Previously on Doctor Who...
Schoolteachers Barbara Wright and Ian Chesterton follow mysterious 15 year old pupil Susan Foreman back to a London junkyard on a foggy November night in 1963, where they meet they meet her grandfather, an old man with a flowing mane of white hair and haughty demeanour, dressed in the wing collar shirt, cravat and dark frock-coat of an Edwardian gentleman. The Doctor is an alien, and the police box standing in the junkyard is his TARDIS, a craft that whisks them off into space and time.
Having escaped the dangers of Earth's stone age, their next journey takes them to the desolate radiation soaked world of Skaro in the distant future, where they must side with the peaceful Thals to escape the clutches of the deadly Daleks.
Now departing Skaro, the Doctor tries once again to return the schoolteachers to London, 1963...
...but a tremendous crash suddenly resounds throughout the control chamber, and a searing white light bursts from the console's central column as they are thrown, unconscious, to the floor.
...but a tremendous crash suddenly resounds throughout the control chamber, and a searing white light bursts from the console's central column as they are thrown, unconscious, to the floor.
Still the best version of the theme tune, probably.
So deliciously sinister.
11thDoctorAdventures @11thDoctorComic · 60s theme tune <3
PART ONE: THE EDGE OF DESTRUCTION (8th February 1964)
It's a great title, isn't it?
50dw50 @50dw50 · "At The Side Of Doom"? maybe not11thDoctorAdventures @11thDoctorComic · The Brink of Disaster's quite a good title too.
MAW Holmes @MAW_H · The Rim of Catastrophe...? And it's always lovely to see the late great David Whitaker's name appear on screen.
How odd to think the first three stories could have been it - one encapsulated 13 episode run, with this as a coda. Everything's still so unknown, so pioneering. They still don't really trust each other till this story's over.
John Mark Frankland@JMFrankland First saw this as part of BSB's Doctor Who weekend in 1990. They broadcast the episodes the wrong way round... they put it on later and broadcast it the correctly. I wasn't really much the wiser.That must have confused a few people!
James Cooray Smith@thejimsmith Hardly less peculiar than watching it in the right order, tbh. 50dw50@50dw50 as i recall the picture was so murky it was hard to make anything out anyway! Barbara is the first to regain consciousness, and begins a confused stumble around the control room, seemingly unsure if the faces of her fellow travellers are familiar.
MAW Holmes@MAW_H Proof, if ever it was needed, that Babs is best! Susan is next to awake. She too seems confused, and has hurt her head and neck.
50dw50@50dw50 from the off they act so oddly it reminds me of one of those experimental theatre productions i used to inflict on myselfLass Productions (as it was then) in Manchester put on a cracking version of this very story, by all accounts, though we missed out on seeing it. Their adaptation of the episode Midnight was amazing. Look out for new productions from their latest incarnation, 5064 Productions!
Susan is concerned to find her grandfather has a nasty looking cut to the head. Presumably he struck the console before falling to the floor.
Barbara asks Susan to fetch some ointment and water, and something to dress the wound with.
As she moves closer to the middle of the room, Susan feels a sharp pain in her head and neck again. She seems not to recognize Ian at all.
As Susan leaves, Barbara sees that Ian is coming around. He too is discombobulated, thinking they're still at school, as if the last two stories were a dream. "You're working late tonight, Miss Wright."
He has a dizzy spell before getting his bearings, and Barbara tells him the Doctor's cut his head.
Susan finds a First Aid kit and cuts a length of medicated bandage. The ointment visible in the bandage will fade as it's absorbed, and once it's done its' work, the bandage can be removed.
Ian assures Barbara that the Doctor's skull isn't fractured. "His heart seems all right, and his breathing's quite regular." So - 'Heart', singular, eh? Ian is quite disorientated, mind you.
Barbara suddenly remembers that the ship is named "TARDIS". The Doctor rambles: "I can't take you back, Susan, I can't..." Aye, aye, what's all this, then? Back to Coal Hill school, or...?
Always great to see the food machine. Susan seems to know how it works, yet is puzzled by the water coming in a clear plastic pouch.
Susan panics when she sees the control room doors are open.
Ian suggests the Doctor may have opened the doors before he fell...
...or that they were flung open when the ship crashed. Susan says it's impossible for the ship to crash, and starts to fear that something has come aboard.
Ian goes to see what's outside, but as he approaches, the doors shut, seemingly of their own accord.
It's never really occurred to me before but I wonder if this bit with Ian testing out the doors is what made its way (in far more "humorous" form) into the first Cushing Dalek film...
