Doctor Who/The Edge of Destruction

The Edge of Destruction
003
Airdate	February 8, 1964
Production Number	C
Written by	David Whitaker
Directed by	Richard Martin and Frank Cox
← 002 The Daleks	004 → Marco Polo
Doctor Who — Season One

The Edge of Destruction is the third serial of the first season of Doctor Who, and the third serial overall.

Plot Overview

The Edge of Destruction

Everyone is knocked unconscious when the TARDIS is rocked by an explosion. Barbara is the first to re-awaken. Her memory seems to have been affected. She shes Ian and recognizes him only as Mr. Chesterton (not as Ian).

Susan, the next to awaken, has similar memory problems, and her neck hurts. Susan discovers her grandfather lying on the floor with a cut on his head. She screams!

Ian wakes up next. He is dizzy and his memory is impaired like the others. After speaking with him for a bit about the man on the floor, Barbara seems to remember that they are on a ship called the TARDIS.

Susan gasps! The doors are open! Something must have opened the doors and come aboard. Each time Ian approaches the doors, they close before he can reach them, and re-open when he walks away. Susan tries to close the doors, but is rendered unconscious when she approaches the main console.

When she awakens again she is a bit delusional. She grabs a pair of scissors and savagely stabs her bed/couch. Ian takes the scissors away from her and then goes to help the Doctor (who is now up and about) diagnose the ship, leaving Barbara to watch over Susan.

Everyone's memories are slowly returning. Meanwhile Susan takes the scissors again, suggesting that the intruder could be within any one of them. Barbara takes the scissors back forcibly.

The Doctor activates the scanners, but they show only memories of past voyages stored in the ship's memory banks. The Doctor accuses Ian and Barbara of sabotaging his ship.

Ian, Barbara, and Susan are suddenly transfixed and horrified by a somewhat abstract sculpture of what might be a clock tower. Barbara throws her wristwatch away, and that seems to make things better for some reason.

Later as the Doctor is contemplating the controls, someone grabs him by the throat.

The Brink of Disaster

In a delerium Ian has been half-heartedly choking the Doctor. Not surprisingly the Doctor becomes very suspicious and paranoid. He believes they are trying to blackmail him into returning them to the 20th century. He threatens to treat them as enemies and put them off the ship.

The Doctor still cannot find the problem. The whole fault locator panel is wrong. The ship is on the verge of destruction. Some strong force is destroying the ship, and they have less than 10 minutes to live.

The TARDIS is giving them clues: the food machine registers empty, but isn't; the time rotor is raising bit-by-bit; the scanners showing the start of a solar system.

They are at the very start of a solar system. That's what the TARDIS has been trying to communicate to them. With help, the Doctor determines that the fast return switch has been stuck the whole time: a bad spring.

The Doctor admits that Barbara was right and probably saved their lives. He fixes the switch, activates the time drive and wisks them away to cold, snowy planet, where the Doctor apologizes to Barbara again for his behaviour. Tensions between the Doctor and the teachers seem to ease a bit afterward.

Outside on the snowy planet, a few snowballs are exchanged, and then a big footprint is found.

Arc Advancement

Happenings

• The TARDIS communicates with its occupants non-verbally, using various clues and subtle signs.

Characters

• The Doctor shows a nasty, cross, paranoid side of himself when he decides that Ian and Barbara are conspiring to take over his ship, and that he'll have to put them off the ship.

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