isn’t necessary, but sets up Marco Polo.  The music also isn’t there.  Oh there is some, but in the vast majority of the runtime the music barely features.

 

To summarize, The Edge of Destruction works marginally well for what it is as it becomes important in creating the continuing developments of the main characters, but Susan is left out of that mix while the pacing makes it much more difficult to find that character development.  Just one more draft is what should have happened to make this story a classic.  50/100



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