When Susan approaches the console, she suffers a sudden pang of pain and collapses to the floor, unconscious..
Barbara tends to the Doctor while Ian lifts Susan up to put her to bed.
Barbara bandages the Doctor's noggin bump and he starts to regain consciousness.
Those beds don't look comfy at all, but I definitely want one of those food machines.
Like Susan before him, Ian is initially flummoxed by the food machine dispensing water in a plastic pouch.
When he returns, he finds Susan threateningly clutching the scissors from the First Aid kit.
Very dodgy stuff with the scissors, but judging by her mad hair, Susan could probably do with at least a trim.
Luckily, she collapses to the floor, dropping the scissors.
The Doctor theorizes that the ship must have landed somewhere, but Barbara rumbles that he's just making wild guesses.
Barbara tentatively returns to the darkened control room.
The Doctor decides to check out the
Barbara wonders if they've been invaded by... something.
I love all the creepy stock music in these 60s stories. Though I associate this more with the Moonbase, to be honest.
Ian is sceptical.
The Doctor is worried by Susan's apparent memory loss.
Ian warns the Doctor off the console, telling him it might give him an electric shock.
Ian tells Barbara not to worry Susan with her invader theory...
...unaware that the girl has slipped past them to retrieve the scissors.
The Doctor comes over all woozy and asks Ian to take the readings for him.
Ian's having trouble focusing himself.
Barbara goes to the First Aid kit, unaware that Susan is watching her.
It seems that Susan does recall who Barbara is now.
Barbara explains that Ian had suggested that the ship had suffered a power failure.
Susan accuses her of lying, revealing that she overheard their earlier conversation about a possible invader, and slipping the scissors from her sleeve to arm herself.
They're all out of sorts, of course, but you're reminded in this one that Susan really is alien.
Barbara manages to wrest the scissors from Susan's grasp.
The two women begin to terrify one another with their fears, of the shadows, of the silence, of not being believed by the others...
If something did get in when the doors were open, where would it hide? "In one of us," Susan suggests.
Are their imaginations just getting the better of them?
Ian returns to confirm that there are no apparent faults inside the ship, so the Doctor's going to turn on the scanner to see what's ouside.
At this, Susan leaps to her feet, but despite her fears, the Doctor is fine.
Susan explains the pain they experienced whenever they went near the console.
The Doctor braces himself and flips the switch, but is unharmed.
Barbara is unnerved by the Doctor's glares. "Why does he keep looking at us like that?" Ian is none the wiser.
Not much on telly, just Countryfile by the looks of it.
But there's a sudden blaring roar as the doors open, and close, once again.
Susan recognizes the next picture as the planet Quinnis in the "4th Universe", where the TARDIS was nearly lost to them "four or five journey's back".
Quinnis it may be, but the Doctor points out that this is just a photo, an image from the TARDIS memory banks.
The Doctor seems suspicious of Ian when the schoolteacher says he's never mentioned the memory bank before.
A new succession of images is displayed: a cratered planet, its solar system, its galaxy...
...but then a flash, and then - nothing.
The Doctor begins to give voice to his suspicions. "Trying to confuse me, eh?"
When Barbara suggests they open the doors to look outside, the Doctor refuses. "What is inside, madam, is most important at the moment!"
The old man points the finger at the teachers.
"You're the cause of this disaster. And you knocked both Susan and I unconscious!"
With the travellers at each others' throats, the TARDIS has another shock in store...
Stop the clocks AND MELT THEIR FACES!
The TARDIS is a bit of a psycho, really.
Even Ian's watch has melted.
While Susan, Ian and Barbara are still reeling, the Doctor has done a complete flip flop and is now playing the perfect host.
The Doctor calls it "a little nightcap to help us all sleep."
Not sure I'd drink that, to be honest.
Barbara is shattered though, and heads off to bed.
Ian suggests an apology to Barbara is in order.
The Doctor suggests he sticks it where the sun don't shine.
Ian is exasperated, telling the Doctor he can't keep up.
The Doctor is acerbic once more. "
You mean to keep one jump ahead. That you will never be. You need my knowledge and ability to apply it, and then you need my experience to gain the fullest results."
When Ian wonders whether such "results" would be for good or evil, the Doctor's reply hardly makes things better: "One man's law is another man's crime."
"Sleep on it, Chesterton. Sleep on it."
Susan begs Barbara to forgive her grandfather, but the teacher turns away, and tells her to get some sleep.
Soon, the Doctor is sneaking around the ship, making sure that the teachers have fallen asleep.
