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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