Read Online Running Through Corridors: Rob and Toby's Marathon Watch of Doctor Who (Volume 1: The 60s) by Robert Shearman, Toby Hadoke - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Robert Shearman, Toby Hadoke
Tags: Doctor Who, BBC
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battle with his most iconic enemies comes to an end. It’s been spooky and experimental, and yet what I love most about this story (especially when you consider that the show as it currently stands can occasionally be too knowingly iconic) is that this was all chucked together by people who had no idea what it was they’d started. To those involved, it was just a day at work, a confluence of ideas – and yet it was so successful that it’s directly responsible for Doctor Who surviving to see the vast number of Who-related events that are going on all over the world on this very day.
The Edge of Destruction (episode one)
R: This is utterly bonkers, isn’t it? You’d never get away with screening an episode as bizarre as this on television nowadays. I’m pretty amazed they got away with screening it then.
Faced with a need to make two episodes on the cheap – and with no new sets and no additional actors – the production team made this quickie inside the TARDIS. With that in mind, David Whitaker – Doctor Who’s first script editor and the writer of this story – could have gone down several different routes. He might have written a story which served as some sort of intriguing mystery – and at times you feel that’s the approach he’s opting for, but the clues are too thinly drawn, and don’t point to any solution. (Besides, at the episode’s end, a whole halfway through the story, you don’t get a sense of anything really being at stake.) So instead, he could have gone for the character study, the cost-cutting option seen on many a Star Trek near the end of a series, sacrificing action and adventure for dialogue and depth. But even that isn’t happening, as the TARDIS regulars are quite purposefully drawn from scratch, and are at times quite unrecognisable from any previous episodes. Actually, it’s even odder than that – they’re even acting in completely different styles. William Russell affects a sort of zombie air for most of the proceedings, giving an eerie sing-song quality to a lot of his early dialogue; Carole Ann Ford goes flat-out playing Susan either as swaying drunk or scary psychopath. William Hartnell seems very puzzled by the whole thing, and so falls into his default “brash” persona. Thank God for Jacqueline Hill, who in spite of the odds actually mines something emotional and true out of all the weirdness, becoming wonderfully angry at the Doctor’s ingratitude and suitably distressed by his suspicion.
It’d take a braver man than me to suggest that The Edge of Destruction actually works. (You up for that, Toby?) And yet... this is an episode so utterly ill-conceived, so entirely off the rails, that it actually impresses with its sheer chutzpah. You can tell that none of the cast have the slightest idea how to read what’s going on – and yet, rather than muttering the lines and looking embarrassed, they’re all really going for their contrasting interpretations. If the following scene contradicts what they’ve just done, they don’t worry about it, they just commit wholeheartedly to the new approach instead. (Watch Carole Ann Ford in particular, who moves from hysteric to sinister scissor-wielding nutter to troubled peacemaker within minutes – and does so with such utter gung-ho conviction, it almost joins the dots.) Had the episode been played in a uniform style, with the cast fully clear about the direction their characters should be going, this would all be rather tepid stuff. But because it’s so deliriously flying by the seat of its pants, it at times feels genuinely chilling. When even the actors don’t appear to know what to expect next, neither can we the audience, and the effect is disorientating. The camera keeps on surprising us, with actors taking up different positions off screen – the most obvious example is when Ian happens upon a Susan who’s brandishing a pair of scissors, but I honestly shuddered when Ian, having been set up as lolling
The Edge of Destruction (episode one)
R: This is utterly bonkers, isn’t it? You’d never get away with screening an episode as bizarre as this on television nowadays. I’m pretty amazed they got away with screening it then.
Faced with a need to make two episodes on the cheap – and with no new sets and no additional actors – the production team made this quickie inside the TARDIS. With that in mind, David Whitaker – Doctor Who’s first script editor and the writer of this story – could have gone down several different routes. He might have written a story which served as some sort of intriguing mystery – and at times you feel that’s the approach he’s opting for, but the clues are too thinly drawn, and don’t point to any solution. (Besides, at the episode’s end, a whole halfway through the story, you don’t get a sense of anything really being at stake.) So instead, he could have gone for the character study, the cost-cutting option seen on many a Star Trek near the end of a series, sacrificing action and adventure for dialogue and depth. But even that isn’t happening, as the TARDIS regulars are quite purposefully drawn from scratch, and are at times quite unrecognisable from any previous episodes. Actually, it’s even odder than that – they’re even acting in completely different styles. William Russell affects a sort of zombie air for most of the proceedings, giving an eerie sing-song quality to a lot of his early dialogue; Carole Ann Ford goes flat-out playing Susan either as swaying drunk or scary psychopath. William Hartnell seems very puzzled by the whole thing, and so falls into his default “brash” persona. Thank God for Jacqueline Hill, who in spite of the odds actually mines something emotional and true out of all the weirdness, becoming wonderfully angry at the Doctor’s ingratitude and suitably distressed by his suspicion.
It’d take a braver man than me to suggest that The Edge of Destruction actually works. (You up for that, Toby?) And yet... this is an episode so utterly ill-conceived, so entirely off the rails, that it actually impresses with its sheer chutzpah. You can tell that none of the cast have the slightest idea how to read what’s going on – and yet, rather than muttering the lines and looking embarrassed, they’re all really going for their contrasting interpretations. If the following scene contradicts what they’ve just done, they don’t worry about it, they just commit wholeheartedly to the new approach instead. (Watch Carole Ann Ford in particular, who moves from hysteric to sinister scissor-wielding nutter to troubled peacemaker within minutes – and does so with such utter gung-ho conviction, it almost joins the dots.) Had the episode been played in a uniform style, with the cast fully clear about the direction their characters should be going, this would all be rather tepid stuff. But because it’s so deliriously flying by the seat of its pants, it at times feels genuinely chilling. When even the actors don’t appear to know what to expect next, neither can we the audience, and the effect is disorientating. The camera keeps on surprising us, with actors taking up different positions off screen – the most obvious example is when Ian happens upon a Susan who’s brandishing a pair of scissors, but I honestly shuddered when Ian, having been set up as lolling
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