He heads for the console...
...where he's suddenly attacked!
Whew! Tense! Great little cliffhanger - is that Ian strangling the Doctor... or has someone else come aboard?!
PART TWO: THE BRINK OF DISASTER (15th February 1964)
Well, it is Ian... but he doesn't look in control of himself... Or that dressing gown, to be honest.
MAW Holmes@MAW_H "Well helloooooooooooo..."Mary Whitehouse's blood pressure now on The Brink Of Disaster.
Barbara asks the Doctor to help the collapsed Ian...
...but the Doctor says he's bang to rights.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Susan sides with her grandfather.
However, although she agrees that the teachers have been actly strangely, she draws the line at him saying they should be treated as enemies.
Barbara pleads with Ian to wake up but he's completely disorientated. His undies must be too tight.
The Doctor's mind appears made up: "Your little trick endangered our lives!"
Barbara appeals to Susan, pointing out that she felt that sharp pain when she went near the console. Susan appears to be coming around, telling her grandfather that they couldn't be responsible for all the strange goings on.
The Doctor is steadfast, though, and has decided to put the teachers off the ship.
Ian suddenly shouts a warning before collapsing again: "Don't touch it, Doctor!"
Susan pleads their case, but the Doctor's not having any of it.
Barbara doesn't think the Doctor would do it. Maybe she doesn't know him after all - doesn't she remember when he 'asked the caveman to draw a map'?
Barbara demands to know why he's so suspicious of them.
He's just telling her that she'd do the same in his shoes, when Ian comes round again, only to be given his marching orders.
Barbara struggles to help Ian to his feet, with no thought of help from the Doctor.
He says he might be inclined to reconsider if they'd confess what they've done to the ship.
Just then a klaxon sounds - apparently the sound of the fault locator warning that every single system aboard is failing. The fault locator seems to disappear in subsequent stories, so maybe such wild catastrophes are just defaulted to the Cloister Bell from then on?
Ian grabs at Barbara to stop her going near the console, warning that the controls are "alive", and the Doctor's eyes are opened at last.
He tells Barbara not to be afraid of him. "I've just realized the danger we're in."
The klaxon means that "the ship is on the point of disintegration!"
The Doctor is forced to come clean that he'd slipped a sleeping drug into the drinks he handed round earlier. Oh, that's fine, then.
Susan has counted the spaces between the sounding of the klaxon, and it's exactly every fifteen seconds. The Doctor admits he misjudged the teachers, and says that they must work together.
When the Doctor begins to hypothesize Ian grows alarmed at the thought that the ship is on the brink of destruction.
The Doctor rules out both a crash landing and an evil intelligence having invaded.
He's also - finally - willing to rule out interference by the teachers.
Barbara suggests that they have a measure of time left, and that this was the meaning of the melted clock face. "We had time taken away from us, and now it's being given back to us because it's running out." Clear as mud.
There's a flash, and the whole ship shakes.
The column rises and falls... once only.
The Doctor explains that "the heart of the machine is under the column."
Susan fears that if the column comes out completely that power would be free to escape.
The Doctor has worse fears: "Can it be possible then, that this is the end?"
He tells the others that have only ten minutes to survive.
Doctor wonders why the scanner controls alone appear to be safe.
Susan is starting to panic.
The Doctor doesn't know where to start, and laments being without even a clue.
But Barbara is one step ahead, realizing that they've been given nothing BUT clues!
The food machine registered as empty when it wasn't, the melted clock made them aware that something was awry with time, and the fault locator said that none of the ship's systems were working incorrectly.
"The machine wasn't at fault, we were. And it's been trying to tell us so ever since."
The Doctor concedes this is plausible. The TARDIS has a bank of computers, so "must be able to think as a machine."
Barbara gets to the heart of the matter - and of the TARDIS. "You say the power is under this column, and the column holds it down. Well, then, what would make it want to escape?"
Ian speculates that it would be some force outside the TARDIS. The Doctor responds that it would have to be a gigantic one - "as strong as a solar system."
The TARDIS shakes once again.
Barbara reminds them that the TARDIS resists them approaching the console unless it's to use the scanner.
Although he likens it to clutching at straws, the Doctor agrees they must try the scanner once again.
He asks Susan and Barbara to stand by the doors so as to glimpse whatever's outside if they open again.
It's not entirely a ruse, but he takes the opportunity to take Ian into his confidence. "We have five minutes only. When the end does come, they won't know anything about it."
He asks Ian to face the end with him, as he switches on the scanner.
Once again, the screen shows an idyllic countryside scene.
Susan is horrified to see that, when the doors open, there is nothing outside. "Nothing but space."
Barbara reasons out the purpose of the sequence of images that they are shown. "Whenever there's a good picture, the doors open because it's safe for us to go outside. And then it shows us a terrible picture and the doors close again."
The Doctor notes the sequence. "A planet, a planet in the solar system, getting further away. Blinding flash. Destruction."
It's their journey, and as Barbara says, the ship is refusing to destroy itself by going through with it.
With another shudder of the ship, the power is at its lowest ebb, with the lights almost completely out now.
An absolute masterclass from William Hartnell now.
"I said it would take the force of a total solar system to attract the power away from my ship. We're at the very beginning, the new start of a solar system. Outside, the atoms are rushing towards each other."
"Fusing, coagulating, until minute little collections of matter are created. And so the process goes on, and on until dust is formed. Dust then becomes solid entity. A new birth, of a sun and its planets!"
50dw50@50dw50 we mock but he was superb.
When they left Skaro, the Doctor had intended to return the teachers to Earth, so he used the "fast return" switch.
Susan tells Barbara that the fast return switch is near the scanner control, which of course is the part of the console that is safe to touch.
The Doctor uses a pen torch to examine the switch.
Sure enough, the switch is jammed down.
A quick jiggle and job's a good 'un. As they say.
With the spring inside the switch unjammed, the systems come alive, and the TARDIS goes into flight, away from its doom the edge of destruction and the brink of disaster!
So the whole nightmare was caused by a stuck spring. The TARDIS isn't fit for purpose, I tells ya!
The Doctor dumbs it down for Susan as he sheds some light on the principle.
50dw50@50dw50 maybe she did not go to one of the better timelord academies? Rejected from Prydon, Arcalia and Patrex, she ended up in Hufflepuff.
The damage to the ship may have been repaired, but there are some rather singed, if not burnt, bridges to attend to where Ian and Barbara are concerned.
Luckily, Ian is so relieved he's prepared to be charitable about the Doctor's suspicious nature.
The Doctor finally admits to Barbara "we all owe you our lives..." Not quite an apology but it'll do.
Apology not entirely accepted, it may seem.
"You know, I really believe I have underestimated that young lady in the past, Chartow. Well, now we can all start again, eh?"
Ian just laughs at the attempt to gloss over everything, much to the Doctor's grumbling annoyance.
This is really all over now.
Some time later, at least long enough later for Barbara to have got changed, the Doctor makes a more concerted effort to put things right between them.
He breaks the ice by informing her that they've landed on a planet and although the air is good, it's rather cold outside.
She reminds him that he said some terrible things to them.
He hears her. "I suppose it's the injustice that's upsetting you, and when I made a threat to put you off the ship it must have affected you very deeply."
Although she doubts whether he cares what she thinks or feels, he shows a surprising side for perhaps the first time. "As we learn about each other, so we learn about ourselves. Because I accused you unjustly, you were determined to prove me wrong. So, you put your mind to the problem and, luckily, you solved it."
Susan pops in, wrapped up warm, to tell them they're going out.
Peace apparently made, the Doctor helps Barbara into a warm coat. "We must look after you, you know. You're very valuable!"
Ian gives them a twirl in his gigantic Ulster coat. Barbara's verdict: "Very chic!"
Susan throws a snowball from outside and legs it, the scamp.
The Doctor notes that the coat suits Ian more than it ever did him - he "acquired" it from Gilbert & Sullivan. I bet that means in the same way he "acquired" the TARDIS. While we're at it, is that Doctor Who's first name drop?
Outside, Susan and Barbara have made an alarming discovery. "Look at this huge footprint. It must have been made by a giant."
50dw50@50dw50 Dr Who in an exciting adventure with the massive feet 
If only we could watch that next episode...
John Mark Frankland@JMFrankland Hartnell does great stuff in The Edge Of Destruction and it has a lovely ending. Who says Doctor Who has to make sense anyway? It strikes me that much of the first episode of the Mind Robber is similar, down to seeing things on the scanner.
John Mark Frankland@JMFrankland The Mind Robber is psychedelic so we have a context for it, so it's better remembered and understood... Whereas Edge is very early 60s and absurdist (maybe) so there's not the same way 'in'... Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying it's a great piece of drama or that Whitaker is up there with Beckett and co!lol! We can at least fairly say it has a creepy psychological quality that remains generally uncommon for the show :-)
TTFN! K.
Coming Soon: The War Games
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